Whirlpool: Innovation and Organizational Learning

Margaret Driscoll, Ph.D. - 3/4/03

Three years ago, Whirlpool Corp. launched a global innovation initiative to differentiate itself from its competitors by delivering unique products and solutions to make customers’ lives easier. This initiative was far from simple sloganeering. The initia

The starting point for the redesign of learning at Whirlpool was based on the competency of innovation. The first step was to create a knowledge management (KM) culture and system. “One of the biggest challenges of developing innovation skills with knowledge management was the needed change in culture,” explained Gil Urban, lead director of global e-enabled organization services for Whirlpool Corp. “Connecting people with the need to know to people who have the knowledge or to the knowledge in the KM system is essential.”

The next step was changing expectations regarding individual training and development at Whirlpool. Employees and managers had long enjoyed a state-of-the-art training center that organized tactical training classes in desktop applications, soft skills, management training and proprietary technical and business process training. Employees had come to expect face-to-face training delivered by Whirlpool and professional trainers at a location remote from their daily place of work.

Freeing up resources and making time for the organization to develop new competencies required significant changes. The challenge was balancing demands for tactical training such as Microsoft Office, negotiation, coaching and proprietary systems skills, with the new demand for strategic skills to support the competency leadership development initiative. All of this had to be done with no additional resources! Whirlpool took three decisive steps to make resources available: reallocating internal training resources, using technology to reduce costs and measuring results at level 4. Looking back on this process, Urban said, “If you do this, start as early as possible to establish e-learning as a tool to deliver learning as part of a blended model. Stress that e-learning is part of a ‘blend’—that is, e-learning is a complement to face-to-face and not a replacement.”

The first step was to redeploy internal resources from tactical training to strategic leadership development. That meant that many of the desktop technical skills courses and soft skills courses were no longer organized centrally—individuals and functions would need to organize more of their own training.