Amy C. Edmondson

<article-ideainbrief class="article-ideainbrief">
 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">The Idea in Brief</h4>
 <div class="ideainbrief-contents">
 Most managers believe that relentless execution—the efficient, timely production and delivery of offerings—is vital to corporate performance. Execution-as-efficiency is important. But focusing too narrowly on it can prevent your company from adapting effectively to change.
 Consider General Motors: Managers’ confidence in GM’s famously efficient control systems blinded them to big shifts in the market, including customers’ preferences for fuel-efficient cars. GM posted a $38.7 billion loss in 2007.
 Edmondson recommends widening your lens to include execution-as-learning. Companies that use this approach focus not just on carrying out key processes more efficiently than rivals—but also on learning faster. To foster execution-as-learning, make it safe for employees to ask questions and fail. Then:
 <ul>
 <li>Provide process guidelines, using the best available knowledge.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Encourage collaborative decision-making.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Collect process data describing how work unfolds.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Use the data to identify process-improvement opportunities.</li>
 </ul>
 Through execution-as-learning, General Electric continually reinvents itself in multiple fields. Its 2007 profit? $22.5 billion.
 The Idea in Practice
 Edmondson provides these ideas for cultivating execution-as-learning in your firm:
 Make It Safe. In psychologically safe environments, people offer ideas, questions, and concerns. They’re willing to fail—and when they do, they learn. To create a safe environment:
 <ul>
 <li>Model openness, humility, and curiosity.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Explicitly acknowledge the lack of answers to the tough problems facing your group.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Ask questions showing that you genuinely want people’s input.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Reward learning.</li>
 </ul>
 Example:&nbsp; 
 Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s chief science officer introduced “failure parties” to honor intelligent experiments that failed. 
 Provide Process Guidelines. Even if you can’t fully standardize knowledge work, you can provide process guidelines informed by best practices. Develop flexible guidelines, understanding that today’s best practices won’t be tomorrow’s and won’t work in every situation. Example:&nbsp; 
 Intermountain Healthcare assembled teams of experts on different diseases to develop detailed guidelines for treating patients with those conditions. Derived from analysis and debate among diverse professionals, the guidelines reflected the current best practices in the medical literature. 
 Encourage Collaborative Decision Making. Knowledge work requires people to make decisions together in response to unforeseen, novel, or complex problems. Provide tools enabling them to collaborate in real time. Example:&nbsp; 
 The Cleveland Clinic developed state-of-the-art IT systems that help dispersed caregivers who are participating in a patient’s care to work together virtually. For instance, through an automated alert function, physicians learn of drugs others have prescribed. Medication decisions with interdependent consequences are thus made safely. 
 Collect Process Data. Gather data describing how work unfolds. Use it to determine what’s going right and what’s going wrong. Example:&nbsp; 
 Intermountain Healthcare allows doctors to deviate from the process guidelines anytime they judge that good patient care requires it. But doctors who deviate must help the organization learn—by documenting what they did differently and why. 
 Identify Process-Improvement Opportunities. Analyze process data to improve the way activities are performed. Example:&nbsp; 
 At the Cleveland Clinic, seven teams of physicians focusing on specific conditions (heart failure, stroke, diabetes) study process data to identify areas for improvement throughout the organization’s many sites. For instance, data showed that stroke patients treated at various sites had not always received a blood thinner within the three-hour window that research had identified as the standard of care. Analysis of patient outcomes helped make blood-thinner treatment the new standard of stroke care for all Cleveland Clinic hospitals. Consequently, hospitals doubled their use of blood thinner and reduced complications from stroke by 50%.
 </div>
</article-ideainbrief>Most executives believe that relentless execution—the efficient, timely, consistent production and delivery of goods or services—is the surefire path to customer satisfaction and financial results. Managers who let up on execution even briefly, the assumption goes, do so at their peril.

305tI5za6UXsVErL1zW9HqTHqjdFKgdSMeridZjp1rCpSOeXj9YBKOEim8mXcN6OitDGVY3pfLC3rl8pJRxX3rRHx/Ia3cs2QHougqbENhKhbNFCiJ0/An15QW1D/W2iusNZTx4pRiRAllGBH4vknQ==

Reprint: R0807E
Most executives believe that relentless execution&#8212;efficient, timely, consistent production and delivery of goods or services&#8212;is the surefire path to customer satisfaction and positive financial results. But this is a myth in the knowledge economy, argues Edmondson, a Harvard Business School professor. She points to General Motors, which for years has remained wedded to a well-developed competency in centralized controls and efficient execution but has steadily lost ground, posting a record $38.7 billion loss in 2007. Such an execution-as-efficiency model results in employees who are exceedingly reluctant to offer ideas or voice questions and concerns. Placing value only on getting things right the first time, organizations are unable to take the risks necessary to improve and evolve.
By contrast, firms that put a premium on what Edmondson calls execution-as-learning focus not so much on how a process should be carried out as on how it should evolve. Since 1980 General Electric, for instance, has continued to reinvent itself in every field from wind energy to medical diagnostics; and it enjoyed a $22.5 billion profit in 2007.
Organizations that foster execution-as-learning provide employees with psychological safety. No one is penalized for asking for help or making a mistake. These companies also employ four distinct approaches to day-to-day work: They use the best available knowledge (which is understood to be a moving target) to inform the design of specific process guidelines. They encourage employee collaboration by making information available when and where it&#8217;s needed. They routinely capture data on processes to discover how work really happens. Finally, they study these data in an effort to find ways to improve execution. Taken together, these practices form the basis of a learning infrastructure that makes continual learning part of business as usual.

The Competitive Imperative of Learning

Reprint: R0807E Most executives believe that relentless execution—efficient, timely, consistent production and delivery of goods or services—is the surefire path to customer satisfaction and positive financial results. But this is a myth in the knowledge economy, argues Edmondson, a Harvard Business School professor. She points to General Motors, which for years has remained wedded to a well-developed competency in centralized controls and efficient execution but has steadily lost ground, posting a record $38.7 billion loss in 2007. Such an execution-as-efficiency model results in employees who are exceedingly reluctant to offer ideas or voice questions and concerns. Placing value only on getting things right the first time, organizations are unable to take the risks necessary to improve and evolve. By contrast, firms that put a premium on what Edmondson calls execution-as-learning focus not so much on how a process should be carried out as on how it should evolve. Since 1980 General Electric, for instance, has continued to reinvent itself in every field from wind energy to medical diagnostics; and it enjoyed a $22.5 billion profit in 2007. Organizations that foster execution-as-learning provide employees with psychological safety. No one is penalized for asking for help or making a mistake. These companies also employ four distinct approaches to day-to-day work: They use the best available knowledge (which is understood to be a moving target) to inform the design of specific process guidelines. They encourage employee collaboration by making information available when and where it’s needed. They routinely capture data on processes to discover how work really happens. Finally, they study these data in an effort to find ways to improve execution. Taken together, these practices form the basis of a learning infrastructure that makes continual learning part of business as usual.

The Competitive Imperative of Learning

Summary.

Partner Center