Leading Organizational Learning

create an infrastructure that moves ideas across boundaries. While
chief learning officer and vice president of management develop-
ment of General Electric, Steve Kerr created a learning matrix that
identified the source of good ideas for sharing across geographical,
functional, or business boundaries and proposed a disciplined
process for moving ideas across units (see Exhibit 7.1).
As your first step, identify an important initiative that is in the
process of being rolled out and that the company is committed to
doing well, such as service, quality (Six Sigma), customer focus,
cycle time, or training. Let’s call this initiative “X.” Substitute this
initiative for X in the proposition in step 1 of the Learning Matrix:
“To be world class at X.”

74 LEADINGORGANIZATIONALLEARNING

Step 3:

Locations

Where

Work Is

Done

Step 4: In each cell, score 1 (low) to 5 (high). Mark 0 if not applicable.

Step 5: Repeat for each part of the business.

Step 6: Build a plan for how to move best practices across the entire business.

Step 7: Generalize the learning capability across the organization.

1

a 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

...

Step 1: Proposition: To be world class at X.

Step 2: Critical Success Factors for X:

To be world class at X, we must...

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Exhibit 7.1 Learning Matrix

Source:Adapted from a form used at General Electric Company. Used with permission.