Building a Continuous Learning Culture

This chapter looks at cultivating a continuous learning culture in an organization. According to Lund-berg, the nature of an organization’s culture is extremely important for organizational learning. As a learning culture grows and develops, the organizational memory should also increase. Many people like Bob Buckman, Chief Executive Officer of Buckman Labs, have said that 90 percent of knowledge management is building a supportive culture. A knowledge repository needed to be created in which experiences would be captured. Top management support and active involvement are needed to provide a motivate-and-reward system to encourage people to submit their heuristics and lessons learned and to use the knowledge in the knowledge repository in a value-added way. Some companies like Andersen Consulting and Lotus require their employees to access and use the knowledge in their knowledge management systems as part of their annual job performance review.