history learning 和 learning history 有什么区别啊？_百度知道
history learning 和 learning history 有什么区别啊？
提问者采纳
我觉得是强调的对象不同，history learning是“对历史的学习”，强调“学习”，换句话说，不是对历史的“破坏”，对历史的“崇拜”，而是对历史的“学习”；learning history是“学习历史”，强调学习的对象是“历史”，而不是学习“数学”，学习“英语”。（仅供参考）
提问者评价
谢谢！我对于定语的掌握还不算好！
其他类似问题
为您推荐：
其他2条回答
历史的学习
说不好的啦，就前置定语和后置定语的差别呗，这也要看词的啦，但我不知道learning可不可以做前置定语哎，好像我没看到过。。。但 i hate learning history的话 这里额learning 是 hate doing的形式而已
您可能关注的推广
等待您来回答
下载知道APP
随时随地咨询
出门在外也不愁Chapter One: What is a learning history?
Field Manual for the Learning Historian
Chapter One: Introduction to Learning History theory and practice
What is a Learning History?
In recent years, the idea of building a &learning organization&
has gained currency in management circles. Many senior managers,
in particular, have come to recognize that, with the right approach
to collective learning, their enterprises can continually gain
new talents and capabilities even as they weather the vicissitudes
of fate. Managers in middle levels, meanwhile, have embraced the
&learning organization& idea because it encourages
people to follow their own aspirations and, in the process,
boost organizational performance. This implies that people can
reclaim a little bit of the spirit of community and personal involvement
that has been leached out of conventional business decision-making.
But even the most fervent &learning organization&
enthusiasts have difficulty demonstrating a link between organizational
learning efforts and key business results. The leaders of all
learning and change efforts in organizations sooner or later run
up against the challenge of proving the value of their efforts'
accomplishments. The same is true for other types of &change&
and &transformation& efforts. Executives authorize
millions of dollars for organizational learning, reengineering,
re-invention, or quality improvement -- and then grapple
unsuccessfully with the problem of assessing their investment.
Assessment is also vital for the participants in learning efforts.
They need to judge the value of their past experience, if only
to help their organizations move forward and to develop their
judgment and skills further.
Moreover, the rest of the company also needs to understand the
experience of its learning efforts to date. They will, after all,
need to build upon that experience. How do they replicate the
first successes, and avoid repeating the first mistakes? How do
they spread the sense of potential achievement through the rest
of the organization? How do they overcome the disdain for anything
&not invented in our part of the company&? Companies
have found it notoriously difficult to institutionalize the learning
of its subgroups, to help the rest of the organization develop.
Finally, successful learning efforts generally require people
to rise above their conventional blinders to add new ways of thinking
and new forms of behavior to their repertoire. But these sorts
of changes are misunderstood. They may be seen as evidence of
cultishness, as window-dressing that isn't backed up by
action, or as well-intentioned but misguided attempts at change.
To really make sense of a learning effort, people throughout the
organization need to see it through the various perspectives of
people who have been involved with it firsthand ,so that
they can come to terms with it based on actual data (not just
on the gossip that reaches them), and make sense of it in a way
that is credible to them.
In short, when an organization has been through a learning or
change process, people throughout the organization need a feedback
process that can provide guidance and support Yet reacting to
the pressure of assessing learning can easily undermine any learning
effort. As people become aware of being assessed and measured,
the intrinsic motivation which drove them to learn is supplanted
by an extrinsically motivated desire to look successful. Any feedback,
mediated through an outside observer's eyes, will be tainted
by this built-in set of distortions.
Learning histories were invented in response to these concerns
and needs.
A &learning history& is a document,or
a series of documents, possibly in audiovisual form ,that
is disseminated in a deliberately structured manner. The document,
and the dissemination, are both designed to help organizations
become better aware of their own learning and change efforts.
The learning history presents the experiences and understandings
of participants ,people who initiated, implemented and
participated in organizational transformation efforts, or some
collaborative learning experience ,as well as non-participants
who were affected by these efforts.
The learning history tells the story in participants'
own words, in a way that helps the rest of the organization
move forward, without having to &re-invent& what a small
group of learners have already discovered.
A learning history thus represents the organization talking to
itself, in a safe and carefully structured way, about the things
it needs to hear but hasn't yet listened to.
The history includes reports of actions and results. It
shows readers how learning is an approach to get what they want,
and it illustrates how others have achieved the results they wanted.
The history also includes descriptions of learning methods
and techniques ,the intent, tools, and design of an
intervention. The history tells the story of how people learned
to collectively inquire in new ways, generate insights, and then
take actions which weren't thought possible before.
Finally, the history includes descriptions of the underlying
assumptions and reasoning that led to people's actions.
In this way, the unwritten but powerful tacit knowledge and undiscussable
myths are brought to surface, codified, and turned into a knowledge
base. People can test their understandings against the perspective
of others, without having to be in the same room at the same time.
For this reason, we sometimes think of learning histories as dialogue,
on a different time/space continuum.
The history includes the perspectives of a variety of people
(including people who did not support the effort). No individual
view, not even that of top managers, can encompass more than
a fraction of what actually happens in a real organization, and
this reality is reflected in the learning history. When participants
discover that their own points of views are treated fairly in
the learning history, they become better able to understand the
many other people's perspectives that make up the learning
Learning history work goes beyond writing a history that documents
a project. It is a critical element in developing an
organizational infrastructure to support learning. Its research,
distillation and dissemination processes are designed to create
new opportunities for organizational learning.
A learning history document becomes an artifact which is
then used as a piece of directly observable data which becomes
the basis for individuals, a team and an organization to share
a common, collective history of what happened in the past, build
on the learning of others, and have a new kind of conversation
that helps them to move forward in their own learning process.
The content of the learning history creates a context for a
conversation that the organization wouldn't be able
to hold otherwise.
Learning history practice provides a philosophical and methodological
basis for addressing issues related to how we measure and
assess organizational learning. The learning history draws upon
established theories, techniques, and skills of action science
intervention, oral history, anthropology, sociology, literature,
and theater. The integration of these theories and techniques,
using a philosophy consistent with organizational learning principles,
is what makes learning histories unique.
The value of a learning history
Most learning history projects begin with three questions:
1. &How can we judge the success of our organizational
change effort?&
2. &How can the rest of the organization benefit from
this experience?&
3. &What do our efforts to date reveal about our opportunities
for success and our potential for failure?&
We believe that most organizations already know what they need
to hear in answer to these questions. But if they have not learned
to listen, then history is destined to repeat itself.
These days, people in most organizations have been involved in
change efforts, transformations, learning initiatives and innovative
breakthroughs. They know the pitfalls that befell them, the value
of their experiments and how the rest of the organization
could benefit from their experience.
However, they lack a way to reflect on their story collaboratively,
talk about it effectively, consider its implications, and communicate
its &learnings& to others. This desire is expressed
when managers say, &We need time to reflect,& or &We
need what we say commuicated to others,& or, &We don't
want to reinvent the wheel.& How, they ask, do we get one
part of an organization to learn from another? How do we keep
from making the same mistakes over and over and over again
To instill organizational learning requires a deliberate attempt
to institutionalize reflection in organizations as whole entities.
Somehow, brilliant components and skeptical overseers must
be given a channel for engaging each other thoughtfully and productively.
This is particularly important as hierarchies devolve and managers
try to institutionalize the organization's &strategic
memory,& so that anyone within a corporate body can draw
upon the knowledge of the whole.
Reflection is rarely put into practice in business, because organizations
are not equipped for it. For one thing, the time pressures of
corporate life mean that there is no slack built in to the typical
management process. Managers act collaboratively, but they lack
the time to make sense collaboratively of their actions. Instead,
they are continually pressed to skip directly into more action.
Moreover, reflection requires the difficult (and often counter-intuitive)
task of building self-awareness. Most managers have little experience
with inquiring openly into the successes and mistakes of the past.
They face overwhelming temptation to cover up such inquiries,
because there is generally an organizational norm, or an unspoken
agreement: Confrontational issues (like mistakes) are not meant
to be discussed. And, as Chris Argyris has noted, this unwillingness
to discuss tough issues is, itself, undiscussable as well. A manager
who tries to &swim upstream& and reflect collaboratively
on past mistakes might be
and even the attempt
to protest the label will be discounted as complaining. The manager
is placed in a terrible double bind.
In the absence of reflection, the organization looks elsewhere
for its assessments. Outside consultants or &expert&
staff members interview some employees and present back the results
as a set of &answers.& But this represents a tragically
discouraging waste of effort and enthusiasm. The people of most
large organizations already know what they need to hear without
a cadre of experts to intermediate. Each member of the organization
knows some aspect of the pitfalls that have befallen them, the
ways in which the organization creates its own problems, the impacts
of changed policies, and the means by which the enterprise could
move forward into the future. They simply lack the opportunity
to reflect on their experience together, and make sense out of
the total experience of which each member holds a part.
&If there had not been a learning history at our company,&
said a participant at one project, &the learning effort would
have stopped with the end of the pilot team. People would have
dispersed and said 'It was good.' Or, 'It was bad.'
There was data to support both points of view.&
A learning history approach captures stories people tell about
learning and change efforts and reflects them back to the organization
and others.
Learning histories are labor-intensive, and can be expensive.
A small project can be &captured& with two or three
days' worth of interviewing, but a large corporate-wide
project may require as many as 150 interviews. It might take 30-60
person-days to conduct those interviews, distill them, and present
the results in a document and workshops. Including the time of
internal people, the overall costs might stretch as high as $500,000.
This is significantly more expensive than a survey, but it should
be seen in the context of a transformational effort that costs
tens of millions of dollars. Without the learning history, there
may be no effective way to judge the effectiveness of that much
larger investment.
Furthermore, a learning history project provides several benefits
that a survey does not:
It is a process, not just a product. The work does not
indeed, the final dissemination
effort is as carefully planned and implemented as any other part
of the work. The learning history process establishes a vehicle
for reflection in all of its stages, from the interviews to the
final workshops.
Surveys tend to produce a set of &answers&
that are endorsed (or not endorsed) by senior management. The
learning history creates a reflective experience that encourages
people to mak it involves people throughout
the company in thinking about the past in a way that helps plan
for the future.
Surveys translate qualitative experiences into quantitative
data. In doing so, they distort the experience and inevitably
lose credibility and focus. The result: &We've measured
everything but we haven't changed attitudes.& The
learning history provides a way of packaging and replicating the
kinds of non-metric data that otherwise would be lost.
The learning history work trains a core group of internal
people in the methods of reflective interviewing, distillation,
and even writing, and brings them up to speed in an overview of
the existing transformation process.
It starts a &buzz& going throughout the company,
as people start to make sense of the new &mythic&
stories that the learning history generates.
Learning histories make use of the skepticism that exists
in organizations, by reproducing it faithfully in the context
of both collective aspirations and current reality. &Dilbert's&
voice is heard in
so is the voice of Dilbert's
boss. This helps build judgment among both of them. &This
may be one tool,& said an internal learning historian at
one company, &that keeps us from going to the next fad.&
It creates a history of effective practices that go beyond
&best practices:& to show not just what people did,
but what they were thinking, what assumptions they had made,
how they came to their decisions, what others thought about their
actions, and how they expect to move forward from here. Instead
of merely copying the best practices of others, people who read
learning histories are now equipped to develop their own best
practices.
The process builds actionable knowledge among organizations.
Learning histories have existed, in the form developed here, for
less than three years, but a body of &results& is
beginning to emerge. At one corporation (AutoCo, a large automobile
company), learning histories are credited with helping preserve
the innovations of one key car launch team, so that other teams
could build on their experience. In a large oil company, learning
histories have become a critical component of the company's
&roll-out,& to help new business practices can be
instilled into the workday of tens of thousands of people. A learning
history of an educational institution has become a key component
of the orientation of new people who join the institution's
it is credited with providing the most credible understanding
of the issues facing that institution. At a manufacturing facility,
the opportunity to see their story told in learning history form
has been a significant morale and involvement factor ,especially
since the plant is being spun off from the parent company, and
its managers and workers must develop their own organizational
This year, the first comprehensive learning history (AutoCo) was
made available to the public, published by the MIT Center for
Organizational Learning. It will be produced in book form next
year. There is reason to believe that others will follow, and
that the growing body of data will comprise a rich source of generalizable
knowledge that spans organizational boundaries. &Learning
histories can be to action science,& Chris Argyris has
said, &what a microscope is to the physical sciences.&
Anatomy of a learning history Project
There are essentially seven steps in a learning history project.
Each one has its own chapter in this Field Manual. They include:
Planning, Research, Distillation, Writing, Validation, Dissemination,
and Publication/Outreach.
I. Planning: Determining the boundaries
The planning stage delineates the range and scope of the project.
It is conducted, typically, by a learning history advisory team,
composed of the external team leaders and a group of &champions&
within the company ,people who are willing to invest some
effort in helping a learning history take root. This planning
phase includes identifying &noticeable results:& tangible
business outcomes that have already caught the attention of the
organization. It also involves recruiting internal learning historians,
and establishing the primary audience, audience, the scope of
the inquiry, and the specific questions that must be addressed.
This planning stage is not just a crucial logistic phase, but
a key avenue of reflective participation.
2. Reflective research: Interviews and data gathering
The internal and external historians conduct reflective interview
conversations with participants in the original learning effort
(along with key outsiders, such as suppliers, contractors, and
consultants), taking pains to gather perspective from every significant
point of view. Between 50 and 200 people may be interviewed, depending
on the scope of the inquiry. These interviews involve skill development
for the internal interviewers, reflective opportunities for the
interviewees, and information gathering for the entire project.
Thus, the interviews build reflective capacity in the organization
,both for the learning historian and for the interviewee,
who may never have had an opportunity to ruminate at work, at
length, about his or her experience. This stage may also involve
other forms of research, including observations, examination of
documents, etc.
3. Distillation: Establishing key themes and &plots&
From the mass of data (interviews, observations, field notes,
and documents), the internal and external learning historians
cull meaningful themes, systemic understandings, and implications.
This also builds analytic and synthesizing skills for internal
learning historians. We have chosen the word &distill&
carefully to convey the essence of this activity ,taking
volumes of data from interviews, and then rectifying, purifying
and refining the &raw data& into a form which the
organization can hear. In this distillation effort, we balance
our &research& imperative ,to keep our conclusions
clearly rooted in the data ,with the &mythic&
imperative ,to tell an archetypally moving story
with the &pragmatic& imperative ,to tell the
story in a way that it can be effectively read, heard and discussed
in organizations.
4. Writing: Production of a transitional object
Next, the document must be produced. We base our writing format
on the anthropological concept of the &jointly told tale.&
In this form of writing, the participants and the learning historians
tell the story together, incorporating the participants'
experience and passion, along with the learning historians'
broader perspective and objective training.This approach places
an enormous burden on the artistry of the editor. Every narrative
tale has to be pared down to its compelling core, to draw an audience
in, to be valid and representative, yet succinct and direct. The
section on writing in this Field Manual describes the various
techniques we use to fulfill our mythic, pragmatic and research
imperatives in the written work.
5. Validation: Reflective feedback
In the validation stage, there are several sets of checks designed
to reestablish validity. In quote-checking, participants see their
quotes, make changes, and approve them, before anyone else sees
them. Validation helps guarantee our protection of anonymity,
and builds in another level of perspective as interviewees reconsider
their statements.
In addition, the learning historians conduct validation workshops
with small groups of key participants (who have already been interviewed),
along with a few other people from elsewhere in the organization.
This allows the original participants to relive their experience
in the company of others ,and to observe how it will be
seen by the rest of the company.
Finally, the learning history champions and team members go over
the document in a manner designed to render it most useful to
the organization.
6. Dissemination: application and transferring learning
The learning history manuscript is not ha
it would be simply put on a shelf and ignored. In carefully designed
workshops, built around concepts of action research and
learning transfer, people from every part of the organization
read and discuss the document. How typical was this story? What
pitfalls and resources exist for their own learning efforts? How
can they use the Learning History's insights to increase
their own capabilities? As comments are added, the report's
story becomes part of the common understanding of the organization.
7. Publication/Outreach
Eventually, learning histories are packaged and presented for
a wider external audience, with the organization's name
disguised ,so that the organization itself, and the research
community, can benefit from the building of knowledge about management
and organizational change.
Creating &reflectionable knowledge&
A key goal of learning history work is to create the type of knowledge
which inspires reflection, and which leads to meaningful and significant
reflection.
&Reflectionable knowledge& often exists in the form
of stories. It provides a context which makes it easy to assimilate
and think about new information. It makes explicit the multiple
mental models which operate in a given social setting. The knowledge
is expressed at different levels of abstraction - from observable
data to interpretations, attributions, and generalizations
in such a way that the communicator's thought processes
are articulated.
Reflectionable knowledge promotes further inquiry into these thought
processes and into the differences between various participants'
assumptions. Having reflected, we build a store of knowledge,
so that when we return to reflect next time, we are less likely
to reinvent the wheel or spin our wheels.
The emphasis on &reflectionable knowledge& has led
us to de-emphasize the document of the learning history. Our fundamental
purpose is to create materials which promote a more effective
form of conversation. The document itself is just a means to that
Indeed, not just the document, but each element in a learning
history process interviewing, observing, analyzing, writing,
editing, circulating drafts, following up and conducting dissemination
workshops is intended to broaden and deepen &reflectionable
knowledge& throughout the organization. The learning history
process provides an ongoing forum for collaborative reflection:
Interviewing: The act of interviewing people and capturing
their perspectives about the learning project is, itself, an intervention.
Often people in organizations do not take the time to reflect
on what they have done, or how they are going about a particular
task. After a learning historian asks them to talk about their
learning, either by themselves or with a partner, they often come
away with a renewed depth of understanding. Later, when they see
the report, they have an opportunity to compare other peoples'
interpretations and experiences with their own.
Document creation: In designing and writing the document,
a team of learning historians assembles the mass of data it has
collected, reads it carefully for patterns and themes, and decides
on how to organize the material.
This set of activities is also an intervention. By having interviewed
multiple people ,those active in the project, those supportive
but perhaps only bystanders, and those against the project
the team of &learning historians& is in a position
to understand and hold a broader and more diverse perspective
than anyone else involved in the effort. That is one reason why
insiders are always part of the learning history team: their growing
capability benefits the organization.
We advocate the &jointly-told tale& form for learning
histories (as described in Chapter 4, &The Jointly-Told Tale&).
This form provides an effective model, on paper, of the type of
conversation which encourages reflection. It is a slower conversation,
in which people can consider the &story& as told from
a variety of distinct perspectives ,including their own.
Dissemination: The learning history is a &means&
to a better conversation. The printed learning history, even if
it is incomplete or provisional, provides a foundation of observable
data upon which conversations about the learning effort can take
place. Discussing a learning history give non-participants an
unprecedented collaborative view of what went on in the learning
In sessions held for other teams, organization members can ask
themselves what similarities a what they
could do simi and how much they could foster
an environment of similar experimentation and learning.
As people throughout the organization read and talk about the
document, they become more interested in the project. Their interest
leads them to inquire about their own methods, to learn new skills
and tools associated with organizational learning, and to create
new ways of working, which in turn lead to new results, and eventually,
to new learning histories.
In some cases, the learning history process offers the only
institutionalized opportunity that a team, or an organization,
has to reflect. The learning history process can be beneficial
not only for the original participants, but also for researchers
and consultants who advised them, and ultimately anyone who is
interested in organizations' learning processes.
Basic principles of learning history work
We're coming to think that a number of generic principles apply
to learning history work. These principles are presented here
as a first take, not as the final word. As the methodology advances,
we hope to continue refining these principles into a set of theories
of organizational reflection.
Organizations today have a choice - &Slash and burn&
or &learn&
Learning history work is inextricably linked with the premise
that organizational learning is essential for managers faced with
a turbulent environment. Organizations that can survive under
an authoritarian regime have no need of learning histories
or, for that matter, of change efforts to evaluate. But the experience
of the past 30 years suggests that, in turbulent environments,
authoritarian companies will not be able to sustain themselves.
The alternative to command-and-control is collaborative learning
,the ability to expand an organization's capabilities
in response to its own desired future and the state of current
Learning takes place from experience, but collective learning
from experience is inherently problematic
This is the basic dilemma of organizational learning. Individual
experiences are inherently limited, by the biases of our own backgrounds
and beliefs, and by the fact that we can only experience a narrow
slice of time and space. If we confine ourselves to learning from
experience, we will always be restricted to a narrow set of &learnings.&
This is problematic in organizations, where systems are spread
over time and space, and may not seem to have much to do with
each other on first glance. Learning histories are successful
when they bridge individual experience, helping people draw common
understanding from the syntheses of individual stories.
Communication that fosters learning must embody research,
mythic and pragmatic imperatives
We're trying to deliberately balance three imperatives in our
work: The pragmatic (telling the story so that managers can accept
it and work with it), the research (telling a story which can
be validated with the &data& of interviews and observations),
and the mythic (telling a story which is powerful, compelling,
and pure because it is true to the story's own needs.) No one
can think all three ways at once. A communication creation process,
to be effective, must cycle between these three imperatives.
No one voice provides &the answer& - people accept
other's viewpoints in the context of their own
Perspective comes from many sources. No one outside expert or
internal observer has the whole story. The enthusiasts, skeptics,
and senior managers ,or, as systems-oriented therapist
David Kantor puts it, the &initiators, opposers, followers,
and bystanders& ,all have valid experiences. They
all need to tell it together, in an explicit way so that the reader
can see whose perspective is present in which part of the text.
This gives the story validity. When people see that their point
of view has been treated fairly, they recognize the credibility
of the whole document.
&You are not alone& - all particular instances
are reflections of universal patterns
&I know who's speaking,& people often say about
a paragraph in a learning history ,but they may, in fact,
be wrong about the individual, the team, the organization, or
even the country! Many of the patterns and systems in organizational
life exist archetypally, independent of a particular culture or
set of circumstances. By understanding these systemic interrelationships,
people can better understand the hidden forces at play in their
environment. As challenges and successes are drawn from the details
in the learning history, a story that seemed unique and based
on idiosyncratic personalities becomes universal ,and thus
useful as a broadly applicable glimpse into the underlying systems
Organizations &know& what they need to hear but
lack the capacity to listen
Individuals throughout the organization, together, understand
the &missing& information that the organizations need.
Each individual has a piece of the puzzle, but as a whole, they
lack systematic ways to combine their understanding together into
a single story. Learning histories represent an alternative to
calling in outside consultants to tell the organization what it
already knows.
Organizations need an established infrastructure for reflection.
We believe that ad-hoc interventions will ultimately be limited.
Learning histories seem to be most effective when tied in to existing
infrastructures for reflection: Management training series, Learning
centers, Team workshops, etc.
Learning involves change, and change may be difficult.
Learning Histories bring out difficult, tough stories that have
been swept under the rug ,and try to do so in a way that
the organization can hear. In our interviews, we feel it is crucial
to get as many perspectives as possible on painful situations.
Stories convey intangibles
We once wrote a learning history about a team which developed
a prototype engineering model. On the surface, the achievement
was a &noticeable result:& a technical feat, which
had paid off in financial savings, and probably duplicable as
a &best practice.&
But to the engineers who put together the prototype, there was
a remarkable story involved: A story of continually testing the
waters, involving people, and learning to communicate in new ways.
Some team members had to work differently with outside contractors
(who were architects of the prototype), while others had to muster
the courage to request an extra half-million-dollar budget. Still
others learned to create an atmosphere of open inquiry, so that
engineers could talk across functional boundaries, and make the
prototype work.
Until the stories of these half-dozen individuals were brought
together, they were not aware of common causes or each others'
contributions, and many others in the company were unaware of
the entire process.
Behind every &noticeable result,& there is a story...
And the story is more effective at conveying intangibles than
any other form of communication...
In our work over the past three years, many different forms of
&learning history& have been proposed, and quite a
few of these have been tested. In addition, learning historians
have been called upon to write a variety of different types of
reports, some of which may or may not fit under the definition
of &learning histories.& Finally, a large number of
intervenors and consultants have begun to include &learning
history work& among their practice, and in many cases,
their work fails to conform to our idea of what a &learning
history& should be ,and yet, clients are enthusiastically
appreciative.
Why bother, then, to define a learning history? Why not let the
term &learning history& simply refer to any reflective
document that helps capture the &learning& from an
organizational experience?
Because we strongly believe, based on our experience and theory,
that some types of reflective documents are more valuable in
the long run than others.
A number of processes and methodologies resemble learning
histories in some respect: Project clinics, &lessons learned&
reports, systems diagram reports, left-hand/right-hand columns
from action science, &organizational memory& efforts,
action reviews, and &reflective memoranda.&
All of these, however, lack the ability to reach the entire organization
in a way that encourages reflection on the most significant aspects
of the organization's experience.
In developing learning histories, we are trying to move beyond
the traditional &lessons learned& reports that people
think of when they think of &learning histories.&
This standard engineering practice, archived in a library, may
often lead to valuable technological cross-fertilization, and
it may help prevent litigation or the repetition of old mistakes.
It may even &capture a moment& in the history of an
organization's learning.
But such reports are all too often filed in desk drawers and forgotten.
They rarely, if ever, lead to conversation about the cultural
and interpersonal issues that lay underneath the success of a
pilot team. They may spread technical and organizational-development
ideas, but they don't allow a sense of &what really
happened, underneath the report& to filter through an organization.
Or if it does, it will do so by accident.
We have set our sights on developing a methodology that will systematically
help organizations get past the stumbling blocks that have
prevented reflection in the past: The unwillingness to consider
&bad news,& the desire to shoot the messenger, the
fragmented nature of decision making, and the frequent lack of
common sense of purpose.
As an innovation in learning infrastructure, a learning history
should conform to the following nine guidelines. If it does not
have these characteristics, then it may
but, in our view, it is not a learning history.
Use of &noticeable results&
Noticeable results are events which people in the organization
consider significant, whether or not the observers were involved
with the learning effort. They are the hard measures that managers
use as yardsticks for performance: a gain in value, a decline
in errors, the ability to do something that had never been done
before, or a clearly observable change in human behavior. They
are when the leaders of a project are dismissed
instead of promoted, that is also a &noticeable result.&
Unless we acknowledge these evident facts, and using them as a
springboard for the story, our learning histories lacks credibility.
Learning histories without noticeable results may serve the &myth&
of pilot team participants, but they will not be taken seriously
by the rest of the organization.
At the same time, we do not attribute causes to an organization's
&noticeable results:& we do not say, &Here is
the explanation of why this result happened.& Instead,
we use the &result& as a springboard into telling
the underlying story ,both during interviews and during
the presentation of the report.
See Chapter 7: Noticeable Results.
Intended for an audience broader than the participants in
the story.
Learning histories are intended to advance an understanding of
the pilot team's experiences ,among members of the
original pilot team, through the rest of the organization, and
in the community of managers and practitioners as a whole. Unless
it is designed to be viable for all three of these audiences,
we do not consider it to be a learning history.
There are, of course, conflicts between these audiences. For instance,
the third audience (the general managerial audience) extends beyond
the boundaries of the organization. The learning history must
protect confidential information and individual privacy (which
may mean disguising the name of the organization). At the same
time, it must be set up so that, at some point in time, in some
edited form, it can be released to the general public.
See Chapter 6: Audiences for a learning history
Data generated through reflective conversations
The learning history depends on information drawn forth in settings
where people can think through what they have set out to do, how
expectations have been accomplished and/or shifted, and what has
been learned. Without this type of input, the learning history
will not develop a rich enough level of a rich enough level of
content ,not just about events, but about the systemic
structures underlying those events, and the mental models which
exist below the surface of visible actions. In addition, reflective
interviews give participants an opportunity to be open and expressive
about their experience ,one of the major benefits of learning
history work.
See Chapter 9: The data gathering process.
The Jointly-Told Tale
The story told in a learning history should be told in the words
of participants. T they alone can describe what
they were thinking, and what led them to their actions. Through
the carefully-edited multiple voices of people involved in the
story, the drama of the underlying structure of events comes through.
But participants are not enough. The reader also wants external
information: What is typical? What has been left out? What was
the significance?
Thus, we have developed the &jointly-told tale& form,
borrowed in part from recent trends in cultural anthropology,
in which participants and outside observers tell the story side
Without this form, the Learning History lacks distinction. It
is just another report, rather than a collaboration between insiders'
and outsiders' voices.
We insist on the &jointly-told& nature of learning histories
because it gives us the freedom to make assertions ,and
yet know that we are protected, somewhat, from the charge of being
&overbearing outside observers.& The assertions come
from the people of the organization.
See Chapter 4: The jointly-told tale.
The Two-Column Format
Readers want to be told a succinct story. They want to be told
what it means, what its implications are, and what they should
do differently. As writers of learning histories, researchers
need to account for their choices in asking questions, collecting,
and selecting data. Readers should be told why particular quotes
were chosen, how representative they were, and what interpretations
and generalizations can be drawn from the narrative that is presented.
We developed the two-column format as a vehicle for accomplishing
all of these goals. Full column text is used for context setting
and exposition. The right hand column is exclusively for primary
data ,narrative from people involved in the change effort,
written comments by participants, sections of memos or meeting
transcripts, and speech excerpts, all edited to tell the story
as a whole. The left hand column is used for more objectively
interpretive material: notes on the questions which people were
asked, conclusions and interpretations drawn by the researchers,
attributions and generalizations, comments on how representative
the elements of narrative may be, and implications of particular
statements.
In a two column format, complexity can be expressed which is not
found in traditionally formatted reports. The two columns distinguish
between relatively &objective& comments by non-participants
on the left, and relatively &experiential& comments
by participants in the story on the right. Reading the two column
format feels unfamiliar to some people at first, but it leads
(we believe) to deeper comprehension of complex learning and change
See, within Chapter 4: The two-column format. And Chapter 10:
A Team of Insiders and Outsiders
A learning history reflects multiple perspectives including those
of outsiders and insiders. Like any research into culture, these
two perspectives are necessary for determining meaning. Outsiders
will notice the peculiar ways in which an organization operates,
ways which go unnoticed and are taken for granted by insiders.
Insiders, however, often do not notice how their espoused values
or beliefs are different from what is practiced.
While outsiders are likely to notice these discrepancies, only
insiders can provide an interpretation for discrepancies'
significance and it's deeper meaning. A learning history
effort requires a team with both outsider and insider membership.
There are also pragmatic reasons for insiders to be an integral
part of the learning history team. As part of an efforts to develop
learning capabilities in organizations, companies need to take
responsibility for the researcher's role. The learning
history becomes part of the institutional feedback mechanism,
an element of an &infrastructure for learning.& If
learning efforts expand, there will be a continual need for a
people to teach others tools and methods for learning and reflecting
on progress. As the formal learning initiatives spread, internal
people who are trained and capable are needed to carry these efforts
See Chapter 5: Project design and planning.
Linking attributions to observable data
&The evaluations or judgments people make are not concrete
or obvious,& writes Chris Argyris. &They are abstract
and highly inferential. Individuals treat them as if they were
concrete because they produce them so automatically that they
do not even think that their judgments are highly inferential.&
With this concern in mind, we have designed the learning history
process so that judgments, inferences, and interpretations can
always be linked, by the reader, to the data nearby.
Simply asking people to &tell their story& would be
problematic if comments were not linked to specific events and
observable information. The story would take on the aura of gossip:
Exaggerated myth, without being rooted in genuine detail.
See, within Chapter 11: Attribution, interpretation, or generalization
linked to description.
A means to better conversation
Learning histories should not be judged by the reports themselves.
They should be judged by the quality of the conversation that
they provoke.
The learning history is conceived not as an ends in itself but
rather as a means toward better conversation. This justifies the
time and expense of the effort. There are three opportunities
for reflective conversation: In the interviews, in various phases
of distillation, and in the dissemination process. All three must
be designed to draw managers into the reflective spirit and make
full use of the information in the report.
See Chapter 13: Dissemination.
Distinguishing assessment, measurement, and evaluation from
each other.
The learning and improvement requires feedback of information
that conveys what happened and how people are doing, the extent
to which they have been able to achieve expectations, and the
surfacing or reasoning and actions that contributed to final or
intermediate outcomes. In modern organizations, feedback comes
in the forms of assessments, measurements and evaluations. An
understanding of different kinds of uses of information that provide
feedback can help organizations that make concerted efforts to
improve learn from their experience.
See next section.
Does a learning history qualify as assessment? Measurement?
And/or evaluation?
Any manager working toward creating a &learning organization&
will sooner or later run up against a challenge of &proving&
the value of what has been done. Researchers face the same question,
&How do you prove what you hold to be true?& The conventional
response is to turn to some form of assessment.
&Assessment,& however, is an emotionally loaded term.
The word derives from the Latin root assessare ,to
impose a tax, or to set a rate ,and it often seems to invoke
a feeling of being persecuted by an auditor. People who contemplate
assessment report palpable fear ,the word itself draws
forth a strong, gut-level memory of being evaluated and measured.
This results in defensive behaviors ,behavior which seeks
foremost to protect oneself against the dangers of assessment.
P they restrict themselves from speaking frankly,
making experiments, taking risks, or paying attention, because
they know they may be punished in the assessment. They devote
themselves to performing for the test, to make themselves look
good. Thus the assessment, in itself, systematically and subtly
defeats and limits the learning that it has been brought to measure.
Yet without some form of assessment, it is difficult to learn
from experience, transfer learning, or help organizations replicate
achievements. One of the major questions in studying learning
in business organizations is manager's requests and requirements
for tangible, measurable evidence of an impact on their people's
or organization's capabilities. How then can assessment
be used to provide guidance and support for improving performance,
rather than elicit fear, resentment, and resignation?
Experience has shown that the first step, starting with the contacts
with potential interviewees, is to distinguish &assessment&
from &measurement& and &evaluation.& The
sort of assessments we make in Learning Histories are made of
events and team activity, not of individual performance. Moreover,
&assessment,& in our context, is the comparison of
reality to expectations. &Here is
here is what we did.& For example, a learning history might
include a comment comparing the amount of money made by a new
effort to what it was expected to make. By this definition, assessment
is a fundamentally human, and necessary activity. It is a way
of judging significance.
We judge significance with words, not numbers. A problem occurs
when &assessment& is conceived of as &measurement.&
Certainly, the benefits of measurement are undeniable: they allow
the comparison of performance across a large number of teams,
projects, processes, and activities. The concept of measurement
is based on being able to ascribe relevant quantitative dimensions
to phenomena which can reliably or repeatedly be observed. If
we cannot measure a learning effort (or a quality, reengineering,
or organizational change effort), then it is far more difficult
to judge its improvement. Unless a learning effort is measured
somehow, it probably cannot be improved.
And measurement, even of qualitative processes, may be possible.
Educator Robert Gahagan noted, &To say, `I know good art
when I see it' is not sufficient. If you know it when you
see it, you can describe what it looks like. If you can describe
it, why can't we measure it? I work with elementary teachers
who often want to measure such things as love, security and self
esteem. When I ask them to tell me what those things look like,
they immediately start describing activities. Then why can't we
measure whether those activities are taking place?
But the difficulty which measurement poses for learning in organizations
can be illustrated by considering how businesses are measured.
In business, accountants' measurements tell managers how
the business performs. As Fred Kofman points out, accounting measurement
is a form of language, and language determines what we perceive.
The way in which corporations count &beans& indicates
which type of &beans& are valued, and which are not,
in a way so subtle that it determines the subconscious focus of
peoples' attention. But then a learning effort begins,
and creatively expands participants' horizons. Suddenly,
what they &see& and do may clash with the types of
perceptions encouraged by the existing accounting system. A rigid
measurement scheme, like that of financial accounting, might not
recognize the effort associated with people's learning,
or people may limit their learning in order to comply with the
perceptions a measurement system enforces.
If we seek to assign value to the learning effort, instead of
measuring performance, then we are well-advised to call our work
&evaluation.& Evaluation involves values and valuing,
deriving from the Old French evaluer, &to value.&
Evaluation means to determine the worth of, to find the amount
or value of, to appraise.
But evaluation is not necessarily fair or beloved. People react
more strongly to being evaluated than to being measured or assessed.
Evaluation, they know, tries to j but often
it is not clearly defined who, or on what basis, value or worth
is being determined, or what decisions and actions will follow
on the basis of an evaluation.
Evaluations are, by nature, but the evaluators rarely
admit the subjectivity. Thus, different people evaluate the same
&data& in vastly different ways, and they interpret
the same evaluations with even greater disparity. Recently, a
university report was released, evaluating one of the university's
programs. One faculty member, reading the report, said, &It
raised important issues, and helped define the P it will
eliminate some controversy.& A Program staff member said,
&I they pickedon the Program in an inaccurate
way.& An associate said, &The report didn't
say anything new. We all knew that we were polarized at the Program.&
And a fourth person ignored every aspect of the report, except
a line that accused the Program of publishing too little work.
Since that wasn't true, the entire evaluation was suspect.
Each of these people had
each came away
with completely different opinions, planning to take completely
different actions. That is the danger of evaluation.
A challenge in the learning history process is to develop a method
of assessment which frees people from the tyranny of a predetermined
measurement and evaluation scheme. The learning history process
does not deny the value of measurement, or the existence of measurement
schemes in most organizations. Indeed, in learning history projects,
all three types of judgment are made explicit:
We offer measurement of significant improvements
if we can describe how and why the measurement systems themselves
were developed, and what impact the measurement had on the people
being measured.
We provide assessments, made by people throughout
the organization, with a clear link between the assessment and
the direct observable data.
We present overall evaluations, always with enough
context that the reader (and interviewee) knows, beyond a doubt,
that the evaluation stems directly from the sense and meani
Influences on learning history work
A learning history combines research philosophies and techniques
from ethnography, action research, organizational development
and oral history.
From ethnography come the science and art of techniques to investigate
culture ,systematic approaches for participant observation,
interviewing, and archival research ,used in understanding
the day-to-day routines which make up people's lives. The
ethnographic researcher defines him or herself as an outsider,
a stranger on the outside developing an understanding of how those
inside the cultural system make sense of their world.
From action research and organizational development we have social
scientist working with people in organizations to help improve
them while as they capture data, reflect back, study the changes.
Action research offers effective models and methods for exploring
situations where the researchers are actively involved in changing
the system they are helping. The typical action research intervention
follows a cycle in which managers observe themselves acting and
communicating, learn to recognize the assumptions inherent in
their actions, build an understanding of the norms and values
which drive those assumptions, and then plan new, more effective
A method to engage people in reporting on their experiences comes
from the tradition of oral histories. Oral histories are often
narratives which come from recorded in-depth interviews. The tradition
of oral histories in transcribing the in-depth interview and using
the voices of participants to record historical evidence provides
a data collection method for rich, natural descriptions of the
complex events. The oral history approach is used to rapidly capture
the details of stories and employs the voice of the narrator to
understand the way that they attribute meaning to their experience.
The U.S. Army historian work
The U.S. Army has a long-standing, in-depth &history&
practice based upon the need to record the process of decision-making
in the field.
Thus, officers and staff are often taken to battlefields such
as Gettysburg, to see firsthand what how the terrain dictated
decisions, what the dilemmas were at the time, and how strategy
and decision-making considerations played out into action.
From the Army's experience, we have gleaned a renewed sense
of the importance of understanding history for making effective
decisions.
The &Listening Project&
Based at a non-profit organization called the Rural Southern Voice
for Peace, this project has existed for 15 years. It is a community-based
project which uses oral history techniques to organize communities.
&The basic idea,& wrote Stephanie Mills in the Essential
Whole Earth Catalog, &is to go directly into divided
communities and question people about the real content of their
opinions, and to listen ,attentively and respectfully
to the concerns that emerge.&
The Listening Project's work shows how learning histories
can be a community-building tool, and how the process of interviewing
and mutual reflection helps people appreciate each others'
perspectives.
The background of this Field Manual
Our work conceiving and building learning histories began in March
1994, when we invited people in a half-dozen companies to join
us for an ongoing practicum at MIT. Everyone was interested in
How do you take the experience and understanding
of a pilot team in an organizational learning effort, and make
it relevant to the rest of the organization?
Since then, this practicum ,the &learning historian
pioneer's group& ,has met regularly in two-
or three-day sessions to develop a practice for reaching those
ends. During these sessions, based on our experiences, we have
begun to document and evaluate the evolving body of theory, lore,
and practice of learning history work.
When we organized Reflection Learning Associates in mid-1995,
as an independent venture for conducting learning history work,
we began to incorporate material gleaned from RLA's workshops
and consulting practice.
This &field manual& represents our efforts to capture
and communicate that body of work to date. It will be continually
updated and expanded as the work is further developed and refined.}