THE DIMENSION
How an executive protects exploration, reviews strategic assumptions, and incorporates learning while maintaining essential current operations.
The dimension in context
How an executive protects exploration, reviews strategic assumptions, and incorporates learning while maintaining essential current operations.
More endorsement may describe an active cycle of experiments and reviews. Look for a traceable change in a decision or practice following the learning, rather than counting initiatives alone.
Less endorsement may reflect a period of consolidation, externally constrained operations, or a deliberate focus on reliability. Consider whether renewal responsibilities are allocated to another team.
An illustrative work situation
An executive sponsors a pilot for a new service model. The pilot generates activity and encouraging stories, but no one has agreed what result would change the rollout decision. Without that link, the initiative may continue even after its learning purpose has become unclear.
Renewal involves both exploration and the protection of essential current work. A participant who experiments frequently may still struggle to use the learning. Another may appropriately focus on consolidation during a demanding period. Reflection should examine the question being tested, the cost, and the decision that follows.
A small practice to examine
State the uncertain assumption, the smallest informative test, and the condition for stopping or expanding it. Identify the operations that must remain protected. After the test, record what the result changes and what it leaves unresolved. Distinguish a useful learning result from a commercially attractive outcome.
Continuous experimentation can fragment attention and undermine reliable delivery. Exploration needs a purpose, a bounded cost, and a path for integrating useful findings.
A question for closer study
Can researchers trace an experiment’s learning into a later executive decision rather than count initiatives alone?
Read the example alongside the research
The following editorial passages come from the linked framework chapters. They provide context for the original teaching example above; the example is fictional and is not a reported study finding.
Consider a fictional organization testing a new customer onboarding process. A pilot can become activity without learning if no one specifies what result would change the rollout decision. Before starting, name the uncertain assumption, the people affected, the information needed, and the cost the organization is willing to bear. Protect the existing service so the experiment does not silently transfer risk to participants or staff.
Continue: Renewal and learning while current operations continue →
After the pilot, separate the commercial result from the learning result. A small test might fail to improve an outcome while revealing why the proposed approach is unsuitable. Another might produce an attractive result that is too narrow or poorly observed to guide a wider decision. These examples are original teaching scenarios. They illustrate why reviewing an experiment requires more than labeling it a success or failure.
Continue: Renewal and learning while current operations continue →
March’s organizational learning model examined exploration and exploitation. Tushman and OReilly discussed organizational arrangements for evolutionary and more discontinuous change. These works concern tensions in how organizations learn and operate. They do not imply that every executive should maximize experimentation or that a personality score can identify an ideal balance. Our design translates the tension into questions about reported practices and concrete decisions.
Continue: Renewal and learning while current operations continue →
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Tushman and OReilly (1996), California Management Review ↗March (1991), Organization Science ↗