Question 1: What is your opinion on DOUGLAS'S ANSWER to the QUESTIONS below?
DOUGLAS'S ANSWER:
Coca-Cola is a learning organization and takes this very seriously. They have a division entitled Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which is charged with strategizing on how to keep the century old company relevant. The company has learned not only to increase their global scale, but also attain the agility of smaller companies. Much of this has been done through the use of local bottle distributorships. The Vice President for Innovation and Entrepreneurship who joined Coca-Cola in 2004 stated "my mandate was to help the company focus on design: to develop a vision, strategy, and approach to ensure it was getting the most value of design." (Butler and Tishler, pgs 5-6 2015)
In order for the company to evaluate the value of a design, this must be analyzed using data sets. This shows an earnest effort to achieve results through the use of lessons learned and an active philosophy of a learning organization.
The company takes this lesson about scale and agility a step further. Coca-Cola has a platform titled Coca-Cola Founders which pairs Coca-Cola, a large scale company with a startup organization before they even start. This teams Coca-Cola with a company that will certainly be agile. David Butler relates about his company that "we've spent the last two years experimenting and learning." (Butler, 2014)
Butler, David and Tishler, Linda; Design to Grow pg 5-6, retrieved from
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Grow-Coca-Cola-Learned-Combine/dp/1451671822#reader_1451671822
Butler, David Coca-Colacompany.com; Learning to Be Lean: 5 Lessons Coca-Cola Has Learned About Building Startups (Oct 29, 2014), retrieved from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/learning-to-be-lean-5-lessons-coca-cola-has-learned-about-building-startups/
QUESTIONS:
We have studied the relationship between Feedback Loops and Organizational Learning (OL).
Please describe the extent to which you believe your chosen "100 Best" organization is also a "Learning Organization." If so, how does your organization "learn"? What has your organization "learned," and through what mechanism(s)?
2) What is your opinion on CHRISTOPHER'S ANSWER to the QUESTIONS above?
CHRISTOPHER'S ANSWER:
In my opinion, Mattel is NOT a "Learning Organization". After reviewing the past few annual reports, I would say that Mattel learns by consistently failing. In fact, they were overtaken by Lego as the world's largest toy manufactures (Solomon, 2014). I'm not sure why Mattel was considered "100 Best", because the more I have investigated them, the worse they appear. This is no more apparent in 2014 when the overall market grew for toymakers, but the sales for Mattel dropped by 7% (Mattel Online, 2015). After a thorough search of their website and annual reports, I can find no information on how (or if) Mattel learns. I can only assume that Mattel learns of their consistent failures by reviewing the losses and value decreases that are highlighted on their annual reports.
References:
Mattel Online. (2015). Mattel 2014 annual report. Retrieved from https://corporate.mattel.com/
Solomon, B. (2014). Everything is awesome: Lego leaps Barbie for world's largest toy maker. Retrieved from
www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/09/04/everything-is-awesome-lego-leaps-barbie-for-worlds-largest-toy-maker/