COO implementing the strategy, teams may carry out this task.

This would eliminate a level in the organizational hierarchy.

The chief characteristic of teams is a shared commitment to a
common purpose. Team members share accountability not only to
each other, but also to the common aim. However, team skills
have to be learned. Not all teams succeed; in fact, many fail.
What makes successful teams? Team members need to be
trained in skills such as communication, listening, and more. They
must learn about setting team objectives, staying focused, and
making decisions that contribute not only to the team’s goals, but
also to the aims of the total organization. Moreover, the reward
system must be based on team performance and less on
individual accomplishments. Teams also need to have access to
important information (which some top managers may not want to
share), thus a culture of openness is essential. Perhaps, most
important, team training is not an individual event or a one-time
program, but a continuing process.

THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION

A learning organization is one that can adapt to changes in the
external environment through continuous renewal of its structure and
practices. Peter Senge, who popularized the concepts of the learning
organization in his book The Fifth Discipline,18 suggests five
techniques that help the organization to learn: (1) systems thinking,
(2) personal mastery, (3) mental models, (4) a shared vision, and (5)
team learning. The learning organization is generally associated with
concepts such as sharing the vision of the enterprise, self-examining
the prevailing assumptions and practices, considering radically new
organization structures, creating learning teams, and establishing
linkages with parties outside the enterprise for generating new ideas
and perspectives.

Learning organization An organization that can adapt to changes in

the external environment through continuous renewal of its structure
and practices.
 David Garvin offers the following definition: “A learning
organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and
transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new
knowledge and insights.”19 This means that organizations engage in
systematic problem solving, experimenting, and continuously
searching for new knowledge. There must also be tolerance for
failure because experimentation may not succeed; the aim is, of
course, to learn from past failures. The learning should not be
restricted to one’s own experience. One can learn a great deal from
others, inside and outside the organization. Learning from other
organizations is often achieved through benchmarking, which
requires the search for the best practices not only within the same
industry, but also in other industries. What is learned needs to be
shared through, for example, reports, plant tours, and education and
training programs. Individuals or groups should be encouraged to
share their specialized knowledge and disseminate it throughout the
organization. Acquiring knowledge is not enough; knowledge has to
be applied. Unless behavior is changed, little is gained from the
efforts of creating a learning organization. Therefore, progress and
improvement need to be measured through questionnaires, surveys,
interviews, and observation of behavior. Department stores may, for
example, use shoppers to assess the service of their sales
assistants. Assessors at the department store L.L. Bean shop by
telephone to evaluate the service of its operators. A comprehensive
learning audit may include a variety of measurements.

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SUMMARY

Manager development refers to the progress a manager makes in

learning how to manage effectively. Frequently, it also pertains to
development programs. OD, on the other hand, is a systematic,
integrated, and planned approach to making the whole
organization or an organizational unit effective.