The Learning Organization

1. The Learning Organization

2. The Learning Organization • continuously transforming itself • able to be nimble, flexible, adaptive to a constantly changing environment • uses an interconnected way of thinking; people continually learning to see the whole together • grounded in member commitment to the shared vision; a sense of being part of something larger than themselves; belonging; mattering • people continually expand their capacity to create the results they desire and better understand their purposes • learning is seen as a process, not an event

3. Peter Senge M.I.T. • Management and social systems modeling • Decentralizing the role of leadership to enhance the capacity of all people to work productively toward common goals Believes real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human – we become able to re-create ourselves. This applies to organizations as well.

4. Learning • Adaptive learning • Expanding our ability to respond to changing environment • Generative learning • Learning that enhances our capacity to create A shift in seeing people not as reactive to their reality, but as shaping their reality. Able to create their future.

5. Features of Learning Organizations • Systems Thinking • Personal Mastery • Mental Models • Shared Vision • Team Learning

6. Systems Thinking • Being able to see the organization as a system of interrelationshipsrather than isolated parts. • Being able to understand and address the whole and to examine the relationships between the parts and the whole. • Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions

7. Systems Thinking • Choose a social issue • Create a mind-map that shows the systemic nature of the problem. • Illustrate causes • Illustrate effects

8. Personal Mastery • An individual commitment to lifelong learning, and learning to see reality objectively and systemically • An organizational culture that encourages the growth of all group members, rather than seeing them as “finished.” • People in the group are living in continual learning mode. They never “arrive.”

9. Mental Models • Deeply held assumptions and generalizations that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. • Learning to identify our mental models, become aware of them so they can be scrutinized. • Learning isn’t hard. Unlearning what we already “know” is incredibly difficult.

10. What shape do you see?

11. Mental Models • We are unlikely to discover when it is our mental models that cause us to make errors. • Organizational culture often presses toward conformity and group think What are the barriers in organizations to recognizing assumptions and questioning them? What can you do to create an organizational culture that identifies and questions its assumptions?

12. Shared Vision • Creating a shared picture of the future we seek to create, binding people together around a common identity and sense of destiny. • Fostering genuine commitment to a shared vision, rather than compliance Examples? When have you truly felt part of a shared vision? How did the group get there?

13. Team Learning • Involves dialogue and the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine “thinking together.” • Dialogue: free-flowing of meaning to discover insights not attainable individually • NOT Discussion: heaving ideas back and forth competitively • Recognizing patterns of interaction in teams that undermine learning (defensiveness, competitiveness, etc.)

14. Challenges to Creating a Learning Organization • Fragmentation • Problems are broken into pieces and considered separately (budgeting, technology, marketing..) • Competitiveness • Members try to out do each other rather than collaborating • Reactiveness • Organizational change only occurs in response to external forces rather than a spirit of continual creating

15. New beliefs about Change • Change starts small and grows organically • Change is only sustainable if it involves learning • Develop the mindset of conducting experiments – an inquiry approach. Try multiple strategies and take intentional time to reflect on the lessons learned from them. • Pilot groups are incubators for change

16. The new role of Leaders • Old view: leader sets the direction, makes the decisions, and energizes the troops. • New view: • Designers – creating a space for individual and tea learning, shared vision, questioning of assumptions and systems thinking • Stewards - shaping the narrative, holding the larger story of the organization, holding the vision • Teachers – focusing attention, defining reality in a systemic way, and helping members truly understand how to think this way

17. Not a New Idea? • Lao-tzu: • The bad leader is he who the people despise • The good leader is he who the people praise • The great leader is he who the people say “we did it ourselves”

18. Misunderstanding of Learning Organizations “We are a learning organization, we fund professional development and on-going employee training.” • Systems Thinking • Personal Mastery • Mental Models • Shared Vision • Team Learning

19. Senge, Peter M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The art & practice of the learning organization. Doubleday. • National Leadership Symposium, 2006. • George Roth, (2006). Personal Communication