venu prasad

Learning Organization

 Learning is the focal point of any organism whether it is an animal or a human being. Starting from birth to death an individual undergoes different kinds of learning. The learning may be intrinsic (here one is actively participated in learning) or extrinsic (here we have to forcefully make the person to learn). Introduction to Learning OrganizationDavid Garvin in the August 1993 Harvard Business Review defines a leaning organization as "an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights." It can further be referred to as “a company that facilitates the learning of all of its members and that continuously transforms itself”.The important component of the definitions above is the requirement that change occur inthe way work gets done. Learning in an organization means the continuous testing of experience, and the transformation of that experience into knowledge- accessible to the whole organization, and relevant to its core purpose.Therefore “Learning Organizations are those that have in place systems, mechanisms andprocesses, that are used to continually enhance their capabilities and those who work with it or for it, to achieve sustainable objectives – for themselves and the communities in which they participate”.Activities of a Learning Organization1. Systematic problem solving:o Thinking with systems theoryo Insisting on data rather than assumptionso Using statistical tools2. Experimentation with new approaches:o Ensure steady flow of new ideaso Incentives for risk takingo Demonstration projects3. Learning from their own experiences and past history:o Recognition of the value of productive failure instead of unproductive success4. Learning from the experiences and best practices of others:o Enthusiastic borrowing5. Transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organization:o Reportso Tourso Personnel rotation programso Training programsReasons to Build a Learning Organization1. Because we want superior performance.2. To improve quality.3. For customers.4. For competitive advantage.5. For an energized, committed workforce.6. To manage change.7. For the truth.8. Because the times demand it.9. Because we recognize our interdependence.10. Because we want it.Attributes of a Learning Organization1. The first is learning how to disperse power on an orderly, non-chaotic basis. Right now the word "empowerment" is a very powerful buzzword. It's also very dangerous. Justgranting power, with out some method of discipline and order that comes out of acommand-and-control bureaucracy, produces chaos. We have to learn to disperse powerso that self-discipline can largely replace imposed discipline. That immerses us in the area of culture; replacing the bureaucracy with aspirations, values, and visions.2. The second attribute of winning companies will be systemic understanding. ...We aregood at the type of problem, which lends itself to a scientific solution and reductionistthinking. We are absolutely illiterate in subjects that require us to understand systems andinterrelationships.3. The third attribute that twenty-first companies will need is conversation. This is thesingle greatest tool in your organization -- more important than computers or sophisticated research. We are good at small talk....but when we face contentious issues --when there are feelings about rights, or when two worthwhile principles come into conflict with one another -- we have so many defense mechanisms that impedecommunications that we are absolutely terrible.4. Finally, under our old system of governance, one could lead by mandate. If you had theability to climb the ladder, gain power, and then control that power, you could enforce these changes in attributes. But the forthcoming kind of company is going to requireVoluntary follower ship. Most of our leaders don't think in terms of getting voluntaryfollowers; they think in terms of control.Skill Sets Needed by Individuals in a Learning Organization1. Ability to understand the culture of the organization2. Ability to let go of old myths3. Ability to notice new patterns- language as an indicatoro Multitaskingo Miniaturizationo Short-term memory overloado Low level depression and increasingly angry cultureo Changes of speed4. Ability to develop a clear perspective/ open perspectiveo Ability to relaxo Sense of humor - ability to laugho Knowing your historyo Insulate hot buttons and fearso Ability to scan for informationo Pretend you are an anthropologist and examine what leaders reward, evaluate,and control; what they are paying attention to; and what are they measuring5. Ability to generate energy with coaching and building self-esteem; ability to bring energy into a room6. Ability to learn forever7. Ability to own your own career8. Ability to create "safe" environment for others9. Ability to see what's coming and what's leaving so you can make choices faster; fasterresponse timeCollective Learning and Learning OrganizationRight at the center of the concept of the learning organization is the idea of collective learning itself. If we are to believe the literature, collective learning is likely to constitute the key source of competitive advantage within a rapidly changing global market. What Senge and other similar writers point towards is the need to develop a culture of continuous development. To do so, they argue, practitioners must place human relationships at the center of their analyses and strategic interventions. A key theme in ‘making the learning organization happen’ is that of the need to remove the barriers to collective learning: removing, for example, people’s personal defensiveness, their animosity towards one another, the hostility between different groups within the organization, and so on. The question then arises as to how do we make this happen? Is it, indeed, possible to negotiate a way through a potential minefield of office politics, of personal agendas and insecurities, of deeply ingrained conflicts that might stand in the way of creating an organization that learns? It is in this connection that emotional intelligence links most closely to the ideas relating to the learning organization, and, accordingly, has a great deal to offer the practitioner. The Fifth Discipline, Peter SengeIn his book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge (1990) defined a learning organization as “… a place where people continually expand their capacity to create 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 how to learn”. Peter Senge, in particular, posits the radically humanist idea that organizations should become places where people can begin to realize their highest aspirations. He talks of developing worker commitment not compliance; of building shared visions, not imposing a mission statement from above; of effectively reconciling individual and organizational objectives. Senge (1992) described the core of a learning organization’s work as based upon five learning disciplines, which represented lifelong programs of both personal and organizational learning and practice. These include:Personal Mastery — Personal mastery is what Peter Senge describes as one of the coredisciplines needed to build a learning organization. Personal mastery applies to individuallearning, and Senge says that organizations cannot learn until their members begin to learn.Personal Mastery has two components. First, one must define what one is trying to achieve (a goal). Second, one must have a true measure of how close one is to the goal.Individuals who practice personal mastery experience other changes in their thinking.They learn to use both reason and intuition to create. They become systems thinkers who see the interconnectedness of everything around them and, as a result, they feel more connected to the whole. It is exactly this type of individual that one needs at every level of an organization for the organization to learn. (Senge, 1990) Traditional managers have always thought that they had to have all the answers for their organization. The managers of the learning organization know that their staff has the answers. The job of the manager in the learning organization is to be the teacher or coach who helps unleash the creative energy in each individual. Organizations learn through the synergy of the individual learners.Mental Models — A mental model is one's way of looking at the world. It involves eachindividual reflecting upon, continually clarifying, and improving his or her internal pictures of the world, and seeing how they shape personal actions and decisions. It is a framework for the cognitive processes of our mind. In other words, it determines how we think and act. A simple example of a mental model comes from an exercise described in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. Learning only comes from seeing the world the way it really is.Shared Vision — what does it mean to have a shared vision? A shared vision begins with the individual, and an individual vision is something that one person holds as a truth. It means individuals building a sense of commitment within particular workgroups, developing shared images of common and desirable futures, and the principles and guiding practices to support the journey to such futures.The shared vision of an organization must be built of the individual visions of itsmembers. What this means for the leader in the Learning Organization is that the organizational vision must not be created by the leader, rather, the vision must be created through interaction with the individuals in the organization. Only by compromising between the individual visions and the development of these visions in a common direction can the shared vision be created. The leader's role in creating a shared vision is to share a own vision with the employees. This should not be done to force that vision on others, but rather to encourage others to share their vision too.Based on these visions, the organization's vision should evolve. It would be naive to expect that the organization can change overnight from having a vision that is communicated from the top to an organization where the vision evolves from thevisions of all the people in the organization. The organization will have to go through major change for this to happen, and this is where OD can play a role. In the development of a learning organization, the OD-consultant would use the same tools as before, just on a much broader scale.Team Learning — this involves relevant thinking skills that enable groups of people to develop intelligence and an ability that is greater than the sum of individual members' talents. It is a discipline that starts with "dialogue," the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine "thinking together." Team learning is vital because teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations.Systems Thinking — this involves a way of thinking about, and a language for describing and understanding forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems. It is a paradigm premised upon the primacy of the whole --the antithesis of the traditional evolution of the concept of learning in western cultures this discipline helps managers and employees alike to see how to change systems more effectively, and to act more in tune with the larger processes of the natural and economic world.Once we embrace the idea that systems thinking can improve individual learning byinducing people to focus on the whole system, and by providing individuals with skills and tools to enable them to derive observable patterns of behavior from the systems they see at work, the next step is to justify why systems thinking is even more important to organizations of people.Here, the discipline of systems thinking is most clearly interrelated with the other disciplines, especially with mental models, shared vision, and team learning.In his prominent book, The Fifth Discipline, Senge identified some learning disabilitiesassociated with the failure to think systemically. He classified them under the following headings:• "I am my position"• "The enemy is out there"• "The illusion of taking charge"• "The fixation on events"• "The parable of the boiled frog"• "The delusion of learning from experience"Characteristics of Learning Organization 

• Provide continuous learning opportunities.
• They use learning to reach their goals.
• They link individual performance with organizational performance.
• They foster inquiry and dialogue, making it safe for people to share openly and take risks.
• They embrace creative tension as a source of energy and renewal.
• They are continuously aware of and interact with their environment.

Criteria1) Adopt a learning approach to strategy, focuses on the learning process, which implies listening to different opinions and an overall attitude of openness. A key ingredient of this criterion is in how banks process their managerial experiences. Learning Organizations/Managers learn from their experiences rather than being bound by their past experiences. In Generative Learning Organizations, the ability of an organization/manager is not measured by what it knows but rather by how it learns the process of learning. Management practices should therefore encourage, recognize and reward: openness, systemic thinking, creativity, a sense of efficacy and empathy. A learning climate is also necessary, as it requires strategic processes in place to support the acquisition of information and its transformation into knowledge.2) Participative policy-making focuses on the actors/stakeholders who are involved inOrganizational policy-making processes and on the nature of the relationships characterizing such a process. The movement has to come from the bottom-up rather than top-down with understanding and shared purpose.3) Access and transparency of information, focuses on the mechanisms which generateParticipation and support empowerment within an organization, allowing knowledge sharing and the access to knowledge bases and to information. The criterion basically focuses on informing and empowering. These can be done by making information as widely available as possible; by using information systems to help employees to understand the content of the data, which must be accurate, complete, representative, updated. In this case, new information systems may be needed to make better data available and to disseminate it. The information systems are information infrastructure that enables information flows, including networked connections between internal systems and access to external networks and databases. They are likely to be “early adopters” of important learning enabling technologies, such as groupware, computer conferencing, video conferencing, Internet exploration, and multimedia.4) Formative accounting focuses on the formative processes through which control procedures take place and their results are then discussed between the controlling actor and the controlled one, with the aim to generate improvement and learning. Formative approaches should be shared on an organizational level and become part of the overall procedural schemes. The accounting, budgeting and reporting systems have to be set up so they assist learning and give added value.5) Internal exchange and dialogue, focuses on the horizontal processes taking place among units. In other words, it focuses on the functions and responsibilities as they are articulated within the organization and on the relevant communication flows.6) Reward flexibility, focuses on a special kind of flexibility, which is strictly linked to the capacity to successfully adapt to changes and to generate innovation. The assessment of flexibility goes beyond the assessment of individual productivity in traditional terms and poses interesting questions concerning what the company considers rewardable or to be rewarded. In other words, it is relevant to see what is the organizational culture affecting the internal reward system. It is important to see if reward and recognition systems are in place - processes and systems that recognize acquisition of new skills, teamwork as well as individual effort, celebrate successes and accomplishments, and encourages continuous personal development. The employees expect reward for their training or developments - they have put effort in, become more skilled - expect greater reward. This reward might be either extrinsic (promotion, increase in pay) or intrinsic (greater fulfillment through a more demanding or higher-status job). 7) Inter-company learning, focuses on the fact that organizations start a praxis in creating opportunities of dialogue with other organizations, Within this criterion, the following indicators could be proposed: investigations of the company’s climate; use of “suggestion boxes”; set up of an “Exchange forum”; use of tools and methodologies to “socialize” knowledge; sharing of self-development plans with the “boss”; detection of employees’ perception of autonomy, responsibility and empowerment8) Self-development focuses on the possibility to access learning opportunities and to start personalized development processes. This criterion could be related to Senge’s discipline of personal mastery and with Stewart’s requirement of individuals committed to self-development. The problem here consists in who owns the learning, the employees or the employers, and the uses to which the new learning will be put.  The Hierarchy of Organizational Learning consists of

• Policy
• Strategy
• Tactics/Operations

 For any organism to survive, its rate of learning has to be equal to, or greater than, the rate of change in its environment. Obstacles to Learning Organization:We would like to affirm that while the visionary concepts of the Learning Organization are inspiring, the reality is that implementation of such systems requires a massive change of attitude that is not always easy to achieve. Success rests in creating a highly-trust organization where knowledge is readily exchanged. In practice there are many barriers. Knowledge is seen as power, and jealously guarded. Its possession and use can further ambitions. A culture of openness may be difficult to achieve, particularly in organizations where suspicion has been the norm. Knowledge management thus has serious implications for communication structures, employee involvement schemes, reward systems and industrial relations.Some of the most common obstacles to becoming a learning organization should be avoided in our case:• Too focused on systems and process (e.g. ISO9000) 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 top-down driven, over tight supervision, leading to lack of real empowermentThe most significant problem resides at a quite fundamental conceptual level. Throughconceiving of ‘the organization’ as in itself engaging in ‘learning’, as ‘having’ an intelligence of its own, he gives it (the organization, that is) an existence in and of itself, an existence beyond the level of the individuals who are the units of its constitution. This is something which is quite different from proposing that the ‘whole is more than the sum of its parts’. To clarify, while it is one thing to claim that one cannot properly understand a system if one does not conceive of it as a whole, and that organizational change cannot be reduced to isolated individual actions, it is another implicitly to claim that the organization has an existence beyond the level of human beings. It is almost as if the organization had ‘a life of its own’. Such a formulation is highly problematic.The voluntarism (i.e. that we can create the conditions of our own actions; that we cancreate reality) might lead the practitioner towards believing that a mere act of will is enough to change fundamentally the ‘organization’, and, moreover might lead the practitioner to neglect how factors external to the organization which are outside of the practitioner’s control, nonetheless, profoundly influence the direction of organizational change. As has been extensively documented within the social sciences, factors such as gender, social class and ethnicity can greatly impede learning in the workplace. Organizations involve highly complex processes of change. The direction of change within, say a business organization is influenced by much broader processes at the national and global level, by changes in the market, by the complex interplay of formal and informal relationships between people at all levels of its workforce, etc.While it may be possible to steer the overall direction of change that an organization undergoes, it is rather misleading to propose that one could, by act of will, ‘think an alternative organizational reality into existence’.At a more pragmatic level, a major problem with the ideal of the ‘learning organization’is that it demands that senior management within organizations have an almost boundless faith in the value of continuous development. Moreover, it gives the practitioner few tools with which to assess the extent to which investment in development has improved organizational competitiveness. ConclusionIt seems that the concept of the learning organization is clear enough to some to beputting it into practice; to others, it is fuzzy and amorphous and needs critical attention. However, useful insights can still be drawn from theory and practice. The learning organization is best thought of as a journey, not a destination, a philosophy, not a program. Few would argue that bureaucracy, Taylor’s, or passive learning is the best ways to work and learn in the world today. The Learning Organization has a lot to offer to the reform and restructuring of organizations, but building one is clearly an enormous task. However, one can begin with the attitude that learning is "a sustainable resource, not a limited commodity" and work on developing the mindset of a culture of learning. It must be recognized that the visioning process is ongoing, not a one-time event.