submitted BY: group 5 submitted to:

Ayushi thakur (16pgdmhr04) prof. j.p upadhyay

gunjan nagdev (16pdmhr20)
pallavi goel (16pgdmhr31)
parampreet singh (16pgdmhr32)
priyanshu rajput (16pgdmhr38)
ridima singh (16pgdmhr42)
roopali sharma (16pgdmhr44)
 CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................ 3
WHAT IS A LEARNING ORGANIZATION.................................................................4
PETER SENGES FIVE PRINCIPLES.........................................................................5
General Electric Company & Boundary less Behaviour: Learning
Organization...................................................................................................... 9
How GE did it?...................................................................................................... 9
WHY ORGANIZATIONS FAIL TO LEARN?.............................................................11
BUILDING BLOCKS OF A LEARNING ORGANIZATION........................................12
1. Systematic problem solving.....................................................................12
XEROX............................................................................................................... 12
2. Encourage Experimentation.....................................................................13
TATA GROUP INNOVATION FORUM................................................................14
3. Learning from Past Experiences..............................................................14
4. Learning from Others Experiences.........................................................14
5. Transferring Knowledge............................................................................ 15
Intel Shuttle..................................................................................................... 15
COLLABORATIVE LEARNING.............................................................................. 16
Trust in people, not ideas.............................................................................. 16
Leave your ego at the door...........................................................................17
Work in a creative environment...................................................................17
Take risks and be unconventional................................................................18
LEARNING ORGANIZATIONS TODAY.................................................................19
HOW DOES GOOGLE INNOVATE?......................................................................26

1
2
 INTRODUCTION

3
 WHAT IS A LEARNING ORGANIZATION

4
 PETER SENGES FIVE PRINCIPLES

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning

Organization (Senge 1990) is a book by Peter Senge (a senior lecturer at
MIT) that focuses on the group problem solving using systems thinking
method in order to change companies into learning organizations.
The title of Peter Senges book the Fifth Discipline cites five Disciplines to
create a Learning Organization. These five disciplines (1) A shared Vision, (2)
Mental Models, (3) Team Learning, (4) Personal Mastery, and (5) System
Thinking. The fifth Discipline, System Thinking, is the one discipline that
binds the other four and therefore it is the discipline where the focus of
Change Management should be.
The 5 disciplines, 3 levels of explanations, 7 learning disabilities and 9
system archetypes which will help practicing Systems Thinking are explained
as follows

THE FIVE DISCIPLINES OF TO CREATE A LEARNING

ORGANIZATION are:

Shared Vision means all the employees in the company share the
same vision of where the organization needs to go instead of the
vision statement where management has written where the
organization should be going). Only when the vision is authentic and
shared, employees will participate automatically in improvement
process to get the company closer to accomplishing its vision. Senge
describes a shared vision as follows: People are not playing according
to the rules of the game, but feel responsible for the same
Mental Models describe the presumptions and generalizations
people have which influence their actions. It is the representation of
the reality they perceive and behave accordingly. The first step to
make people change their Mental Models is to have people reflect on
their own behaviour and believe system. One of the mental models in
every organization is that of official hierarchy. Personal values can help
in overcoming the shortcomings of hierarchical power. One important
value that Senge describes is openness. One important part of
openness is to quit playing the power games and be open and
honest about what your real needs are.
Personal Mastery describes the ability and strength of people to be
proactive and keep on learning to continuously achieve results which

5
 are important for them. Two factors which are of importance in this
discipline are: defining what is important to us (1) and being able to
see the current reality as it is (2).
Team learning includes two aspects. Effective and efficient teamwork
leads to results which individuals could not have achieved on their own
(1) and individuals within a team learn more and faster than they
would have without the team (2). The team members have to be
willing to shift their mental models and be open to learn from their
colleagues.
System Thinking is used to analyse patterns in an organization by
looking at it from a holistic point of view rather than small unrelated
manageable parts. Senge describes the elephant metaphor wherein
when you split an elephant in two, you do not have two small
elephants which you can take care of. You can only take care of the
one complete elephant. An organization is like a living organism and
should accordingly be managed as one.

One way in which systems thinking is executed is the way in which various
situations are explained by employees. Senge describes THREE LEVELS OF
EXPLAINATION:

(1) A reactive explanation based on events,

(2) A responsive explanation based on behaviour

(3), and a generative explanation based on structural level

6
 These 3 ways of explaining are linked to one another. A System (level 3)
leads to a certain behaviours (level 2) which can lead to certain events (level
1). Therefore, the best way to change events is to change the system, which
will further lead to different behaviour.

Lifelong learning is important for an organization because learning results in

creation. The more people of an organization learn, the more value they can
create for the organization. In the Fifth Discipline there are SEVEN
LEARNING DISABILITIES.

1. I-am-my-position syndrome. This syndrome is described by people

talking about what tasks they perform in an organization instead of
what value they add to the company goal. Talking in terms of tasks
only results in lack of accountability for the product or service the
company delivers.
2. The enemy is there syndrome. When people are task-focused, they
are likely to not able to see their own influence on the company goals
and as a result point to others in organization as the root cause of all
problems.
3. The illusion of taking charge is the third constraint for learning, and
describes the danger of reactive action instead of proactive action.
Proactive action is defined by people daring to face the results of their
own behaviour and the willingness to change it to prevent problems
from reoccurring in the future.
4. The fixation on events instead of focussing on small continuous
improvements. Learning should be part of everybodys daily job and
not just a temporary one day event or a project. Projects, by definition,
are temporary and project teams are eliminated after a certain
problem is solved.
5. The parable of the boiled frog. A Frog put in a pan in which the
water temperature is increased slowly will die as soon as the water in
time boils, as the frog will not notice the rise in temperature. To
prevent this from happening to organizations in continuously changing
environments, processes should be continuously measured and
evaluated.
6. The delusion of learning from experience is described because
people hardly really know the outcome of their actions on the long
term, while we tend to believe that we can know the long term
outcome by looking at the short term outcome.
7. The myth of the management team is the final constraint
wherein people truly believe that management can solve all problems.

7
 When one thinks about it, it is evidently impossible that 1 management
team truly knows everything about all processes and has all
capabilities needed to solve each problem.

Peter Senge also gave 9 SYSTEM ARCHETYPES or behaviour patterns

which would provide starting point for systems thinking:

1. There is always a delay between the execution of actions and the final
results.

2. A pattern of limited growth: It is the result of focusing on improving

activities which focus on improving growth accelerating factors instead of
reducing growth limiting factors.

3. Moving the problem instead of solving it. This happens when only
symptoms of the problem are addressed and not the root cause, the
problem then can reoccur in other departments too.

4. Deteriorating Goals: When situations get tough, Goals are set aside
due to a crisis. The vision and its goals give direction to the company,
especially in these difficult times hence goals should be held stable!

5. An escalation loop is a loop in which actors influence one another

with a loss-loss situation as outcome. An example is a price-war between
supermarkets, where multiple competitors eventually fight one another on
being the cheapest, and none of them ends up with profit in the end.
According to Senge, one should only encourage a culture in which win-win
situations are created.

6. Success to the successful is the archetype in which resources are

allocated to the most successful activity which makes the unsuccessful
ones even more unsuccessful because they receive fewer resources. This is
not necessarily the best policy fir the long term.

7. The politics to receive resources (for instance the budgeting game)

is a situation where departments make up and alter numbers to receive
more resources for their department instead of being able to see the scope
of the entire organization and act accordingly.

8. Solutions which do not solve, is a situation where short terms

positive results lead to long term losses. For instance reducing
Preventative maintenance on machines in a factory.

8
9. Growth and underinvestment, is the trap where investing does not
seem necessary because all is well at the moment. Not investing today,
however, might lead to a lost opportunity for growth in the future because
of a lack of skills or capacity.

9
 General Electric Company & Boundary
less Behaviour: Learning Organization
General Electric Company, or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation
incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United
States. The company has four segments: Technology Infrastructure, Energy Capital
Finance and Consumer & Industrial.

GE as boundary less Organization

There may not be an exact pinpoint of whom the idea of boundary less started, but Jack Welch
certainly propelled it into the worlds corporate consciousness with his Work-Out program at
General Electric in the early 1990s.

The Need

Jack Welch, the former Chairman and CEO of GE believed that rigid, hierarchical organizations
were not well structured to compete in the fast moving, information centric, and customer
focused competitive environment of the 1990s and beyond. He also recognized that General
Electrics people and specially their diversity of talents, knowledge, and ideas could become a
terrific competitive weapon for the company in the changing business environment. Work-Out:
GEs boundary breaking program of early 1990s, made GE into a boundary less company and
also launched boundary-less ness both as a management philosophy and a potential field of
study. Boundary-less ness was seen along four dimensions: horizontal, vertical, external and
geographic. Although all four dimensions are important in the boundary less literature, the
horizontal and vertical dimensions are most important for the understanding of boundary less
ness at General Electric because those were the two dimensions concerned with day to day
interactions among co-workers.

Jack Welch wanted a work environment wherein people responded quickly to any situation and
they together faced problems quickly and efficiently. Empowering employees to make decisions
at the lowest level and creating an environment that gave them the ability and flexibility to be
actively involved in creating efficient process improvements required removing barriers that
prevented ideas, information flow, or process improvements before they could be explored. This
was the need that was felt at GE during the 1980s for the implementation of a boundary less
organization.

How GE did it?

Town meetings or Recombination Labs

In a town meeting, employees from different managerial levels working on the same product
or customer or geography come together to discuss new ideas. Before the meetings a few
days are spent on collecting data and idea generation and at the meeting they are discussed at

10
 great length. In the end, some ideas are adopted while some are rejected. In this format
everyone has an equal footing and thus every employee from any level can propose or
challenge an idea.
Thus town meetings served two purposes:

1. Generating, discussing, and implementing ideas

2. Educating employees of the freedom they have in making decisions and to encourage
them to do so

General Electric is a multi-business company and Jack Welch tried to create an atmosphere
where implementing and adapting a new idea from another area of GE or from outside is
valued as much as or more than creating or generating it. Jack Welch focussed his
organization on getting the maximum benefit of the diverse intellectual capital it possesses.

Pointing and Pushing at General Electric

1. Strong pointing and pushing

There are quite a few instances of a pointing and pushing strategy in GE. The most notable
among them is training given to employees on six sigma. As six sigma had given GE
tremendous success in the past on improving quality of its products, in the 1990s many
employees were trained in six sigma.

2. Negative pointing and pushing

At GE there are several examples where employment had been terminated when few
employees were not following boundary less behaviour. Employees are generally expected to
keep the interests of whole GE as priority rather than their own divisions. boundary less
behaviour is strictly followed in GE.

11
 WHY ORGANIZATIONS FAIL TO LEARN?
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.

12
 BUILDING BLOCKS OF A LEARNING ORGANIZATION

According to Garvin, learning organizations are skilled at five main activities:

systematic problem solving, experimentation with new approaches, learning
from the past experience, learning from the experiences and best practices
of others, and transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the
organization.

1. Systematic problem solving

The underlying idea of this particular block is to get a clear, scientific way of
solving problems. To be a learning organization, an organization must not
rely on guesstimation, instead it must adopt scientific ways to first identify,
and then, solve the problem. The popular Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle is a
four step method used for control and continual process improvement.

13
 XEROX
Xerox is one such company which has introduced innovative concepts within
so as to come up with innovative and systematic problem solving approach.
In 1983, Leadership Through Quality was launched by the senior
management.
Under this initiative, all employees were trained in Problem-Solving and
small-group activities. Here, employees are provided with basic tools in four
areas: generating ideas and collecting information (brainstorming, surveying,
interviewing); reaching consensus (rating forms, weighted voting); analysing
and displaying data (cause-and-effect diagrams, force-field analysis); and
planning actions (Gantt charts, flow charts). The training occurs in Family
Groups wherein, employees from same departments and business unit-
teams. The employees then, apply these tools in real problems faced by
them. The result of the process has been a common terminology and a
similar companywide approach to problem-solving.
The six-step approach that Xerox uses has been awarded Malcolm
Baldridge Award Winner for the Corporation. The six steps are:
1. Identify and select the problem
2. Analyse the problem
3. Generate potential solutions
4. Select a specific solution
5. Implement that solution
6. Evaluate the solution

14
 2. Encourage Experimentation
This is concerned with searching and testing of new knowledge.
Experimentation is more related to finding new opportunities and expanding
into new horizons.
There are a few ways in which an organization can imbibe the culture of
experimentation. These are:
Use an idea portal
Reward good ideas
Court long time employees
Embrace analytics

TATA GROUP INNOVATION FORUM

TATA group has developed a forum to foster innovation by encouraging
people with ideas to share them with the group. Even the seemingly
insignificant ideas are encouraged and warmly welcomed. The group also
rewards the employees with The Young Innovator Award. Winning the
award results in salary increase and also increases the chances of promotion.
The organization also organizes an annual competition, Innovista, which
invites employees from all its subsidiaries of the TATA Group. The aim of the
annual competition along with generating new ideas is to democratise
innovation within the group.
The group has taken another initiative, in which the employees are given 5
hours out of 45 hours work week, which can be devoted to personal
objectives.
IdeaMax: TCS uses a social innovation platform to encourage its consultants
so that they come up with new ideas.
3. Learning from Past Experiences
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
~George Santayana
The approach has cropped from the mind-set that enables companies to
recognize the value of productive failure as contrasted with unproductive
success. A productive failure is one that leads to insight, understanding, and
thus an addition to the wisdom pool of the organization. An unproductive
success occurs when something goes well, but nobody knows how or why.

15
 4. Learning from Others Experiences
Steal Ideas Shamelessly is synonymous with Benchmarking. Similarly, Not
invented here syndrome has been replaced by Enthusiastic Borrowing.
Some of the reasons to learn from others are:
Speeds up the time to develop and implement
Reduces the risk
Broadens the horizons
Saves organizations resources and energy
5. Transferring Knowledge
It is important that knowledge is transferred throughout the organization.
The transfer can happen through various ways. Some of the most popular
ones include: Reports, Site visits, Rotational Programmes, Tours, Training
programs among many others.
Reports and tours are the popular and widely used methods of transferring
knowledge. Tours are better means in organizations with many divisions at
many sites.
Intel Shuttle
Intel, at U.S. has its own fleet of planes which is dedicated to its employees.
The employees can travel to and fro from one Intel site to another by the
shuttle for completely free.
Such practices within an organization encourage both learning and transfer
of it. Best practices from one site are transferred to rest of the Intel sites.
Employees also gain hands-on experience and thus improve both their and
organizations efficiency.

16
 COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
Collaborative learning is based on the view that knowledge is a social
construct. It can occur peer to peer or even in larger groups. Research shows
that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging,
and student-owned lead to deeper learning. The benefits of collaborative
learning include:
Development of higher-level thinking, oral communication,
self-management, and leadership skills.
Promotion of student-faculty interaction.
Increase in student retention, self-esteem, and
responsibility.
Exposure to and an increase in understanding of diverse
perspectives.
Preparation for real life social and employment situations.
The collaborative environment at Pixar Animation Studios is the stuff of
legend. Not only has the studio given us their magnificent portfolio of
Disney/Pixar movies and created indispensable animation technology, they
have also birthed a work practice that encourages group creativity, brings
out the best in individuals and guarantees success. No matter what they are
working on, Pixars endeavours are successful both artistically and
financially.

So what can small businesses, with far fewer employees and no backing from
Disney, take away from Pixars success? Luckily, the core principles at the
heart of Pixars practice can be replicated on any scale. These are the four
most important ways to bring some Pixar magic to your business.

Trust in people, not ideas

Pixar founder and president Ed Catmull says many observers think his studio
is successful thanks to good ideas; Toys coming to life, monsters in the
closet, a fish far from home, etc,. He disagrees. In an article for the Harvard
Business Review, Catmull says while most companies value ideas above
people, Pixar values people above ideas. His logic? If you give a good idea
to a mediocre team, they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a
great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with
something that works. In other words: Good people can elevate bad ideas,
but bad people can ruin good ideas.

Catmull sees this as the most important factor in Pixars success. Their hiring
practice is geared towards bringing together the most gifted group of people

17
possible. Fostering a talented community will attract even more talented
people, allowing the team, and the teams reputation, to grow.

On hiring, Catmull has another important message, sometimes lost on small-

minded CEOs: Its okay to hire people who are smarter than you are. This
advice, obvious if you are dedicated to creating a truly brilliant workforce,
leads us onto our next Pixar principle.

Leave your ego at the door

According to Catmull and others at Pixar, another important factor in Pixars

success is the postmortems they perform when their movies are released.
Project postmortems are common in many industries, but Pixars are some of
the most thorough.

Even though nearly every movie they make is successful, the management
and everyone involved dedicates time to going over what went wrong in the
process, and what could be done better next time.

Postmortems can be difficult, but it never helps to adopt a defensive

attitude. At Pixar, all the employees speak their minds, no matter how junior
or senior, and they are all open to criticism. This is the only way a group can
learn from its mistakes together. It can be painful, but ultimately it leads to
better practice. Peers can still be supportive during the postmortem
approach, which will lead to an even more productive process.

This ego-less approach extends beyond the postmortem process. During

every project, Pixar employees display their work to their colleagues for
feedback while it is still in progress. Other workers give their opinions, and
hopefully help fix any issues before they become major problems. Catmull
says exposing your work in progress allows people to be more creative in
what they do, and to up their game when they see someone elses great
work.

Work in a creative environment

The people and the attitude are important at Pixar, but so too is the building
they work in. Pixars main campus is based in Emeryville, California. The
campus main building was dubbed The Steve Jobs Building when the Apple
CEO died in 2012. Steve Jobs designed the building himself when he was
Pixars CEO, with the intention of building the perfect incubator of creativity.

18
As a result of Jobs dedication, the building encourages creativity by forcing
employees into chance encounters as they cross the large central atrium to
get to the single set of bathrooms, or to other departments. Unexpected
chance encounters like these can spark new ideas and collaborations that
could bring the company more success.

You dont need a huge atrium to replicate this design; having communal
areas in the middle of the office will do fine. Workers waiting for the kettle in
the kitchen have spawned great ideas since the offices of old. Try rearranging
your desks to create more surprise collisions between employees.

The creative environment ethos at Pixar is about more than just bathroom
bonding. Pixar workers are encouraged to decorate and customise their
desks in any way they please. CCO John Lasseters office is strewn with toys
and memorabilia from every Pixar film. Other Pixar cubicles are designed to
look like beach huts, old sheds, castles and much more.

Allowing workers to feel comfortable and at home in their workspace has a

hugely positive effect on their performance, according to Pixar. Other
workspace designers agree that even something as simple as colour in office
design can impact productivity.

A creative environment, populated by a skilled team unafraid of criticism,

can bring Pixar success to any small business. But what is the final and
perhaps most important Pixar principle for a small business to take on board?

Take risks and be unconventional

In the same Harvard Business Review article, and in his book Creativity, Inc.
Ed Catmull says the reason Pixar has been so successful is that their ideas
are totally ridiculous and that they could go terribly wrong if they were done
badly. The premise of the hit film Ratatouille involves a talking rat who wants
to be a chef who can somehow control a young mans movements by pulling
the mans hair. The movie Up is based around an old mans flight to South
America in a house pulled by balloons. These are crazy ideas. As we
mentioned earlier in the article, all it takes is a great team to bring a crazy
idea to fruition.

Taking chances on such strange and unique ideas is what makes Pixar films
stand out in the world of safe bet sequels and bland blockbusters. If you
want to be original, says Catmull, you have to accept the uncertainty, even
when its uncomfortable.

19
Accept the uncertainty, work with talented people in a creative environment,
and you will see success, whatever you do.

LEARNING ORGANIZATIONS TODAY

Tata Steels Journey to becoming a Learning Organization

Source: http://www.techsparks.com/Tata-Steel-KM-people-culture-technology.html
Knowledge Management = People + Culture + Technology
According to Ravi Arora, head of Knowledge Management at Tata Steel (1999-2004)
"The key to business modernization in the 21st century is not just through the expenditure of huge
sums of money to create physical assets, but orienting people - the greatest asset - towards
meeting the opportunities and challenges of the future,"
The importance of combining intellectual with technological assets via a KM culture was learned
the hard way by the Indian steel giant in 1999. That year, it was informed by a foreign technical
consultant that he was referred the exact same problem by the company two years in a row! In
other words, the company, despite having a sophisticated IT infrastructure, did not seem to
systematically "know" what its problems were and how it had been solving them.
The company aggressively embraced IT-enabled processes in the late 1990s, and by 1999 had
installed a corporate Intranet, SAP ERP system, employee portal, and "special interest groups"
focusing on various operational and manufacturing issues. The company's mission statement in
1998 was re-drafted to include: "Tata Steel enters the new millennium with the confidence of a
learning and knowledge-based organization."
But still there was no effort being made to capture experts' knowledge into intellectual assets,
and no systematic way of aligning the employee portals with solving business problems.

20
In April 1999, a concerted effort was made to launch a KM practice. Over the next year, through
April 2000, a core group of five members was formed, best practices were studied, knowledge
taxonomies devised, knowledge repositories created, knowledge communities formed, and
employee training launched on KM behaviours.
Though this was a good textbook beginning, connectivity was still poor and access technology
was not standardized. A lot of irrelevant and superfluous contributions were coming into the
knowledge repositories. Worse, there were cultural problems with technology phobia and
attitudes like "This is another method to downsize" and "Why should I share my precious
knowledge?"
A new refined strategy was adopted in May 2000-January 2001, which included a seminar on
KM, consulting on communities of practice by an external firm (McKinsey), and identification
as well as recognition of successful KM efforts.
Communities of practice aligned with business processes and strategy were formally launched in
21 areas, including iron making, steel making, rolling, maintenance, mining, waste management,
cost engineering, energy management, HR, IT and KM.
However, some problems still remained. There was still no easy way to cull out the referable,
usable contributions. Irrelevant and unsolicited contributions continued to pour in.
For the next year - January 2001 to 2002 - benchmarking steps were introduced, a composite KM
index was created, and KM activity was included in performance evaluation. A directory of
experts and skills was devised, a formal rewards and recognition system was put in place, and
seminars on KM were conducted.
And new problems arose! The management realized that they had not adequately planned
budgetary outlays for KM community support, or devised ways of summarizing knowledge
contributions and identifying which were the similar and redundant ones.
Key questions the organization was then facing were: Is this KM approach really encouraging
innovation? How can we involve the grassroots levels as well?"
So in February 2002, the company began to formally focus on promotion of innovation by
encouraging more active experimentation, and rewarding intelligent failures as well. KM activity
was more closely monitored. It was learnt that the number of KM users had grown from about
1,000 in early 2001 to over 3,000 by late 2002; in the same period, page views of the body of
knowledge grew from barely 200 to almost 2,000 per day.
The number of new products manufactured significantly increased, downtime decreased, and
costs came down, In monetary terms, savings of Rs. 3.41 crore were realized (47 rupees = 1
USD: 10 million = 1 crore ( year 2002)) from the KM system.

21
At a cultural level, employee attitudes shifted from one of "I am an expert, I do not need new
knowledge" to one of a continuous quest for knowledge; from just "I need help" to "I can also
help." The extent of organizational knowledge changed from narrow and shallow silos to wider
and more permeable silos.
Following the hard work and success of Knowledge Management Systems at Tata Steel, funds
were allocated to enhance knowledge activities, and Tata Steel started providing KM guidance to
its sister companies of the vast Tata group in India.

How Accenture shifted its focus to learning

Source: BOOK (Building the Learning by Michael Marquardt Organization)

From its earliest days Accenture has striven to hire the best people it could find and provide them
with the best training available. And therefore becoming a learning organization was a natural
evolution for it.

The many exciting steps that the company took to in its journey towards learning as an
organization have been summarized below.

1) Shift from business to learning

The first major change Accenture made was that it requested staff to make a shift in their
perceptions of their roles, environment and daily activities. Everyone was encouraged to
transform/modify his/her mental model of supervisors, workers, activities and workplace
to a new learning-oriented mental model which is tubulised as follows:

Mental Model shifts at Accenture

OLD NEW

Supervisors Coaches

Workers Continuous learners

22
 Activities Learning opportunities

Workplace Continuous learning

environment

2) Focus shift from training to learning

Earlier Accentures focus was more on efficient instruction where training focussed on
content and instructor focussed on getting the right answer. This transmittal training is
based on assumptions like-
All learners have the same basic knowledge
People learn in the same way
Listening is same as learning
Focussing on observable behaviour, not ways of thinking, is more effective for
producing change
But this model is not concerned with what is happening to the learner internally, whether
he/she is bored, or overwhelmed with the content and pace of instruction and understands
well it well enough to apply.
But recognizing the need of the hour, taking a radical change the new learning model at
Accenture realizes that learning the process of getting the right answer is most important.
Thus the company now designs its learning programs to stimulate learners to engage in
activities that focus on the needs they have identified for themselves. In the process, they
are given tools to reflect on their actions, evaluate them according to specified standards,
and give and receive feedback on what they are doing and learning. Hence this view
focuses on the learners internal processes and encourages increased sensitivity to
learners while instructions take place.
3) Self-Study, Point-of-Need Learning
For continuous self-development Accenture provides staff with opportunities to learn by
doing as they learn individual skills. By coupling technology with new learning
strategies, Accenture has successfully developed interactive, multi-media self-study
training that more effective than traditional instructor-led training.
4) Continuous Learning
Accenture places emphasis on learning from experience at all levels of the organization.
There are efforts to move action learning from training environment to overall work
environment.

23
 5) Collaborative Learning
In this members of small groups learn from one another by working together. It creates a
rich learning environment by allowing participants to take on various roles, including
instructor. It promotes sharing of ideas and knowledge and gives learners an opportunity
to others work.
6) Learning from others: Global Best Practices
The knowledge base identifies and describes best practices, best companies, engagement
experiences, performance measures, and diagnostics. Workshops on global best practices
are conducted for the staff in offices around the globe.
7) Excel through Learning Strategy
It was developed as another means to achieve corporate mission. The company has
incorporated advanced technologies to ensure timeliness and relevance of the learning
process.
8) Goal Based Scenarios
This program is based on task simulations that help participants pinpoint the skill they
need and why, and the problems they are likely to encounter, and most effective approach
in dealing with the problem and why.
How Deloitte made Learning a Game?
Source: https://hbr.org/2013/01/how-deloitte-made-learning-a-g
A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring
knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights.
An article in Harvard Business Review about how Deloitte made learning into fun activities
speaks in support of Deloitte qualifying for the above definition of a learning organization.
Training is a funny thing, says James Sanders, Manager of Innovation at Deloitte Consulting.
No matter how easy you make it to access, or how brilliant the learning programs are, training
is simply not the first thing people think of doing when they have some free time. On a typical
Sunday morning, if given the choice between Am I gonna watch ESPN, or am I gonna do some
training? training will not win out.
And by using gamification principles, Deloitte has seen use of its Deloitte Leadership Academy
(DLA) training program increase. Participants, who are spending increased amounts of time on
the site and completing programs in increasing numbers, show almost addictive behaviour. Since
the integration of gamification in to Deloitte Leadership Academy, there has been a 37% increase
in the number of users returning to the site each week.

24
DLA is an online program for training its own employees as well as its clients. DLA found that
by embedding missions, badges, and leaderboards into a user-friendly platform alongside video
lectures, in-depth courses, tests and quizzes, users have become engaged and more likely to
complete the online training programs. The Academy has had over 20,000 executive users since
its inception in 2008.
DLA uses content from such top tier business schools as Harvard Business Publishing, IMD,
Melbourne Business School, and Stanford Graduate School of Business. The content on the site
falls into three categories: videos, in-depth content, and self-assessments (tests and quizzes).
Some are interactive forms and others are PDFs, but all offer a section for learners to interact
with each other or to leave questions or comments. To help solidify the community, each
learners home screen receives news feed updates from the users they follow. They can then
interact with each others status updates, in a format similar to that on Facebook.

Before learners even begin the online learning programs they must complete their first mission,
dubbed the on-boarding mission. They do this by watching a 3-minute video, which explains
how to use the website, and in the process of watching the video, they are instructed how to
personalize the site to their individual learning priorities. Upon completion, learners receive a
badge for their on-boarding mission and then have the option to connect to their personal
networks on Linkedin and Twitter so they can easily upload a profile and photo. This level of
customization is important, because it breeds a higher level of engagement.

As learners complete each online learning program, they receive a badge to mark their
achievement. Most of those badges are won upon completion of straightforward competencies,
but some are secret badges, dubbed Snowflake badges. These are created to surprise and
delight learners and are unlocked only by achieving certain goals. For example, if all members of
one department watch the same video during the same week, they all receive a snowflake badge.
This is an unpredictable reward, which is a surprise and a delight for our learners, says
Sanders. The average user completes enough online learning programs to earn three badges.
DLAs design of its leader board is also instructive. Instead of displaying one standard list of the
top ten scorers overall, each general level of user has its own top-ten leader board, so that each
users competition for top-ten is limited to other users on that same level. That board resets every
seven days. Traditional leader boards are, in fact, counter-productive, Sanders says. The same
consistent top users, with astronomic scores, turn off everyone who knows they have no chance
of beating them. Instead, with Deloittes model, Every week you have a new chance to be the
best learner on the site, he says. This seven-day reset also means that executives wont be
discouraged from using the site just because they missed a few weeks and fell behind in
scores while on vacation or traveling for work.

25
Also, in Association for Talent Developments 2014s Very Best Learning Organizations
Deloitte secured 6th rank.

Deciding on whether or not the organization should use gamification for Learning &
Development: ASK THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS TO YOURSELF
1) What are your business goals? Define the business problem that gamification is trying
to address as clearly as possible. Determine if gamification is something that can
contribute to solving this problem or if it will supplement existing plans.
For example, do you want to add gamification for learning as a way to have more
learners complete their certifications or compliance programs? Or are you appealing to a
growing segment of Millennials who express a desire for learning to be fun, engaging and
highly collaborative?
2) Who is your audience? Will this be directed to internal employees or external
stakeholders such as dealers or distributors? Do you want to design prescriptive missions
or create more open experiences? View the game from the learners point of view. No one
wants to perpetually be at the bottom of a leader board. Instead demonstrate to users how
they can progress toward higher levels of mastery.
The goal is not to game or manipulate target audiences, but rather to mesh behavioural
science with social technologies to increase collaboration and engagement levels among
your users.
3) How will you track success? Have a plan in place for measuring the effectiveness of
your gamification efforts. Its not enough to capture data; you need to analyse it as well.
Some measures to think about include: level of engagement among users, number of
power users on the site, learning completion rates among users, satisfaction rates among
users and the relationship between engagement and achievement levels on the site and
individual promotions, and other external career progressions among your users.

26
27
 HOW DOES GOOGLE INNOVATE?

The story of innovation has not changed. It has always been a small team of
people who have a new idea, typically not understood by people around
them and their executives - Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google

As one of the most celebrated Learning organisation, Google thrives on

innovation, which is the reason for its successful growth. The learning culture
of Google is built upon these important pillars:
1) Sharing is Caring and Learning
2) Learn from Celebrated Failure
3) Formalizing Informal and Continuous Learning

Sharing is Caring and Learning

For Google, the essence to innovation is collaboration and the best way it
happens there is by sharing of information openly. The leaders share
information, knowledge with fellow Googlers as much as possible and strive
for transparency. Googlers are encouraged to to ask questions, give feedback
and at the same time their views are being valued.
One practice that captures this idea is Googles weekly TGIF meeting, which
is generally an hour long and are attended in person or livestreamed by
Googlers from offices across the countries. These meetings are hosted by the
founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, where they talk weeks Google news,
industry changes or new acquisitions. Different engineering teams present
their upcoming products. Leaders update Googlers on key topics. These
meeting are both business and fun, there is always food, drinks and music.
The spirit of these meetings is much like a startup team coming together for
a weekly wind down except with thousands of people.

Learning from Celebrated Failure

Google does not stop at failures but rather celebrate it with success, i.e.,
they accept them and improve upon them, instead of feeling discouraged or
embarrassed.
Google is one of the company who would launch any product as beta
launches and then would listen to their users, what they want more or less
of. Using this user feedback Google revise its products. For instance, Android
(Googles mobile operating system) launched in, continues to grow based on
the feedback from the users and analysis of what they want or do not want.

28
 And if the product is not well accepted by the users, it would scrap that
product off. Like Google Buzz (A Google version of Facebook), which failed to
create buzz amongst the users was scrapped off and instead a much better
version of Google Plus was launched, which is more successful.

Formalizing Informal and Continuous Learning

Google believes that learning has a bearing on employees job or life.
Informal and continuous learning are not just an ordinary thing but a highly
encouraged part of employee growth and one that is organised into the
system as much as formal learning is.
Google encourages its employees to pursue their own interests and have
reaped the benefits of a workforce that feels valued and nurtured. Google
follow indigenously developed 70/20/10 Model for Business Innovation (by
Eric Schmidt). According to this model, to cultivate innovation, employees
should utilize their time in following manner:
70% - dedicated to core business tasks.
20% - dedicated to projects related to the core business.
10% - dedicated to projects unrelated to the core business, i.e., projects
related to the interests of the employee.

29