How Organizations Learn

"How can managers make their organizations learning organizations?"

"There are three essential criteria of organizational learning."

"We conceive of organizational learning as a series of three processes: Knowledge Creation or Acquisition, Knowledge Dissemination, and Knowledge Use."

"To engage in the learning cycle, some firms move their employees instead of their knowledge."

"Here are definitions of the seven Learning Orientations."

"Facilitating Factors are the practices or conditions that promote learning within all kinds of organizations."

"Three kinds of problems often act as barriers to recognizing or responding to a Performance Gap."

"Organizational Curiosity fosters an environment in which people are encouraged to try out things on an ongoing basis."

"Organizational learning style is a function of how organizations learn."

"When organizations learn from their own operations and use that knowledge transformatively, they create product or process innovations."

"When knowledge is seen in personal terms but disseminated in an informal manner, learning occurs through role modeling or social emulation."

"Companies with a large portfolio of learning styles are apt to have multiple competencies and a greater capacity to adapt to change than companies that rely on a single learning style."

"The organization could make more learning investments at a different part of the value chain or try to be more of an innovator if it is now more of an adapter."

"What are the minimum knowledge bases required to achieve our mission?"

"Four elements have special impact on Knowledge Acquisition: Scanning Imperative, Performance Gap, Concern for Measurement, and Organizational Curiosity."

"The first step in building learning capability in Knowledge Reserve is to engage in a dialogue about how the organization defines knowledge and what knowledge is considered important for doing the unit's work."

"One cannot simply say that we need to trust each other more when many years of low trust have left their mark."

"Knowledge Utilization represents the ultimate payoff in learning."

"It is not necessary that people imitate or adapt what they see; it is enough that they become open to the validity of different approaches."

"Assessing progress in the building of learning capability is itself an intervention because attention given to a team can affect its performance."

"The focal point for intervention within the normative view is those factors or conditions that must be present in order for learning to take place."

"Organizations and teams progress through stages and, in so doing, alter their learning styles and competences."

"The capability view emphasizes understanding the present and making explicit what might be hidden or overlooked."

"Different contexts of learning engender different leverage points for changing learning."

"Rather than presuming that there is something wrong in most organizations, practitioners should base their approach on a wellness model."