Learn or Die

"This book does a beautiful job bringing together the most important ideas in organizational learning, established by academics and practitioners over the past thirty years or more, into one place."

—Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

"An excellent book. In Learn or Die, Edward D. Hess captures a central element to enhancing and sustaining success as a business organization or as one of its leaders—being a high-performance learning organization. This book is a thought-provoking study of the technological advances making this need ever more relevant and provides a comprehensive roadmap of the culture, leadership, employee learning behaviors, HR policies and other organizational processes necessary to build and lead such an organization."

—Roger Carlile, Executive Vice President and CFO, FTI Consulting

"Learn or Die is a thoughtful and easy-to-read synthesis of the leading thinking on organizational and individual learning. Not only does Hess neatly summarizes what a savvy business person needs to know, but he also provides practical suggestions that will allow the reader to take action. This book contains essential lessons on an important topic—I highly recommend it."

—Joe Timko, Chief Strategy Officer, ADP

"Learn or Die is a tremendous look into the requirements of high performance individual and team learning. Ed Hess does a masterful job of conveying that learning happens best in a humanistic work environment, enabled by leaders who in reality are great coaches striving to serve others. Learn or Die will help anyone who wants to improve themselves—it changes the game."

—Sam Presti, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Oklahoma City Thunder

"The smart money is on innovation, which depends on personal and group learning. Ed Hess combines a tour d’horizon of what is known about individual learning and about conducive environments for organizational learning with fascinating case studies of companies who use learning to win. Any leader who needs to encourage innovation will find information and reflections that will be both humbling and inspiring."

—Michael Balay, Head of Global Strategy, Cargill, Inc.

"Learn or Die in a masterful manner makes it clear that consistent business growth can only be achieved through learning—there is no other way—and that the pace of business change today requires a scientific approach to building a high performance learning organization. For those responsible for leading, Learn or Die should be mandatory reading."

—Terry S. Brown, Chairman & CEO, Edens Investment Trust

"Learn or Die allows the reader to not only to visualize the future, but also, and more importantly, to create the future by unleashing the power and potential of building a learning organization. It has been demonstrated that strategies, systems and processes can be copied by others, yet a company’s people, and the way they learn, are true differentiators. Ed Hess captures the essence of a high performing organization and shares his “secret sauce” through an actionable blueprint for becoming a leading-edge learner and creating a high performing organization."

—Jeffrey S. Shuman, Senior Vice President, Quest Diagnostics