Learning while doing builds stronger capability

Learning while doing makes us more productive more quickly. Active or experiential learning builds stronger capability . People remember up to 75% of what they practice compared to just 10% from reading or listening. Some people still think you can study for a degree in your late teens and be set for life. It’s as if you learn when you’re young than just do for the rest of your life. In real life, learning and doing go together.

Today, a national training provider (Skills Group) released a white paper calling for apprenticeships to be given the same status as degrees in the New Zealand qualifications framework. They said: “Industries are changing rapidly and many roles now require increasingly advanced technical and professional skills. Apprenticeship pathways should be capable of developing those higher-level skills while allowing people to remain in paid employment.” They make a good case.

Hague Consulting made the same case in a blog post three years ago. Degree Apprenticeships allow students to earn a degree and/or professional qualification while also gaining valuable work experience. They build the future workforce and address skills shortages by employing students while they study. UK Degree Apprenticeship programmes enable the learner to gain a full Undergraduate or Masters’ degree.

Learning while doing isn’t just about formal qualifications. We need to seize the opportunities to learn from the best in the world. There is ample best practice information out there that would make us more competitive, raise productivity and help us diversify our economy. Practices like benchmarking provide a structured learning process we can incorporate into our work. Innovation systems are structured ways to apply leadership, people and resources to the tasks of better products and services and greater value.

Many organisations have cut staff training as their confidence in traditional training courses has waned, They don’t see enough direct skills from that training investment and they rarely see better outcomes. The problem is often that the organisation lacks a systematic approach to creating and enhancing capability across its workforce and its strategic partners.

I help judge international best practice competitions which shows me how the world builds capability across organisations. Recent sessions on learning and capability and organisation wide innovation highlighted some great practices that prove learning by doing improves productivity. It also makes work more fun. If your organisation has a strategy but doesn’t have a systematic approach to build the capability to deliver its strategy then you have a big constraint on your ability to deliver.

Your strategic choices will only deliver for you if your capability matches your aspiration. Strategy lands successfully if your team are constantly honing their skills and learning new ones on the job. If you want a new perspective on what is possible, where to start and how to get the results you need then talk to us. Strategy implementation is what we do at Hague Consulting. Please get in touch for a chat. Enquiries@hague.co.nz

Phil Guerin, Consultant/Director, Hague Consulting Ltd. © Hague Consulting Ltd 2026. If you like this content, subscribe to our blog – it’s free!

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