Speeding Up Team Learning

Cardiac surgery is one of medicine’s modern miracles. In an operating room no larger than many household kitchens, a patient is rendered functionally dead—the heart no longer beating, the lungs no longer breathing—while a surgical team repairs or replaces damaged arteries or valves. A week later, the patient walks out of the hospital.

A version of this article appeared in the October 2001 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School and the author of Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. She is an expert on team learning and psychological safety.

Richard M.J. Bohmer is a physician and a senior visiting fellow at the Nuffield Trust in London and advises health care organizations around the world. He previously was a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. He is the author of Designing Care: Aligning the Nature and Management of Health Care and the forthcoming Managing Care: How Clinicians Can Lead Change and Transform Healthcare.

Gary P. Pisano is the Harry E. Figgie Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School and the author of Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation (PublicAffairs, 2019).

Read more on Organizational culture or related topics Collaboration and teams, Operations and supply chain management, Motivating people, Personnel policies, Leading teams and Healthcare sector

Speeding Up Team Learning

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