One of the best articles I have read in a long time appeared in the March issue of Harvard Business Review: Is Yours a Learning Organization?

If you are a leader (please remember, if you are leading 1, 2 or 50,000 people, you are a leader), I highly encourage you to pick up this issue or at least purchase a copy of this article. We are in the age of the knowledge worker, and the article starts off clearly stating the assumption many leaders are making today: “Leaders may think that getting their organizations to learn is only a matter of articulating a clear vision, giving employees the right incentives, providing lots of training. This assumption is not merely flawed — it’s risky in the face of intensifying competition, advances in technology, and shifts in customer preferences.”

I am not going to tell you about the rest of the article, but there are three critical building blocks presented in this article. For more information on the article, check out the article here: Is Yours a Learning Organization?

I had the opportunity to speak to the NAIW Southeastern Region Annual Convention this past Friday in Raleigh. It was really such a great group to speak to…200 women leaders in the insurance industry, many of whom are concerned about the growing need for young talent.

The topic of my presentation was on how to attract, retain and lead Generation Y. One of the best studies I have read recently on this topic is a study released by Deloitte: How Insurance Companies Can Beat the Talent Crisis.

In this report, Deloitte highlights their simple but powerful Develop, Deploy, Connect Model for recruitment. As we have been saying, Generation Y is highly inspired by ongoing learning and development and being able to engage in meaningful work, and this report really brings this concept to light.

Just last week, I posed a question to my executive team: “Are you having fun lately?” A few of them immediately responded yes, one hesitated and one directly said, “No!” We took the opportunity to have a group discussion about what was currently “fun” about the culture of the company and the current work load and what was getting in the way of that. We ended up speaking together for 90 minutes and it was uncovered that since we had taken on the development of an entire new division of our company at the beginning of 2008, there were some stresses related to learning how to function within this new division. Our workload had doubled in many cases and we didn’t have the support staff to take on the burden of new administrative tasks. Taking the time to flush it out allowed us to uncover some possible new ways to not only function within our company, but also new ways to educate our clients on how to get the most out of our new division. We decided to hire an assistant to take on some of the administrative work and we also decided to bring on a sales rep to begin to focus on generating revenue with our new division. We also set up a new model of communication with certain clients to ensure that our time was being maximized by efforts that would produce results. Had we not engaged in the question of fun, we would not have found the answer; everyone would have just put down their heads and tried to barrel through the work. Suddenly we were on the way to having fun again – all of us! I am a firm believer that a culture of joy drives creativity, results, and growth. Consider asking yourself and your co-workers if you’re having fun. If not, don’t just complain about it, determine the cause and find a solution!