Organizational Learning and Performance: The Science and Practice of Building a Learning Culture

by Ryan Smerek

In Organizational Learning and The Science and Practice of Building a Learning Culture , Ryan Smerek combines organizational examples with insights from research, to provide readers with a unique and distinctive lens to improve personal and organizational performance.

The first section of the book provides an overview of what it means to learn as an individual and how individuals vary in their openness to learn. Drawing from cognitive and personality psychology, thinking dispositions such as a growth mindset, curiosity, and intellectual humility are explored and how they help foster learning in organizations.

In the second section, Smerek describes the principles of a learning culture, providing a look into the world's largest hedge fund, a renowned food company, a highly-regarded children's hospital, and a preeminent innovation and design firm. Through these examples, readers will come to understand the social norms that increase learning. These include a commitment to transparency of thinking and the pursuit of truth, "Big Picture thinking," a willingness to learn from failure, and the social norms needed to foster innovation and creativity.

Throughout the book, Smerek draws from compelling examples of organizations and research in the social sciences to demonstrate what it means to build a learning culture -- and how it can improve personal and organizational performance.

Genres: Nonfiction

200 pages, Hardcover

Published December 1, 2017

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a student and colleague of Ryan's, I know firsthand how worthwhile it is to pay attention when he shares his work and thinking. This book deserves the attention of all who aim to understand and/or improve their own learning - and the learning of their colleagues or community members - to advance culture, performance, and satisfaction in organizations of all kinds.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

A succinct and accessible read on what it takes to build a learning culture within an organisation, with summaries at the end of each chapter that highlight the key points. Smerek defines learning by an organisation as the routines and social norms that are not stored in any one person's head, whereby "people can come and go but the routines remain. This contrasts with learning in an organization, which is the process of individuals developing their personal skills and abilities." Both are important for organisations to improve but they are fundamentally different forms of learning.

Organisations that have a strong learning culture strike a good balance between exploration and exploitation/execution. This balance could differ across different parts of the organisation (e.g. the R&D department vs the call centre and also across different phases of an organisation's journey; for instance after the launch of a new product, execution should be the priority rather than exploration). Organisations tend to prefer focussing on the exploitation space because of what Levitt and March describe as the "competency trap", where "incremental improvement is all that can be seen and competency is comfortable".

Smerek divides the book into two sections - the first focussing on learning at the individual level, and the second on learning at the organisational level. I found the metaphors that Smerek used to describe the kind of learning that takes place at the individual level helpful:
- The mind as a computer that absorbs and accumulates facts and information for subsequent retrieval (where we need to be intentional about how we build the knowledge base and absorptive capacity of employees; bombarding new hires with masses of information during their first week on the job does not take into account the "slow progression of understanding" of the novice, for instance)
- The mind as a developing author where the individual constructs meaning from experiences, and is eventually able to reframe how they look at the world and respond to situations (e.g. moving from an individual contributor role to a managerial role requires a shift to working through others)
- The intuitive and reflective mind and its role in how we implicitly absorb norms and associations. Training the intuitive and reflective mind could either focus on helping individuals build intuitive associations and implicit expertise, or reflection and scrutiny on the associations that have been formed.

On learning at the organisational level, Smerek highlights several norms that can increase learning:
- An orientation towards pursuing truth and transparency, supported by efforts to build psychological safety, mutual trust and respect and helping people manage the emotional consequences of transparency
- Promoting "Big Picture" thinking to connect employees' day to day work with the organisation's vision and purpose, to increase the significance of their work and willingness to learn from feedback
- Enabling learning from failure by putting in place "blameless reporting" and "systemic thinking" (i.e. rather than attributing it to individual error, looking at the environmental and systemic causes that might have led to the error); learning preemptively from failure via pre-mortems
- Adopting tools that support learning and innovation e.g. design thinking, brainstorming and nominal group technique, parallel prototyping and experimentation
- Leaders driving the learning culture by being mindful of the power they hold (and how it can make them less receptive to learning), using "socialised power" to implement learning initiatives (e.g. to help overcome organisational inertia), leading as teaching

So in summary, what can organisations do to increase learning by the organisation? Smerek advocates "learning mechanisms", i.e. concrete and structured activities and processes that create routines and norms that support learning. These include:
- Hire people with a high learning orientation
- Fostering learning in performance reviews
- Engaging in AARs

Overall, I found Organisational Learning and Performance a helpful primer on the topic. My only quibble is that I wish Smerek had gone into a bit more detail for some of the case studies he flagged as exemplars of organisational learning - WD-40, Zingerman's, IDEO, etc.

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched with lot of references, great illustrations and charts.