How is a learning organization defined
How do you define a learning organization? by Peter Senge, Author of The Fifth Discipline
what is your definition of a learning
organization and how can leaders build a
learning organization what types of
resources do you need well first off I
would jettison the jargon you know it
term like that the learn learning
relation is always to some degree going
to be jargony and and therefore gets to
be off-putting for people you know just
think of it as people working together
at their best you know how do we grow
organizations where that's the norm and
it's a real in continual relentless
process to keep learning how to work
together in our best because if you're
doing that you're going to be learning
as I said you know there's only two
mindsets that kind of can infiltrate an
organization control or learning and and
it's question of which one is dominant
and if learning dominates I guarantee
you you'll create all the different
aspects that we call learning
organization I think that you know the
how-to is obviously what all the work
has always been about and that's why
there's not only the original fifth
discipline there's the fifth discipline
field book there's a dance of change
field book there's even a field book
strictly I'm doing this in educational
context it's called schools that learn
and those field books are like 600 pages
of stories and examples and tips and
tools so there's a lot of how-to so you
can't really summarize it very
completely in a brief form but it comes
back to those three broad areas but
there are tools we talked about before
the pre broad areas you know fostering
aspiration there are tools for
encouraging you know building personal
mastery and building shared vision
creative tension is a very basic tool
that individuals learn how to work with
there are tools for a fostering
reflection the ladder of inference is a
tool that we found once people learn
they never you know stop using it and in
teams its enormous ly powerful it's
basically just a weighted more in a more
disciplined way distinguish what
actually happened from my
interpretations and attributions about
what happened all my assumptions and
becoming disciplined in distinguishing
fact
assumption you might say assumptions are
really important it's not they're bad
you don't ever get rid of assumptions
you can't live without assumptions the
question is you know are we disciplined
in relating those to what's actually
happening so those are a set of tools
and in the system's understanding and
seeing larger systems there's a whole
set of tool system archetypes
you know seeing basic patterns of
systemic activity like what we call
shifting the verb a pattern where
there's a problem and people focus
quickly on a quick fix but they know
there's a deeper source of the problem
and if they get caught up in the quick
fix they never get to the deeper source
so understanding those systemic patterns
we call them archetypal pattern system
archetypes so there's tools all over the
place so you need to have tools to work
with and that's why all these big field
books exists and a lot of those tools
have evolved but there's plenty out
there but then you also need to have a
commitment to this you know so we often
call it the guiding ideas so what does
the organization stand for in Bob
Keegan's recent book on deeply
developmental organizations he gives
three examples of organizations that are
very explicitly by their philosophy by
their actions by their day to day
practice dedicated to the continual
development of their people so you need
to have you might say a philosophic
framework to kind of orient you and then
you need to have time so the three
things we say that always matter in
practice are do you have tools do you
have a kind of guiding philosophy what
we often call guiding ideas that that
that help people orient that we're not
here just to make money yet we want to
be a good business we want to be a good
business that also grows people and we
really mean it and do have time do you
have the internal we often call them
learning infrastructures if there's no
time to reflect it doesn't matter how
skillful you are reflection if there's
no way to kind of organize and study
what's being learned in different places
people doing this and learning this but
over here people are restless they
probably have no clue what people have
learned over here because there's no
infrastructure and that shares that
learning in the software industry now
it's amazing and partly this is because
it's being done more
9 they're coordinating these distributed
development teams remotely so they
actually have a lot of data and they can
share it up so that will we often call
the learning infrastructure at the time
the resources to study and learn help
people learn from each other bring
people together
I know it's mundane but do people ever
get together and if they get together do
they do something I didn't watch stupid
powerpoints crazy that's the dumbest
thing in the whole world why would you
bring people together which is a big
undertaking and not use the time for
real learning do you know how to do that
do you have the tools if you have the
time do you know how to use the tools so
you know for example any organizations
really goodness they're really good at
hosting meetings where people actually
spend time really learning they have
world cafes one of the tools that's
propagated widely in our networks as a
way to organize big meetings in any
event so you need all three of those you
need tools Indian philosophy and you
need infrastructure to make it all real
you
