Yes, but does LO work? LO19109

Rol Fessenden (76234.3636@compuserve.com)
Mon, 7 Sep 1998 21:26:58 -0400

Replying to LO19073 --

T. J. Elliott quotes Senge, "The rationale for any strategy for building a
LO revolves around the premise that such organizations will produce
dramatically improved results, compared to more traditional
organizations."

To my simple mind, "dramatically improved results" applies to resource use
(money, people), and peoples' satisfaction, whether customer-type people,
employee-type people, or other stakeholder-type people. There are
numerous devices to measure customer and employee satisfaction, but no
standards that I am aware of. Stakeholder satisfaction for others than
customers and employees is hardly recognized in any business literature.
Resource use can be measured by return on sales ( work productivity),
return on equity (investment productivity), return on employee (people
productivity), and return on assets (asset productivity). No single
measure will be effective. Short term measurement is not valid. Stock
price is universally available, and so it is appealing. Unfortunately, it
is heavily influenced by market issues that have little to do with
learning. Witness the dither over Viagara. Of course, there is research
there, but that is not corporate learning. They just have a
market-beating idea, and it is having a big influence on stock price.

-- 

Rol Fessenden

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