Set Up a Learning Organization Where Everyone Continually Improves Their Skills

Today’s best managers know that their main responsibility is to help create organizations that will be successful today and tomorrow. A key way to make that happen is through organizational learning. An organization that learns is one in which everyone understands that we all need to continually develop new knowledge, skills, and abilities. Today’s best managers help remove obstacles that keep employees from learning, such as: set an example by taking courses yourself, communicate the importance of learning, provide opportunities for learning, help reduce anxieties about learning, and take courses with your employees.

Source: Harper, S. C., & Glew, D. J. 2008, March/April. Is your organization learning-impaired? Industrial Management, 26-30.

Efficiency Without Learning And Adapting Results in Company Failure

Managers used to believe that the way to success was doing things in the most efficient way possible. Today’s best managers know that this limited view can quickly lead to company failure in today’s business environment. Focus on finding the best information available and using that to improve your processes. Make information available to all employees and help them collaborate using the new information. Examine your processes and find out how work is actually being done. Study all of the data and combine it with your best information to create new ways of working that go beyond just being more and more efficient.

Source: Edmondson, A. C. 2008, July-August. The competitive imperative of learning. Harvard Business Review, 60-67.

Develop Your Employees Through Consciousness-Raising Experiences

Today’s best managers know that employees need to: develop their social awareness and interpersonal skills, work more effectively and sensitively with people of various backgrounds and ethnicities, and work more effectively in an ever-changing global environment. One way to help employees do these behaviors is through consciousness-raising activities. These activities raise employee consciousness of themselves, and deepen their understanding and awareness of others. Not all employees may be ready to have their consciousness levels raised as experiences are not what happen to employees, rather, they are what employees do as a result of what happens to them.

Source: Mirvis, P. 2008. Executive development through consciousness-raising experiences. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 7, 173-188.

Monitor and Reduce Subtle, Selective, Uncivil Behavior In Your Organization

Today’ best managers are aware that underlying biases and prejudices may still exist in organizations, and that employees may express these views more subtly nowadays. Employees may be selectively uncivil, which means to cut off others mid sentence, ignore or overlook others, categorize or stereotype others, expect lower behavior from some groups, and to hold other employees at lower levels of esteem or status than they deserve. Today’s best managers educate new employees about civil behavior to all employees, emphasize that unacceptable behaviors include both obvious and subtle actions, and set good examples of civil behavior for others to follow.

Source: Cortina, L. 2008. Unseen injustice: Incivility as modern discrimination in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 33, 55-75.

Motivation To Gather Information Results In Finding More and Better Information

Today’s best managers know the importance of information gathering for effective managerial performance. Managers who have access to more and better sources of information are better able to make sense of their environment, are more effective at spotting trends, and are more able to achieve higher levels of performance compared to managers without such information. The larger the social network, the more time managers spend looking for more information, and the more information they find. However, having a large social network is only helpful for managers who are motivated to take advantage of the information that is available from that network.

Source: Anderson, M. H. 2008. Social networks and the cognitive motivation to realize network opportunities: A study of managers’ information gathering behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 51-78.

Seek Out New Methods and Take Advantage of Current Competencies to Be The Most Successful

Managers used to believe that companies could only be successful if they followed one of two learning activities. The first is called exploitation, which means to take advantage of abilities that the organization already has. The second is called exploration, which means to be adaptive to change and to seek out and discover new methods for the organization. Today’s best managers know that the most successful organizations follow both approaches, which means that they follow an ambidextrous approach to organizational learning.

Source: Raisch, S., & Birkinshaw, J. 2008, June. Organizational ambidexterity: Antecedents, outcomes, and moderators. Journal of Management, 34, 375-409.