Why a learning organization

Senge recommends that organizations share their vision where everyone has access to it, discuss it with their teams, and make changes to it as they gain new information and perspectives. Rather, it requires teams to use collaboration and mutual creativity rather than groupthink to achieve goals. Discussion and dialogue are two key components of team learning.

In other words, each team member should have an opportunity to contribute their perspective on a challenge or problem the group is trying to address, and everyone should also be able to ask questions and provide additional context and ideas in relation to the perspectives that have already been shared.

This allows team members to bring their knowledge together and collectively grow their understanding. Adopting this type of culture is not only beneficial to your employees. Fostering a genuine desire for growth can help significantly improve your bottom line—mainly because an innovative, successful business thrives off the solutions its workforce creates. But all too often, employees feel their only role is to show up, complete their tasks without having any real say, and go home.

Companies rarely achieve success without engaged employees asking questions, gaining knowledge, and challenging themselves and their peers. Companies and their employees need to focus on learning to learn: a process that involves pairing different individuals, departments, and management styles together.

And while the first two will always have their idiosyncrasies, consolidating management styles catalyzes the transition from traditional corporation to pioneer. Rather than restricting i. Why is that so important? Your employees are your most valuable resource. And helping them realize it leads to a whole new realm of benefits. There are five huge advantages companies can enjoy when they make the transition to a learning organization:.

According to Karen Jaw-Madson, management consultant, Co. Some of the most successful companies in the world—like Google and Facebook—achieved their status by creating a culture where employees have the time and space to learn, explore, and pitch their ideas no matter how off-the-wall or unconventional they might be. When new ideas are not only welcomed but encouraged, employees will engage in more brainstorming and cross-departmental collaboration.

Keeping knowledge siloed within departments—or in the boardroom—means teams are left in the dark. Giving all of your employees access to the content they need allows them to fully understand corporate challenges and goals. In an environment with a strong shared vision, employees and executives alike are curious and emboldened to learn what they need to be their best. Learning organizations also learn from their mistakes and actively engage in problem solving to quickly pivot to better solutions.

So now that we know what a learning organization looks like, how do they make learning happen? Organizations must develop a learning culture in which learning is continuous—in the form of online classes, tuition reimbursement, mentorships, on-the-job training, webinars, eLearning, in-person classes—the method depends on the learning goal.

Whatever the method, corporations need to meet learners where they are, which means providing learners with what they need to know to be successful and to grow in their jobs. To figure out what learners need, you have to ask them.

Talk to managers and employees. Conduct surveys and focus groups. Take a trip to the production floor and conduct on-the-spot interviews. Talk to your HR Department. Shadow a few employees to identify areas of frustration and gaps in knowledge. All of these methods are not only good ways to determine what learners need, they create that all-important feeling that management cares about what they think, and wants to invest in their learning. While training methods is the focus of another ELM article , learning organizations need to make sure that employee training is targeted—and convenient.

Consider microlearning , which provides quick answers to targeted questions; gamification , which provides employees rewards such as badges and points; or mobile learning or mLearning , which is content written to be displayed on mobile devices—making it accessible whenever the learner needs it—wherever they are.

Shifting from the traditional top-down corporate learning structure has a lot of benefits beyond fostering a healthy learning environment:.

Each of those areas was actually a weakness in the firm. Without concrete data, such reflection can become abstract and susceptible to idiosyncratic assessments and often emotional disagreements about the current state of affairs. With the survey data in hand, managers had a starting point for discussion, and participants were able to point to specific behaviors, practices, or events that might explain both high and low scores. Given that the survey-based scores derive from perceptions, the best use of the data at Eutilize was, as it would be at any company, to initiate conversation and self-reflection, not to be the sole basis for decision making.

In addition, managers learned the importance of using concrete examples to illustrate interpretations, to refer to specific practices or processes, and to clarify observations. Finally, the participants from Eutilize identified specific actions to be taken. Had they not done so, the discussions could have deteriorated into unproductive complaint sessions.

Our experiences developing, testing, and using this survey have provided us with several additional insights for managers who seek to cultivate learning organizations. By modeling desired behaviors—open-minded questioning, thoughtful listening, consideration of multiple options, and acceptance of opposing points of view—leaders are indeed likely to foster greater learning. However, learning-oriented leadership behaviors alone are not enough. The cultural and process dimensions of learning appear to require more explicit, targeted interventions.

We studied dozens of organizations in depth when developing our survey questions and then used the instrument with four firms that had diverse sizes, locations, and missions. All four had higher scores in learning leadership than in concrete learning processes or supportive learning environment. Performance often varies from category to category. This suggests that installing formal learning processes and cultivating a supportive learning climate requires steps beyond simply modifying leadership behavior.

Managers must be sensitive to differences among departmental processes and behaviors as they strive to build learning organizations. Groups may vary in their focus or learning maturity. Managers need to be especially sensitive to local cultures of learning, which can vary widely across units. For example, an early study of medical errors documented significant differences in rates of reported mistakes among nursing units at the same hospital, reflecting variations in norms and behaviors established by unit managers.

In most settings, a one-size-fits-all strategy for building a learning organization is unlikely to be successful. Simply because an organization scores itself highly in a certain area of learning behavior or processes does not make that area a source of competitive advantage.

Surprisingly, most of the organizations we surveyed identified the very same domains as their areas of strength.

A high score therefore conveys limited information about performance. The most important scores on critical learning attributes are relative—how your organization compares with competitors or benchmark data.

Our analysis suggests, however, that each of the building blocks of a learning organization environment, processes, and leadership behaviors is itself multidimensional and that those elements respond to different forces. You can enhance learning in an organization in various ways, depending on which subcomponent you emphasize—for example, when it comes to improving the learning environment, one company might want to focus on psychological safety and another on time for reflection.

Managers need to be thoughtful when selecting the levers of change and should think broadly about the available options. Our survey opens up the menu of possibilities.

The goal of our organizational learning tool is to promote dialogue, not critique. All the organizations we studied found that reviewing their survey scores was a chance to look into a mirror. The most productive discussions were those where managers wrestled with the implications of their scores, especially the comparative dimensions differences by level, subunit, and so forth , instead of simply assessing performance harshly or favorably.

Not surprisingly, we believe that the learning organization survey is best used not merely as a report card or bottom-line score but rather as a diagnostic instrument—in other words, as a tool to foster learning. You have 1 free article s left this month.

You are reading your last free article for this month. Subscribe for unlimited access. Create an account to read 2 more. Organizational culture. Is Yours a Learning Organization? Garvin, Amy C. Edmondson, and Francesca Gino. Reprint: RH An organization with a strong learning culture faces the unpredictable deftly.

Building Block 1: Supportive Learning Environment Psychological Safety In this unit, it is easy to speak up about what is on your mind. If you make a mistake in this unit, it is often held against you.

Keeping your cards close to your vest is the best way to get ahead in this unit. Openness to New Ideas In this unit, people value new ideas. Unless an idea has been around for a long time, no one in this unit wants to hear it. In this unit, people often resist untried approaches. At the beginning of the 3-day course, each team received a request from a company officer to prepare a complete quality plan for their unit, based on the course concepts, within 60 days.

Discussion periods of two to three hours were set aside during the program so that teams could begin working on their plans. After the teams submitted their reports, the company officers studied them, and then the teams implemented them. This GTE program produced dramatic improvements in quality, including a recent semifinalist spot in the Baldrige Awards. GTE proved knowledge is more likely to be transferred effectively when the right incentives are in place.

The GTE example suggests another important guideline: knowledge is more likely to be transferred effectively when the right incentives are in place. If employees know that their plans will be evaluated and implemented—in other words, that their learning will be applied—progress is far more likely. At most companies, the status quo is well entrenched; only if managers and employees see new ideas as being in their own best interest will they accept them gracefully.

Gold, silver, and bronze Improvement Awards are given to units that have improved their scores , , and points, respectively. These awards provide the incentive for change. An accompanying Pockets of Excellence program simplifies knowledge transfer. These increases were viewed as proxies for greater manufacturing knowledge, and most early studies examined their impact on the costs of direct labor.

Later studies expanded the focus, looking at total manufacturing costs and the impact of experience in other industries, including shipbuilding, oil refining, and consumer electronics. Firms like the Boston Consulting Group raised these ideas to a higher level in the s. With this observation, consultants suggested, came an iron law of competition.

To enjoy the benefits of experience, companies would have to rapidly increase their production ahead of competitors to lower prices and gain market share. Both learning and experience curves are still widely used, especially in the aerospace, defense, and electronics industries. Boeing, for instance, has established learning curves for every work station in its assembly plant; they assist in monitoring productivity, determining work flows and staffing levels, and setting prices and profit margins on new airplanes.

Experience curves are common in semiconductors and consumer electronics, where they are used to forecast industry costs and prices. For companies hoping to become learning organizations, however, these measures are incomplete. They focus on only a single measure of output cost or price and ignore learning that affects other competitive variables, like quality, delivery, or new product introductions. They suggest only one possible learning driver total production volumes and ignore both the possibility of learning in mature industries, where output is flat, and the possibility that learning might be driven by other sources, such as new technology or the challenge posed by competing products.

Perhaps most important, they tell us little about the sources of learning or the levers of change. Another measure has emerged in response to these concerns. When represented graphically, the performance measure defect rates, on-time delivery, time to market is plotted on the vertical axis, using a logarithmic scale, and the time scale days, months, years is plotted horizontally.

The Half-Life Curve Analog Devices has used half-life curves to compare the performance of its divisions. Here monthly data on customer service are graphed for seven divisions. Division C is the clear winner: even though it started with a high proportion of late deliveries, its rapid learning rate led eventually to the best absolute performance.

Divisions D, E, and G have been far less successful, with little or no improvement in on-time service over the period. The logic is straightforward. Companies, divisions, or departments that take less time to improve must be learning faster than their peers.

In the long run, their short learning cycles will translate into superior performance. Half-life curves are also flexible. Unlike learning and experience curves, they work on any output measure, and they are not confined to costs or prices. In addition, they are easy to operationalize, they provide a simple measuring stick, and they allow for ready comparison among groups.

Yet even half-life curves have an important weakness: they focus solely on results. Some types of knowledge take years to digest, with few visible changes in performance for long periods. Creating a total quality culture, for instance, or developing new approaches to product development are difficult systemic changes. Because of their long gestation periods, half-life curves or any other measures focused solely on results are unlikely to capture any short-run learning that has occurred.

A more comprehensive framework is needed to track progress. Organizational learning can usually be traced through three overlapping stages. The first step is cognitive. Members of the organization are exposed to new ideas, expand their knowledge, and begin to think differently. The second step is behavioral. Employees begin to internalize new insights and alter their behavior. And the third step is performance improvement, with changes in behavior leading to measurable improvements in results: superior quality, better delivery, increased market share, or other tangible gains.

Because cognitive and behavioral changes typically precede improvements in performance, a complete learning audit must include all three.

Surveys, questionnaires, and interviews are useful for this purpose. At the cognitive level, they would focus on attitudes and depth of understanding. Have employees truly understood the meaning of self-direction and teamwork, or are the terms still unclear? At PPG, a team of human resource experts periodically audits every manufacturing plant, including extensive interviews with shop-floor employees, to ensure that the concepts are well understood.

Have new approaches to customer service been fully accepted? Surveys like these are the first step toward identifying changed attitudes and new ways of thinking. To assess behavioral changes, surveys and questionnaires must be supplemented by direct observation. Here the proof is in the doing, and there is no substitute for seeing employees in action. Bean places telephone orders with its own operators to assess service levels. Other companies invite outside consultants to visit, attend meetings, observe employees in action, and then report what they have learned.

Finally, a comprehensive learning audit also measures performance. Half-life curves or other performance measures are essential for ensuring that cognitive and behavioral changes have actually produced results. Learning organizations are not built overnight. Most successful examples are the products of carefully cultivated attitudes, commitments, and management processes that have accrued slowly and steadily over time.

Still, some changes can be made immediately. Any company that wishes to become a learning organization can begin by taking a few simple steps. The first step is to foster an environment that is conducive to learning. There must be time for reflection and analysis, to think about strategic plans, dissect customer needs, assess current work systems, and invent new products.

Learning is difficult when employees are harried or rushed; it tends to be driven out by the pressures of the moment. That time will be doubly productive if employees possess the skills to use it wisely. Training in brainstorming, problem solving, evaluating experiments, and other core learning skills is therefore essential. Another powerful lever is to open up boundaries and stimulate the exchange of ideas. Boundaries inhibit the flow of information; they keep individuals and groups isolated and reinforce preconceptions.

Opening up boundaries, with conferences, meetings, and project teams, which either cross organizational levels or link the company and its customers and suppliers, ensures a fresh flow of ideas and the chance to consider competing perspectives. Once managers have established a more supportive, open environment, they can create learning forums. Each of these activities fosters learning by requiring employees to wrestle with new knowledge and consider its implications. Each can also be tailored to business needs.

A consumer goods company, for example, might sponsor a study mission to Europe to learn more about distribution methods within the newly unified Common Market, while a high-technology company might launch a systems audit to review its new product development process. Together these efforts help to eliminate barriers that impede learning and begin to move learning higher on the organizational agenda.

They also suggest a subtle shift in focus, away from continuous improvement and toward a commitment to learning. Modesto A. Frank R. Robert C.