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Kleiner and Roth, in an influential article for the Harvard Business Review, put forward a strategy for organizational learning that codifies experiences for later use. [1] This section outlines the approach, called the 'learning history', which is based on the simple premise that we learn most effectively from experience.
Kleiner and Roth’s approach to organizational learning is rooted in common sense. That managers learn best from critical events is not a revolutionary idea, but it has proven to be difficult to make explicit. Kleiner and Roth have developed a method of codifying experiences of critical events to help organizations learn more effectively, and to free tacit knowledge from management for use in other areas of the organization.
Kleiner and Roth suggest that instances where organizations do not learn from experience often result in the transfer of blame, similar to Argyris’s description of defensive consultants who blame others instead of learning from mistakes. [2] This results in experiences remaining tacit and shared between a few managers. Kleiner and Roth define a learning history as ‘a written narrative of a company’s recent set of critical results.’
Examples of these results include product launches, a major reduction in the workforce and a new organizational initiative. The ‘learning history’ itself takes the form of a document of around 20–100 pages, divided into two columns. In the right-hand column, people who had direct experience of an event write down their account of the event. Kleiner and Roth suggest that any employee of the organization can put forward their version of events, but they are identified by title only. The pieces are then woven together to make a ‘rich, cogent story’.
In the left-hand column, Kleiner and Roth suggest that ‘learning historians’, a small team of trained outsiders, usually academics or consultants, and one or two knowledgeable insiders, insert notes on recurrent themes and learning points. The intention is to uncover the ‘undiscussable’ events that might have gone unnoticed if management had been responsible for analysis.
The next stage is to use the learning history as a basis for group discussions involving participants in the event and individuals who could learn from it. Specifically, the goal of the meetings is to gain an acute understanding of the events so that learning points can be identified and drawn from them.
Kleiner and Roth are confident that the strategy will help organizations significantly improve organizational learning. In practice, they have observed a number of positive effects of learning histories:
- They build trust.
- They raise ‘undiscussable’ issues.
- They successfully transfer knowledge from one area of the organization to another.
- They help ‘build a body of generalized knowledge about management – about what works and what doesn’t’.
Although they are used to examine one event, the positive repercussions usually feed into other areas of the organization. Kleiner and Roth believe that the benefits are so important that ‘these documents may someday be routinely included among textbooks and treatises in business schools and libraries’. If organizations can be persuaded to address such a project despite the significant commitment required, it is possible that management in general may benefit from the insights that learning histories might provide.
References[1] Kleiner, A., and Roth, G. (1997). 'How to Make Experience Your Company's Best Teacher,' Harvard Business Review, 397(5). Available
here.
[2] Argyris, C. (1991). 'Teaching Smart People to Learn', Harvard Business Review, 391(3), 91-109. Available
here.
