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Is Yours a Learning Organization

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Is Yours a Learning Organization?
Using this assessment tool, companies can pinpoint areas where they need to foster knowledge sharing, idea development, learning from mistakes, and holistic thinking.

by David A. Garvin, Amy C. Edmondson, and Francesca Gino

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Daniel Chang

EADERS MAY THINK that getting their organizations to learn is only a matter of articulating a clear vision, giving employees the right incentives, and providing lots of training. This assumption is not merely flawed – it’s risky in the face of intensifying competition, advances in technology, and shifts in customer preferences. Organizations need to learn more than ever as they confront these mounting forces. Each company must become a learning …show more content…

Our instrument enables your company to compare itself against benchmark scores gathered from other firms; to make assessments across areas within the organization (how, for, example, do different groups learn relative to one another?); and to look deeply within individual units. In each case, the power is in the comparisons, not in the absolute scores. You may find that an area your organization thought was a strength is actually less robust than at other organizations. In effect, the tool gives you a broader, more grounded view of how well your company learns and how adeptly it refines its strategies and processes. Each organization, and each unit within it, needs that breadth of perspective to accurately measure its learning against that of its peers.

Building Blocks of the Learning Organization
Organizational research over the past two decades has revealed three broad factors that are essential for organizational learning and adaptability: a

Our tool is structured around the three building blocks and allows companies to measure their learning proficiencies in great detail. As you shall see, organizations do not perform consistently across the three blocks, nor across the various subcategories and subcomponents. That fact suggests that different mechanisms are at work in each building-block area and that improving performance in each is likely to require distinct supporting activities. Companies, and units within them,

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