The Learning Organization
EmPower Research
July 15, 2007
By Ravi G., Sr. Media Analyst
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be the individual who cannot read and write, but the one who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” - Alvin Toffler.
Organizations, like individuals, also learn. Many of the fundamental phenomena of learning are the same for organizations… however, organizational learning also has distinctive characteristics with reference to what is learned, how it is learned, and the adjustments called for to enhance learning. These derive from the fact that any organization by definition is a collective unit, with individuals and larger units in different roles. This involves different perspectives and values, passing information through their own filters, with noisy and loss-prone information channels connecting them.
Given below are some characteristics of a learning organization:
Sharing the vision
An organizational plan or strategy that expects or requires people to change and grow
Strategy formulated in a participative way
The vision is known and shared
People are constantly scanning for new developments and initiatives, and using these to improve the ways in which they plan and function
Supporting initiative and flexibility
People are encouraged to take initiative in their work
The organization’s structures encourage team working and peer support
The organization is flexible, so that people can move across departmental or functional boundaries easily
Developing people
The organization rewards people for initiative and risk-taking
People are recognized for putting effort into developing themselves
People are appreciated for helping to develop others
Open to ideas
There is a general sense of learning and developing
Ideas can be introduced by anyone, regardless of grade or level
The organization is open to new ideas from outside.
A Learning Organization is “where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together". It means the continuous testing of experience and the transformation of that experience into knowledge – accessible to the whole organization and relevant to its core purposes. “Senge P. 1990 The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization”.
The Learning organization is a vision of what might be possible. It is not brought about simply by training individuals; it can only happen as a result of learning at the whole organization level. It is an organization that facilitates the learning of all its members and continuously transforms itself. (Pedler et. al)
A learning organization is not just about 'more training'. While training does help develop certain types of skills, a learning organization entails the development of knowledge and skills spread across divergent levels, involving:
Learning facts, knowledge, processes and procedures. Applicable to known situations where changes are minor.
Learning new job skills those are transferable to other situations - applicable to new situations where existing responses need to be changed.
Learning to adapt - applicable to more dynamic situations where the solutions need developing.
Experimentation and deriving lessons from success and failure is the mode of learning here.
Learning to learn is about innovation and creativity; designing the future rather than merely adapting to it. This is where assumptions are challenged and knowledge is reframed.
This model or adaptation of it can be applied at three levels - to individuals, teams and organizational. Organizations that achieve learning to Level 4 will "reinvent not just their organization but their industry" (Hamel and Prahalad, Competing for the Future)
To become learning organization is to accept a set of attitudes, values and practices that support the process of continuous learning within the organization. Through learning, individuals can re-interpret their world and their relationship to it. A true learning culture continuously challenges its own methods and ways of doing things. This ensures continuous improvement and the capacity to change. There is a strong similarity with those characteristics associated with innovation which call for an organizational climate that nurtures learning.
Requiring future, external orientation.
Free exchange and flow of information - systems that are in place to ensure that expertise is available when and where it is needed; individuals network extensively, crossing organizational boundaries to develop their knowledge and expertise.
Commitment to learning, personal development - support from top management; people at all levels encouraged to learn regularly; learning is rewarded. Time to think and learn (understanding, exploring, reflecting, developing).
Valuing people: ideas, creativity and "imaginative capabilities" are stimulated, made use of and developed.
Climate of openness and trust - individuals are encouraged to develop ideas, to speak out, to challenge actions.
Learning from experience - learning from mistakes is often more powerful than learning from success. Failure is tolerated, provided lessons are learnt ("learning from past failure" - Peters).
This necessitates processes that encourage interaction across boundaries. These are infrastructure, development and management processes, as opposed to business operational processes.
Strategic and scenario planning - approaches to planning that go beyond the numbers, encourage challenging assumptions, thinking 'outside of the box'.
Team and organization development - the use of facilitators to help groups with work, job and organization design and team development - reinforcing values, developing vision, cohesiveness and a climate of stretching goals, sharing and support.
Performance measurement - finding appropriate measures and indicators of performance; ones that provide a 'balanced scorecard' and encourage investment in learning (Example; Measuring Intellectual Capital).
Reward and recognition systems - processes and systems that recognize acquisition of new skills, team-work as well as individual effort, celebrate successes and accomplishments, and encourages continuous personal development.
Information and knowledge management - using techniques to identify, audit, value (cost/benefit), develop and exploit information as a resource ; use of collaboration processes and methods.
Capability Planning - profiling both qualitatively and quantitatively the competencies of the organization. Profiling these on a matrix can be helpful to planning adjustment.
For which we need methods that aid individual and group learning, like creativity and problem solving techniques. This can be broken into:
Problem definition - including problem analysis, re-definition, and all aspects associated with defining the problem clearly.
Idea generation - The divergent process of coming up with ideas.
Idea selection - The convergent process of reducing all the many ideas into realistic solutions.
Idea implementation - Turning the refined ideas in reality.
Processes - Schemes and techniques which look at the overall process from start to finish entailing.
Inquiry - interviewing, seeking information.
Creativity - brainstorming, associating ideas.
Making sense of situations - organizing information and thoughts.
Making choices - deciding courses of action.
Observing outcomes - recording, observation.
Reframing knowledge - embedding new knowledge into mental models, memorizing
Collective learning requires skills for sharing information and knowledge, particularly implicit knowledge, assumptions and beliefs that are traditionally "beneath the surface". Key skills here are:
Communication, especially across organizational boundaries
Listening and observing
Mentoring and supporting colleagues
Taking a holistic perspective - seeing the team and organization as a whole
Coping with challenge and uncertainty
Some of the most common obstacles to becoming a learning organization are:
Operational/fire fighting preoccupation - not creating time to sit back and think strategically
Too focused on systems and process to exclusion of other factors (bureaucratic vs. thinking)
Reluctance to train (or invest in training), other than for obvious immediate needs
Too many hidden personal agendas
Too many top-down driven, over tight supervision - lack of real empowerment
Working in a learning organization is far from being a slave to a job that is unsatisfying. Rather it is seeing one’s work as part of a whole, a system where there are interrelationships and processes that depend on each other. Consequently, awakened workers take risks in order to learn, and they understand how to seek enduring solutions to problems instead of quick fixes. Lifelong commitment to high quality work can result when teams work together to capitalize on the synergy of the continuous group learning for optimal performance. Those in learning organizations are not slaves to routine, but serve others in effective ways because they are well-prepared for change and working with others.
Organizational learning involves individual learning, and those who make the shift from traditional organization thinking to learning organizations develop the ability to think critically and creatively. These skills transfer nicely to the values and assumptions inherent in organization development, and enhance the lifelong learning process.
References:
The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization, Senge P. (1990).
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization, Peter M.Senge, C. Roberts, R.B. Ross, B.J. Smith, A. Kleiner, Nicholas Brierley (1994).
Competing for the Future, Hamel and Prahalad - Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass. ( 1994).
A Concise Guide to the Learning Organization - Managing change and learning is the No 1 task - wherever you work, Pedler Mike and Aspinwall Kath (1998).
The Organizational Learning Cycle, Nancy Dixon, McGraw-Hill (1994).
The Learning Organisation, Bob Garratt, Harper-Collins, (1994).
The Learning Company: a Strategy for Sustainable Development, Mike Pedler, John Burgoyne & Tom Boydell, McGraw-Hill (1991).
Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone, Joseph A Raelin, Berrett-Koehler Pub, (2003).
Society for Organizational Learning: www.solonline.org
www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm
The Learning Organization Meme: Emergence of a Management Replicator or Parrots, Patterns and Performance- http://members.aol.com/ifprice/ppatperf.html
www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk/go_further/learn_as_organisations/learn_as_organisations/default.aspx
www.knowledgepassion.com
www.mycoted.com
www.mindtools.com
www.businessballs.com
And various other sites.
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be the individual who cannot read and write, but the one who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” - Alvin Toffler.
Organizations, like individuals, also learn. Many of the fundamental phenomena of learning are the same for organizations… however, organizational learning also has distinctive characteristics with reference to what is learned, how it is learned, and the adjustments called for to enhance learning. These derive from the fact that any organization by definition is a collective unit, with individuals and larger units in different roles. This involves different perspectives and values, passing information through their own filters, with noisy and loss-prone information channels connecting them.
Given below are some characteristics of a learning organization:
Sharing the vision
An organizational plan or strategy that expects or requires people to change and grow
Strategy formulated in a participative way
The vision is known and shared
People are constantly scanning for new developments and initiatives, and using these to improve the ways in which they plan and function
Supporting initiative and flexibility
People are encouraged to take initiative in their work
The organization’s structures encourage team working and peer support
The organization is flexible, so that people can move across departmental or functional boundaries easily
Developing people
The organization rewards people for initiative and risk-taking
People are recognized for putting effort into developing themselves
People are appreciated for helping to develop others
Open to ideas
There is a general sense of learning and developing
Ideas can be introduced by anyone, regardless of grade or level
The organization is open to new ideas from outside.
A Learning Organization is “where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together". It means the continuous testing of experience and the transformation of that experience into knowledge – accessible to the whole organization and relevant to its core purposes. “Senge P. 1990 The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization”.
The Learning organization is a vision of what might be possible. It is not brought about simply by training individuals; it can only happen as a result of learning at the whole organization level. It is an organization that facilitates the learning of all its members and continuously transforms itself. (Pedler et. al)
A learning organization is not just about 'more training'. While training does help develop certain types of skills, a learning organization entails the development of knowledge and skills spread across divergent levels, involving:
Learning facts, knowledge, processes and procedures. Applicable to known situations where changes are minor.
Learning new job skills those are transferable to other situations - applicable to new situations where existing responses need to be changed.
Learning to adapt - applicable to more dynamic situations where the solutions need developing.
Experimentation and deriving lessons from success and failure is the mode of learning here.
Learning to learn is about innovation and creativity; designing the future rather than merely adapting to it. This is where assumptions are challenged and knowledge is reframed.
This model or adaptation of it can be applied at three levels - to individuals, teams and organizational. Organizations that achieve learning to Level 4 will "reinvent not just their organization but their industry" (Hamel and Prahalad, Competing for the Future)
To become learning organization is to accept a set of attitudes, values and practices that support the process of continuous learning within the organization. Through learning, individuals can re-interpret their world and their relationship to it. A true learning culture continuously challenges its own methods and ways of doing things. This ensures continuous improvement and the capacity to change. There is a strong similarity with those characteristics associated with innovation which call for an organizational climate that nurtures learning.
Requiring future, external orientation.
Free exchange and flow of information - systems that are in place to ensure that expertise is available when and where it is needed; individuals network extensively, crossing organizational boundaries to develop their knowledge and expertise.
Commitment to learning, personal development - support from top management; people at all levels encouraged to learn regularly; learning is rewarded. Time to think and learn (understanding, exploring, reflecting, developing).
Valuing people: ideas, creativity and "imaginative capabilities" are stimulated, made use of and developed.
Climate of openness and trust - individuals are encouraged to develop ideas, to speak out, to challenge actions.
Learning from experience - learning from mistakes is often more powerful than learning from success. Failure is tolerated, provided lessons are learnt ("learning from past failure" - Peters).
This necessitates processes that encourage interaction across boundaries. These are infrastructure, development and management processes, as opposed to business operational processes.
Strategic and scenario planning - approaches to planning that go beyond the numbers, encourage challenging assumptions, thinking 'outside of the box'.
Team and organization development - the use of facilitators to help groups with work, job and organization design and team development - reinforcing values, developing vision, cohesiveness and a climate of stretching goals, sharing and support.
Performance measurement - finding appropriate measures and indicators of performance; ones that provide a 'balanced scorecard' and encourage investment in learning (Example; Measuring Intellectual Capital).
Reward and recognition systems - processes and systems that recognize acquisition of new skills, team-work as well as individual effort, celebrate successes and accomplishments, and encourages continuous personal development.
Information and knowledge management - using techniques to identify, audit, value (cost/benefit), develop and exploit information as a resource ; use of collaboration processes and methods.
Capability Planning - profiling both qualitatively and quantitatively the competencies of the organization. Profiling these on a matrix can be helpful to planning adjustment.
For which we need methods that aid individual and group learning, like creativity and problem solving techniques. This can be broken into:
Problem definition - including problem analysis, re-definition, and all aspects associated with defining the problem clearly.
Idea generation - The divergent process of coming up with ideas.
Idea selection - The convergent process of reducing all the many ideas into realistic solutions.
Idea implementation - Turning the refined ideas in reality.
Processes - Schemes and techniques which look at the overall process from start to finish entailing.
Inquiry - interviewing, seeking information.
Creativity - brainstorming, associating ideas.
Making sense of situations - organizing information and thoughts.
Making choices - deciding courses of action.
Observing outcomes - recording, observation.
Reframing knowledge - embedding new knowledge into mental models, memorizing
Collective learning requires skills for sharing information and knowledge, particularly implicit knowledge, assumptions and beliefs that are traditionally "beneath the surface". Key skills here are:
Communication, especially across organizational boundaries
Listening and observing
Mentoring and supporting colleagues
Taking a holistic perspective - seeing the team and organization as a whole
Coping with challenge and uncertainty
Some of the most common obstacles to becoming a learning organization are:
Operational/fire fighting preoccupation - not creating time to sit back and think strategically
Too focused on systems and process to exclusion of other factors (bureaucratic vs. thinking)
Reluctance to train (or invest in training), other than for obvious immediate needs
Too many hidden personal agendas
Too many top-down driven, over tight supervision - lack of real empowerment
Working in a learning organization is far from being a slave to a job that is unsatisfying. Rather it is seeing one’s work as part of a whole, a system where there are interrelationships and processes that depend on each other. Consequently, awakened workers take risks in order to learn, and they understand how to seek enduring solutions to problems instead of quick fixes. Lifelong commitment to high quality work can result when teams work together to capitalize on the synergy of the continuous group learning for optimal performance. Those in learning organizations are not slaves to routine, but serve others in effective ways because they are well-prepared for change and working with others.
Organizational learning involves individual learning, and those who make the shift from traditional organization thinking to learning organizations develop the ability to think critically and creatively. These skills transfer nicely to the values and assumptions inherent in organization development, and enhance the lifelong learning process.
References:
The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization, Senge P. (1990).
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization, Peter M.Senge, C. Roberts, R.B. Ross, B.J. Smith, A. Kleiner, Nicholas Brierley (1994).
Competing for the Future, Hamel and Prahalad - Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass. ( 1994).
A Concise Guide to the Learning Organization - Managing change and learning is the No 1 task - wherever you work, Pedler Mike and Aspinwall Kath (1998).
The Organizational Learning Cycle, Nancy Dixon, McGraw-Hill (1994).
The Learning Organisation, Bob Garratt, Harper-Collins, (1994).
The Learning Company: a Strategy for Sustainable Development, Mike Pedler, John Burgoyne & Tom Boydell, McGraw-Hill (1991).
Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone, Joseph A Raelin, Berrett-Koehler Pub, (2003).
Society for Organizational Learning: www.solonline.org
www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm
The Learning Organization Meme: Emergence of a Management Replicator or Parrots, Patterns and Performance- http://members.aol.com/ifprice/ppatperf.html
www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk/go_further/learn_as_organisations/learn_as_organisations/default.aspx
www.knowledgepassion.com
www.mycoted.com
www.mindtools.com
www.businessballs.com
And various other sites.