Leading Organizational Learning

this small box. They figured that you could not fit all that equip-

ment in that box, so they probably would just get a coupon that

would have to be mailed in for the printer at a later date. In other

words, they could not visually see and perceive the value of this

special. I took one of the boxes, sliced open the side panel so that

shoppers could see the contents, and placed it next to the stack of

boxes. Almost instantly, customers started to purchase the computer

specials.

Back at headquarters, the merchandising manager knew what
he had to do. He had to create an instant learning, knowledge, and
action moment for electronics departments around the country. He
put together a quick note detailing how to display the product, and
within a few hours, the marketing display was modified. Sure
enough, all around the country, hour-by-hour sales of the product
reached their original planned levels.
What do we call this process? Knowledge management? Supply
chain management? E-learning? Customer relationship monitor-
ing? Best practice harvesting? Collaborative real-time innovation?
Actually, it’s a blend of all of those things. It combines all of these
corporate processes, but even more important, it demonstrates how
an organization committed to being smart, in real time, can lever-
age an active learning network to learn and teach. My use of the
word networkshould not take you to a hardware or even software
image. What Wal-Mart used that day was a combination of infor-
mation, analysis, investigation, communication, and digitally based
learning.

Factors at Work

In this particular case, the factors at work that are critical to mov-
ing learning around the organization rapidly include predictive
modeling, real-time information and real-time learning, people,
encouragement of initiative and innovation, rapid authoring of
learning, and the second wave of learning implementation.

4 LEADINGORGANIZATIONALLEARNING