Organizational Learning
Organizational learning is the foundation for gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage. Organizational learning enables teams and organizations to continuously improve and innovate. Continuous improvement focuses on enhancing existing products, services, or processes, while innovation creates entirely new ones. Together, these practices allow organizations to adapt more quickly than competitors, which is the surest path to long-term success. Because meaningful organizational change requires the ability to learn, the process begins at the team level – where people build the skills, insights, and adaptability needed to move from the current state to a desired future state.
Leader Task 1: Analyze organizational learning capacity.
- Know why team learning is the foundation of organizational learning.
- Know how learning creates competitive advantage in organizations.
- Know why organizational change is not possible without learning.
- Know what competitive advantage is.
- Know what organizational change is.
Leader Task 2: Promote a shared vision.
- Know why vision is important for organizations.
- Know how vision drives learning and change in organizations.
- Know how organizations realize their visions.
- Know what vision is.
- Know what culture is.
- Know what strategy is.
Leader Task 3: Foster knowledge creation.
- Know why the best new ideas often come from frontline workers and supervisors.
- Know why leaders should encourage and reward creativity.
- Know how challenging the status quo fosters knowledge creation.
- Know what status quo means.
Leader Task 4: Ensure knowledge sharing.
- Know how sharing knowledge ensures that it becomes a collective resource.
- Know how entrenched mental models impact knowledge sharing.
- Know why communities of practice are especially effective at sharing knowledge.
- Know how organizations can support communities of practice.
- Know what a community of practice is.