How organizations achieve success by learning to adapt and change.
Since that time the idea of organisational learning has taken hold in all sorts private and public organisations as something that can help them cope with fast moving, unpredictable and changing situations.
The key idea is to create an organization that continually senses and responds to changes in the external environment. That's why in much of the writing on organizational learning the metaphor of a plant or organism is used. The organization is seen as a living, breathing and thinking entity that is sensitive to opportunities and threats and changes to meet them.
In that sense it is a programme of 'continuous improvement'.
As far back as 1988 Arei de Gues said:
"The most successful corporation of the 1990s will be something called the Learning Organisation...the ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage"
image credit our community place
So What's The Big Idea?
what makes this approach to competitive success so different?
image credit wikihow - teams and organizational learning
I started to get interested in organizational learning following several years in business management in the games and gaming industry. Standard management training at the time emphasised the need for rational objective analysis and the need for careful planning.
Whilst there were benefits to this approach, it became clear to me that success didn't come from this alone. Conventional strategy and marketing approaches tended to airbrush 'people' out of the picture.
It was OK doing loads of research and setting out a course for action, but experience showed that 'how' the research was interpreted and 'how' plans were implemented were the things that made a difference.
Organizational learning struck a chord because it looked at how people in organizations learn and how that learning improves performance. The observations of some key writers really connected with me.
"The learning of the people who comprise an organisation is critical in determining its survival" Bob Garrat - Creating a Learning Organisation
"Competitive success is a function of organisational excellence...the only competitive weapon left is organisation" D.Ulrich - A New Mandate for Human Resources - Harvard Business Review -1998
"Learning is the key to survival and development of companies today" Pedler Burgoyne & Bodell - The Learning Company
Just Fancy Idealism?
Organizational learning is criticised for being too soft and too idealistic
image credit Daily Telegraph
Learning Organizations are where "people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire" Peter Senge
"individuals and organisations that are incapable of escaping the gravitational pull if the past will be foreclosed to the future" Gary Hamel
The Fifth Discipline
1. Mental Models an understanding of your own and other peoples world views and assumptions
2. Systems Thinking understanding the inter-connected of organisations and their environment. A change in one part of the system can affect other parts even at a distance. The metaphor that is used is a mobile above a child's cot. Pull on one element of the mobile and the whole mobile will dance as a result.
3.Team Learning collaborative working, avoiding politics and power plays
4. Shared Vision building a shared undertsanding of future possibilities
5. Personal Mastery taking personal responsibility for learning
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 12/29/2009)
This is one of the first books to bring Organizational Learning into the management main stream
Why is a Learning Organization Different From Any Other Style of Organization?
How you would spot a Learning Organization if you saw one.
image credit royalty free photographs
"an organisation that is able to discover what is effective by re-framing its own experiences and learning from that process; by developing the skills of its people it continuously transforms itself" Pedler Burgoyne & Bodell
"an organisation skilled at creating, acquiring and transfering knowledge and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights" D.Garvin
Key Books on Organizational Learning
As management writers Pedler, Burgoyne and Boydell in their book The Learning Company point out:
"The history of managing is littered with the remains of yesterday's 'right answers', scientific management, theories X & Y, Blakes Grid, Management by Objectves, Quality Circles, the search for excellence and so on"
So keep your feet on the ground when reading these books
Harvard Business Review on Organizational Learning
Amazon Price: $14.96 (as of 12/29/2009)
Leading Organizational Learning
Amazon Price: $40.00 (as of 12/29/2009)
On Organizational Learning
Amazon Price: $65.29 (as of 12/29/2009)
The Learning Company: A Strategy for Sustainable Development
Amazon Price: (as of 12/29/2009)
Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning
Amazon Price: $124.83 (as of 12/29/2009)
The Marketing Concept versus Organizational Learning
Two big management ideas that promise success for your business. Which is the best?
The marketing concept says that success comes from understanding customer needs, being aware of your competitors and most importantly creating and delivering a differentiated Value Proposition at a profit. It is about the Competitive Strategy of the Organisation
on the other hand...
Organizational Learning is not simply capability to achieve a given strategy...its also AND PRIMARILY capability to develop and re-develop strategy in the first place
What is the best competitive strategy for an organization?
Fetching blurbs now... please stand byMarketing
KathyMcGraw says:
I love Marketing...and know this to be successful, however I taught Organizational Development and know that the power of Group Think can be more valuable in the long run to success.
I say a of mix the two is the best.
Posted August 02, 2009
Organizational Learning
reasonablerobinson says:
Organizational Learning because without people there are no ideas.
Posted August 02, 2009
Organizational Learning as a key part of Strategic Marketing
Both/And rather than Either/Or
Strategic Marketing Decisions In Global Markets
Amazon Price: $72.99 (as of 12/29/2009)
One of the few marketing management books to integrate organizational learning as a key feature of effective marketing strategy.
Formulas For Organisational Learning
Ideas from Reg Revans - learning from your environment
image credit royalty free photography
L>=C... the rate of an organisation's learning needs to greater than or equal to the rate of change in its environment.
L=P+Q...the quality of an organisation's learning is made of P its current and past knowledge or programmed knowledge PLUS Q its ability to keep an open mind and question its assumptions about the world.
Reg Revans is famous for inventing the idea of Action Learning
Go Loopy
About Single and Double Loop learning
If Peter Senge is the Prince of organizational learning then Chris Argyris has to be the King
One of his key ideas is the notion of Double Loop Learning This is where people in organizations are able to 'think outside the box'. Single loop thinkers try and improve the system they've got, double loop thinkers invent a new system!
Another key theme of Argyris's writing is the the topic of Organizational Defence This is a crucial aspect of organizational learning because if people are too defensive they will hold onto past ideas and not listen to new information.
Argyris talks about undiscussables the stuff that people learn NOT to mention in a meeting. He then points out that you are really in trouble when the undiscussables become undiscussable. In other words you can't even bring up thorny and difficult subjects such as how poor the company's products and services are!
Stay Competitive
Key Organizational Learning Links
- The Society for Organizational Learning
- Formed in April of 1997 to continue the work of MIT's Center for Organizational Learning (1991-1997). Peter Senge, author of the The Fifth Discipline: the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization is the founding Chairman of SoL.
- European Consortium for the Learning Organisation
- The European take on O.L.
Organizational Learning Bloggers
- Organizational Learning: How Companies and Institutions Manage and ...
- Palgrave Macmillan English PDF MB To survive in any economic climate organizations must manage what they know and adapt this knowledge to rapidly changing environments Organizational 161098.
- Best Jobs In East Africa: Regional Security Advisor - East and ...
- As part of Mercy Corps' agency-wide Organizational Learning Initiative, all team members are responsible for spending 5% of their work time in formal and/or non-formal professional learning activities. Accountability to Beneficiaries ...
- Why blended learning for training staff? « warsaw
- If you cut the cost of your presence for training and improving the quality of organizational learning at the same time, you might want is on blended learning solutions as a possible way forward. Bottom line benefits ...
- Knowledge Solutions: A Primer on Organizational Learning
- Organizational learning is the ability of an organization to gain insight and understanding from experience through experimentation, observation, analysis, and a willingness to examine successes and failures. There are two key notions: ...
Organizational Learning Discussed
David M. Kopp, Ph.D., Chair of Barry University's Organizational Learning and Leadership Program
Runtime: 58
1288 views
3 Comments:
A Model Organization
Management authors Paul Tosey, Peter A.C. Smith say that "headway in substantive wide-scale learning organization development is seriously jeopardised unless individual organizations objectively measure their progress"
This model can be found in: Journal:The Learning Organization 1999.Vol 6 Issue 3 pp 107 - 116
ISSN:0969-6474
Like any management initiative OL seems like a good idea until you try and measure its effects. Effective needs to be tracked on the individual, group and organizational level.
O.L. on Del.icio.us
Organizational Learning on Facebook
Society For Organizational Learning (SOL Global)
Join the SOL group here.
Has learning helped organizations you know succeed
Business success through organizational learning
Do you know business that have the right communication, knowledge management, organizational behaviours and strategy to succeed? Do they make good use of organizational learning?
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- kimmanleyort kimmanleyort Aug 4, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
- Very well done and valuable lens!
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Reply
- reasonablerobinson reasonablerobinson Aug 2, 2009 @ 8:38 pm | in reply to KathyMcGraw
- Thanks for this Kathy. I laughed at myself when I read your comment ref: 's' and 'z' becauze (oops) I thought I'd go for the American version throughout, clearly I missed some. I love marketing too, its my 'subject' at work and I agree a mix of both approaches is very powerful. You've just reminded me of a strategic marketing book I need to add as a spotlight that features a section on OL.
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Reply
- KathyMcGraw KathyMcGraw Aug 2, 2009 @ 7:54 pm
- I smiled through the material because this brought back a ton of memories of when I taught Organizational Development...and was assisting with a grant where the word Organization was spelled with an s over 300 times. That was my first experience with "British English" and your use of both spellings here brought that memory back :) Anyway....liked this.
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- oneskms oneskms Aug 2, 2009 @ 5:47 pm
- Real good read, thought provoking which I guess is the idea
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Reply
- reasonablerobinson reasonablerobinson Aug 2, 2009 @ 12:37 pm | in reply to a_willow
- Thanks Willow, anything good about the lens is down to the feedback and support of the WiWon team and your guidance and my team coach Carol.
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by reasonablerobinson
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