One beauty of Kerr’s Learning Matrix is that it simply and
elegantly shows where pockets of excellence exist, and it suggests
how to move ideas from one unit in the firm to other units. The
Learning Matrix offers a simple methodology for generating and
generalizing ideas with impact within an organization. Leaders who
use methods like this ensure that good ideas are not hidden within
a unit but are quickly and rapidly disseminated across units.
Leadership ImplicationsJordan Pettinger, the senior vice president of human resources
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, could make practical
use of these ideas. She found that her leaders could build learning
into their organizations by generating and generalizing ideas with
impact for individuals, teams, and organizations. In addition,
she found other actions that helped her to build learning into her
organization:
- Bring natural learners into the organization, and encourage
all employees to learn through the choice-consequence-
correction cycle. - Encourage employees to look for patterns and to transfer
knowledge from one setting to another. - Provide forums (meetings, training, and the like) where peo-
ple have the authority and the opportunity to reflect on better
ways to do their jobs. - Help teams become more creative and insightful by bringing
new people onto teams and by operating teams in a way that
encourages debate and dialogue. - Allow teams to generalize learning through team audits on
purpose, decision making, relationships, and learning. - Encourage units to create new ways of doing work through
experimentation, competency acquisition, continuous learning,
and benchmarking. Make sure that all of these receive at least
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