Peter Senge and his seminal work"The Fifth Discipline. The art and practice of the learning organization" made the whole topic of 'learning organization'very popular. Today, 21 years after this great work was published, we are still learning about how organizations learn. At times, as we see Lehman type failures, we wonder if organizations learn at all. Organizations that demonstrate equal competence in all Senge’s five disciplines of learning, viz: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning are rare.Much is changing in the world of work and organizations. The next 20 years will pose serious challenges to the very relevance of building learning organizations.For most people, learning is all about knowing and not about doing.We believe of walking and do not take a regular walk - your learning is incomplete. A corporate example: If you have learnt about 'risk assessment' and do not use that learning in avoiding risks,then your learning is incomplete. This is what all those bright MBAs did in some famous financial Services companies and many collapsed. If you attended a Harvard program on leadership, learnt how important is 'listening and dialogue' and in your day to day life you can not listen,your learning is incomplete. That is why, in best of companies learning programs are measured by the results they produce and the changes they engender (over a a period of time) and not by the end-of the class euphoria over how nice the program was or worse still the lunch was. So if we understand learning it as a'knowing-doing continuum, we will have the mental capacity to understand grander concepts such as 'learning organizations'.Building learning organizations Incidentally, Peter Senge provides us with a useful framework to do this.First he says, organizations must have 'systems thinking'. This means they should have the ability to understand the connections and interdependencies of all their actions on the larger organization system.In practical terms, this means you should know what impact your decisions have on all other aspects. So if you reduce price, your sales will increase but your brand may be compromised. If you pay some people extra because they are threatening to leave -you risk many other groups black mailing you soon. If you do not spend on training for students are learning and professionals are doing. By the same token, colleges are for learning and companies are for doing. Most learning programs are about acquiring new knowledge. What is more, in the action world of quarterly corporate pursuits - learning is actually considered a big distraction. I hear many top leaders and CEOs say in private: 'we don't have time for these learning and reflection programs, let's move on, let's do some thing on the ground, execution is what matters.' I hide my Ph.D lest my corporate colleagues think I am theoretical and incapable of action because I am 'learned'! In our daily work world action is macho and learning a useful distraction. This misconception is popular because of our faulty understanding of what is learning. Learning is not complete without action. If you have learnt about the value future skills you may have to pay a lot more to hire from a market of 'shortages'. Every decision we take has a spiraling impact on many other connected parts of the company. Some of these are apparent and some are not. Learning organizations are those that understand these connects almost intuitively and take wellconsidered decisions. Now go and check in your companies how this is working. Do your leaders know what impact their decisions have on other parts of the organization? Second, Senge asks for 'personal mastery'. This means people of the company are deeply committed to learning and take responsibility for learning. And this is a continuous act - not flashes in the pan. We all know successful people have mastery over themselves and continuously learn. We actually use master as a word to describe an expert - an accomplished musician or a great sportsman (Sachin our little master). Imagine companies full of masters in their respective fields - people continuously engaged in learning and using their skills to render virtuoso performance. Ideal, isn't it? However, we know that most people work in companies to earn and not to learn. We have not managed to link earnings to life-long learning. Most societies work on a model where people learn for the first 20-25 years and secure their right to earn forever. Few professions demand mid-course certification and renewal. You do an MBA at 22 and now you are ready to be a manager for ever - without ever having to prove again that you remain capable of managing. Those who learn obviously do better but many who do not too do well. Now go and find in your companies howmany people have personal mastery including you.The third discipline Senge talksabout is about mental models. This refers to the 'assumptions' from which we operate. All of us make assumptions and worse still, we stay stuck to them. Some salesmen assume that their big accounts should always be retained - till someone tells them that their small accounts are more profitable than the big ones.
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