Oftentimes leaders use Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to gauge the performance of their organization. They see lines on a graph or numbers indicating whether or not there is improvement. Other times, leaders tend to trust the word of their team or lean into their own intuition. Whether that feedback shows improvement or decline doesn’t necessarily tell us what’s really going on. But the moment we see a downward trend or hear grumblings at a meeting; there’s typically a knee-jerk reaction to address the problem. In other instances, there’s absolutely nothing wrong, but we want to improve the organization to be more effective and efficient. When leaders decide the organization needs to improve, we frequently say it needs to “learn”, but what exactly are we asking it to do?
To better understand what constitutes a Learning Organization, we have to step back and understand what the term means and how it differs from other terms that have circulated around similar topics. Mark Easterby-Smith and Marjorie A. Lyles provided a useful way to make sense of these related ideas by mapping them across two dimensions: theory versus practice and process versus content.
“The first of these dichotomies follows concerns of academics against those of practitioners… The second dichotomy, the distinctions between learning and knowledge, also seems fairly obvious: knowledge the stuff (or content) that the organization possess, and learning being the process where it acquires this stuff.”
As leaders, it’s important to understand that Organizational Learning and the Learning Organization both focus on the process of learning, but they approach it from different perspectives. Organizational Learning is theoretical in nature and seeks to understand how and why learning occurs within an organization. The Learning Organization is more practical, asking how leaders can intentionally create the conditions that allow an organization to learn, adapt, and continuously improve. One helps us understand how organizational learning happens; the other helps us put that understanding into practice.
But leaning on process improvement alone won’t make an organization better or avoid unintended consequences. When I was a junior officer coming up in the military, I used to constantly go to my supervisor with questions I didn’t know the answer to, only to be told “What’s the policy say?” This was frustrating to the point it became a running joke in the office, but the leadership lesson he was teaching me was to stop relying on what he knew and learn how to access what the organization knew. The answer shouldn’t reside solely with the person sitting behind the desk. A good leader knows what he or she is talking about, but a better leader ensures the policies, procedures, job aids, training, and other organizational knowledge are available so others can find and use them.
The point isn’t deciding which quadrant is more important. Organizations need all four. The value of the matrix is recognizing that learning, knowledge, theory, and practice are related but aren’t interchangeable. Before throwing another solution at an organizational problem, understand what you’re actually trying to improve.
Truth Improves Performance.
