Organizational Memory - How Experiential Learning Works

How Experiential Learning Works

When it comes to experiential learning, an awareness of both the explicit and tacit components of organizational memory on their own is not generally enough to create new knowledge efficiently. As a general rule, it needs to be accompanied by a focused learning phase.

Most models of experiential learning are cyclical and have three basic phases:

1. Awareness of an experience or problem situation;
2. A reflective phase within which the learner examines the OM around the experience and draws erudition from that reflection; and
3. A testing phase within which the new insights or learnings, having been integrated with the learner's own conceptual framework, are applied to a new problem situation or experience.

The concept’s starting point is that individuals or organizations seldom learn from experience, unless the experience is assessed and then assigned its own meaning in terms of individual and/or the organization’s own goals, aims, ambitions, and expectations. From these processes come insights and added meaning, which is then applied to new circumstances. The end product is better decision-making.