Knowledge Management &
Organizational Learning

Sending people to short skill-building workshops may be adequate for adding to an existing base of knowledge they already posses.
However, to develop new capabilities that are different from the current knowledge base, a short-term course will not provide the depth and span of knowledge and learning retention that is needed. The difficulty goes up exponentially as additional, interdependent knowledge areas are added to the new learning mix.

This is the role of Communities of Practice (CoP) in organizational learning

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Barriers to a team implementing new business ideas (best practices in today's jargon) include:

Priorities - heavy work load that will require something else to take a lower priority
Sidetracking - focusing on ancillary issues (cost and time) that detract from the main focus
No buy-in - belief that originator lacks full knowledge of the true situation and needs
Shortsightedness - unwillingness to wait for full impact to take effect before results are demanded
Politics - internal competition, not collaboration
Time - solution misses the timing requirements of the problem
General - lacks specifics that may be required for the situation at hand
Rigidity - not adaptable (find the middle ground)
Single sightedness - seeing the best practice as the answer to everything, even where it is not warranted

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Requirements for spreading a best practice across the organization:

Easy for everyone to understand "as is" without excessive explanation and support
- clear business purpose for multiple stakeholders
Easy to be communicated between different levels and between different groups within the organization
- allow for different rates of learning and different learning styles [ see stages of learning ]
- builds on an existing knowledge base in and between team members
Adaptable to specific, local requirements
- what worked in one situation may not work elsewhere
- what is the core essential elements that are critical to the best practice?
- is the core element the concept itself or the execution process?
- sufficient supporting information to permit changes to fit current situation
- sufficient time to allow mistakes to be made and corrected
Storage and retrieval system for collecting and disseminating the best practice within the organization
- "bank" good ideas for later use
- promote availability once banked
- retrieval mindset (not librarians or archivists, but brokers and matchmakers)
- realize that value is only realized through use
- don't get tied up in technical or ownership issues
Existing system structure and processes that do not inhibit collaboration [see business culture]
- beware sub-optimization
- reward "copying" ideas; do not rely solely on those internally developed

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Organizational Learning

Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline defines learning organizations as those that continually enhance their capacity to create the results they really care about. This is accomplished by paying attention to three key areas:

Shared Vision and a common sense of purpose - able to clearly articulate the vision
Common language for communicating information within the organization - productive conversations to make the results happen
Understanding of organizational dynamics and complex business processes - tools and thinking to management the complexities involved

As learning takes place, an individual (or organization) goes through five stages of learning. Without an understanding of the stages of learning, a manager may think that more than enough time and resources have been spent training someone and are then disappointed when the level of knowledge is less than desired. Or worse, the subject area being trained, if new, is discarded as being without merit because results are expected too soon. If an organization is serious about developing its ability to create its own future, there must be a way to develop a critical mass of people at the competent level in the desired knowledge areas. This requires an organizational awareness of its level of learning and the development of a learning plan to move forward. Part of the learning plan is the identification of available internal training resources and acquiring outside resources when needed.

Why a Learning Organization?

Behaviors associated with organizational learning

Systems Thinking - one of the Five Learning Disciplines

Information Taxonomy - preparing for knowledge mapping

Organizational Learning Activities

Other Resources