Learning Practices: Assessment and Action for Organizational Improvement

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Features

• An innovative framework—Includes seven different Learning Orientations exhibited by teams and organizations, which, because they are bi-polar dimensions of contrasting learning approaches, result in 14 approaches.

  • Provides an inventory of learning practices that shows students how capability can be developed within these 14 approaches. Ex.___

• Diagnostic instrument—The Organizational Learning Inventory (OLI) (a tool to profile a team or organization's learning capability).

  • Gets students immediately into the task of assessing ANY organizational unit—e.g., department, workgroup, task force, or a company subsidiary—to profile its learning capability and align it with the strategic direction of a team or company. Ex.___

• Critical issues in implementation—E.g., how to adapt learning methods and styles to different contexts and how to promote staff identification and commitment to borrowed “best practices.”

• Specific Actions/Recommendations about learning practices.

  • Takes students beyond the boundaries of their own team/organization to examine the challenges of learning across those boundaries. Ex.___

• Ways to design/build corporate learning architectures—E.g., shows how learning practices within companies form patterns and portfolios that need to be managed strategically; examines several critical challenges facing companies that try to learn; considers the concept of “best practices;” and discusses how space and time relate to learning and can be circumvented through innovative means.

  • Shows students how to maximize their return on learning investments. Ex.___

Description

This book offers a practical, hands-on, pluralistic approach to building organizational and team learning capability that is consistent with OD principles and that carefully explores the links between learning, corporate strategy, and knowledge management. Through a systematic series of applied exercises, it shows readers how learning in, of, and among organizations can be recognized, analyzed, and put into practice through a variety of learning actions and styles that improve organizational performance. It introduces the diagnostic Organizational Learning Inventory and provides guidance on how to use/benefit from it in assessing ANY organizational unit--e.g., department, workgroup, task force, or a company subsidiary. KEY TOPICS: The Competitive Edge: Learning for Strategic Advantage. Assessing Learning in Your Team or Company: Learning Orientations. Assessing the Conditions for Learning: Facilitating Factors. Recognizing Your Best Possible Learning Profile. Ways to Enhance or Shift Learning Orientations. Promoting the Conditions for Learning. Learning across Team and Corporate Boundaries. Making Learning Investments: Learning Portfolios and Architectures. Critical Challenges in Learning “Best Practices.” The Learning Horizon. MARKET: Chief Learning Officers, Chief Knowledge Officers, Directors of Organizational Development, Effectiveness, Training.

Sample Content

Table of Contents

I. PROFILES OF LEARNING: CURRENT AND STRATEGIC.

II. LEARNING CHOICES, LEARNING INTERVENTIONS.

III. THE ADVANTAGED LEARNER.

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