Analysis of Hewlett Packard as a Learning Organization - Essay Example

Analysis of Hawlett Packard as Learning Organization Introduction When we talk about the term organizational learning, the first important thing thatcomes to mind is the existence of an organization that actively inculcates the present experiences as well as the past knowledge in to meaningful insights and uses this knowledge towards future betterment of the management and flow of their business activities. For a learning organization Gravin recommends following most important activities that should be considered: i. Solving problems systematically ii. Experimenting with new approaches to work iii. Learning from past experience iv. Learning from other companies and from customers v. Transferring knowledge throughout you organization According to the organizational experts organizations are seen as learning by encoding inferences from history in to routines that guide behavior. Organizational learning enables companies to manage everything to successful in their business and to introduce improved organizational structure and working environment with in the setup, which can lead to reduced cost of production and increased productivity and growth. (Vargas-Hernández, J. G., & Noruzi, M. R, 2010). Organizational learning means the process of continuous improving actions with the availability of better knowledge and understanding. For efficient operations, organizations need to fit themselves with their environment keeping in view the strategies, capabilities and leadership skills. To meet the standards of international market and ever-growing competition, organizations also need ability to learn continuously in the changing competitive environment and to fit in the new circumstances. Otherwise the organizations can loose the competition in the international market through the lapse of time (Day, G. S, 2012) For sustainable improvement the organizations require commitment to continuous learning from the pas experiences. Organizational learning means the process of improving actions through better knowledge and understanding. Organizations are seen as learning by encoding inferences from history into routines that guide behavior. Organizational learning occurs through shared insights, knowledge, and mental models build on past knowledge and experience, that is, on memory. There are many types of organization change and development approaches, from John Kotters Leading Change methodology to Robert Schaffers Rapid Results technique. No matter which you use, success depends on how well it can be adapted to the situation at hand. At Hewlett-Packard, design thinking turned out to be the glue that held everything together. (Sato, S., Lucente, S., Meyer, D., & Mrazek, D, 2010). Hawlett Packard as Learning Organization Hewlett-Packard has practiced these ideas for more than half a century. The previous CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Lew Platt, explains: “In the HP environment, you really can’t order people to do anything. As CEO my job is to encourage people to work together, to experiment, to try things, but I can’t order them to do it. We’ve picked people who are high energy self-starters. You can’t tell them what to do. The best I can do is sort of bring people together and hope they mate.” “The philosophy of The HP Way is built on guiding rather than telling: instead of telling people what to do, real leaders focus on helping people find their own way through, adaptive challenges, problems without readily apparent solutions.” “I spend a lot of my time talking about values rather than trying to figure out the business strategies. I don’t think I realized until I became CEO and started to talk to other CEOs how different that is. The most important aspect of the management of this company is cultural control. Hp created a continuous learning environment within organization and continues to inspire measurable performance gains. The employees of the company provide software for internal operations as well as for third party software developers and other management organizations. Hp team member’s willingness to accept the notion of continuous learning and development as part of their job likely stems in part from the transitions and uncertainties they have experienced. Bob Digregorio, plant manager of Hp, said “we started with digital equipment, then later a merger by Compaq, and now we are part of Hp. The company moved through three most difficult and different corporate environments and cultures in a three year period. As a result of working with passion change proved to be the rule, not an exception for all of us. Hewlett package business intelligence maturity model consists of three dimensions namely business enablement, information technology, and strategy and program management. The business enablement dimension describes sorts of business requirements and problems that are solved with BI solutions; the information technology dimension describes information solutions a company adopts to serve differences of business needs while the strategy and program management dimension describes management skill as a key enabler and catalyst for BI success . Hewlett Package BI maturity model depicted the maturity levels from business technical aspect. This model is new and need to improve to add more technical aspects such as data-warehousing and analytical aspects. (Chuah, M., & Wong, K, 2011). Although employees at Hp have practiced some problems for some time, there’s a major difference when it is integrated with continuous learning, according to Digregorio. “The traditional approach was to ensure we kept up with changes and event,” he said as we need to move ahead of change by providing and creating readiness through learning and development, not just reacting to events. We looked at how a teaching hospital operates, what their work is, and how they learn as they treat patients, and how we can apply these concepts in our organization. We adopted out motto, “the work will teach us.” The cumulative effect is that we are flourishing on people’s minds as they act and react in various situations. Learning goes hand in hand with their teaming approach that is a critical element in their overall culture. Employees are encouraged to participate in operations leadership forum each Friday. Quarterly results were discussed and reviewed and employees share specific improvements with others. These sessions reflect the operation’s value and recognitions of continuous learning. Following on continuous learning and team based activities, a third key element in successful operation is the alignment to their overarching goals. When company found that it is disconnected from the strategic framework of the various companies it adopted the Malcolm Baldrige framework, which provide disciplined, adaptable and effective methodology to run operations. By giving importance to loyal customers company strive to improve and sustain customer service supported by predictability, customer site visit feedback, delivery, quality and other factors. Similarly participation and performance plans for teams and individuals contribute to employee’s inspiration. Also important are recognition, learning effectiveness tracking, employee satisfaction, leadership effectiveness, effective communications and other areas. (Tonkin, L. A, 2011) Learning modules designed to help employees meet current and future needs identified through corporate feedback loops. All employees are encouraged to consider courses that will help them build and develop the skills that will keep them not only current with their roles, but equally important and viable for future work according to emerging customer demand. Because identity change can be painful, it is inevitably met by resistance from those whose own interests and identities are threatened. To preempt and overcome resistance, leaders need above average political skills. The hostile reaction of influential members of the Hewlett and Packard families to the Compaq-Hewlett-Packard (HP) merger is illustrative. Although chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina’s management skills are widely recognized, she clearly underestimated how deeply rooted HP’s identity was in the personalities and values of its co-founders and, therefore, did not anticipate the amount of resistance she encountered. Similarly, Jean-Marie Messier underestimated, and failed to counter, the hostility of French intellectuals, artists and politicians to what they perceived as the Americanization of a French corporate icon. However, as the death of Moulinex shows, the personal qualities of CEOs are only part of the story. Stubborn opposition from employees and union leaders, supported by local and national politicians determined to protect jobs, can outweigh the forces of change. And as former chairman and CEO Thomas Middelhoff learned the hard way at Bertelsmann, a company deeply rooted in its origins as a family business, the commitment of key stakeholders to an organization’s identity can weigh heavily in strategic decisions. Middelhoff’s commitment to listing Bertelsmann publicly conflicted with its strong identity anchor and ultimately cost him his job (Bouchikhi, H., Kimberly, J. R., & Team, L. Y, 2012). Four levels of learning offer employees the opportunity to start at the beginning in any particular study area and progress through advanced, expert, and then mastery levels of attainments. A learning council is formed and is composed of all levels in the organization. Employees informally add their suggestions and deliver the lectures. Among the customer satisfaction and productivity boosting tools employed at Hp are demand driven execution; root cause analysis; problem solving activities and continuous learning. (Tushman, M. L., & OReilly, C. A, 2013). Through members of the organization stories are handed over to new members and to older members in new situations in which the re-told story is handed over. New events affect and revise continuously the collective organizational memory. The organizational memory can be seen as an intersubjective consensual social knowledge, which is created, maintained and revised through the employees’ stories. Organizational stories then can be seen as a medium for understanding and communication of organizational knowledge. (Berdou, E, 2010). In an organization the communication of the company’s values maintain the organizational memory through formal stories as illustrated by the case Hewlett-Packard. Informal stories contribute continuously to an adjustment of the organizational memory. Through informal stories the existing values and norms, which are maintained through the formal stories, are questioned. Thus formal and informal organizational stories’ role in relation to learning processes can be described. For the individual employee formal stories function to maintain and reinforce the existing understanding of the organizational culture, while informal stories function to give meaning to otherwise paradoxical occurrences in the organization. In this re-telling from employee to employee the organizational memory is adjusted. Although organizational learning occurs through individuals, it would be a mistake to conclude that organizational learning is nothing but the cumulative result of members’ learning. Organizations do not have brains, but they have cognitive systems and memories. As individuals develop their personalities, personal habits, and beliefs over time, organizations develop world views and ideologies. Members come and go, and leadership changes, but organizations’ memories preserve certain behaviors, mental maps, norms, and values over time (Boumgarden, P., Nickerson, J., & Zenger, T. R, 2012) It has thus been seen how the conditions for organizational learning are supported by an emphasis on value-based management. It has been seen how the founders of Hewlett Packard have practiced value-based management for decades, and that Hewlett-Packard even can be called a ‘learning organization’ according to the definitions laid out in the first part of the articleAs a result of continuous learning process Hawlett Packard has achieved following awards and recognitions: IEEE Corporate Innovation Award(2004), IEEE Milestone (for HP-35)(2009), IEEE-ISTO Corporate Award (2005), Top Corporate Citizen (2010), Named 2nd on Computerworld’s 2011 list of Top Green Companies (2011). References Berdou, E. (2010) Organization in Open Source Communities: At the Crossroads of the Gift and Market Economies (15). Taylor & Francis. Boumgarden, P., Nickerson, J., & Zenger, T. R. (2012) Sailing into the wind: Exploring the relationships among ambidexterity, vacillation, and organizational performance. Strategic Management Journal. 33(6). P. 587-610. Bouchikhi, H., Kimberly, J. R., & Team, L. Y. (2012). Escaping the identity trap. Image. Chuah, M., & Wong, K. (2011) A review of business intelligence and its maturity models. African Journal of Business Management. 5(9).p .3424-3428. Day, G. S. (2012) Aligning the Organization with the Market. Reflections on the Futures of Marketing. Franklin, E. L., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2011) International Growth and Human Resource Management Challenges: A Review of Hewlett-Packard’s Efforts to Maintain the HP Way. Journal of Business Case Studies (JBCS). 3(1).p. 5-14. Sato, S., Lucente, S., Meyer, D., & Mrazek, D. (2010) Design thinking to make organization change and development more responsive. Design Management Review, 21(2). P. 44-52. Tushman, M. L., & OReilly, C. A. (2013) Winning through innovation: A practical guide to leading organizational change and renewal. Harvard Business Press. Tonkin, L. A. (2011) Thriving on Continuous Learning at Hewlett-Packard America’s Software Manufacturing (ASM): It’s more than a strategy-it’s their culture. Sustaining Lean, 33. Vargas-Hernández, J. G., & Noruzi, M. R. (2010) How intellectual capital and learning organization can foster organizational competitiveness? International Journal of Business & Management, 5(4). Read More