Leading Organizational Learning

departmental logs that answer questions such as “What have you
learned today?” “How did you learn what you learned?” “Who or
what helped you?” and “How will you apply what you learned?” Con-
sider unconventional methods, such as job readiness reviews, peer
appraisals, and social network analyses to measure what is being
learned.^6 Initiate inventories that capture changes in content knowl-
edge, or ask managers to report regularly not only on business met-
rics but also on what their groups discover and are prepared to share.

Celebrate Learning’s Pervasiveness

Gartner, Inc., in Burlington, Massachusetts, has created a succes-

sion policy designed to reward and promote employees who learn

continuously and share their knowledge with peers and subordi-

nates. WD-40 Company recognized a learning superstar, a person

who learned the most and from whom others learned the most over

the course of a year, by paying for that family’s food for a year.

Talk about the ongoing nature of informal learning and the
improvements the organization has made as a result. Honor success
by citing examples of learning from the executive suite to the manu-
facturing floor. If learning all the time is an explicit organizational
goal, it then becomes a value on which people pride themselves. They
are likely to increase skills and knowledge, improve performance and
bottom-line results, work successfully as a team, offer timely assistance,
and develop innovative approaches to work. Don’t change the
essence of informal learning by trying to codify too much, though;
some people prefer the unbounded nature of their contributions and
prefer to decide how much attention and praise they receive.

Conclusion

To create a smarter organization, discover what learning already lurks
on your walls and in your halls. Then purposefully support an envi-
ronment full of additional informal opportunities and experiences

100 LEADINGORGANIZATIONALLEARNING