LEARNING ORGANIZATION

TOOLS & PRACTICES

THE DISTINGUISHING FACTOR

• TRADITIONAL ORGANIZATION• LEARNING ORGANIZATION

DEFINITION

PETER SENGE (1990)“… where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire…where people are continually learning how to learn together…where people are continually discovering how they create reality. And how they can change it.”

PEDLER, BURGOYNE AND BOYDELL(1991)

“…an organization that facilitates the learning of all its members and continually transforms itself. ”

NANCY DIXON (1994)

“…the intentional use of learning processes at individual, group and system level to continuously transform the organization in a direction that is increasingly satisfying to stakeholders.”

THE FIVE DISCIPLINES

• SYSTEMS THINKING• PERSONAL MASTERY• MENTAL MODELS• BUILDING SHARED VISION• TEAM LEARNING

SYSTEMS THINKING

Seeing interrelationships rather than linear cause-effect chains and seeing process of change rather than snapshots.

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF SYSTEMS THINKING

• REINFORCING FEEDBACK: SELF FULFILLING PROPHECY OR PYGMALION EFFECT–BEAHVIOUR THAT RESULTS FROM A

REINFORCING LOOP IS EITHER ACCELERATING GROWTH OR ACCELERATING DECLINE – i.e. Positive word of mouth; snowball effect, vicious circle etc.

TO ADD

• BALANCING FEEDBACK: DISCOVERING THE SOURCES OF STABILITY AND RESISTANCE– IN A STABILIZING SYSTEM THERE IS A SELF –

CORRECTION THAT ATTEMPTS TO MAINTAIN SOME GOAL OR TARGET – HOMEOSTASIS

– IN AN ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT : DEMAND & SUPPLY

– PLANNING CREATES LONGER TERM BALANCING PROCESSES.

BALANCING PROCESSES OF AN ORGANIZATION

• IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT GOALS• BALANCING PROCESSES IN MERGERS &

ACQUISITIONS.• LEADERS INITIATING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

CAUGHT IN BALANCING PROCESSES – RESISTANCE (THE HIDDEN BALANCING PROCESS).

• SYSTEM PERFORMANCE VS. SYSTEM DELAYS• LESSONS OF BALANCING LOOPS: AGGRESSIVE

ACTION OFTEN PRODUCES EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS INTENDED.

NATURES’S TEMPLATES: IDENTIFYNG THE PATTERNS THAT CONTROL EVENTS

• ARCHETYPE 1: LIMITS TO GROWTH– DEFINITION: A reinforcing process is set in motion

to produce a desired result. It creates a spiral of success but also creates inadvertent secondary effects (manifested in a balancing process) which eventually slow down the success.

– MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLE: Don’t push growth; remove the factors limiting growth.

HOW TO ACHIEVE LEVERAGE

• MOST COMMON REACTION TO LIMIT TO GROWTH IS BY TRYING TO PUSH HARD: If you cannot break your bad habit, become more diligent in monitoring your own behaviour.

• BUT THERE IS ANOTHER WAY – In each of them, leverage lies in the balancing loop – not the reinforcing loop. To change the behaviour of the system, you must identify and change the limiting factor.

ARCHETYPE 2: SHIFTING THE BURDEN

• DEFINITION: An underlying problem generates symptoms that demand attention. But the underlying problem is difficult for people to address, either because it is obscure or costly to confront. So people “shift the burden” of their problem to other solutions.

• MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLE: Beware the symptomatic solution. Go for fundamental solution.

STRUCTURE OF SHIFTING THE BURDEN

Two Balancing Processes:– Symptomatic Intervention or ‘quick fix’.– Side Effects.Patterns of Behaviour – Drinking to release tension: Symptomatic

solution. It leads to the dependence on the symptomatic solution that keeps on reinforcing.

– Strengthening fundamental responses almost always require a long – term orientation and a sense of shared vision.

PERSONAL MASTERY

• It involves taking a creative rather than a reactive stance to issues, problems and life itself. It is the discipline of personal growth and learning.

• Kazuo Inamori, Founder & President of Kyocera (Ceramics Technology) says:– If employees are not sufficiently motivated to challenge

the goals of growth and technological development…there will simply be no growth, no gain in productivity, and no technological development .

– Inamori believes, ‘tapping the potential of people will require new understanding of the “subconscious mind,” “will power” and “action of heart” etc.

Bill O’Brien, President of Hanover Insurance strives for,

“…Organizational models that are more congruent with human nature. When the industrial age began people worked for 6 days a week to earn enough for food and shelter. Today most of us have these handled by Tuesday afternoon. Our traditional hierarchical organizations are not designed to provide for people’s higher order needs, self – respect and self – actualization. The ferment in management will continue until organizations begin to address these needs, for all employees”.

MASTERY & PROFICIENCY• Personal mastery goes beyond competence and skills

though it is grounded in competence and skills.• It goes beyond spiritual unfolding though it requires

spiritual growth.• It means approaching one’s life as a creative work – living

life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint.• Two underlying principles:

– Continuously clarifying what is important to us and– Continually learning how to see current reality more clearly.

It’s a process of continuously focusing and re-focusing on what one wants

RESISTANCE TO PERSONAL MASTERY

• Who could resist the benefits of Personal Mastery?– Traditional Contract Between Employee and

Institution.– Cynicism : To empower people in an unaligned

organization can be counter productive. The productive way is to share commonly the vision and mental models.

The Discipline of Personal Mastery

• The ability to focus on ultimate intrinsic desires, not only on secondary goals, is a cornerstone of personal mastery.

George Bernard Shaw said, “…This is the true joy in life, the being used for a

purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one…the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

TO ADD

• Same principle has been expressed in some organizations as “genuine caring.”

• In places where people felt uncomfortable about talking personal purpose, they felt perfectly at ease talking about genuine caring.

• When people genuinely care they are naturally committed.

• They are full of energy and ethusiasm.

Purpose Without Vision

O’Brien says, “…You and I may be tennis fans and enjoy talking about

ground strokes, our backhands, the thrill of chasing down a corner shot, of hitting a winner. We may have a great conversation, but then we find out that I am gearing up to play at my local country club and you are preparing for Wimbledon. We share the same enthusiasm and love of the game, but at totally different scales of proficiency. Until we establish the scales we have in mind, we might think we are communicating when we are not.”

Personal Mastery and the Fifth Discipline

• Integrating Reason and Intuition.• Seeing Our Connectedness to the World: Einstein expressed, [the human being] experiences himself, his

thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few person nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

TO ADD

• COMPASSION: It is not always just the concern for others. But it is also grounded in a level of awareness. More the people see the systems within which they operate, and as they understand more clearly the pressures influencing one another, they naturally develop more compassion and empathy.

• COMMITMENT TO THE WHOLE: Individuals committed to a vision beyond their self – interest find they have energy not available when pursuing narrower goals, as will organizations that tap this level of commitment.

MENTAL MODELS

SURFACING, TESTING AND IMPROVING OUR INTERNAL PICTURES OF HOW THE WORLD WORKS IS AN IMPORTANT ASPECT OF LEARNING AND CHANGE.