Francesca Gino

Bradley R. Staats

<article-ideainbrief class="article-ideainbrief">
 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">Idea in Brief</h4>
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  <h5>The Problem</h5>
  <p>Even companies dedicated to continuous improvement struggle to stay on the path. Research suggests that’s because of deeply ingrained biases: We focus too much on success, take action too quickly, try too hard to fit in, and depend too much on outside experts.</p>
  <h5>The Impediments</h5>
  <p>These biases manifest themselves in 10 conditions that impede learning. These include fear of failure, insufficient reflection, believing that we need to conform, and inadequate frontline involvement in addressing problems.</p>
  <h5>The Solutions</h5>
  <p>Leaders can use a variety of strategies to counter the biases, including stressing that mistakes are learning opportunities, building more breaks into schedules, helping employees identify and apply their personal strengths, and encouraging employees to own problems that affect them.</p>
 </div>
</article-ideainbrief><p>Virtually all leaders believe that to stay competitive, their enterprises must learn and improve every day. But even companies revered for their dedication to continuous learning find it difficult to always practice what they preach.</p>

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<p>For any enterprise to be competitive, continuous learning and improvement are key&#8212;but not always easy to achieve. After a decade of research, the authors have concluded that four biases stand in the way: We focus too heavily on success, are too quick to act, try too hard to fit in, and rely too much on experts. Each of these biases raises challenges, but each can be curbed with particular strategies.</p>
<p>A preoccupation with success, for example, leads to an unreasonable fear of failure, a mindset that inhibits risk taking, a focus on past performance rather than potential, and blindness to the role of luck in successes and failures. Managers therefore need to treat mistakes as learning opportunities, recognize and foster workers&#8217; capacity for growth, and conduct data-based project reviews.</p>
<p>To counter the bias toward action&#8212;and the unthinking perpetual motion and exhaustion that ensue&#8212;leaders can schedule more work breaks and make time for reflection. They can redress the tendency to conform, which stifles innovation, by encouraging workers to cultivate their individual strengths and to speak up when they have ideas for improvements. And they can develop and empower their employees to solve problems instead of turning automatically to outside experts.</p>

Why Organizations Don&rsquo;t Learn

For any enterprise to be competitive, continuous learning and improvement are key—but not always easy to achieve. After a decade of research, the authors have concluded that four biases stand in the way: We focus too heavily on success, are too quick to act, try too hard to fit in, and rely too much on experts. Each of these biases raises challenges, but each can be curbed with particular strategies. A preoccupation with success, for example, leads to an unreasonable fear of failure, a mindset that inhibits risk taking, a focus on past performance rather than potential, and blindness to the role of luck in successes and failures. Managers therefore need to treat mistakes as learning opportunities, recognize and foster workers’ capacity for growth, and conduct data-based project reviews. To counter the bias toward action—and the unthinking perpetual motion and exhaustion that ensue—leaders can schedule more work breaks and make time for reflection. They can redress the tendency to conform, which stifles innovation, by encouraging workers to cultivate their individual strengths and to speak up when they have ideas for improvements. And they can develop and empower their employees to solve problems instead of turning automatically to outside experts.

Why Organizations Don’t Learn

Summary.

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