Individual successes are measured by getting the job done, accomplishing assigned tasks, and executing. Long term organizational success though depends on being able to leverage those individual successes through the execution of scalable, repeatable, definable processes and systems. Through leveraging institutional learning, the organization is able to incrementally improve efficiency and performance.
Organizations that do not follow effective processes are typically marked by indecisiveness, poor continuity, ineffective forecasting, inadequate visioning, misunderstanding of core competency, and lack of effective focus on critical tasks (among other difficulties). While, there may be talented people in these inefficient organizations, the potential of those talents is not fully utilized. Individuals are constantly faced with “reinventing the wheel” and do not have effective mechanisms for tapping into the vast knowledge and experience of prior organizational learning (or even of others currently in the organization).
This is not about defining procedures. Improving processes through lessons learned (better ways of doing business) is essential. To sustain strengths and improve weaknesses an organization needs to actively seek better ways of doing business. For the organization to be able to extract those lessons from team members there needs to be 1) an environment that truly values team accomplishments as well as individual contributions, 2) a culture where team members believe their input matters and 3) trust and respect that the identification of lessons (that may reflect past failures) will be rewarded rather than punished. Note that learning and incorporating lessons into the process requires more than simply identifying the potential lessons.
