Novartis: Culture, Curiosity and Scaling Learning
Stories play a key role in learning. In this case, we’ll look at stories that Novartis is sharing about their efforts to drive curiosity, digital transformation, innovation and learning.
I appreciate finding and reviewing stories from organizations pursuing new ways of learning. Investigating and thinking about the experiences that others have is a great way to accelerate our own learning. A recent story that I’ve found is from Novartis; a large pharmaceutical company with over 125k employees across the world. Their corporate culture and values put curiosity and empowerment front and center. Building such a culture takes time, focus and investment — and there’s a few interviews and articles that I’ve found that speak to their efforts.
This interview with Vasant Narasimhan the CEO of Novartis has some great comments. I appreciate the focus on servant leadership, support, empowerment and the recognition of the need to move quickly. Here are a couple of comments that particularly stood out:
- “…the inspired, curious, unbossed”
- “‘I believe the future of companies is going to be about ideas coming from the bottom up,’ he explains. ‘We don’t need bosses. We need servant leaders. We need people to serve their teams and let their teams come up with the best ideas.’”
- “‘Every time Novartis needed to pivot in that long history, it pivoted,’ he says. ‘And this is a moment to pivot again. Pivot towards transformational innovation. Pivot the culture. Pivot towards data and digital technologies. And we need to do it fast because the world is moving really fast.’”
Simon Brown, the Chief Learning Officer at Novartis, has been sharing details about their learning initiatives (“ Enabling 130,000 employees to grow in an organization committed to continuous learning”, “ We’re going BIG on Learning at Novartis — here’s how…” and “ In September we’re taking steps to be #Curious “). In these stories we hear about the focus on curiosity (#curiosity), the investment in learning, MOOCS, gamification, the use of VR, extended durations of learning experiences, connecting learning and work, scaling, and the many events focusing on curiosity. There isn’t a simple switch, poster on the wall or proclamation from up on high that is going to bring about the creation of a culture to support learning. Seeing the actions and activities underway reflects an alignment between intention and investment.
I’m thankful for the sharing from Novartis — getting insights on their reasoning, approaches and efforts. The sharing speaks to the culture they have and that they are trying to build. Looking forward, I’m keen to hear more about their efforts around informal and social learning, finding the right balance between “push” and “pull”, learning analytics (in particular — impact of their efforts), and the continued pursuit of a “…curious, unbossed culture.” I expect that these areas will be critical to success as they pursue scaling (both in terms of numbers of learners and frequency of learning).
What are your thoughts on the stories from Novartis? How do they compare to your thoughts and experiences?
Originally published at https://blogs.ubc.ca on January 18, 2020.
