- 08 Dec 2006
- Working Paper Summaries
When Learning and Performance are at Odds: Confronting the Tension
While most people agree that learning leads to improved performance, there are several ways in which learning and performance in organizations can be at odds. First, when organizations take on a new learning challenge, performance often suffers in the short term, because new behaviors or practices are not yet highly skilled. Second, by revealing and analyzing their failures and mistakes—a critical aspect of learning—individuals or work groups may appear to be performing less well than they would otherwise. This paper reviews research that describes the challenges of learning from failure in organizations, and argues that these challenges can be at least partly addressed by leadership that creates a climate of psychological safety and that promotes inquiry. Key concepts include: In organizations, the costs of learning may at times be more visible than the benefits. Therefore, leaders must publicize this idea broadly, or else learning may not happen. Experimentation, by its nature, will inevitably result in failures; yet without these failures learning cannot occur. Leadership is essential for fostering the mindset, group behaviors, and organizational investments that promote learning now and invest in performance later. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 05 Jul 2006
- Working Paper Summaries
Failing to Learn and Learning to Fail (Intelligently): How Great Organizations Put Failure to Work to Improve and Innovate
Successful companies see failure as a part of the innovative process, but there are social (organizational) and technical (skill-based) reasons why it is difficult to turn failures into learning opportunities. First, executives need to develop the skills to probe failures and analyze the root causes. Then improve management's technical skills in problem diagnosis, statistical process design, and qualitative and quantitative analysis. Organizationally, executives should create an environment where people are encouraged to identify failures, rather than encourage a "shoot the messenger" mindset. Key concepts include: Learn from failure by identifying, analyzing, and discussing it, and through deliberate experimentation and risk-taking. It is important to learn from small everyday failures rather than wait for a catastrophe to force change. Break down tasks and provide feedback and specific information on mistakes right away. Use the failure data to educate the organization. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 05 Jul 2006
- Working Paper Summaries
Learning Tradeoffs in Organizations: Measuring Multiple Dimensions of Improvement to Investigate Learning-Curve Heterogeneity
How and why experience leads to performance improvement has made the learning curve an important management topic for sites ranging from nuclear power plants to cardiac surgical units. This new research looks deeper at learning curves by focusing on learning rates in technology adoption in similar organizations along multiple, potentially competing dimensions. Using longitudinal data from sixteen hospitals that are adopting a new technology for cardiac surgery, it specifically studies two dimensions: efficiency and application innovation and the potential tradeoff between efficiency and application innovation. It also asks how such tradeoffs are influenced. Key concepts include: Organizations should explicitly decide which dimension of learning is of greatest strategic importance to them. Some organizations may learn more slowly on a particular dimension because they are investing in a different, potentially contradictory dimension of learning. Hospitals in the study that focused on increasing the technical difficulty and innovativeness of their use of a new technology were less likely to increase efficiency as quickly as those that were focused on efficiency. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 05 Jul 2006
- Working Paper Summaries
Implementing New Practices: An Empirical Study of Organizational Learning in Hospital Intensive Care Units
How do hospital units, as complex service organizations, successfully implement best practices? Practices involve people and knowledge; people must apply knowledge to particular situations, so changing practices requires changing behavior. This study is a starting point for healthcare organizations to improve work practices. The researchers drew from literature on best practice transfer, team learning, and process change and developed four hypotheses to test at highly specialized hospital units that care for premature infants and critically ill newborns. Key concepts include: Organizations must set up project teams to investigate and implement new practices. Project teams are important for creating organizational change. There is a strong positive relationship between "learn-how" and implementation success. "Learn-how" makes new practices work in a specific context, and psychological safety encourages people to participate in this disruptive process. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 19 Mar 2006
- Research & Ideas
Do I Dare Say Something?
Are you afraid to speak up at work? The amount of fear in the modern workplace is just one surprising finding from recent research done by HBS professor Amy Edmondson and her colleague, Professor James Detert from Penn State. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 27 Feb 2006
- Research & Ideas
Corporate Values and Employee Cynicism
A values-driven organization poses unique risks for its leaders—in particular, charges of hypocrisy if the leaders make a mistake. Sandra Cha of McGill University and Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School discuss what to do when values backfire. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 22 Aug 2005
- Research & Ideas
The Hard Work of Failure Analysis
We all should learn from failure—but it's difficult to do so objectively. In this excerpt from "Failing to Learn and Learning to Fail (Intelligently)" in Long Range Planning Journal, HBS professor Amy Edmondson and coauthor Mark Cannon offer a process for analyzing what went wrong. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 21 Aug 2000
- Research & Ideas
Inside the OR: Disrupted Routines and New Technologies
A hospital operating room may seem an unlikely place to attract the attention of a group of management professors. But for HBS faculty members Amy Edmondson, Richard Bohmer and Gary Pisano it's a setting that offers great insights into work teams and the ways they adapt and learn. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
Three Perspectives on Team Learning: Outcome Improvement, Task Mastery, and Group Process
Organizations increasingly rely on teams to carry out critical strategies and operational tasks. How do teams learn, and what factors are most important to team learning? This paper reports on current perspectives and findings that address these questions, looking at empirical studies on team learning from three areas of research: outcome improvement, task mastery, and group process. Overall, Edmondson and coauthors characterize the nature of research to date and assemble what is known and unknown about the theoretically and practically important topic of team learning. Key concepts include: Team learning has value for organizations; learning in teams is seen as a key mechanism through which learning organizations become strategically and operationally adaptive and responsive. Research on team learning is at a crossroads. How the learning of individual work teams translates into organizational learning is not well understood, and management literature to date offers few insights. One avenue for future research is the durability and utility of team-based networks for the organization as a whole. Learning in teams almost necessarily plays a role in developing the knowledge and skills of individuals who compose the team. Another avenue for future research is how individuals benefit from their team learning experiences in terms of intellectual, career, and personal development goals. Organizations stand to benefit when ideas are cross-fertilized and diverse individuals learn to work together. "Outsiders" can introduce valuable ideas. Learning and execution are often at odds: Learning by its nature involves uncertainty, false starts, and occasional dead ends. Team learning in organizations must be recognized as a strategy for tolerating forays into the unknown. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.