As a group navigates this crisis, it begins to function as a whole, as opposed to working at cross-purposes, and a synergy develops. This alignment within groups is needed for team learning to occur. Thus, dialogue allows for the transformation of organizations, with members moving from individual, competing parts that are walled off from one another and reacting to external factors, to a collective, generative, boundary-crossing group engaged in double loop learning. It is important to capture group learning and make it a part of a knowledge repository that employees can access easily. If the learning of individuals is not transferred to the group or from the group to the organization, the learning will be lost.
Institutional memory allows for new learning to build on past learning.
Memory is not simply a storage device but an active component of learning as our mental models shape how we act. Organizations with large turnover experience problems with learning because maintaining the shared models that allow for group learning becomes difficult. Teams need to share their learning across time and across vertical, horizontal, external, and geographic boundaries. By sharing learning across boundaries, it become less person-dependent and more embedded in the systems of the organization. The learning organization, with its emphasis on team learning may be the model of the future for organizations that champion generative learning over adaptive learning.