Chapter 3 The Learning Organization

Daniel H. Kim’s definition of learning: Knowledge is the know-why and skill is the
know-how. Kim suggests that the learning process is a wheel. When we are
testing our concepts and observing what happens in a concrete experience, we
are learning know-how. When we are reflecting on our observations and forming
concepts, we are learning know-why.

Communities of practice per Etienne Wenger, of the Institute for Research on

Learning: His experience as claims processor in a large insurance company, an
example of community of practice.

This supposedly routine job gives rise to a very complex social

community. In order to work together, claim processors have established a
versatile web of informal networks. Through exchanging questions, meeting in
hallways, telling stories, negotiating the meaning of events, inventing and sharing
new ways of doing things, conspiring, debating and recalling the past, they
complement each other’s information and together construct a shared
understanding of their environment and work.

In fact, the claims processors’ ability to learn and perform their jobs
depends on their community – its shared memories, routines, improvisations,
innovations and connections to the world. The company functions within and
without and sometimes in spite of the company’s official organizational and
procedural networks.

In theory, then

If the individual wheels of learning always turn rapidly and smoothly,

If individual mental models are constantly shaped, challenged, and reshaped,

If the accumulated know-why and know-how of the organization is always

shared efficiently and effectively,

If the social communities of practice always remain intact and strong,

Then the organization learns and thrives at least, according to learning

organization theory.

Three approaches: how to diagnose and cure learning deficiencies in your

organization –
Approach #1: Learning to reflect and communicate

Chris Argyris and Donald Schon are interested in two related problems that
inhibit both individual and organizational learning: (1) our failure to recognize and
challenge the mental models that control our actions, and (2) our failure to make
our assumptions clear to others and to help them do the same. Argyris and
Schon propose remedies for both problems in terms of two types of learning
skills they say we all need to develop: (1) reflection - slowing down our thinking
process to become more aware of our mental models, and (2) inquiry - being
more open about the assumptions behind our actions and helping others to do
the same.

Photocopy exhibit 3.10 Chris Argyris’s Model I

How to avoid sticky situations and continue learning

The words are tough, sticky and confrontational, but, in Argyris’s opinion,
necessary. “The idea,” he writes, is to increase the other’s capacity to examine
their defensive reasoning and the unrecognized negative consequences.

Photocopy exhibit 3.11 how to inject more inquiry into our conversations

Approach #2 Learning Systems Thinking

MIT professors Jay W. Forrester and Peter Senge are confident that most of our
if-then interpretations of the world are wrong most of the time and that the
benefits of the learning organization would flow to us if we could only grasp our
wrongheadedness.

The loopiness of the world

Our system theorists argue that the world is a loopy place where cause and
effect go around and around like a long winding spring of causality.

Information > action>result and so on…

In systems composed of many interacting feedback loops and longtime delays,

causes of an observed symptom may come from an entirely different part of the
system and lie far back in time.

We fail to make the proper connection between the true cause-and-effect

relationship in any given situation.

Photocopy Exhibit 3.14 pp.110-117.

Kets de Vries noted that when he interviewed global business leaders about how
they had learned to lead, they all told him similar stories. They told about being
sent, in their late twenties or early thirties, on a challenging mission to set up a
plant, restructure a sales office, arrange a joint venture, or complete some other
assignment that caused them sleepless nights. It was by sweating those tough
assignments that they learned.

Senge uses computer simulations to create what he calls “practice fields” or

“learning labs” in which people can test their mental models and see system
dynamics operate in a risk-free environment. These computerized and interactive
business games, entitled Microworlds and Simuworlds, allow current and future
leaders to practice running businesses the same way pilots use flight simulators
to practice maneuvers without worrying about crashing.

Approach #3 Creating the learning culture

The chief architect of learning cultures, MIT professor Edgar H. Schein defines
organizational culture as “the accumulation of prior learning based on prior
success” and “a pattern of basic assumptions… invented, discovered, or
developed by a given group… as it learns to cope with its problems… that has
worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore… is to be taught to
new members as the… correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to
those problems.”

McGregor’s Theory Y – the assumption that people are willing and able to work
and make contributions to organizations is still overridden in most organizations
by the clinical assumptions of Theory X that people are basically lazy and have to
be motivated and controlled by management.

We need, says Schein, a psychologically safe haven where learning can occur.

Safe havens encourage learning

These havens would be “parallel systems” that would exist alongside or within
the organization. Schein sees the CEO as being the initial learner and the
parallel system being composed of a group surrounding the CEO. These parallel
systems would eventually be networked with consultants, research centers, and
other parallel organizations to form giant learning consortiums.