Episode 42: How Do You Create a Learning Culture in the Workplace? (Interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri)
In this episode of the podcast, my guest is Gianpiero Petriglieri, who is the Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, and an expert on leadership and learning in the workplace.
Gianpiero has chaired The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on new models of leadership and is listed among the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world by Thinkers 50. His work explores how and where people development sustains the personal foundations and professional abilities to exercise leadership mindfully, effectively and responsibly.
Gianpiero’s studies highlight the psychological, social and cultural functions of leadership development and his teaching methods provide an example of how to perform those functions purposely for the benefit of individuals, organisations and society at large. His research has appeared in academic journals, media and business journals, like the Harvard Business Review, where five of his essays have been included among the ideas that shaped management in the last decade. You can listen below or by visiting the podcast website here.
In our conversation, Gianpiero and I discuss:
Why organisations are struggling to embed a culture of lifelong learning
The differences between cognitive learning and socio-emotional learning and why organisations need to make room for both
The role of technology in supporting the development of skills
Examples from companies like Schneider Electric and Lego who have developed culture and environments where learning can thrive
The role of the Chief Learning Officer and whether it should sit within HR or report directly to the CEO
This episode is a must listen for anyone interested or involved in learning, skills and leadership development, either from an individual or company perspective. So that is Business Leaders, CHROs, Chief Learning Officers and anyone in a People Analytics, Workforce Planning or HR Business Partner role.
Support for this podcast is brought to you by Degreed. To learn more, visit https://degreed.com/.
Interview Transcript
David Green: Today I am delighted to welcome Gianpiero Petriglieri, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD to The Digital HR Leaders Podcast.
Welcome to the show Gianpiero. Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to your background and current activities?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Thank you very much for having me David. Sure, my professional background is somewhat unusual. I started actually training as a medical doctor and as a psychiatrist and then made a transition from a mental hospital to a Business school, which is somewhat different. Although you encounter quite a lot of neurosis in both places. I went through coaching and consulting and then I got into academia.
I have been a Management Professor at INSEAD for the last 15 years. I specialise in leadership and learning. So, what does that mean? I research leadership development, especially in this day and age, where things are changing very fast, people are more mobile and business is more digital. I write and I speak about leadership development and I also practice it.
So I work with a number of companies on leadership development initiatives and workshops. At INSEAD I run the Management Acceleration Program, which is the school's flagship program for emerging leaders.
David Green: Great. Well, I think we will probably touch on all of those areas today. You write a lot, I think we will start there because one of your recent articles, I think it came out towards the end of last year in MIT Sloan’s management review, Learning for a Living. It has grabbed quite a lot of attention and rightly so, so I would like to start the conversation there. The byline of the article is learning at work is work and we must make space for it. Please can you describe for our listeners what you mean by this and the implications for both the individual learner and the organisation?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Yes. If you look at business right now we talk a good game about learning, we talk about learning all the time, I like to say that learning is the new loyalty. Usually organisations recruited talent by saying "If you make it here you will have a great career. You must stay a long time. We will make you one of the best, and then we will keep you and we will give you a great career for life.” These days that has completely disappeared. Employee value proposition has really disappeared, but it has been replaced by the promise of learning. And the employee value proposition tends to be "If you come here, you learn more, you learn faster than if you were at our competitor” and companies invest a lot in learning.
They don't just talk about it, but they also put their money where their mouth is. What I was interested in in the article is exploring a little bit about discrepancy that you see if you work with business, which is we talk a lot about learning. We invest a lot in learning, but then people feel that learning isn't quite happening as much or as fast as they wished it to. This is independent on whether you are talking to executive and they say "people are really still a bit resistant to learning, resistant to change” or whether you actually talk to talent and they say “yes, I would really like to invest in my own learning but really our organisation isn't set up for that so I have to do it in my own time.”
And so, one of the things I was trying to do in the article is it possible that the discrepancy between how much we want to invest in learning and how much learning we actually managed to get in business, isn't really because we have bad intentions but it is because we don't really understand. We don't really look at what does it take to learn and where do we learn? Just like for anything else before any other process we often really look at, what does it mean? What outcome are we trying to achieve? What is it that we're trying to maximise? How do we do it more efficiently?
The idea that I was trying to put across was that learning is not a singular monolithic thing. There is more than one process that goes on under this very general and nebulous banner of learning and probably we will get back to that.
David Green: Since you wrote that article, we have had the Covid-19 crisis and a lot of organisations we are speaking to are accelerating programs around learning, particularly digital learning, which is quite interesting.
What are the gaps between the intent and the execution of learning? And why are they falling down and what could they do to remedy it?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Well, let's go to the core of it. What we understand as organisations as organising is really antithetical to learning, organisations frankly are simply not designed for learning. So we have a 20th century design which really follows the principle of scale and efficiency. Organisations are designed for efficient performance but are trying to address the 21st century problem, which is innovation, talent development, learning, these are all learning process by the way, innovation and talent development are the organisation and the personal side of a learning process. So I think unless we change the way we view and understand organisations then it is hard to really focus them on learning. I also want to say I am wrong in a sense, people often say organisations are inhospitable to learning and actually I find it inaccurate. Organisations are great at learning but a particular kind of learning, which is incremental learning day in, day out, doing things a little better than we did them yesterday. Really squeezing those efficiency and financial margins but what they find is that because they are so successful at incremental learning, then that gets in the way of transformation because learning isn't just getting better at what you already know how to do. Learning is also trying to figure out what matters now, this is what we were good at yesterday but is this what we need to do now? That kind of transformational learning requires not just putting aside, but actually subverting the logic of efficiency which is a religion in the way we design and run organisations, frankly. It is blasphemy to say that you should actually challenge the logic of efficiency if you really want to make room for development, for innovation, for learning in its broader sense.
David Green: I guess it is a two way thing as well. The organisational construct needs to adapt, as you said it is still in most cases 20th century constructs for a 21st century world. I guess for the individual it is a little bit more empowerment as well, isn't it? So organisations should be there to help people learn but also help people learn the skills that the organisation needs to be more successful in the future. I guess that is where we have a bit of a problem that needs to be closed.
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Yes and often I get asked if maybe we should rebrand learning and I actually don't think the issue is rebranding learning, the issue is de-branding it. It is actually looking at learning as a pluralistic thing and as you were saying, there is more than one kind of learning. Certainly I look at learning from at least two different perspectives. There are two categories of learning that are important for any organisation. What is the learning that makes you more efficient? What we know and what we are good at, we already talked about that.
And as you were saying another one is the learning that makes people freer. Now these are two really different kinds of learning and if you dig into the practice, again the byline you were talking about earlier the idea that learning is work, the learning that makes you more efficient unfolds through a process of deliberate practice.
So there is a skill that you want to really isolate and then practice again and again and again, in a context of increasing difficulty with as much feedback and as much support as you can in order to achieve higher levels of mastery. Now, that is one kind of learning. There is another kind of learning, which I call in my own work reflected engagement. It is the ability to actually remove yourself, question what you know and be present to what is emerging. It is the ability to look at what everyone looks at and see it from a different angle. Now that is in some way antithetical and yet complimentary. At the core, learning is a paradox because it is the opposite of deliberate practice, instead of doing the right thing better and better you have to question, why is this right?
What you need is not feedback, but often what you need is space to actually think for yourself, to be free and to be empowered. You see one process of learning, that deliberate practice process of learning, needs feedback and affirmation. The reflective engagement, which is really what allows individuals to then maybe reimagine a process, reimagine the business, come up with something new, requires space and requires almost an invitation to challenge and an invitation to subvert.
I often joke that there are really two kinds of slogans for learning. One is “This is how you are going to get even better” and the other one is “Everything you know is wrong.”
Very often why organisations struggle is because they need one kind of learning and they try to do the other because then of course, people become very ideological. They tell you that this is the most impactful learning, but there is no such thing as the most impactful learning. The most impactful learning depends on the needs you have. If you have a need for bringing people together, for strengthening the culture, for more efficiency, then what you need is deliberate practice of certain values, of certain norms, of certain skills. But if we have a need for inclusion, for innovation, for empowerment then that is actually going to go against the outcome you want, what you need is really allowing people to be present and free to ask why we are doing things and maybe question, what do we take for granted? So again, it really depends where your organisation is at and what you are trying to achieve, the kind of learning that then you want to put into practice that you want to emphasise.
But because we are often used to deploying the hammer of deliberate practice and skills development, then every learning problem looks like a nail.
David Green: The constant challenge I think for organisations. So you said in the introduction that you do work with organisations as well. Can you give us an example of one or maybe more than one who you think has tackled these challenges well and what you think other companies could learn from them?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: I think any company that's not ideological about one kind of learning, but it actually uses both the kind of skills development and transformational learning in the best way. I have an example and yes, this is a company I have had the pleasure to work with. Schneider Electric,a global energy company and what they are doing with learning is really interesting because it combines the strategic imperative, which is digital transformation like many other companies and so they combine their learning initiative for the strategic imperative of digital transformation. How do we acquire the skills to work in a digital environment? But also at the same time the personal imperative of how do we allow people, not just at the top but throughout the organisation, to really understand that transformation starts with you. That if you want to see an organisational transformation, each and every person ask the question, Why have I done things this way? How do I need to change my own way that I look at a business problem, the way I practice my daily work so that I can actually offer and provide innovation and offer an example to others? And again, what I find interesting, not a specific best practice, but it is the fact that the whole learning strategy is anchored both to an organisational strategic imperative and yet personalised to each and every individual.
Every organisation I work with that I think is really focused on learning, doesn't make a choice between serving the organisation strategy or allowing the individuals to grow. They actually try to figure out how do we bring these two outcomes as close as possible? How do we make them synergistic? Sorry to use a business buzzword.
David Green: No, no, no, that is fine. It is interesting that a podcast episode that we actually published this week, so it will be two weeks ago when people are listening to this, with Diane Gherson CHRO at IBM. She was talking about how the real light for them was when they actually bought skills and learning together.
So as you said, the strategy that the organisation needed, the transformation that was going on within IBM. She bought the people responsible for understanding the skills together with the head of learning and then she said magic effectively happened. And as you said, it is about tying that organisational imperative of transformation, like at Schneider, but by personalising it for individuals as well.
I think that obviously the technology is now there to help us to do that personalisation much better than we have in the past.
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Look I think almost every organisation that is really taking learning seriously is focusing on three pillars. How do I make it personal? How do I make it practical? How do I make it digital? And I think very often the personal is the one that we still struggle a little bit with. Any time you are not really having solid foundations on any of these three pillars, your learning stool is a little bit out of balance.
David Green: And of course you need good data to do that. So if you are going to personalise something for an individual employee, then you need to understand what skills have they got? Where do they want to take their career within an organisation? What are the opportunities within the organisation?
How can we help them acquire the skills to do that, to develop themselves as an individual, but also to help the organisation close some of the skills gaps that they have got? And I think Schneider Electric has been doing something, I can't remember the name of the platform now, but they kind of brought that mobility and learning together to help employees develop their careers within the company as well.
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Yes, I do think you need data. I don't think you just need data, you also need dreams. I think you need to understand the skills people have, but also the ambition they have, just like you need to understand the capabilities you have as a company and also the vision you have. At the end of the day, learning is not just giving you the skills that allow you to close the gap between A and B, it is also about giving you the space where you can figure out whether B is really where you want to be or whether you should actually be going to C, because since you were thinking about B the world has changed pretty dramatically. I think of course that requires much closer attention to emotions, to social environmental context. I think to really personalise learning means you need to dwell with the psychology and the culture around you, not just with the mechanics of the skills you need to acquire so that you can reach a goal faster.
David Green: We'll come back to some of the technology that is supporting the whole development of skills a bit later actually. But something I think you have written about which would be great for listeners to hear, can you talk to us a little bit about the difference between cognitive learning and socio-emotional learning as you call it?
Are we talking about hard and soft skills or is it more complex than that?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Maybe it was the other way around, I don't know, I think it is orthogonal. Remember in business we are not concerned about skills from a theoretical or from an academic perspective, we are concerned about skills which will impact on people's lives then hopefully in to their company. So we are talking about skills applied efficiently and effectively by a certain person at a certain time. So what I tried to get at with this distinction between cognitive and socio-emotional is that anytime you are learning a skill, you need to learn the building blocks. How do you do something and what are the steps to do that? But you also have to understand the context in which people might react differently. To use a very common example, if a man and a woman does the same thing, people might not have the same reaction. They should, but they don't. So can you understand how that skill might have a different impact and can you understand the context in which you might work slightly differently. Why is that skill designed in a certain way? I am gonna use another simple example not from business. Just this week I took my son to try fencing and then I was looking and I love watching learning so I had the chance to observe the actual lesson and the instructor. I could see the dance of the two kinds of learning. Part of the lesson was trying to figure out can he hold the sword a certain way, does he get that you have to wear a mask. There are all the technicalities of this is how you do this, you have to keep your feet in this way because you have more balance and then you can actually be more efficient, make more points.
Then there was a whole other layer. Understand there is a certain discipline here and we comport ourselves in a certain way and I realised it had nothing to do with winning a fancy belt, this is a sport in which you are going to be handling a weapon and in the teaching what was beginning to happen there was learning this is how you use power responsibly.
I think in business it could be looked at in exactly the same way. The skill you need and how to use it more effectively and at the same time in this context, how do you make sure you have the discipline to use it responsibly?
The former is cognitive learning, it has to do with intellectually and physically, do you understand what you need to do? But the other one has to do with your morals, with your emotions, with the culture, with the norms and often as a business leader, especially, you are not just upholding certain morals, you are innovating. You are doing things others haven't thought about or done. You are also shaping norms. And that process is a socio-emotional process. It is not just a cognative process of what works, it is also a process of saying, is this right? Is this wrong? Is this appropriate? And so on.
David Green: So to use an example that is quite in vogue at the moment, we talked about leadership in a crisis and there is lots of talk about the importance of empathy. So the socio-emotional part would almost be the empathetic way that you use the skills that you have as a Leader to communicate something across to a group of people, might be a team, might be the whole workforce and if you use that socio-emotional skill, the empathy part, it is more likely to resonate.
So, you know how to communicate as a Leader, but to do it empathetically means that you are more likely to have resonance and maybe get what you want, which is the right response, perhaps.
Gianpiero Petriglieri: I think it is empathy but I think it is also imagination. It is really taking a very different perspective on your skill. Instead of asking, will this work? Asking, what will this mean? For a Leader for example, you might say, look at the data, we are going to be working from home and it shows that on average people are a lot more productive. And then when you scratch, again this is when data is dangerous without a theory, right? That is one thing academia can teach other domains. And then you find out that for some people, that average is really made up by two categories of people. People who when working from home actually allows them to be undistracted, more focused and more productive. Then people who will struggle because home is not a safe place or because maybe they don't have a comfortable place to work and so suddenly that invitation to work from home, which you have been so upbeat about the time and the productivity, actually it really doesn't mean the same thing to different people. To a category of people who have the fortune of having a safe and comfortable environment, what it means is a liberation of great ideas. But to a group of people who don't have those privileges, then what that invitation means is constraints. I think to have the capacity to understand whether your initiative works is important, but to have the capacity to understand what it means and for whom that is, as you say, your empathy but it is also an act of imagination because you sometimes have to be able to empathise or imagine yourself in the shoes of different constituencies.
I think empathy is a big building block of that.
David Green: It is going to be interesting over the next few months as it seems the crisis will be with us for some time by the sounds of it. You have said there has been lots of reports about people being more productive at home.
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Yes, "I am not going to be the one who is letting the company down, people are being laid off, I still have a job. I am going to really work for my colleagues, for the company". Again and again we see in a crisis our most pro-social impulses takeover. We sacrifice, we try to help the person next to us, we try to help the institutions we hold dear sometimes at a big personal cost and then you see that cost down the line when people start feeling disconnected or burnt out. I think that cost needs to be acknowledged.
David Green: Interestingly you have been talking about virtual working and obviously technology is important in enabling us to work virtually, but it is also important in enabling us to learn as well.
What is the role of technology in supporting development of skills? How is it evolving? Let's not just focus on people working virtually, but how is technology helping support and enable some of the things we talked about earlier around learning and skills?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: I think the biggest thing that is changing and it requires a change in the mindset of the Leaders who use technology for learning, is in a nutshell, I think technology is changing from a tool for delivery to a space for a conversation. I think in the same way that it is true for other parts of work, I think it is true for learning. I think we have often had an understanding and perhaps a prejudice that technology is great when it comes to doing the cognitive stuff, really take content in a very well-produced efficient way and transfer it from experts to non experts. Now what we are learning is no, tech maybe can do more than that, it can actually provide the space where people come together to question, to challenge, to think. So I think one of the things that we are experimenting with and I think a lot of companies are too is, how do you grow the role of technology in learning?
I think we had already kind of got down the whole knowledge transmission through tech, bite-sized learning and all of that, but can technology be more than a pipe? More than an efficient pipe from someplace where knowledge is to someplace where knowledge is needed. Technology, I think, needs to move and is moving from knowledge transmission to a tool from knowledge creation. In that way, learning itself as a whole needs to move more towards a space where people create and innovate as opposed to a space where they get indoctrinated, they absorb what other people have sorted out and it is good for that.
David Green: Well obviously you are a Professor at INSEAD, we are six months into the crisis, how is technology supporting you in teaching your students at the moment?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Well immensely. We are obviously using zoom extensively, we transitioned in a week and we learned that there was actually a lot more things that I personally didn't think could be done well, like a case discussion or sharing a personal experience through a platform like zoom. But then we also saw that there was a possibility for a third space between the classic video conferencing platform like Zoom or Teams and the amphitheater or the workshop room. So instead we started these go live rooms, which are a lot more tech heavy ways of bringing people virtually in the same room and it is a virtual classroom, I am surprised by the extent to which you can really foster the social learning, which is of course at the centre of what I do. Leadership development isn't just a matter of me telling you how to lead. That by definition would make you a follower not a leader. Leadership development is about me accompanying you as you discover what your purpose is and how you can have the most impact. We have really been discovering and practicing ways to find spaces where we can do that. We are also really now working a lot with dual presence teaching where some people are physically in the room and other students are connecting virtually and of course it is not just about the Professor, but it is about all of us really dancing with what being present means. Obviously for a lot of the work I am interested in, I'm not going to lie, I think coming together is always going to be the most impactful and in fact I am worried that physical gathering becomes a privilege of the few. I am hoping we can avoid that because of course then you have all kinds of side effects of being together and the formation of bonds and all that. I think it is a great risk that we move to an environment in which privileged senior executives can still come together, gather, form bonds, think about who they are and what others need and then everyone else is sort of brought together in a slightly more diminished or should I say precarious way? Because one of the challenges we face in the technological space is that it is too easy to disconnect and precarious relationships, although we might adjust to them, they are never fully satisfied.
But anyway, that is just a long way of saying that we are experimenting with technology as a space because the temptation is immense to then add on this technology and just stick to what we knew. Again, we are really trying to take our own medicine, what do we need to unlearn? And what we need to unlearn is that technology is simply a transmission mechanism, it works for a lecture, no technology can work for a conversation, if you are able to have a conversation. Incidentally that is also true in a classroom, which is a technology. You can come in to a classroom and think, that is a great place for me to come and tell people how great and smart my ideas are, but actually that is not really the best use of people coming together in a classroom. It is really figuring out how do we make sure that we have the conversation that generates the most insight and so I always go back to yes, obviously technology will improve, but it is really our intent and our capacity that builds learning, that builds transformation, it is not the tech. I think it is our ability to resist the temptation to narrow learning to its minimum common denominator of knowledge transmission. I think that that really would be not just inefficient, it would actually be counter productive.
A lot of the companies I have worked with over the last 20 years have really tried to move away from this narrow view of learning and they are really trying to use learning more broadly and more strategically as a place, not just to indoctrinate people, but to actually let people get the skills and the talent and strengthen the time they need to go and get stuff done.
I think the risk is that we set ourselves back 20 years. Technology is not going to set us back it is the Leaders that might set us back if they can’t challenge prejudice, if they can’t resist anxiety. At least that is my view.
David Green: Yes Leaders need to adjust and embrace what technology can do, but not be restrictive in the way they apply learning of course, as you said. You talked a bit about environments there and actually that was kind of the next question. You work with lots of different organisations, can you give us some examples of organisations who are really good at creating the right environment for learning?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: I think there are two kinds of ideal learning environments. We talked about it at the beginning, for incremental learning, getting better, deliberate practice, you want a bootcamp.
As close as possible to the challenge you are going to encounter with people that push you, that challenge you, that give you feedback so that you can actually improve those skills at a faster pace than if you were in the wild. I think almost every organisation in some way, shape or form is good at the bootcamp thing, whether they do it in house, they outsource it, but in a way business itself often is a bootcamp of sorts.
But then there is another kind of space which is really optimised for the learning we talked about as transformative learning, the reflective engagement, being present, being personable and then you need the playground. There is a company that because of their nature are very good at thinking about this and making space for it and that is Lego. They really are very good at creating learning spaces which are like a playground, the minimal amount of structure that allows it to be possibly safe enough, but also ambiguous enough that you can make what you want of it. A great playground has got a few structures, but structures that can be used in different ways, that can be recombined, that can be re imagined. No, that is not a climbing frame it is a bridge across two countries and I am going to cross them.
And I think they do a lot of work thinking about how to create learning spaces where people can really bring their imagination and then they can actually put their imagination into practice into either changing process or developing a new product.
I think more and more organisations and certainly that is the kind of work I personally do more of. I have been really encouraged by many organisations that say they want to get past the bootcamp, bootcamps are great when you need them and it is not a matter of building playgrounds where all the bootcamps were, it is making sure that you have enough of each and that the right people are going to both.
If you send children who need to play and by child I use it as a metaphor for a person with potential, if you send that kind of learner to a bootcamp, then what you will see is they'll shrink, their creativity, their imagination will shrink. But if you send people in a bootcamp to a playground, what you will see is a lot of incompetence.
So if you were training someone to master the safety processes of your plant, you wouldn't want them to say “well let's just go and try to figure it out” You would want them to have the most efficient possible transmission of the knowledge and practice of their skills daily. Then you will want a little bit of, do you understand why we are doing this? This is why I go back to what we were talking about earlier, I think what is important is not to say when it is this, or when it is that, but to try and figure out how do you build the two kinds of learning on each other? Because once you clarify your purpose you will need the bootcamp that allows you to get the skills to fullfill that purpose.
Then after you are done in the wild, maybe you will need another round of learning that makes you question whether it is still what you want to do or what the company needs at this time. So in many ways you can think of this as a figure of eight, where we often oscillate between periods in which we need more incremental learning that lets us consolidate and efficiently pursue goals, and periods in which we need more transformational learning and actually question what is our purpose and what best serves our constituencies? In many ways the crisis we are going through now is a great example of a moment in which we are very, very tempted to stick to our knitting, to really hold on to what we know and maybe it requires us to do the opposite.
To question why is it that we do things and how can I do them differently? I don't want to say it's an opportunity because it would be offensive, but I think it is actually needed.
David Green: I have lost count of the number of people who said to me "In crisis there is opportunity” but I think you have to remember that this is a health crisis and nearly a million people around the world have died from it and it is going to be with us for some time as well. And on that note has the Covid-19 pandemic advanced a culture of lifelong learning and a growth mindset or has it delayed progress, in your opinion? I guess it is probably not a simple yes or no, it probably depends.
Gianpiero Petriglieri: I think any crisis of this nature which really raises anxiety becomes an enormous challenge to a culture of learning, to a culture of experimentation because what it does is it makes us defensive and less functional. If you are in a life threatening crisis, to be defensive isn't strange it is actually normal. At the same time it is a crisis like any other crisis, which is it fazes us with the challenge that we have the need for learning, we have opportunities for learning because things are a little bit up-ended and we don't have the resources. That is where Leaders really come into play. My way of defining Leaders is people who can learn and help others learn just when we are tempted to cling to what we know and what we do best. To cling to our prejudice, to cling to our practice, to cling to our traditions.
A Leader is someone that says, we have all the reasons to not learn but let's pay attention to the little things we are seeing in this moment which might be the beginning of the future.
So the crisis, the answer is clear for the crisis, the crisis will definitely focus us on what we risk losing from the past. If there is any acceleration, if there is any innovation it will come from Leaders that say let's remain focused on what's emerging of the future. That will not be a crisis that does it, the crisis will bring anxiety. Leaders who are able to contain their own and other's anxiety will be able to restore our faith in the future.
David Green: It will be interesting to see how it pans out. One thing we are seeing with the organisations that we are working with, primarily with People Analytics teams in large global organisations, the focus seems to be around employee wellbeing and employee safety. One hopes that that will continue as the crisis continues to unfurl and in the future when these teams are supporting their organisations, re-imagining what that organisation could look like, what the future workplace will look like in the future. I am sure learning will be an absolute core component of that, because as you said, if transformation is accelerating because of the crisis, it probably is in some places and not in others, then learning is going to be absolutely key for organisations and individuals moving forward.
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Yes and that is why in some way that article you mentioned at the beginning was titled that because to learn is to be alive. In many ways there is nothing like an existential crisis to remind us that life is precious and we are human beings and the way to stick around a little longer is to learn what we need to do to make it.
David Green: Well we are going to move forward to the last question now. This is the question we are asking all our guests on the show in this particular series. So it is two prongs. The first one is what will be the role of learning and development in 2030? So a real opportunity to peer in to your crystal ball here.
Gianpiero Petriglieri: You are the first to ask me about 2030. I think possibly it will be even more central.
I think if the trend continues of more uncertainty and more volatility then learning in many ways will become not just a central part of organisations but learning will become a way of organising, a way to constantly hold onto or renew your culture and capabilities. So maybe one of the things we will do is not just asking are we well organised for learning? But, are we learning in a way that makes us well organised?
David Green: Then the extension of that. I have read a couple of pieces recently from big strategy consultants like BCG and McKinsey, advocating that the Chief Learning Officer move out of HR or and report directly into the CEO and I was just wondering what your thoughts are. Is that something that you are seeing? I know you are working with a lot of companies or is this just the strategy consultants trying to get themselves some work?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: In my experience it is mixed. I am researching the role of Leaders of learning right now and I work with a lot of companies and in my experience it really is almost 50/50. They report to the Chief HR Officers, but there are companies where they do report to the CEO. Classic case is the first Chief Learning Officer at General Electric which was a role that Jack Welch invented and the Chief Learning Officer reported to him. When Steve Jobs hired a CLO at Apple he made them report to himself. There are many companies where that is a signal that learning is really central and there are many other companies where they report to the Chief HR Officer.
Look, I will be honest, what I think is going to happen is there are going to be as many things probably, a lot more polarisation than we see now. So there will be organisations where learning becomes really instrumental, so it really is just a tool to implement a strategy. It is just another piece of machinery and I don't think that is the most strategic or the most transformative use of learning, but it is certainly a way to use learning and I think you will see a lot more of that. Either you can make the business case for this piece of learning or we shouldn't be doing it.
At the same time I think we will see other Chief Learning Officers in some way embodying a different philosophy of learning that will make learning a lot more radical and learning will really become not a way to support leadership, but a way to exercise leadership. There will be CEOs that say, hey, the Chief Learning Officer is really in many ways a central component, it is one leader that really upholds a sense of principle of the leadership of the company. One of the things that we are seeing, especially among the largest companies is hybridisation, where they say we don't just want to achieve this particular business result, but we also want to be a social force, we want to help people develop. The Chief Learning Officer will have a huge role to play there and so they will really become almost a peer of the CEO if you wish, to hold that balance between the instrumental and the socio-cultural purpose of business.
So I think we will see Chief Learning Officers going in opposite directions, either becoming another tech or really becoming a beacon of humanity in business.
David Green: And I guess it lends itself to what you spoke about right at the outset around learning being the new loyalty?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Yes and of course you can exercise loyalty by blindly obeying or you can exercise loyalty by being responsibly subversive. I think we will see very efficient followership or responsible subversion from learning executives in different companies and in different contexts.
This is not going to be just a function of who they are but also going to be a function of the company they are in and the situation they find themselves in.
David Green: Gianpiero thanks for such a fascinating conversation, thank you for your time and thank you for being a guest on the show. How can listeners stay in touch with you? Read more of your work, follow you on social media?
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Sure I don’t have the easiest name to spell do I. So my website all my work is there, all my academic research, all of my essays, all my work, if you are interested in my speaking it is there at gpetriglieri.com
That is the same as my Twitter handle @gpetriglieri on Twitter or you just find me on LinkedIn or you look me up on INSEAD, under faculty and you will find me.
David Green: We will hyperlink it so people come straight to you. So, Gianpiero thank you very much. Good luck with the new academic year at INSEAD as well and we will look forward to speaking to you again.
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Good luck to you too. The more learning we have, the less luck we need.