How Learning Goals Will Help You Reach Your Business Goals

Chances are, you are part of the knowledge economy. Most of us are. We live and work in an age of ever-increasing specialization. Management guru Peter Drucker put it this simply: "We live in an economy where knowledge, not buildings and machinery, is the chief resource."

You know a lot more about what you do than most people. It's that knowledge and how you use it that makes you a professional. If you're in the automotive service industry, for example, you are definitely in the knowledge economy. Diagnosing and repairing complex machinery requires highly specialized knowledge. This is becoming more true each year as vehicles and the systems that guide them become increasingly complex.

Knowledge is power. One of the key differences between the leading repair or service business in a market and its competition is the cumulative knowledge of all the people who work there. Customers recognize this, depend on it, and tell their friends about it. Talented workers know who the market leaders are in their areas and seek to join teams that employ the best and most talented individuals. Knowledge yields strength and growth.

If knowledge is a key asset in the business, what should you be doing to leverage that asset and make it grow? My suggestion: set annual learning goals for yourself and insist that your employees set learning goals for themselves as well. For several reasons this is an essential step in improving your business.

First off, there are the usual benefits of having goals of any kind. Goals will:

• Increase motivation.
• Provide targets for achievement.
• Increase productivity and profits.
• Help people improve on both a personal and professional level.

Beyond these reasons, learning goals provide some additional benefits. Learning goals will:

• Give people the new skills or knowledge needed to increase their
  productivity.
• Put learning into a strategic role in your business.
• Help emphasize the value of learning for the entire staff.
• Support your vision of the future of your business.

Having learning goals ensures that everyone on the staff will develop professionally, which might not happen if such development is left to chance. You know how that works. In January, you resolve to take a class to get current in one technical area or another "when you see a good class offered." Unfortunately, when a flyer arrives announcing a great class from an equipment vendor, you toss it out with the junk mail. December arrives without your having met your goal. Planning for learning makes this kind of lapse much less likely.

Most business owners start each year with a few business goals in mind. What many don't realize (but you know about this because you've heard it here before) is that meeting new business goals usually means finding ways to improve employee performance. Most often, improved human performance comes from learning something new or from learning to improve how we do something we're already doing. Learning is the key to improving the performance of the business.

This takes us back to the idea of setting learning goals for the year. You have your business goals already in place, right? Now it's time to set some learning goals to make certain that you reach your business goals.

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