Learning From Mistakes in Project-based Organizations

Knowledge sharing and learning play a pivotal role in improving performance in organizations. Organizational activities such as projects provide the necessary arena for creating new knowledge (knowledge exploration) as well as sharing of existing, well-proven solutions (knowledge exploitation). This can lead organizations to increase their productivity, innovation and profitability. Sustainable competitive advantage can also be gained by being keen on knowledge sharing and learning, since focusing on continuous learning and improvement can make organizations as learning organizations. Learning organizations, which are characterized as having a genuine interest, willingness and ability to learn and improve continuously, can effectively deal with typical organizational phenomena such as changes and uncertainty both reactively and pro-actively. As a result, they can quickly adapt to and master changing environments. This paper will look at the topic of learning from mistakes in an organizational context. “To err is human” – As the idiom points out how natural it is to make mistakes, organizations too are prone to make mistakes. Though mistakes can be seen as natural in organizations, it is important to look at how the person who has made a mistake as well as other relevant people can learn from the mistake. Learning from a mistake helps to avoid doing the same mistake in the future and hence contribute to save time, energy and cost. It can also trigger to find a correct or better alternative way / solution to deal with the situation at hand, resulting in providing opportunities for single- or double-loop learning. This paper will focus on (1) identifying barriers that hinder learning from own mistakes and sharing that knowledge with others and (2) how to facilitate learning from mistakes and sharing that knowledge with others in project-based organizations. The study on which this paper is based, uses qualitative research method. Data have been collected through conducting interviews with Norwegian public organizations.