Organisational learning is more than just falling forward, it’s about developing a clear, intentional pathway to success

At Laudes Foundation, we closed 2021 with an event for staff which was about sharing failures and drawing lessons from them. Kicked off by our CEO, we encouraged staff of all levels to consider their lessons from the year and reflect on what could have been done differently. Our goal was to demonstrate that the foundation is a place where staff can be open about and learn from failure without fear or shame. This was a key milestone for us in terms of starting to build our learning culture.

Learning from failure is vital to building strength within an organisation and acknowledging its weaknesses, but it’s impossible without the right organisational culture. To leverage the true value of learning, and indeed become a learning organisation capable of influencing and affecting change, we need to take a few steps back and start from the beginning. We wanted to use our contribution to this special feature of Alliance to describe not only why we decided to become a learning organisation, but how we are going about it. What is learning and how can we develop an approach that is both proactive, inclusive and effective?

Our goal was to demonstrate that the foundation is a place where staff can be open about and learn from failure without fear or shame.