Create Learning Organizations
Grant recommends revisiting established practices, creating psychological safety, and assessing how decisions are made alongside their results. The aim is to make questioning and learning part of organizational routines.
THE IDEA
C. Create Learning Organizations
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Abandon best practices. Best practices suggest that the ideal routines are already in place. If we want people to keep rethinking the way they work, we might be better off adopting process accountability and continually striving for better practices.
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Establish psychological safety. In learning cultures, people feel confident that they can question and challenge the status quo without being punished. Psychological safety often starts with leaders role-modeling humility.
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Keep a rethinking scorecard. Don’t evaluate decisions based only on the results; track how thoroughly different options are considered in the process. A bad process with a good outcome is luck. A good process with a bad outcome might be a smart experiment.
When to use it
An organization undergoing a digital transformation needs to foster continuous learning.
A startup founder wants to avoid groupthink and encourage dissenting opinions.
A manager reviews both team results and the process used to make decisions.
A school or educational institution aiming to create a culture where teachers and students feel safe to question established methods.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Replacing Best Practices with Process Accountability
As an illustrative example, a team revises its handbook so members can propose alternatives to a standard practice. They record the reasons for each trial and compare the results before deciding whether to change the routine.
Using a Rethinking Scorecard for Project Evaluation
In an illustrative campaign review, a marketing team checks whether it considered alternatives, ran small tests, and sought dissenting views. The campaign failed, but the review helps the team judge what the process missed and whether the experiment produced useful evidence.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How can you encourage your team to question existing best practices?
What steps can you take to increase psychological safety in your meetings?
How would you design a scorecard to evaluate the quality of decision-making in your organization?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Think Again The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know (Adam Grant)