Building blocks of a learning organization

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Shanmugam

Many thinkers have contributed to the field of learning organization -in which employees
continuously create, acquire and transfer contextual knowledge to help their company to adapt to
the changes around them faster than the competitors. The concept of learning organization
closely meshes with that of the Knowledge Management. Although many companies have
embraced the concept of learning organization and knowledge management, only a few have
managed to tap its enormous potential.
Why do only few companies succeed? David Garvin and others in their article Is yours a
learning organization? Harvard Business Review March 2008 point out key reasons: there were
no prescriptions on how to go about it; and the concept was aimed at CEOs and other senior
leaders rather than managers of smaller departments and businesses where much critical work is
done. To address these deficiencies, they present:
1. Three building blocks, each with its discrete components that enable a learning
organization: 1) A supportive learning environment; 2) Concrete learning processes and
practices; and 3) Leadership that reinforces learning.
2. A diagnostic survey that measures the learning that occurs in a department, office, project
or in any organizational unit of any size. This instrument helps a company to compare
itself against benchmark scores gathered from other firms, so that one has grounded view
how well their organizations learn and what can be done to refine their strategies and
processes.

Building block 1 A supportive learning environment

This block has four characteristics:
1. Psychological safety: An organization that provides a supporting environment, where
employees can ask nave questions, own up mistakes and present their or contrary views,
without being belittled, marginalized by their peers and/or immediate managers
2. Appreciation of differences: Becoming aware and sensitive to opposing ideas and
alternative worldviews. Appreciating differences increases energy, motivation and fresh
perspectives as they prevent lethargy and drift.
3. Openness to new ideas: Learning is not just about correcting mistakes and solving
problems; it is also about encouraging employees to take risks and to explore the untested
and unknown ideas for bringing out innovative approaches.
4. Time for reflection: Todays managers are busy with deadlines and time pressures and
get judged by the number of hours they have put in and the tasks accomplished. Such

time pressure not only kills creativity but does not allow managers to diagnose problems
and learn from their experiences. Supportive learning environment needs time for a pause
in the action to encourage a thoughtful review of the organizations processes. The
authors David A Garvin and others quote an instance of a Childrens Hospitals and
Clinics policy of blameless reporting. The policy by replacing threatening terms such as
errors and investigations with less emotionally loaded terms such as, accidents and
analysis encouraged and brought in a culture, where everyone works together to
understand safety, identify risks and report them without fear of blame. This change in
culture enabled people to collaborate throughout the organization to talk about and
change behaviors, policies, and systems that put patients at risks. Over times, these
changes resulted in measurable reductions in preventable deaths and illnesses.

Building block 2 Concrete learning processes and practices

Learning processes and practices generation, collection, interpretation, and dissemination of
information involve a series of specific steps and must be clearly defined that serve the
organizations needs. The knowledge sharing process can be:
1. Among individual employees, departmental groups or the whole organization itself
2. Internally focused right after a project is completed, the process may call post-reviews
that are then shared with others engaged in similar tasks
3. Externally focused processes that systematically engage customers and subject matter
experts (SMEs) to gain their perspectives on the companys activities and challenges.
The best known processes are:
1. U.S. Armys After Action Review (AAR) process is widely used by many companies that
look at any event, task or project, after it is completed. By finding contextual answers to
four simple questions: 1) What did we set out to do?; 2) What actually happened?; 3)
Why did it happen?; 4) What do we do next time? (Which activities do we sustain, and
which do we improve), organizations capture valuable knowledge for reuse.
Such AAR insights could be of leadership and employee behaviors, execution of a project or
task, cycle time reduction indicators, and implication of the learning to the organization if the
project, product or service is new. One reason why some organizations dont learn is that after
AAR insights revealed a few problems along with technical and behavioral fixes, they never act
on them in subsequent projects. The reason there were no organizational processes to follow up
on such organizational learning to tap this potential.
AAR efforts also fail, when organizations conduct a lessons-learned questionnaire after the
completion of a project. But if the project lasts more than six months or a year, leaders and
employees may not capture the insights at all. AAR should not be post-mortem reports but an
explicit learning that connects past experience with future action. If the project or a task is more

than six months, one could consider a periodic AAR insight capturing after a significant
milestone or a phase.
2. John Shook in his article Toyotas Secret: The A3 Report in Sloan Management Review
in Summer 2009 shows how Toyota solves problems that generate knowledge and help
employees while doing their work makes them to learn. The managers use a tool called
A3 (named after the international paper size on which it fits) to share a deeper method of
thinking that lies at the heart of Toyotas sustained success.
A3 is a simple seven sequential steps for capturing organizational learning: 1) Establish the
business context and importance of a specific problem or issue; 2) Describe the current
conditions of the problem; 3) Identify the desired outcome; 4) Analyze the situation to establish
causality; 5) Propose countermeasures; 6) Prescribe and action plan for getting it done; and 7)
Map out the follow-up process. This tool serves as a mechanism for managers to mentor others in
root-cause analysis and scientific thinking and align the interests of individuals and departments
throughout the organization by encouraging productive dialogue and helping people learn from
one another
3. The 5 Ws (Whys) and 1 H (How) process explores the cause/effect relationships
underlying a particular problem. This process was originally developed by Sakichi
Toyoda and was later used by Toyota Motors during the evolution of its manufacturing
methodologies The maxim of the Five Ws (and one H) is that in order for a report to be
complete, it must answer a checklist of six questions, each of which comprises an
interrogative word:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.

Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?

The maxim underlies that each question should elicit a factual answer facts that it is necessary
to include for a report to be considered complete. None of these six questions can be answered
with a simple yes or no.

Building block 3 Leadership that reinforces learning

Organization learning becomes a reality, when leaders walk the talk. When leaders actively
question and listen to employees, spend time on problem identification, knowledge transfer,
reflective post-audits, and entertain alternate points of view, it emboldens employees to offer new
ideas and options. The three building blocks of organizational learning reinforce one another.
Just as leadership behaviors help create and sustain supportive learning environments, such
environments make it easier for managers and employees to execute concrete learning processes
and practices smoothly and efficiently.

Diagnostic survey to assess the Depth of Learning in an Organization

This interactive survey is available at los.hbs.edu and helps one to determine how well their
department or company functions as a learning organization. The survey is divided into three
blocks as explained. In the first two blocks of the survey one rates statements on a seven-point
scale. In the third block one rates their managers behavior whom they report to.
After the online survey is taken, it synthesizes the ratings and yields an estimated score for each
building block and its subcomponent. Synthesized scores are then converted to a zero-to-100
scale for ease comparison with people in your department and/or with other department in your
organization. In addition, one can compare their scores with benchmark scores which are
categorized into 5 quartiles: Bottom quartile; second quartile; median; third quartile; and top
quartile. The 5 quartiles were derived from surveys of large groups of senior executives who
completed 8 weeks of general management program at Harvard Business School during 2006.
If ones scores fall at or below the median in a particular building block or subcomponent, one
can initiate an improvement effort in that areas by assembling their team to brainstorm specific
strategies for enhancing the area of weaknesses. On the other hand, if ones scores fall above the
median particularly in the top quartile, one can consider partnering with other departments in
your organization that may benefit from specific concrete strategies that you may articulate and
model them in the area of weakness
There are many ways of taking the survey. First, an individual can take it to get a quick sense of
her work unit or project team. Second, several members of a department can complete the survey
and average their scores. If employees in multiple departments want to take the survey, they can
make comparisons department-by-department or companywide. Whatever may be the way, the
next step is to compare individual and departmental scores with overall benchmark scores
provided in the article that were derived from baseline group organizations.
It is common for any employee or department to overestimate their abilities and skills. But when
they take survey such as this, they are able to test their real assumptions, engage in productive
debate and seek out dissenting views. Such reflection along with feedback from stakeholders
enables a genuine organizational learning by pointing out which specific behaviors, practices or
events lead to high and low scores. David Garvin and others from their experiences in
developing, testing and using of the survey provides some more insights.
1. Leadership alone is insufficient: Modeling desired behaviors open-minded
questioning, thoughtful listening, considering multiple options and acceptance of
opposing views do foster learning but such changes are inadequate. To make it adequate
one needs to institute formal learning process and a supportive learning climate.
2. Organizations/departments are not monolithic: One must be sensitive to differences to
differences among departmental processes and behaviors. Departments may vary in their
focus or learning maturity. Managers need to be especially sensitive to local cultures of
learning, which can vary widely across departments. A one-size-fits all is unlikely to be
successful.

3. Comparative performance is the critical scorecard: A high score in certain area of

learning behavior or process does not make that area of competitive advantage. For e.g.,
from the organizations that were surveyed revealed that openness to new ideas and
education and training almost universally scored higher than other attributes or
categories, probably because of their obvious links to organizational improvement and
personal development. The most important scores on critical learning attributes are
relative how your organization compares with competitors or benchmark data.
4. Learning is multidimensional: Often companies to garner organizational learning focus
their efforts on any of these practices more time on reflection, greater use of post-audits
and after-action reviews. David A Garvin and others suggest that their three learning
blocks of a learning organization is itself multidimensional and that those elements
respond to different forces. One can enhance organizational learning in many ways: to
improve the learning environment, one company may want to focus on psychological
safety and another on time for reflection. Managers must be thoughtful when selecting
the levers of change and should think broadly the available options the subcomponents
that exist in three building blocks of organizational learning.

Build the learning culture

Not all employees generate valuable knowledge that organizations may require for reuse. Key
people like departmental and business heads, team leaders are the ones who generate contextual
knowledge for instance: when they win new customers; bring innovative products and services;
or bring imaginative solutions to challenges faced in the business.
Once an organization identifies such key people, the next step is to align organizational systems
such as performance management system, developing people and most importantly the
organizations culture to assess which amongst these key people have the potential to take more
responsibilities as when they get promoted. Assessing people is about:
1. Ability of the people to capture knowledge immediately whenever an important event
takes place
2. How such captured knowledge is being reused subsequently?
3. Inculcating the organizational learning behaviors to those who report to these key people
Understanding how adults learn in such organizational learning change initiative is helpful for
successful implementation. The fundamental reason why people sometimes resist change is
that the new behavior to be learned requires some unlearning that they may be unwilling or
unable to do. Adult learning is fundamentally different from childhood learning, where
everything learned is new.
One basic assumption of adult learning is that we are at all times in a state of a quasi-stationary
equilibrium and that we are always trying to stabilize our emotional and cognitive state, which
is perpetually bombarded by new external and internal stimuli that have the potential for

upsetting and moving the equilibrium to a new state. Many of these stimuli can be thought of as
driving forces that push us toward something new, but we also generate within ourselves
restraining forces that keep us at the present state. Learning or change takes place when the
driving forces are greater that the restraining forces. Such driving forces could be rewards and
recognition that could be built in organizational systems as mentioned in the three building
blocks of David Garvin and others.
An organization culture is not about homogeneity. Edgar H Schein in his book The Corporate
Culture Survival Guide 2009 says as organizations grow and mature, they not only develop their
own culture, but also differentiate themselves into many subcultures based on occupations,
product lines, functions, geographies and echelons in the hierarchy. Leaders must not only
understand the cultural consequences of the many way in which organizations differentiate
themselves but, more importantly, must align the various subcultures that have been created
towards a common corporate purpose.
Taking this logic of aligning subcultures in to a companys overall culture, it becomes
imperative for an organization to capture these nuances between departments and businesses.
The nuances could be in terms of capturing knowledge by way formats framing of standard
vocabulary or taxonomy unique to the functions or businesses. Such nuances not only bring
uniformity in organization learning, but also help employees to work smarter.
True organizational learning must promote dialogue, not critique. Most importantly, surveys
should not be used to generate judgmental report cards but rather as a developmental instrument
tool to foster learning.
Source:
1. David Garvin and others. Is yours a learning organization? Harvard Business Review.
March 2008
2. Edgar H Schein. The corporate cultural survival guide. Rev Ed. Jossey-Bass2009
3. John Shook. Toyotas Secret: The A3 Report. Sloan Management Review Summer 2009.