Building The Learning Organization

This essential best-practices toolkit with lessons from world-class leaders—FedEx, Nokia, Alcoa, Whirlpool, Microsoft, and others—tells how to successfully transform an organization into one that not only continually learns from its experiences but quickly translates that knowledge into improved performance. Rich with hands-on tools and dozens of new examples and case studies, this highly anticipated updated edition of the award-winning Building the Learning Organization puts the power of the author’s Systems Learning Organization model into the hands of any manager who wants to participate in building, maintaining, and sustaining the next generation of learning organizations.

Institute a culture of learning to boost organizational performance and agility What makes organizations successful? Today, most successful companies are learning organizations. Building an Innovative Learning Organization shows you how to join their ranks and bring your organization up to the head of the class. This book is a practical, actionable guide on how to boost performance, successfully manage change, and innovate more quickly. Learning organizations are composed of engaged, motivated employees who continually seek improvement, which leads to organizational agility and the ability to innovate ahead of the curve. When you encourage learning at every level, from the intern to the C suite, you gain a more highly skilled workforce with a greater ability to act in any situation. Building an Innovative Learning Organization shows you how to create this culture in your organization, with detailed explanations, practical examples, and step-by-step instructions so you can get started right away. Written by a recognized thought leader in the training industry, this informative and insightful guide is your roadmap to a more effective organization. You will discover how to: Attract, retain, and motivate the best employees Become a more innovative and agile organization Create a culture of continuous self-improvement Encourage learning at all levels and translate it into action Learning and education doesn't end at graduation—it's a lifelong process that keeps you relevant, informed, and better able to achieve your goals. These same benefits apply at the organizational level, making the culture self-sustaining: learning organizations attract top workers, who drive the organization forward, which attracts more top workers. If you want the best people, you have to be their best option. Building an Innovative Learning Organization gives you a blueprint for building a culture of learning, for a stronger, more robust organization.

Building the Learning Organization is the first practical guide to transforming your organization into one that is set up to learn - even seeks out opportunities to learn - and then stands ready to quickly capitalize on that information. You'll be able to navigate your way through the process with the help of an easy-to-follow model that forms the heart of the book. You'll also find incisive and fascinating case historiesshowcasing the successful efforts of such companies as Arthur Andersen, Whirlpool, National Semiconductor, and Federal Express - that illustrate application of the model's tenets in various economic sectors. And, to further facilitate the transformation to a learning organization, the book presents 16 recommended action steps your company will want to consider taking. There is also discussion of what it takes to maintain a learning organization over time. There are evaluation forms to help you assess at what stage your company is currently at, what its strengths are, and where the needs are the greatest. There is even a helpful glossary of common terms.

Learning is the key to success and survival in today's workplace. This essential best-practices toolkit with lessons from world-class leaders - FedEx, Nokia, Alcoa, Whirlpool, Microsoft, and others - tells how to successfully transform an organization into one that not only continually learns from its experiences but quickly translates that knowledge into improved performance. Rich with hands-on tools and dozens of new examples and case studies, this highly anticipated updated edition of the award-winning Building the Learning Organization puts the power of the author's Systems Learning Organization model into the hands of any manager who wants to participate in building, maintaining, and sustaining the next generation of learning organizations.

Senge's best-selling The Fifth Discipline led Business Week to dub him the "new guru" of the corporate world; here he offers executives a step-by-step guide to building "learning organizations" of their own.

Most managers today understand the value of building a learning organization. Their goal is to leverage knowledge and make it a key corporate asset, yet they remain uncertain about how best to get started. What they lack are guidelines and tools that transform abstract theory—the learning organization as an ideal—into hands-on implementation. For the first time in Learning in Action, David Garvin helps managers make the leap from theory to proven practice. Garvin argues that at the heart of organizational learning lies a set of processes that can be designed, deployed, and led. He starts by describing the basic steps in every learning process—acquiring, interpreting, and applying knowledge—then examines the critical challenges facing managers at each of these stages and the various ways the challenges can be met. Drawing on decades of scholarship and a wealth of examples from a wide range of fields, Garvin next introduces three modes of learning—intelligence gathering, experience, and experimentation—and shows how each mode is most effectively deployed. These approaches are brought to life in complete, richly detailed case studies of learning in action at organizations such as Xerox, L. L. Bean, the U. S. Army, and GE. The book concludes with a discussion of the leadership role that senior executives must play to make learning a day-to-day reality in their organizations.

Building a Global Learning Organization: Using TWI to Succeed with Strategic Workforce Expansion in the LEGO Group describes how a multinational company developed a global structure for learning based on the TWI (Training Within Industry) program to create and sustain standardized work across multiple language and cultural platforms. In this book,