Leading Organizational Learning

Leading Organizational Learning

Edited by Marshall Goldsmith, Howard Morgan and Alexander J. Ogg, Jossey-Bass, 2004 360 pages, List price: $39, ISBN: 0-7879-7218-5

How can organizations encourage and harness the informal learning that goes on every day in the halls and around the water cooler? That is one of the questions authors of Leading Organizational Learning raise in this collection of essays about organizational learning.

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Editors Marshall Goldsmith, Howard Morgan and Alexander J. Ogg encourage readers to begin anywhere in the book depending on their needs. For guidance, the editors group the essays into five topics: Challenges and dilemmas, processes that work, leaders who make a difference, changes for the future, and case studies and examples (though all the essays contain examples from real companies' experiences).

Challenges and dilemmas include moving knowledge to employees rapidly. Noting that learning does not have to be "polished and highly produced," Elliott Masie describes how one Wal-Mart store's decision simply to open a box and show customers the computer inside boosted sales and sparked a flurry of same-day e-mail messages to other stores to spread the word. As a result, one store's experience became instant learning, instantly conveyed.

In an essay about "influencing up," Goldsmith offers 10 tips for getting those above you to listen to your ideas and help turn them into actions.

Niko Canner and Jon R. Katzenbach describe how organizations turn business knowledge into documents, and then create technologies to make those documents accessible. But people don't always take time to access the information, they say. The essay recommends more face-to-face sharing and new systems that connect people with experts rather than trying to provide knowledge directly.

An essay about informal learning notes that 70 percent of learning experiences in the workplace are informal or accidental, not structured. How can employers harness this informal learning? Marcia L. Conner says you can uncover learning by having people share experiences.

Essays about leaders who make a difference in learning look at the traits and knowledge that make successful executives. James Bolt and Charles Brassard discuss how top executives set the tone for knowledge in an organization by learning from feedback, coaches and mentors.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Society for Human Resource Management
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group