A project of any complexity is an effort to harness multidisciplinary expertise to solve challenges for the benefit of people.
- Location 47
-

Projects run on knowledge—a combination of learning and experience that enables people to perform tasks. A project can have all the resources in the world, but without the necessary knowledge it is doomed. There are plenty of other reasons that projects fail, but lack of know-how almost guarantees a bad outcome.
- Location 50
-

Three leitmotifs recur throughout this book. The first is that projects are fundamentally about how teams work and learn together to get things done. Project teams are not like professional sports teams that play games with clearly defined rules. Project teams may rely on repeatable processes to design, build, test, and deliver products or services, but innovation, whether incremental or radical, depends on team learning. As Arie de Geus of Royal Dutch Shell Group writes, “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.”1
- Location 57
-

Second, the local level is where the action happens. Innovations and breakthroughs that lead to project success rarely come from the top of large, centralized organizations. If anything, a burdensome bureaucracy will spur a project team to expend considerable time and energy finding ways to work around it. This is nothing new—the agile movement that began two decades ago has brought widespread recognition to the benefits of decentralized decision-making—but the implications for knowledge often go unnoticed.
- Location 62
-

The governance of knowledge and projects in large organizations is typically most effective when it empowers people working at the local level to…
- Location 65
-

Finally, projects don’t operate in a vacuum. They exist within organizations that are responsible to stakeholders, whether they are corporations accountable to shareholders or government agencies accountable to political leaders and the public. A project’s…
- Location 67
-

The traditional project management “iron triangle” of cost, schedule, and scope does little to articulate the differences between a project that delivers a sidewalk versus another that delivers a supercollider, let alone accounting for elements like knowledge,…
- Location 71
-

There is a symbiotic relationship between an organization that pursues its mission through projects and the teams and individual members that execute them. The organization supports its teams and individuals by providing resources and infrastructure for knowledge and learning as well as a culture that shapes the work environment. This enables teams and individuals to learn and acquire the knowledge…
- Location 74
-
- [note::Organization -> Knowledge/project infastructure + culture
Team/Individual -> Knowledge acquisition + project execution]

We approach project complexity through the lens of knowledge and learning needs, identifying three project models—micro, macro, and global—that each…
- Location 78
-

A micro project seeks to solve a problem that is finite and primarily technical in nature. The challenge can be simple or difficult, but the solution comes as a result of having the… ... A micro project can be a straightforward software project such as delivering a feature for a website, or it can require a great deal of innovation (think of an ambitious R&D initiative), but in either case the project team has the…
- Location 80
-

A macro project focuses on a problem that can only be solved by involving a significant part of an organization, ranging from a division or large business unit to the entire enterprise. The need for technical knowledge cannot be divorced from the organizational knowledge required to gain support for changes in resources, authority, or norms and behaviors. Mastery of organizational politics is necessary to secure buy-in from key decision makers and neutralize pockets of resistance.
- Location 96
-

A macro project we will explore is one that Ed led in setting up an enterprise-wide knowledge capability for NASA across its many centers, mission directorates, and functional areas in response to direction from a congressionally backed advisory panel. ... Ed and his team (which included Larry and Matt) already had the technical understanding necessary to address this challenge. The real work was in engaging stakeholders, understanding their capabilities and concerns, sharing insights with them about the nature of the problem at the agency-wide level, and ultimately earning their approval to move forward with a solution that was both flexible and binding.
- Location 101
-

A global project addresses a vast societal challenge. This can be a public health problem like eradicating smallpox, or a knowledge quest such as unraveling scientific mysteries of the universe through a shared laboratory or observatory.
- Location 109
-

These projects are inherently political, and they call for practical wisdom about the way the world works (the Greeks called this worldliness phronesis—wisdom and prudence acting in the world) in combination with metis and episteme. They are akin to a three-dimensional chess game: critical knowledge can be identified at global, organizational, and local levels. Global knowledge—an understanding of a project’s political dimension—is necessary to manage relationships among governments, corporations, universities, and other key stakeholders. Organizational knowledge is unique since the organization itself has to be created to execute the project. And local knowledge within the project is still just as essential as it is for a project with a narrower scope.
- Location 112
-

As these models suggest, technical knowledge is critical but insufficient unless the problem is essentially technical and the project team is empowered with the authority to solve it without interference. In our experience, complex projects rarely, if ever, have a purely technical focus. Yet few organizations acknowledge their need for organizational or political knowledge.
- Location 126
-

We offer three archetypes for organizations that accomplish their work through projects while acknowledging that most large organizations are hybrids that combine elements of more than one of these models.
- Location 133
-

A complex project-based organization is in the one-and-only business. These are organizations like NASA or CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, that solve fundamentally novel problems. Cost and schedule are measured in terms of the project life cycle rather than a unit of production (e.g., the time and dollars required to manufacture a single automobile in a mass-production operation). The customer, which in the case of NASA or CERN is often a team of scientists seeking to run highly sophisticated experiments and collect data, is typically involved throughout the life cycle because of the complexity of the problem. Success is impossible without significant technology development and innovation.
- Location 135
-

A mass-production organization is a manufacturer working at scale, whether it makes cars or candy bars. Problems in production are measured, scored for criticality, and tracked until resolved. These organizations use lean or agile methodologies to improve quality and efficiency and have a separate research and development (R&D) function focused on breakthrough innovations. Customer feedback informs the design and production process, but the point of sale is where most customers enter the picture.
- Location 140
-

An entrepreneurial organization in this framework is something like a pure software-as-a-service (SaaS) organization, for example. The minimum viable product provides the initial basis for continuous testing and improvement, which is informed by ongoing customer feedback. Since there are no per-unit physical capital costs as there are with cars or candy bars, the unit cost goes down with every subsequent sale.
- Location 144
-

Since knowledge is inherently social, the structure of an organization plays a huge role in its approach to knowledge development, retention, and transfer.
- Location 148
-

Three Models for Project-Based Organizations
- Location 151
-

Knowledge is a social phenomenon. Team dynamics and organizational considerations including governance, incentives, and culture can either promote or inhibit the learning and collaboration necessary for project success. There isn’t a neat algorithm for optimal performance in project-based organizations; the intangibles make all the difference.
- Location 173
-

A smart mission recognizes that few things go as planned, and that both learning and unlearning are essential. It understands that knowledge creation happens at the team level, and therefore works to design and sustain a strong, inclusive team that collaborates effectively. It is conscious of the culture it develops and maintains. Above all, it values people, and offers them the opportunity to be part of something that has meaning and purpose.
- Location 185
-

Larry is one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject of knowledge in organizations, having written nine books and more than 50 articles and consulted with more than 300 organizations around the globe on the topic. Matthew has run a consultancy focused on learning and development for over a decade and has written widely about leadership, communication, and influence.
- Location 192
-

Ed and Larry teach in Columbia University’s Information and Knowledge Strategy program, and all three authors currently serve as senior advisers to the Project Management Institute.
- Location 196
-

Learning is the other side of the coin from knowledge: it is an activity whereby knowledge is specifically taught and transferred to others. Most organizations emphasize learning at an individual level, which is insufficient in a context that demands team learning and organizational infrastructure and support.
- Location 215
-

Efforts to improve knowledge sharing and learning cannot be successful unless the organization values and recognizes the importance of these activities. This understanding comes from the culture of the organization.
- Location 223
-
- [note::Sad but true :(]

1. Arie de Geus, “Planning as Learning,” Harvard Business Review 66, no. 2 (March–April 1988): 70–74, https://hbr.org/1988/03/planning-as-learning.
- Location 240
-

2. Rick Waghorn, “Distance Learning,” Project (February 2009), 12–14, https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/321075main_Project_Magazine_excerpt.pdf.
- Location 242
-

Knowledge is the source of wealth. Applied to tasks we already know, it becomes productivity. Applied to tasks that are new, it becomes innovation. —Peter F. Drucker, Peter F. Drucker on Practical Leadership
- Location 248
-

Ed shared his concerns openly and explained that his focus would be on the people side of the equation, saying, “There are many in the knowledge management community who see knowledge management from a technology, process, and tools perspective. That is important, but it will not be my starting point.”
- Location 275
-

Knowledge is not information, although information can be seen as a piece of knowledge when it is added to an individual’s store of know-what. Knowledge isn’t data or wisdom either. A few years ago, Larry was asked by a reporter for a quick definition that would help people understand the differences between these terms. He came up with this: Let’s say you plan to make a fine dinner for someone you care for. The letters in a printed recipe are data, the recipe is information, knowledge is the ability to cook, and wisdom is marrying a good cook.
- Location 296
-

Working knowledge is a mix of explicit and tacit knowledge, or know-what and know-how, with a stronger dose of the latter.
- Location 303
-

Knowledge is a slippery word because it describes something that is basically intangible, though the outcomes of it are often plain to see, and those outcomes enable us to determine its value and best uses. Whether we are discussing a car, medicine, legal advice, or the space shuttle, we can value its performance and outcome without trying to meticulously identify the knowledge that went into creating it. But it is useful and important to understand the sources of an organization’s knowledge to get a better grip on what it does and doesn’t know, and how to use that knowledge in a more effective way.
- Location 310
-

Knowledge is profoundly social. Individual knowledge is important, but it pales in comparison to the knowledge of a group. This can be true of a team, network, community of practice, or any other aggregate unit where there is a generalized common goal, vocabulary, understanding, and purpose.
- Location 315
-

Ideas about the nature of knowledge are deeply influenced by the culture of the person using it. “We find knowledge inseparable from the knower,” says Naoki Ogiwara, managing director of a Tokyo-based global consulting firm that specializes in knowledge.2 He notes that in East Asian cultures, knowledge is viewed “not as a thing to be measured, but an attribute or force within us.” In Western cultures and those regions most influenced by the West, knowledge is often thought of as something that can be expressed in a rule or an algorithm, or embedded in a form external to the knower. These two very different understandings of how knowledge is manifested have created some difficulties in communications about how to successfully manage knowledge.
- Location 319
-

Working knowledge can be embodied in people and embedded in processes and routines. When a new idea enters an organization it is evaluated, and if deemed valuable, it takes root as a part of the way work is organized and performed until a better idea supersedes it. It becomes part of the set of routines and processes that allows an organization to operate.
- Location 344
-

When organizations decide to actively engage with knowledge, they generally focus on three activities: knowledge development, knowledge retention, and knowledge transfer and diffusion. All of these activities are critical to any organization, but their value and the time spent on any of them largely depend on the organization’s products or services. Most organizations in our experience choose one or maybe two of these activities to focus on.
- Location 350
-

Knowledge development focuses on how knowledge comes into an organization, is evaluated, and becomes part of an organization’s stock of working knowledge. This can be done by forming an alliance with a firm that has needed knowledge, buying that firm outright, hiring consultants or other advisors, or creating a team or task force to identify new sources of knowledge.
- Location 354
-

Knowledge retention is usually associated with training and internal learning processes in order to embody knowledge in chosen employees. The effectiveness of these processes is mixed. As we explain in chapter 2, a great deal of knowledge retention happens directly and informally among employees as circumstances allow. But a growing trend in knowledge retention is the development of academies and corporate universities.
- Location 369
-

Knowledge transfer or diffusion describes how knowledge gets intentionally shared among people or groups. This can happen at any level and degree of cardinality within an organization, whether it’s one-to-one, one-to-many, or team-to-team. Many managers, organization theorists, and economists assume that if part of an organization (e.g., a division or team) has some knowledge, it is known by the whole organization. Needless to say, this isn’t true. For varied reasons, knowledge is sticky—it tends to remain where it has been developed.6
- Location 379
-

Many knowledge-sharing efforts overlook the impediments to transferring knowledge, such as the reliability of the knowledge being transferred, logistical factors, the sheer difficulties of communicating and appropriating what is often complex and tacit, and the transaction costs that transferring knowledge can entail. We have learned that a great deal of knowledge transfer happens informally through casual or spontaneous conversations that spark new connections. A critical lesson shared in an email (or worse, a lessons-learned database) is less likely to find its audience than if it is shared in a discussion that allows listeners to prod, question, and evaluate the knowledge before deciding to act on it.
- Location 384
-
- [note::Very curious to hear more about the last sentence. Why is a lessons learned database ill-advised?]

This should not be misinterpreted as a dismissal of the importance of documentation. Ray Ryan, a senior software engineer at Square, emphasizes the importance of capturing ideas in writing to facilitate knowledge transfer through dialogue. “The main thing is to write things down, teach others to write things down, and be willing to read what others have written down,” he says. “The conversations we have are about the documents.”7 The critical distinction is that knowledge captured in writing is most likely to prove its value when it spurs conversation.
- Location 389
-

One way to encourage knowledge transfer is to build social infrastructures that allow employees to share what they know. Organizations that provide spaces to learn demonstrate a different level of understanding about the inherently social nature of knowledge. This concept is well known in Japan, and there is a Japanese word, ba, that is used to describe a space where common meaning is created.
- Location 394
-

Beyond physical spaces, events can offer a different kind of space for knowledge transfer. NASA has used this approach extensively, combining internal and external speakers to stir the pot of knowledge circulation while leaving ample time for talking, informal meetings, and conversation. Convening a workshop to reflect on and capture lessons learned from a project is a common example.
- Location 409
-

Another way to transfer and diffuse knowledge is to relocate employees who have specific knowledge to places where this knowledge is needed. While this sounds simple, it has proven to be problematic since global firms often meet resistance when shuffling workers across the globe. Another impediment to this is that knowledge is not only sticky, as noted previously, but it is often context dependent: an idea may work well in one occupational or geographical context but not in another.
- Location 415
-

Though it would seem self-evident that “capturing” or even roughly identifying all the knowledge in any organization of size would be absurd, if not impossible, it has been attempted by several organizations. Much of this absurdity stems from three fallacies. The most common is the myth that enterprise-wide software promoted by vendors and consultants can either catalog the knowledge of the organization or serve as a portal for individual employees to share their knowledge. The latter, while having some value, is based on the false premise that individual knowledge is the most important unit of analysis in an organization. The second fallacy is the belief (again promoted by technology vendors and consultants) that organizational knowledge is an objective, tangible “thing” that can be identified, manipulated, and harnessed in encyclopedic form. ... Trying to document individual knowledge in a large industrial enterprise is futile. ... The third misguided notion is that knowledge can be captured. This idea, which still has some currency, conflates knowledge with information. In the 1990s, there was a popular belief that if an organization could deliver the right information to the right person at the right time, the firm would prosper forever. This is a category error based on a misunderstanding of the nature of knowledge. Library-like information management systems can be incredibly useful, but they don’t have much to do with knowledge.
- Location 424
-

Not all knowledge is critical for effective performance capability. Much depends on an organization’s products or services, the complexity involved with product or service delivery, and the competitiveness of the market. NASA used the term “mission-critical knowledge” to describe this distinction. The process of identifying what’s truly critical doesn’t need to be difficult. The best way we know to explore this is through a series of questions, such as “What do we know that enables us to do well?” and “What do we need to know that we don’t know right now?” See the “Putting Knowledge to Work” section at the end of this chapter for a list of questions that can serve as a starting point.
- Location 456
-

The level of granularity is also important to consider. What is the unit of analysis when evaluating critical knowledge? It is almost never an individual, since knowledge is a social activity. ... The unit of analysis is often driven by organizational incentives. In organizations that reward employees for publishing reports, for instance, the report becomes the unit of analysis rather than the team that produces the report.
- Location 462
-
- [note::Having trouble understanding this]

Since knowledge is social, the transaction cost is primarily a function of the total time it takes to identify, locate, evaluate, and adapt knowledge. The time it takes to search for a source of knowledge represents a relatively small part of the total cost. Larry and his colleague Al Jacobson found that 80 percent of the time spent acquiring new knowledge is consumed by the process of eliciting it from people and then adapting it for a specific context.17 The real drivers of the cost are social.
- Location 492
-
- [note::Does this imply that the highest leverage actions when it comes to reducing knowledge-related costs are increasing people's ability to identify, connect with, and gain insight from others who possess the knowledge they need?]

As he planned to convene the first in-person meeting of the NASA knowledge communities—employees who already had some responsibility for knowledge in specific parts of the organization—Ed aimed to secure agreement on a set of guiding principles that were broad enough to feel inclusive and specific enough to result in positive change. By the end of that meeting, the community had reached consensus on five points that would ultimately serve as the kernel for an agency-wide governance model for knowledge: We recognize that knowledge is embedded in the flow of all the work we do in order to get real results. We foster community-wide knowledge acquisition, access, sharing, and reuse. We respect local customs while enhancing organizational norms. We strive to operationalize and brand knowledge so that it resonates with all stakeholders—what it is, what it isn’t, and how to use it effectively. We collaborate across organizational boundaries, remove stovepipes, and continuously measure our effectiveness (people, process, systems).
- Location 506
-

It is useful to stress here that the governance structure for managing organizational knowledge needs to fit the culture and the strategy of the organization as well as the national or regional culture in which it is located. Some organizations such as intelligence agencies have a strong need for monarchy, and organizations that have a number of disparate major products or decentralized sites may be best suited for feudalism.
- Location 523
-

Knowledge is a profoundly social and human activity. It may be represented in a process, rule, or system, but it is basically a human activity. It includes judgment, discernment, and a rich understanding that isn’t yet accessible to machines, except as instructed by humans.
- Location 536
-

Knowledge is its own thing. It is not anything else. Knowledge isn’t information or data or wisdom. It’s a way of understanding a bounded subject that allows practitioners to act on that understanding.
- Location 538
-

Knowledge is temporal. It changes as new knowledge is developed and displaces old knowledge. This has always been true since the dawn of human achievements. Even with the most established knowledge, such as Newton’s laws, questions have been raised about their “truth…
- Location 541
-

Knowledge can be observed and understood but not captured. It is always largely tacit, and this type of tacit know-how can’t be readily…
- Location 544
-

Knowledge is expensive. It takes time, energy, and focus to become knowledgeable in a subject. There are no shortcuts to knowledge. One may have flash intuitions, but even those are…
- Location 546
-

People, ideas, and things are all that we have. (This is a simple way of summarizing a powerful concept identified by economist Paul Romer.) A century ago, the world ran primarily on things—tangible objects ranging from pairs of shoes to barrels of oil. Things are still important, but our global economy is increasingly based on ideas that can be captured…
- Location 549
-

There is no individual knowledge—only individual memories. No one has useful knowledge that isn’t known by others. Knowledge is a social…
- Location 552
-

Knowledge can be best understood and characterized as “know-what and know-how.” Most people know that Paris is the capital of France—that is know-what. But an understanding of French culture or even the…
- Location 554
-

Experience doesn’t automatically turn into knowledge. It needs to be framed and…
- Location 557
-

Knowledge is an interdisciplinary subject. It can be approached and analyzed from almost all the social sciences and many of the humanities. The challenge is that the vocabularies and research agendas of the various disciplines within the social sciences and humanities make it…
- Location 558
-

Pick a unit of analysis that corresponds to places or structures that can be identified as knowledge hubs or hot spots that have an impact on business outcomes or strategy. There is usually some focused aggregate, such as a team, network, community, branch, division, or department. It is helpful to limit the unit to no more than…
- Location 565
-

Identify critical knowledge, keeping in mind that knowledge is social and intangible rather than a “thing” that can be captured. These questions can serve as a starting point for discussion: Strengths: What gives us a competitive advantage? What do we know that enables us to do well? What do we know that sets us apart from others? Gaps: What opportunities and vulnerabilities can we see? What do we need to know that we don’t know right now? What do we need to learn to do differently? What do we know now that we could lose in the future? Development: How do we develop new knowledge? Innovation: Where do new ideas come from? How well does the organization innovate? How well does the team innovate? Learning How well does the organization support learning? How well does the team support learning? Problem-solving How well does the organization solve unexpected problems? How well does the project team solve unexpected problems? Retention: How do we embed what we know in order to keep it? Transfer: How do we share what we know across…
- Location 568
-

Identify a governance model for knowledge that reflects the structure of your organization. Federated models are increasingly the norm in large, decentralized organizations. Centralized models (e.g., “monarchies”) can work in settings where it’s impossible to reach the consensus needed in a federated model as long as the culture and incentives foster open…
- Location 595
-

Remember that ideas don’t speak for themselves. Organizations are not meritocracies when it comes to adopting ideas. The decision makers in a hierarchy make the decisions, and their motives are almost always more complex than the pure potential value of the idea. Even before an idea reaches the C-suite, it…
- Location 599
-

Robert Gibbons and Laurence Prusak, “Knowledge, Stories, and Culture in Organizations,” AEA Papers and Proceedings 110 (2020):187–192, https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20201091.
- Location 610
-

NASA Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership, “Collaborative Problem-Solving: The STS-119 Flow Control Valve Issue,” NASA, April 2013, https://appel.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/468375main_STS-119_flow_control_valve.pdf.
- Location 614
-

Gabriel Szulanski, Sticky Knowledge: Barriers to Knowing in the Firm (London: SAGE Publications, 2003), 2.
- Location 618
-

Ikujiro Nonaka and Noboru Konno, “The Concept of ‘Ba’: Building a Foundation for Knowledge Creation,” California Management Review 40, no. 3 (Spring 1988): 40–54, https://home.business.utah.edu/actme/7410/Nonaka+1998.pdf.
- Location 621
-

Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak, Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998), 7. See also Richard F. Meyer, Michael G. Rukstad, Peter J. Coughlan, and Stephan A. Jansen, “DaimlerChrysler Post-Merger Integration,” Case, Harvard Business Publishing, last revised December 1, 2005, https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/703417-PDF-ENG.
- Location 639
-

Al Jacobson and Laurence Prusak, “The Cost of Knowledge,” Harvard Business Review 84, no. 11 (November 2006), https://hbr.org/2006/11/the-cost-of-knowledge
- Location 649
-

Thomas H. Davenport, R. G. Eccles, and Laurence Prusak, “Information Politics,” Sloan Management Review 34, no. 1 (1992): 53–65.
- Location 651
-

NASA Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership, “Young Professionals Brief: The Next Generation on Knowledge,” ASK the Academy 6, no. 1 (January 31, 2013), https://appel.nasa.gov/2013/01/31/6-1_yp_nextgen_knowledge-html/.
- Location 654
-

In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. —Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition
- Location 660
-

The starting point for learning is an experience or problem. This experience leads to reflection on what is happening, followed by the development of an abstract hypothesis to address the experience or problem. The final step is action through experimentation, which leads to new experiences, creating a cycle. Without experience, learning becomes a series of disconnected abstract concepts.2
- Location 699
-

Learning often meets resistance because it demands changes in mindset, skill, and performance. These changes can be difficult and even painful, and as a result they elicit strong emotions. The emotional dimension of learning generally receives little attention unless it falls under the banner of “change management,” but learning is always more than a purely cognitive experience.
- Location 703
-

Training traditionally implies a classroom exercise where a fellow employee or a consultant teaches the processes, routines, technologies, or expected behaviors of the organization. In recent years much of this work has migrated to online courses, but the substance hasn’t changed significantly. The main faults with this model in a project context are threefold: these activities rarely reflect the way employees actually learn, there is little room for substantive discussion and feedback, and there is almost no integration with the learning done at other levels in the organization.
- Location 708
-

Fortunately, training represents just one of many ways to learn in a professional setting. Rotational assignments, hands-on opportunities, problem challenges and contests (e.g., hackathons), storytelling forums, and partnership programs with universities can all provide valuable learning experiences for individuals.
- Location 715
-

Katie Smith Milway and Amy Saxton identify three challenges to organizational learning: lack of clarity around measures of organizational knowledge and related outcomes, poor incentives for learning, and uncertainty about the best ways to create and transfer knowledge across an organization.
- Location 727
-

While individual learning gets the lion’s share of attention, savvy organizations have recognized the value in approaching learning as an integrated effort that happens at all three levels: Organizational—promoting sustainable performance and innovation Team—enabling project success Individual—building competence, capability, and confidence
- Location 738
-

This experience points to a central requirement for successful learning and knowledge systems: they have to be closely aligned with and managed by senior leadership. They cannot operate as an HR function that’s disconnected from corporate strategy. Leadership sponsorship and engagement are essential. At NASA’s academy, leaders from engineering, project management, safety, business, and science were responsible for identifying critical capabilities, designing learning events, and serving as faculty. At such educational events, senior executives would be exposed to conversations about the practitioners’ reality—both the good and the bad.
- Location 773
-

An organization uses a combination of signals and incentives to send a message about the value of learning. At a high level, organizational efforts generally boil down to 1) investments in learning infrastructure, and 2) reinforcement through culture.
- Location 780
-

The primary dimensions of learning infrastructure include integration, resources, time and space, and networks.
- Location 785
-

Larry’s research into knowledge networks with Katrina Pugh identified four distinct goals that these networks can have: coordination, learning/innovation, translation/local adaptation, and support of individual members.9 Given the range of these goals, there’s no single best way for an organization to develop and leverage networks. Successful networks reflect culture and a shared sense of mission. McKinsey’s thousands of consultants around the globe are expected to return a call from any other consultant in the company within 24 hours.10 Experience with this kind of responsiveness in a network fosters a strong sense of reciprocity.
- Location 814
-

Software developers of all ages around the globe rely on Stack Overflow, a network of 10 million registered users who troubleshoot problems and share solutions with each other. Learning is increasingly an outside-in opportunity.
- Location 830
-

Infrastructure can only take an organization so far. The presence of a learning culture is the real indication that learning matters. It’s one thing to own exercise equipment, but it’s another to use it every day as a matter of habit. Some of the hallmarks of a learning culture include recognition, leadership support and participation, iterative experimentation, unlearning behaviors that have impeded learning, and connection.
- Location 836
-

Organizations can also recognize learning through events that explicitly acknowledge and even celebrate the importance of getting things wrong. ... The World Bank has hosted FAILfaires (failure fairs) to share lessons about approaches that haven’t worked.11 ... The World Bank is not alone among large organizations in adopting this approach; other organizations, including the Gates Foundation, have held failure festivals.
- Location 846
-

Psychological safety is oxygen for a learning organization; it’s impossible to imagine one without it. At firms like Bridgewater Associates, which practices a kind of radical transparency that’s uncommon in most corporate settings, the focus is on building a culture where mistakes are aired rather than airbrushed.
- Location 868
-

Before rolling out top-down company-wide initiatives, experienced leaders in learning organizations run experiments to figure out what works best in a given context. In short, they think big and start small. At NASA, Ed ran initial knowledge-sharing events and publications as pilot programs, and only established knowledge sharing as a formal business line of the project academy once the offerings were relatively mature. ... Particularly in situations involving technology, limited test runs with small groups of practitioners can save countless time, money, and frustration.
- Location 871
-

In order for an organization to shift direction and adopt a learning posture, the people within the organization have to unlearn behaviors and habits that have held the organization back in the past. For example, if people have guarded knowledge rather than shared it or elevated team loyalty over transparency with the broader organization, these norms have to change to create space for learning to happen.
- Location 885
-

As Edgar Schein has noted, learning anxiety—the fear of trying something new—can only be overcome by either a greater survival anxiety (e.g., the prospect of job loss for failing to adapt) or an increase in psychological safety that reduces the resistance to change.
- Location 887
-

A novel approach to unlearning is the Friction Project, an initiative by Stanford professors Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao that seeks to “understand the causes and cures for destructive organizational friction.”15 It has studied firms such as AstraZeneca, which made an organization-wide commitment to simplification in order to free up hundreds of thousands of wasted hours that could be put to more constructive uses.
- Location 891
-

Where learning is concerned, connection must come before content. A key aspect of our colleague Nancy Dixon’s life-long work is research that underscores the need for relationships, trust, and connection.17 Once the question “Who is this?” has been answered, then people can focus on “What are they saying?”
- Location 898
-

Efforts to promote team learning should consider big-picture issues like project relevance, cultural factors that promote safety to challenge the status quo, and resources such as space and time and targeted support.
- Location 943
-

At the other extreme, an ad hoc team assembled to promote a hastily approved change initiative that’s not supported by senior leadership stands little chance of learning to enhance its performance. This may sound obvious, but anyone who has worked in a large, bureaucratic organization has probably witnessed a team that was doomed to fail before its kickoff meeting. There can be any number of reasons for this, from ill-conceived ideas to political naivete, but the end result is always the same if a team’s mission is not respected by the organization’s leaders.
- Location 947
-

Chris Argyris, one of the most influential theorists of organizational development, argued for a different characteristic of learning teams and organizations, which he dubbed “double-loop” learning.22 This is what happens when teams go beyond learning that simply addresses a problem with a linear solution (single-loop learning) and respond instead by delving deeply into context and questioning the underlying values, beliefs, and norms that frame the problem. Seen from this vantage point, project reviews are places for argument, exchange, and exploration, and risk management is a tool for learning to understand the likelihood of failure.
- Location 959
-

What ultimately makes individuals effective in a project organization? At a series of NASA knowledge-sharing events from 2007 to 2009, Ed asked 275 senior practitioners a simple question: “How do you learn to do your job?”
- Location 1009
- c1,

Ed and Matt collated these responses and ultimately identified four key dimensions of effectiveness: Ability—a combination of natural aptitude and the capability to incorporate new knowledge and learn from experience. Attitude—motivation, curiosity, a growth mindset, and the willingness to work as a member of a team. Assignments—core on-the-job learning experiences that lead to personal development. Alliances—relationships that enable an individual to succeed within the organization. These “4 A’s” provide a lens for thinking about individual development as a process that is both personal and social. Ability and attitude are personal qualities, while alliances and assignments are both rooted in relationships with others.
- Location 1012
-
- [note::Similar to CAMPS model of job satisfaction?]

Promote leaders as teachers, which contributes in many ways to the value of learning. Under Ed’s leadership, the NASA project academy always invited executives, engineers, and scientists to present at events ranging from training courses and knowledge forums to conferences.
- Location 1037
-

Establish reflective leadership as a clear goal.
- Location 1041
-

Approach training as a conversation that makes productive use of argument and dissent. Training often turns off smart people. Asking people to share their own experiences and perspective gives them a voice and helps to foster inclusion and appreciation.
- Location 1045
-

30. See, for instance, NASA Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership, “The Space to Collaborate, the Space to Share,” ASK the Academy 5, no. 3 (March 6, 2012), https://appel.nasa.gov/2012/03/26/5-3_space_collaborate-html/.
- Location 1137
-