Preparing for Conversations with Dave Ulrich
Knowledge and Human Resource Management

Why the Bottom Line Isn't
Learning: Changing the Game

Editor's note: Excerpts from Chapter 8, Why the Bottom Line Isn't. For the full chapter, download the PDF. To order the book, use the AOK Bookstore.

Everyone has firsthand experience with learning. Students learn by transferring knowledge from their teachers and other resources-and prove it by passing exams and completing degrees. Employees learn the norms, expectations, and goals of their company and its leaders and demonstrate their learning by both delivering and receiving value from their work. Family members learn to adapt and share as they create a positive home environment. And every life transition (relocation, marriage, divorce, new children, children leaving home, or whatever) makes it necessary to unlearn and let go of the past, then learn to begin a new future.

Organizational Learning

In organizations, learning also occurs. Learning differs from change and speed of change. Where change deals with doing something new, and speed focuses on the pace of doing new things, learning implies transferring knowledge from any single change experience to another. A leader can implement an innovation initiative for new products (change) and do so quickly (speed) without changing the company for the better on a long-term basis (learning); learning occurs when the innovation initiative draws on experiences from other companies or divisions of the company or when the innovation ideas implemented in one setting transfer to other settings in the company.

Some organizations seem to have the ability to learn better than others, creating intangible value in the process. These organizations are not only able to change but to learn from each change experience so that cumulative progress occurs. In some ways, it is easier to recognize non-learning organizations. You often run into them-say, when you arrive at the airport just as it begins to rain and find that your flight is delayed. Many airlines seem to have a learning disability: it looks as if their people have to completely relearn foul-weather operating procedures every time it rains. This corporate Alzheimer's is the antithesis of learning. Each new experience requires a reconception of new patterns rather than transfer of knowledge from one event to the next. When it rains, the experiences of previous rainstorms should transfer to the current situation, enabling the airline to meet travel goals in spite of the rain.

Individual Learning

Some individuals are predisposed to learn. By nature they are inquisitive and curious; they're always experimenting, trying new things, and seeking ways to improve. These individuals have a constant stream of fresh insights and ideas. They see alternatives others don't see and connections not readily apparent to others. These natural learners are valuable employees because they generate new ideas and offer alternatives for the future not grounded in the past.
Individuals Generate Ideas with Impact

Our colleague C.K. Prahalad is a natural learner. His inquisitive nature and clever intellect allow him to constantly be on the lookout for new ideas. His half-life of knowledge is short as he constantly strives to discover and frame new ideas in new ways. Many organizations have people like C.K.-people who don't rest on the past but look toward the future, who have new ways to perceive thoughts and ideas, and who seem to be ahead of the "what's next" question.

Leaders should identify these individuals both as they come into and as they move through the organization. Natural learners offer novel responses to preliminary screening questions. A number of companies (Microsoft comes to mind) have thought-provoking interview questions to tease out an individual's predisposition to learning:

• How much water flows through the mouth of the Mississippi River in a day?
• Why are manhole covers round?
• Who in history would you like to visit with for an hour? Why? What would you ask?
• What is the future of our industry? What are the threats? Challenges? Opportunities?

The goal in each case is to see how a prospective employee responds to these questions; the factually accurate response, where there is one, matters relatively little. The intent is to identify how the candidate thinks about finding an answer to the problem. Natural learners see alternatives that others don't see. Since personal history is the best predictor of present state, natural learners have also probably engaged in creative activities, taken risks, and had unique experiences.

Team Learning

Increasingly, companies perform work through task forces, projects, groups, account teams, and the like. Teams as collectives of individuals may be scored on their ability to generate and generalize ideas with impact. High-performing teams begin their learning journey by generating new ideas, which come both from the composition of the team and from the way the team operates.

Teams Generate Ideas with Impact
Teams striving for new ideas select diverse members. When team members each bring a unique point of view, the entire team benefits-and so does the organization it serves. When the members are all looking at problems from the same perspective, by contrast, they're likely to fall into groupthink and miss many useful possibilities. That makes it important to orient new members to encourage debate and dialogue. One of the most effective team leaders we know uses this briefing for new team members: "You are on this team because you are different from me. If you and I think alike all the time, one of us is not necessary. And it won't be me."

Teams Generalize Ideas with Impact
High-performing teams not only generate new ideas, they generalize those ideas by rigorously improving their team process. Team process checks enable teams to audit and improve how well they are working. By so doing, they learn about their own processes and improve upon them. Four processes are critical for team effectiveness: defining purpose, making decisions, managing relationships, and learning.

Leadership Implications

Leaders build learning into their organizations by generating and generalizing ideas with impact for individuals, teams, and organizations. Here are some specific leadership actions that you can take to build learning into your organization:

1. Bring natural learners into the organization and encourage all employees to learn through the choice-consequence-correction cycle.
2. Encourage employees to look for patterns and to transfer knowledge from one setting to another.
3. Provide forums (meetings, training, and the like) where people have permission and the opportunity to reflect on better ways to do their jobs.
4. Help teams become more creative and insightful by bringing new people onto teams and by operating teams in a way to encourage debate and dialogue,
5. Allow teams to generalize learning through team audits on purpose, decision making, relationships, and learning.
6. Encourage units to create new ways of doing work through experimentation, competence acquisition, continuous learning, and benchmarking-making sure that all receive at least some attention, and that experimentation and competence acquisition aren't overshadowed by the more cautious approaches.
7. Share knowledge and ideas across organization boundaries through building the right culture and a disciplined learning process.
8. Frequently audit for internal best practices in relevant areas and find ways to export these best practices to other parts of the firm.
9. Use your intranet to create chat rooms and e-mail lists focusing on important issues, making it easy to discuss important ideas across geographic boundaries.

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