Staying Ahead Means Learning Faster Than We Change

Every business, whatever it produces, ultimately makes the same product – cash. The question is how well it learns to make that product sustainably, and how quickly it can adapt when conditions change.

Across five decades in manufacturing, I’ve seen the conversation on productivity evolve from counting labour hours to understanding learning curves. The lesson is simple but powerful: the rate of learning has to be greater than the rate of change. If it isn’t, businesses lose momentum.

That principle applies as much to people as it does to processes. Change is constant – new technologies, new markets, new supply chain pressures – but learning isn’t automatic. It takes investment in people, communication and shared understanding. When teams learn together, they adapt faster and make better decisions. When they don’t, energy is lost in frustration and confusion.

In our work at the University of South Wales, we encourage manufacturers to see learning as the foundation of resilience. It’s what allows an organisation to absorb shocks, manage risk and keep moving forward. That learning culture starts with curiosity and asking where the constraints lie. If you doubled your turnover in three years, what would hold you back? Is it skills, investment, innovation, or the market itself? Once you know the constraint, you can focus your efforts where it counts.

Innovation is central to that process. Most firms measure sales, costs and profit, but few measure their rate of innovation – how quickly new ideas are tested, refined and scaled. The companies that do are the ones that grow most sustainably. They build systems where teams can learn from data, experiment safely and share insights across functions.

For small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up the vast majority of Welsh industry, that learning culture is critical. It strengthens both organisational and individual resilience. Standards such as ISO 22316 offer a framework for assessing that maturity, but the real value lies in the conversations it sparks – where people start asking how they learn, not just what they produce.

My advice to manufacturers is to stop chasing turnover alone and start measuring innovation. Let teams co-design their own metrics and take ownership of improvement. When people understand why change is happening and have the tools to learn faster than it unfolds, they don’t resist it – they lead it.

In the end, productivity is not just about speed or output. It’s about how quickly and collectively a business can learn its way to the future.

Professor Paul Byard talks about this and more in the Productivity Reimagined podcast. Listen here.