Is Your Vendor a Learning Organization? Part 1

During one of our company's integration trips, we visited The Futurium – a museum that explores various future scenarios. One exhibit, in particular, left a strong impression on me and inspired this article. It showcased a dense and interconnected network of rapidly evolving events, illustrating how quickly human activity can reshape our world and how complex and far-reaching our actions are. This naturally led me to ask: if everything around us is changing so quickly – especially technology – what supports fast adaptation?

The World Economic Forum suggests that in the fast-growing world, lifelong learning will become one of the most in-demand skills. Businesses also emphasize the importance of learning. “Fast-learning teams” is a common phrase used on companies’ websites. However, do organizations truly adapt and learn at speed? Do they cultivate a growth mindset and draw conclusions from their experiences? In my view, only a minority of them do. That’s why, I will show you how to identify companies that genuinely prioritize and cultivate fast-learning teams.

Should your vendor also learn quickly?

A learning attitude seems crucial for organizations that implement products or services to the market. With tough competition, their success depends on the speed and quality of the delivery. To follow technology advances, and shifting customer preferences, they need to have a high level of expertise and processes for creating innovative solutions. Such organizations need vendors who do more than just deliver features; they should design systems with scalability and efficiency in mind. They need to provide the most valuable outcomes, even when the solutions aren't the easiest to implement, ensuring long-term success for the product.

One of our clients described their expectations as follows:

For us, it was essential to partner with someone who not only brings deep technical expertise but also takes full ownership of their work and actively contributes to improving every aspect of our value chain. I’m thrilled that we’ve found such a reliable partner in SoftwareMill.

How to find such vendors? Firstly it is crucial to distinguish vendors with fast-learning individuals from real-learning organizations. According to David A. Garvin, Amy C. Edmondson, Francesca Gino only learning-driven organizations have a supportive learning environment, concrete learning processes, and leadership that reinforce learning, which help them to:

• exchange ideas,
• experiment,
• reflect on past experiences,
• create, acquire, and transfer knowledge.

Such vendors have processes in place to find innovative solutions or solve complex problems - helping their clients adapt to the unpredictable.

On the contrary, vendors that are based solely on fast-learning individuals don't have an environment that benefits from the synergy of learning processes. People in such organizations are less open to sharing views, knowledge doesn't flow as easily and it's harder for the team to take ownership of the project.

So, when choosing vendors, consider if they're not just skilled, but also a learning organization that can enhance your product development.

Assessing an organization's capacity to learn before even meeting them

Let’s explore key activities that strongly indicate a vendor’s learning capabilities and how these practices directly impact their ability to adapt, innovate, and deliver long-term value. Firstly I will focus on the external indicator that can be easily checked.

Having an expert blog

How does blogging link to learning ability? Firstly, blogging demonstrates the level of knowledge and experience within an organization. But what is more, blogging can boost competence development. According to Kolb’s experiential learning theory, reflective observation and abstract conceptualization are important steps in understanding experiences and improving future actions. When employees write blog posts, they have the opportunity to reflect on their experiences, analyze what has happened, and connect these experiences with the models and processes they are familiar with. This reflective practice allows them to draw meaningful conclusions for the future and enrich their knowledge through practical application. As a result, when faced with similar situations in the future, they are more likely to approach them with greater awareness and strategic thinking.

Moreover writing blog posts is also a great way to share knowledge. When employees write regular blog posts, they become better at explaining their thoughts and communicating their ideas clearly. This can make a big difference to how well projects get done. Teams that openly share their thoughts and value different points of view tend to come up with better solutions. This helps everyone on the team to keep learning.

Blogging is a tangible attribute that is easy to evaluate. When assessing an organization's blogging activity, consider the range of topics covered and the depth of expertise demonstrated. It's also useful to analyze the authors - are they primarily content writers, or do technical specialists also contribute? A diversity of contributors, including different levels of seniority, is a positive indicator of a robust learning culture. For example, our technical staff are encouraged to suggest and write about topics they are passionate about, which further enriches the content and reflects the organization's commitment to knowledge sharing. Take a look at our blog to see a learning culture in action.

Being a conference speaker

Public speaking, like blogging, is a great way to think about your experiences and improve your real-time knowledge-sharing and presentation skills. As an active speaker, you always learn, get feedback, refine your messages, and test new strategies. These activities foster a growth mindset, which research shows is crucial for personal and professional development. People with a growth mindset actively seek feedback, identify areas for improvement, and can apply this approach not only to their performance on stage but also to their day-to-day teamwork.

To succeed, you must share.

Some organizations go one step further in knowledge sharing by building communities. They organize events like meetups or conferences, bringing people together to share ideas and inspire one another. For example, at our conference Skalar, participants and keynote speakers (also from our organization) share their insights and experiences. Building such communities demonstrates an organization’s commitment to the benefits of exchanging ideas, not just internally but also with external experts. This is why we created Rustikon – a platform to connect, learn, and share.

Contributing to open source

Open-source activity is another step towards sharing knowledge with the community. Contributing to open-source projects is a great way to develop employees' skills by working with other developers, often experts, who are involved in developing the community's knowledge. This activity is a source of concrete experience which, according to Kolb’s experiential learning theory (mentioned before), provides data for analysis, practical conclusions and growth. Contributing to open source also allows employees to practice turning ideas into real solutions and get community feedback. For more on the benefits of contributing to open source, read our article: Why contribute to open source? 

All of these benefits increase employees' expertise, but they also influence their openness to:

• considering different opinions,
• collaborating with others to bring an effective solution,
• exploring the unknown and experimenting with new ideas,
• identifying and solving problems.

These activities are indicators of a learning organization and have a positive impact on project realization.

Stay Tuned for More Insights!

In this series of articles, I will guide you on how to evaluate the learning mindset of your software consultancy partner. You'll learn what to look for and how to assess it correctly. This will assist you in identifying the learning capabilities of your tech partners.

In the next few episodes, I'll take a closer look at another set of learning organization indicators. I'll be exploring topics such as:

• What does effective internal knowledge sharing look like?
• The importance of seniority levels in learning organizations.
• How can training processes be structured to support continuous learning?
• What is the type of environment that fosters learning and how to assess its effectiveness?

Finally, I'll provide real examples of the benefits of collaborating with a vendor with a robust learning culture.