Page 222 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

THE WHY OF WORK

• • Create cases from the higher-scoring cells for others
to draw on.
• • Move talent from higher- to lower-scoring business
units.
• • Create incentive systems for sharing knowledge (e.g.,
bonuses, awards).
• • Assign someone from corporate to oversee the entire
matrix process and ensure that a larger percent of
cells are 5s in each successive year.

This learning matrix offers a disciplined way to share best
practices within an organization.
When leaders use a mix of self-awareness, experimen-
tation, continuous improvement, and boundary spanning,
they help their organizations learn from rather than be over-
whelmed by change.

Principle 2: Generalize Ideas

Generalization simply means the movement of ideas or
knowledge across boundaries like space or time. For exam-
ple, our friend Rand readily transfers his skill at learning
languages into new geographic settings and brings his
understanding of ancient civilizations into today’s political
processes.
Most of us are not nearly this good at generalizing knowl-
edge or skills. The biggest challenge in education is not
to get kids to learn math but to get them to remember to
apply the math skills they have learned when they go to the
grocery store or restaurant. Research on continuing educa-
tion programs suggests that most participants, even though

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