Critical factors for organizational learning

Garvin (1993) cites three critical factors that are essential for organizational learning in practice: meaning, management, and measurement, each further defined as follows

Meaning. For learning to be a meaningful organizational goal, it must be widely understood, have application to the work being performed, and be supported by the organizational leadership. A key means of support is the tolerance of mistakes or failures. The organizational culture must embrace reasonable risk-taking such that mistakes or failures become learning opportunities that can be spread throughout the organization

Management. The generation of new ideas does not necessarily indicate an organization’s ability to learn. Until those new ideas, or knowledge, are accompanied by a change to the way an organization performs work, then only improvement is taking place. For an organization to learn, a change must take place and that newly gained knowledge must be intentional and managed. That is the learning must be by design, not by chance. Learning practices and policies must be the foundation of “managed” organizational learning. Garvin suggests five basic practices that organizations can manage to enable organizational learning: systematic problem solving, experimentation, the use of demonstration projects, experiential learning, and learning from others on the outside, e.g., benchmarking.

Measurement. There is an old management saying that “you get what you measure”. So, if you want to know whether your organization is indeed learning, how do you measure it? The earliest measurements, those developed in the 1920’s and 1930’s were learning curves and manufacturing progress functions. But these are not necessarily sufficient for the level of organizational learning we are looking to measure. Measurements must effectively gage the stages of organizational learning: cognitive -- where members are exposed to new ideas or knowledge; behavioral changes – where members actually alter their behavior based on new learning; and finally, performance improvement – where behavioral changes actual lead to positive business results in safety, quality, market share, and profitability (Garvin, 1993)