meetings, and site visits) to talk about their mistakes, what they
have learned, and how they learned. The stories and the dialogues
created around them help foster the sharing of values, culture, and
best practices across the organization. They use many direct
and virtual channels (such as weekly e-mail, broadcast voice
mail, and video) to communicate their insights and learning
throughout their organizations and to harvest ideas and intelli-
gence on organizational progress.
CEOs Exemplify Lifelong Learning
Their behavior and actions toward learning and development
allow others to practice the same approach to life. They not only
promote learning policies but also demonstrate how they learn.
They demand that others be committed to and engaged in execu-
tive and management development processes to the same degree
that they are. CEOs are “coaches at large,” supporting people
who seek to improve their performance and attending to their
development. They encourage learning by asking questions
that disturb, generate insight, and uncover knowledge and new
possibilities.
Obstacles to Learning That CEOs FaceCEOs who invest in their learning and that of their people create
a systemic and strategic capacity for knowledge creation and distri-
bution in their organizations. In large part, embodying the values
and the practices that can drive a learning culture starts at the top.
This cannot be done successfully without having the right operat-
ing mechanisms supported by the right kind of dialogues and work-
ing relationships among people who promote learning and
knowledge sharing as means of achieving the business strategy of
the organization. CEOs who don’t recognize the importance of
modeling these behaviors face many potential setbacks. The
following obstacles are most often seen as deterring CEOs in their
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