A nice article on HBR - "Why Organizations Don't Learn", by Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats; take a look.They list these reasons:
- Fear of failure
- Fixed mindset
- Over reliance on past performance
- Attribution bias
Who else has studied organization failure? Well I've heard that many academics have studied the failure modes of organizations. One was John Kotter's 8 Steps model developed by studying the failure modes of organizations trying to institute large scale changes. Other's have studied how successful large mergers have been after the fact (some would suggest it's on the order of 20% successful). Some have studied how successful large software development project have been (Chaos Report - it is not a good report).
So what does your leader do to encourage learning at the organizational level? Is failure even allowed in your department? If so then it will be discussed and talked about in formal settings and acknowledged by leaders, rather than only around the dark stairways and in hushed tones.
Leader's drive FEAR out of the room!
How To Ask Good Questions: David Stork at TEDxStanleyPark
Dr. David G. Stork is Distinguished Research Scientist and Research Director at Rambus Labs
Sometimes posing a good question is more important than answering a good question. Some unsolved questions—in science, philosophy, mathematics, humanities—are properly judged to be "better" than others, so we should consider how those questions arose and explore how best to guide ourselves to posing such world-class questions. This presentation explores why the act of posing good questions has been, for the most part, neglected by scholars and the general public alike and what we should do about it. There is a range of types of questions, each with optimal strategies for posing and now is the time for a call to arms for educators, researchers, technologists, and business leaders to explore the hows and whys of asking good questions.
See Also:
Pitfalls of Agile Transformations by Mary Poppendieck
Knut Haanaes - Two reasons companies fail - TED Talk AND how to avoid them: Exploration and Exploitation
4 Questions Smart Leaders Always Ask Employees to Improve Their Performance
They're also great for fostering open dialog and developing meaningful work relationships.
End of nations: Is there an alternative to countries? Nation states cause some of our biggest problems, from civil war to climate inaction. Science suggests there are better ways to run a planet.
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