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Organizational learning, a prerequisite for high performance in dynamic environments, is a challenge for many organizations. One set of activities shown to improve organizational learning of new work practices is learnhow. Learnhow refers to learning activities that combine experimentation, adaptationinuse, and staff participation (e.g. dry runs). This paper proposes that organizations that use learnhow not only experience projectlevel success with the implementation of new work practices, but also organizationallevel success as indicated by overall measures of performance. We tested our hypotheses in a longitudinal study of 23 hospital neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) involved in a quality improvement collaborative. The results support our hypothesis that learnhow is positively related to organizational performance, as measured by NICUs ’ riskadjusted mortality rates for 1061 infantpatients. Moreover, our data reveal that interdisciplinary collaboration mediates this relationship and has a more positive relationship to performance for organizations that perform more complex tasks. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. Key words: organizational learning, learnhow, interdisciplinary collaboration, project teams, task complexity,