The Learning Edge:

How Smart Managers and Smart Companies Stay Ahead

by Calhoun Wick and Lu Stanton Leon

In today's business world, competitive advantage is achieved only when executives, managers, and their organizations are able to harness the power of knowledge by promoting and maximizing intentional learning at work. Based on the authors' rigorous 12-year study, this essential guide provides a dynamic blueprint for implementing intentional learning in the workplace, both individually and company-wide.

Drawing on interviews with today's business leaders, The Learning Edge reveals where and how the best learning occurs, and shows what you should be learning to increase your value to your firm and to position yourself for future success. With the aid of charts, graphs, and personal action plans, the book reveals the five S.M.A.R.T. components essential to the learning process, including how you can:

• Select a learning goal.
• Map out a detailed learning plan.
• Act on your plan to make learning part of your daily routine
• Review what you've accomplished and evaluate what you've learned
• Target your next learning goal

At the same time, The Learning Edge examines the cutting-edge practices of Eastman Kodak, Corning, Motorola, Boeing, J.P. Morgan and other pacesetters to reveal how any company can transform itself into a flexible and responsive learning organization that consistently out-thinks and out-maneuvers the competition. Detailed yet far-reaching, The Learning Edge arms both you and your organization with the tools and processes that are critical to individual and corporate success.

Book Reviews

Fortune magazine recently proclaimed that "the most successful corporation of the 1990's will be something called a learning organization." Today, more than ever before, knowledge is power, and organizations facing global competitive pressure must consistently harness this power and maximize employees' learning to survive.

The Learning Edge responds to this new market reality with a dynamic, concrete approach managers and executives can use to take charge of their own futures, by turning on-the-job experiences into learning opportunities, and discovering how to lead others to grow and to learn. This insightful guide shows that the competitive advantage for today's forward-looking managers lies at the point where work and learning converge to produce greater productivity. It explains where the best learning occurs, discloses what managers must learn to add value to their organization, and presents a five-step process for "Becoming Your Best at Work" by: Mastering the art of intentional learning; Performing a learning audit; Building developmental learning teams; Motivating employees to stretch and take risks; Growing on the job despite the lack of top-level support.

Paperback - 232 pages
McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing; ISBN: 0070700834