Look To The Future

Learning Organizations

Learning organizations rely on critical thinking and rigorously analyzed hard data to provide a long-term sustainable competitive edge relative to others in their industry. Unfortunately knowledge-creating organizations are still rare. Too many U.S. businesses instead fall prey to every new management fad promising a painless solution, especially when it is presented in a neat and bright package. This tendency has created a cottage industry of pop management books, which often substitute for serious thinking about the best way to manage in specific companies.

To avoid the quick-fix mentality, managers need to keep current with the literature in the field of management and to pay particular attention to journal articles that translate research findings into practical guidelines. Second, managers need to be skeptical when simple solutions are offered, and to analyze such solutions thoroughly. Managers need to ensure that the concepts they apply are based on science, and managers should experiment with new solutions themselves whenever possible - in other words, strive to make their organizations learning organizations.

The purpose of the upcoming series of articles on this blog is to help promote the kind of philosophy embodied by knowledge-creating organizations. Whereas these past articles on organizational behavior have focused on learning what is already known about management, I now plan to start writing more about the thinking process so that you yourself can learn new and innovative approaches to management. Being the first to discover and implement innovative management techniques will help give you a sustainable competitive advantage relative to those relying on ineffective and widely copied business fads.

Coming up in this next series of articles, I will begin by examining the nature of the scientific process in order to show you, the reader,  how to successfully conduct your own experiments. I will then go on to discuss how to draw valid causal inferences so that you can maximize your ability to learn from your own experiences as well as to critically evaluate claims made by others. I will then go on to discuss how to generalize research results to determine whether the results found in one sample and setting are likely to be repeatable in a different sample and setting. Finally, I will describe some of the scientific sources you can turn to in seeking answers to your managerial questions.

I must go now. Have a pleasant evening and a proactive tomorrow.