Organizational Learning

Dealing with Complexity, Chaos and Change

Learning Organizations

Learning organizations are not simply the most fashionable or current management trend, they can
provide work environments that are open to creative thought, and embrace the concept that solutions
to ongoing workrelated problems are available inside each and every one of us. All we must do is tap
into the knowledge base, which gives us the "ability to think critically and creatively, the ability to
communicate ideas and concepts, and the ability to cooperate with other human beings in the process
of inquiry and action.

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Why Organizational Learning? The “C” Words

Complexity: Situations that are difficult to understand, have considerable ambiguity and uncertainty,
and often have no

“Solutions,” only options.

Chaos: Seemingly random events that have an underlying pattern (which is difficult to discern)

Change: turbulent environments in which the future is difficult to predict or control

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“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.”

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6 Practices of Organizations That Learn and Adapt to Complexity,

Chaos, Change
Understand, communicate the “main thing” that is central to success

Create alignment around the main thing by giving everyone “line of sight”
Utilize multiple perspectives to gain a systems understanding

Defer to expertise

Maintain fluid communications across permeable boundaries

Support continual training, learning and practice

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Learning Organizations

Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge (1990)

A learning organization is a place where people are continually discovering how they create their reality.

Innovate an invention to replicate at a meaningful scale and cost

Learning Organizations

Lifelong learning

Never arrive

Always in a state of practicing

Becoming better and worse

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Components of Learning Organizations

1. Systems thinking

2. Personal mastery

3. Mental models

4. Building shared vision

5. Team learning
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Learning Organization

A learning organization is one that seeks to create its own future; that assumes learning is an ongoing
and creative process for its members; and one that develops, adapts, and transforms itself in response
to the needs and aspirations of people, both inside and outside itself

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SYSTEMS THINKING

Systems Thinking - the ability to see the big picture, and to distinguish patterns instead of
conceptualizing change as isolated events.

Systems thinking needs the other four disciplines to enable a learning organization to be realized.

There must be a paradigm shift – from being unconnected to interconnected to the whole, and from
blaming our problems on something external to a realization that how we operate, our actions, can
create solutions

Personal Mastery - begins "by becoming committed to lifelong learning," and is the spiritual cornerstone
of a learning organization.

Personal Mastery involves being more realistic, focusing on becoming the best person possible, and
striving for a sense of commitment and excitement in our careers to facilitate the realization of potential
- deeply aware of growth areas and tension between vision and reality

Mental Models must be managed because they do prevent new powerful insights and organizational
practices from becoming implemented. ? The process begins with self-reflection; unearthing deeply held
belief structures and generalizations, and understanding how they dramatically influence the way we
operate in our own lives. Until there is realization and a focus on openness, real change can never take
place

Building Shared Visions - visions cannot be dictated because they always begin with the personal visions
of individual employees, who may not agree with the leader's vision. What is needed is a genuine vision
that elicits commitment in good times and bad, and has the power to bind an organization together. As
Peter Seng contends, “building shared vision fosters a commitment to the long term"

Team Learning - is important because modern organizations operate on the basis of teamwork, which
means that organizations cannot learn if team members do not come together and learn.

It is a process of developing the ability to create desired results; to have a goal in mind and work
together to attain it.

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Journey of Learning Organization

A learning organization does away with the mindset that it is only senior management who can and do
all the thinking for an entire corporation. Learning organizations challenge all employees to tap into
their inner resources and potential, in hopes that they can build their own community based on
principles of liberty, humanity, and a collective will to learn.

Stage one is to create a communications system to facilitate the exchange of information, the basis on
which any learning organization is built. The use of technology has and will continue to alter the
workplace by enabling information to flow freely, and to "provide universal access to business and
strategic information". It is also important in clarifying the more complex concepts into more precise
language that is understandable across departments

Stage Two is to organize a readiness questionnaire, a tool that assesses the distance between where an
organization is and where it would like to be, in terms of the following seven dimensions. "Providing
continuous learning, providing strategic leadership, promoting inquiry and dialogue, encouraging
collaboration and team learning, creating embedded structures for capturing and sharing learning,

Empowering people toward a shared vision, and making systems connections". The questionnaire is
administered to all employees or a sample of them, and is used to develop an assessment profile to
design the learning organization initiative.

Stage Three is to commit to developing, maintaining, and facilitating an atmosphere that garners
learning. ? Stage Four is to create a vision of the organization and write a mission statement with the
help of all employees
Stage Five is to use training and awareness programs to develop skills and understanding attitudes that
are needed to reach the goals of the mission statement, including the ability to work well with others,
become more verbal, and network with people across all departments within the organization

Stage Six is to "communicate a change in the company's culture by integrating human and technical
systems“

Stage Seven is to initiate the new practices by emphasizing team learning and contributions. As a result,
employees will become more interested in self-regulation and management, and be more prepared to
meet the challenges of an everchanging workplace

Stage Eight is to allow employees to question key business practices and assumptions.

Stage Nine is to develop workable expectations for future actions

Stage Ten is to remember that becoming a learning organization is a long process and that small
setbacks should be expected. It is the journey that is the most important thing because it brings
everyone together to work as one large team. In addition, it has inherent financial benefits by turning
the workplace into a well-run and interesting place to work; a place which truly values its employees.

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A Learning Organization Is Where people continually expand their

capacity to create the results they truly desire
Where new patterns of thinking are nurtured

Where collective aspiration is set free

Where people are continually learning to see the whole together

“When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the
meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of
being connected, of being generative.”

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