Learning Organization Defined
The learning organization is "an organization which facilitates the learning of all its members and continuously transforms itself." - "Towards the Learning Company", Pedler M., Boydell T. and Burgoyne J., 1989
Leveraging the Power of Knowledge
Learning is the key competency required by any organization that wants to survive and thrive in the new knowledge economy. Market champions keep learning how to do things better, and keep spreading that knowledge throughout their organization. Learning provides the catalyst and the intellectual resource to create a sustainable competitive advantage.
Knowledge organizations obtain competitive advantage from continuous learning, both individual and collective. In organizations with a well established knowledge management system, learning by the people within an organization becomes learning by the organization itself. The changes in people's attitudes are reflected in changes in the formal and informal rules that govern the organization's behavior.
Creating Your Future
Knowledge is most productive when it is shared by all. A learning organization is "an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future".1 It is continuously learning new ways of doing things and also (necessarily) involved in a continuous process of forgetting old ways of doing things.
Organizing Knowledge Communities
Use entrepreneurial approaches to organize knowledge communities within your organization to give it what it needs most - radical innovation. Knowledge communities organized around the principles of entrepreneurship have the best chance at success. Members of these communities - exciting, entrepreneurial, and highly profitable - would emulate entrepreneurs acting less like followers and more like empowered founders and builders of new organizational value.
To establish cross-functional knowledge communities in your organization from scratch, you may need to go through the following three stages2:
Information sharing - through task forces, cross-departmental activities, e-mail.
Cross-departmental Cooperation - through cross-functional teams
Knowledge community - a vision of knowledge community has been embraced by the organization; supportive culture and connectivity established
JIT-Style Learning and Training
The best kind of quality oriented learning (and training) is just-in-time-style learning, that is, learning that happens on the job, knowledge which is applied immediately as needed, and learning by doing. The sooner you can apply the material you learned, the better you will understand it and the longer it will be retained.
Innovative e-learning services create new opportunities for such on the job JIT-style learning and training. In particular, the first-ever Ten3 Business e-Coach provides most effective JIT-style e-learning opportunity which is available free anytime to anybody.
There is No Failure, only Feedback
The presupposition 'there is no failure, only feedback' is at the heart of the learning culture of the neuro linguistic programming ( NLP), the technology of achievement. To hold this presupposition means to treat every situation, every moment, as an opportunity to learn and to gain some new choices and flexibility. This helps the team members to improve continuously both personally and as a business.
Organization as a Set of Interconnected Subsystems
Organizations work as a set of interconnected subsystems so decisions made in one part of the business have implications for the other parts1. Managers, therefore, need to embrace the complexity of organizations rather than embracing "the pervasive reductionalism" of western culture, whereby simple answers to complex questions are always sought.
A non-threatening dialogue needs to be carried out among the employees of an organization in which some sort of consensus is reached as each employee comes to see the points of view of all the others, and begins to learn from them.
Links Between Individual Learning and Collective Learning
"The alignment of personal ambition and personal behavior can help to create inner peace, develop personal charisma and improve a person’s credibility. Attention now turns to the alignment of the personal ambition and the shared ambition of the organization. This can help to stimulate the enjoyment, active participation and of employees"7...
The Five Learning Disciplines1
The five "learning disciplines" are described as the basis of "learning organization work". They are:
Personal Mastery. Expecting people to develop their personal capacity to meet their own objectives, and thus those of the company, which in turn is organized to encourage that personal effort.
Mental Models. Developing the right "mind-set" to guide actions and decisions.
Shared Vision. Commitment of all members of the organization to its aims and its ways of achieving those objectives.
Team Learning. Exploiting the fact that group thinking is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
Systems Thinking. Acting on the understanding that actions and decisions cannot be isolated, but have ramifications throughout the organization.
Case in Point: General Electric (GE)
At General Electric (GE) the sum is greater than its parts as both business and people diversity is utilized in a most effective way. A major American enterprise with a diverse group of huge businesses, GE is steeped in a learning culture and it is this fact that makes GE a unique company.
As Jack Welch puts it: "What sets GE apart is a culture that uses diversity as a limitless source of learning opportunities, a storehouse of ideas whose breadth and richness is unmatched in world business. At the heart of this culture is an understanding that an organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive business advantage."...More
Case in Point: Sharing Knowledge - the Microsoft Approach
Bill Gates is clear that high individual knowledge is not enough in today's dynamic markets. A company also needs a high corporate IQ - intelligence, knowledge, and expertise of the company - which hinges on the facility to share information widely and enable staff members "to build on each other's ideas". This is partly a matter of storing the past, partly of exchanging current knowledge. "We read, ask questions, explore, go to lectures, compare notes and findings... consult experts, daydream, brainstorm, formulate and test hypotheses, build models and simulations, communicate what we're learning, and practice new skills," says Gates... More
Case in Point: British Petroleum - the Power of Corporate Learning
John Browne, CEO of British Petroleum is an outspoken enthusiast of the power of corporate learning. "From his perspective, learning provides the catalyst and the intellectual resource to create a competitive advantage2". Browne has developed an action plan for competitive corporate learning (see the table on your left) to spur changes in people's attitudes and ultimately formal and informal rules that govern the organization's behavior... More
Case in Point: Intel - Personal Accountability for Learning
At Intel, employees must take personal accountability for learning and building their skills. Intel provides the resources to support learning through its training programs and career centers. employees must understand their own performance reviews, as well as their own goals and objectives, and lay out a plan that addresses both.
Case in Point: Dell Computer Corporation
Dell start their innovation process with asking their customers, "What would you really want this thing to do? Is there a different way to accomplish that?" Then they meet with their suppliers and ask, "Can we do this in a different way?" Then they try to come up with a totally different approach that exceeds the original objectives.
To continually bring information from the outside world into Dell, with an eye toward staying as competitive as they can, Chairman and CEO of the Dell Computer Corporation uses a variety of innovative approaches. He says, "I also enjoy roaming around outside the company to see what people think of us. On the Web, nobody knows I'm a CEO. I'll hang out in chatrooms where actual users commonly chat about Dell and our competitors. I listen to their conversations as they discuss their purchases and their likes and dislikes. It's a tremendous learning opportunity."1...