HBR Special IssueIf that’s so, it has important implications
that may aff ect how companies balance
team-learning eff orts against staying
the course.
To examine these problems, we
divided the business units from our con-
sumer products company into high, me-
dium, and low performers. We measured
performance according to the units’
profi tability relative to plan over the
preceding two years. Next, we randomly
selected 15 management teams from
each performance level for study—45 in
all. Teams were composed of a general
manager and a plant manager, as well as
managers for marketing, regional sales,
fi nance, equipment, human resources,
and administration. Through surveys
and interviews, we assessed each
team’s learning orientation—how much
members felt that the team emphasized
learning, developing skills, seeking chal-
lenges, and taking risks.
By comparing a team’s learning
orientation with its subsequent unit
performance, we were able to show
that there was an optimal point beyond
which more emphasis on learning actu-
ally depressed performance. Where this
point fell for a given team depended on
that team’s recent performance history:
As we had suspected, poorly performing
teams benefi ted more from an empha-
sis on learning than better-performing
teams did (see the exhibit “Getting Team
Learning Right”).If It Ain’t Broke, Tweak It
It might be hard to give up the idea
that a greater emphasis on learning is
better. But our data clearly suggest that
managers— and their companies—would
be best served by identifying the appro-
priate level of learning for their teams.
Here are some rules of thumb.
First, although managers should
avoid aggressively “fi xing” a team
that’s not broken, they should never
stop tweaking. As the graph shows,even the highest-performing teams
in our study improved when they
placed a low-to-moderate emphasis on
learning—that is, when they tweaked
their success formula. But when these
high- performing teams overemphasized
learning—when their tweaking turned
into fundamental rethinking—their
performance rapidly declined.
Second, if a team is performing poorly
relative to its peers, managers have
everything to gain and nothing to lose
by increasing the emphasis on learning.
The low-performing teams in our study
improved most when they placed a
moderate- to-high emphasis on learning.
Finally, team leaders must actively set
the learning tone for their team. Their
challenge is to balance the benefi ts of ex-
perimentation, innovation, and renewal
with the need for stability and effi ciency.
Team leaders must identify the point of
diminishing, and then negative, returns
on learning and ratchet back a team’s
learning eff orts accordingly to sustain
the highest performance.
HBR Reprint F0302DJ. Stuart Bunderson is the director of the
Bauer Leadership Center and the George
and Carol Bauer Professor of Organiza-
tional Ethics and Governance at the Olin
Business School at Washington University
in St. Louis. Kathleen M. Sutcliffe is the
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of
Business and Medicine at Johns Hopkins
University.Too much emphasis
on learning can
compromise any
team’s performance.
But compared with
high-performing
teams, those that
have been doing
poorly gain more—
and lose less—
from ramped up
learning efforts.
Increase
dDecreased
Busines
s-
unit^ pro
fit
abilityLower Team learning orientation HigherGetting Team Learning Right
Teams that have been: Performing poorly Performing wellTHE LEARNING ORGANIZATION
WHEN TO PUT THE BRAKES ON LEARNING