Immediate performance: when results conceal a loss of learning
Within SHR — Swiss Human Resources’ “Management complexe” programme, one question deserves separate attention: how can managers assess a team’s results without encouraging it to abandon learning? The issue is not simply pressure to meet targets, but the difference in visibility between returns from established practices and the uncertain benefits of experimentation.
What the literature establishes
James G. March (1991, Organization Science) distinguishes the exploitation of existing knowledge from the exploration of new possibilities. His model shows how the more immediate and predictable returns from exploitation can lead organisations to favour it at the expense of future adaptation. It does not demonstrate that improving existing practices is a mistake: it identifies a tension between two necessary activities.
The mechanism: learning can narrow the range of possibilities
Daniel A. Levinthal and James G. March (1993, Strategic Management Journal) examine the myopias of learning, including the tendency to overlook distant horizons and failures. An organisation can therefore reinforce routines that succeed in its immediate experience without learning enough about their limitations. Observed success alone is consequently not evidence of adaptability.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that every organisation should reserve a fixed share of resources for experimentation. These studies, however, establish no universal ratio between exploration and exploitation. In healthcare or hydropower, maintaining reliability remains essential; exploration therefore requires an authorised scope, safety conditions and explicit stopping criteria. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot decide
These two articles primarily offer models and theoretical analysis, rather than a causal evaluation of a management intervention in Sion. They cannot support a promise that an experimentation budget will improve a particular team’s results. Counting ideas or trials is no more sufficient: without a record of what was learned and the resulting decision, exploratory activity remains difficult to assess.
A practical check in Sion
For an exercise in the “Management complexe” programme in Sion, a team could select a limited trial: simulating an adjustment to hydropower maintenance, testing a healthcare administrative process, trying a grape-harvest scheduling approach or testing visitor information for alpine tourism. Over a proposed six-week exercise period, each trial would be documented with a hypothesis, an observable result, safety boundaries and a final decision: continue, modify or stop. The measure would be the proportion of trials due for completion that contain all four elements, verifiable in a shared register. This indicator would check the traceability of learning, not a performance gain or an obligation to increase the number of trials. To go further: explore the Complex Management training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Complex Management in Sion
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