What does it look like when an organization is learning? How do we know when learning is occurring? Educational institutions use tests, grades, and diplomas as indicators, but what are the indicators outside traditional educational systems?

I cannot say that I knew what learning at General Motors would look like when I first joined the organization in 1978. But I was pretty sure it was not learning I was seeing when I witnessed the plant training coordinator first reading the GM instructor's manual verbatim to a group of us new employees, then reading to the class the corporate lecturette, and, finally, “augmenting” our lesson with a video that offered only a simulation of the lecturette's key points. As I looked around the classroom of freshman foremen, I realized we were all bored and offended by this antiseptic presentation sent down from headquarters. It seemed very much removed from the pain and grime of our manufacturing lives.

Even so, the other foremen frowned with disbelief when afterward I shut down my manufacturing line and took my department into the cafeteria to teach them how all the parts they were making would be assembled into throttle body injectors. Their disapproving stares all seemed to ask the same question: “Didn't I care that I had a production quota to make?”

With a PhD in education, I had expected to be placed in the education and training department when I arrived at GM. What a relief it was not to be there.