Four Approaches to Learning from Experience

Investigates what lies behind the cliche that “managers learn from experience”. Reviews a project undertaken with 21 directors in 15 organizations in the United Kingdom, who were interviewed over a period of three months about their experiences at work and what they had learned from them. Shows the possibility of enhancing capacity to learn from experience through an improved analysis of the alternative ways in which managers approach their experiences. The apparently obvious proposition that managers learn in hindsight by looking at the experiences they have had and, much less frequently, learn by identifying in advance learning opportunities needs to be turned into a more discriminating analysis. Instead, shows that there are four approaches: (1) Intuitive; (2) Incidental; (3) Retrospective; and (4) Prospective. Offers a description of each of these Four Approaches and presents examples of the thinking involved in each description. In addition presents a case in which four different individuals illustra...