Organizational Learning

An agricultural expert visited a small mid-west community to give a lecture on state-of-the-art farming tools and techniques. All but one of the local farmers attended. Several days later, one of the attending farmers asked the one stubborn farmer why he did not come to the lecture. The old fellow replied, “I already know how to farm a lot better than I do.”

Our ability to think, our capacity to use what we know, has been subject to question for as long as we have been thinking. Chapter two explores some of the elements of individual and organizational memory and thought, beginning with a brief description of how individual memory operates and how individuals handle, or mishandle, what they know. Memory is after all the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of knowledge. This sets the stage for an analogous discussion of how organizations remember and how they deal with what they know.

Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put a ladder under it. Before long, an ape will go to the ladder and start to climb toward the banana. As soon as he touches the first step, spray all the apes with cold water. After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result—all the apes are sprayed with cold water.

I once visited a factory in North Carolina that manufactured radios, the type used by fire departments, police, and emergency responders. The company had an enviable and growing market share and this particular factory had a reputation for rigorous quality control and productivity techniques, enabling them to compete effectively with Asian companies. They had recently won a national quality award and I had gone to see what my business could learn from them.

The U.S. Air Force operates several individual satellites and constellations of satellites orbiting the earth. The Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites enable precision navigation for the military, for our automobile navigation systems, for tracking wildlife, and for an evergrowing number of previously unimagined purposes. For example, some countries are embedding very small GPS sensors in relics and other national treasures, hoping that if the items are stolen it will be possible to track and retrieve them. Another such satellite constellation is the Defense Satellite Communications Systems, a group of nine satellites that enable communication between military units. The Defense Meteorological Satellites provide weather information to deployed military forces and to strategic planners. Other satellites detect and track missile launches; recall the tracking of the SCUD missiles during the Iraqi conflict in the early 1990s. These orbiting satellites and constellations are controlled from two command centers in the United States and several remote-tracking sites around the world.

In 1980 my daughter and I built a computer from a kit, the Heathkit H-8. The computer case was about 6 inches tall, 16 inches wide, and 17 inches deep and was powered from an electrical outlet, no batteries here. It had a sixteen-digit keypad for entering data and a light emitting diode numerical display. One of our most memorable discussions was about whether to upgrade from the standard 8k (8,192 storage locations or bytes) to the optional 16k of memory. This week Kelly and I looked at an Apple iPhone with 8 gigabytes (more than 8,000,000,000 bytes) of memory, 1 million times more than the computer she and I assembled in 1980. The iPhone is 1/300th the size of the H-8 (less than 5 cubic inches). It has an integrated touch keypad and a video display. It also contains a phone and a camera. It can store thousands of songs and I can listen to music for up to twenty-four hours without recharging the device.

A typical automobile includes perhaps 2,000 parts. Individually none of them enable us to travel safely and comfortably from place to place but assembled they provide us a means to travel over long distances. A typical college basketball team has about fifteen players, five of whom may be on the floor at a time. No single player can win a game playing alone, much less have a winning season. Yet, together those fifteen players may be able to win a championship. Just as the players can come together to form an integrated, powerful, and successful team, so to can Culture, Old Pros, Archives, and Process come together to enable an integrated, powerful, and successful learning organization. Each brings a unique set of strengths and weaknesses, yet together they can form a formidable organizational knowledge management capability.

Every organization is a learning organization, although some are more effective than others. Best-in-class learning organizations appreciate the power, the complexity, and the challenge of managing all four methods that determine just how effectively the organization learns and applies that learning. These organizations embrace the organizational development techniques that shape the Culture, make use of Old Pros, deploy Archives appropriately, and successfully master the principles and tools that enable them to perpetually control their ever-evolving Processes. The result is an integrated environment that enables the organization to make optimal use of what it knows and to extend its knowledge faster than its competition.

The individuals operating within organizations often know how to do their jobs better than they actually do them. Much like the crusty old farmer they already know how to farm a lot better than they actually do. Organizations operate in much the same way. First, because they are made up of individuals and second, because they are infused with group social norms, work routines, and standards of behavior that collectively inhibit the organization from making best use of what it collectively knows.