INTHEBLACK May 2025 - Magazine - Page 56
WORK SMART
Create a
learning culture
True learning stems from an environment where curiosity is celebrated and workers take
responsibility for their own growth. To develop a learning culture, organisations need
to empower employees to direct their own growth and development.
Words Beth Wallace
56 INTHEBLACK May 2025
SHORTLY AFTER BECOMING MICROSOFT CEO
in 2014, Satya Nadella voiced his plan to
orchestrate a major culture change. At the
time, he stated the organisation had been
a “know-it-all company” for too long.
Now, he said, it needed to become
a “learn-it-all company”.
For Microsoft, this means encouraging
employees to learn “not only from successes,
but also from experiments, mistakes, failures
and especially each other”.
It is an approach that other companies
would do well to replicate, says Michelle
Ockers, organisational learning strategist
and founder of Learning Uncut.
“Nadella said it’s not about being perfect,
because that closes us off to opportunity,”
she explains. “This is the language that he
very deliberately used and cultivated across
the organisation that, in turn, inspired their
developers and customers to engage with
the company in new and more modern ways.”
