People & Organisation : Learning & Development (Lecture 03)

LEARNING ORGANISATION

Today the world becomes more interconnected and business becomes more complex and dynamic. Therefore work become more important and learning is an essential part for it. Organisations that will truly surpass in the future will explore how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organisation.

What is Learning Organisation?

Learning organisation is an organisation which learns powerfully and collectively and is continually transforming itself to better collect, manage, and use knowledge for corporate success. It empowers people within and outside the company to learn as they work (Marquardt, 1996).

According to Garvin (1993), A learning Organisation is skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights.

Is yours a Learning Organisation ?

Garvin et al. (2008) identified three factors those are essential for organisational 

learning.

A supportive learning environment - 

An environment that supports learning consists with four distinguishing characteristics.

• Psychological safety - There should be an open environment for employee to express their thought about the work at hand.
• Appreciation of differences - Employees can learn from opposite ideas with others have.
• Openness to new ideas - encouraged employees to take risks and explore the untested and unknown ideas
• Time for reflection - Supportive learning environments allow time for a pause in the action and encourage thoughtful review of the organisation's processes.

Concrete learning processes and practice - 

Learning organisation is having concrete learning processes including;

• Generation - experimentation to develop and test new products and services
• Collection - intelligence gathering to keep track of competitive, customer, and technological trends
• Interpretation - disciplined analysis and interpretation to identify and solve problems
• Dissemination - education and training to develop both new and established employees

Leadership that reinforces learning - 

Organisational learning is strongly influenced by the behaviour of leaders. Employees feel encouraged to learn when leaders actively question and listen to employees.

Does your organisation have a Learning Disability?

Senge (1994) discussed following learning disabilities which evident for organisational failure.

• “I am my position"- Employees are trained be loyal to their jobs so much .They "do their job," put in their time, and try to cope with the forces outside of their control .As they focus only on their position, they have little sense of responsibility for the results produced.
• "The Enemy is out there" - This can be explained as the propensity to find someone or something outside ourselves to blame when things go wrong.
• The illusion of taking charge - Instead of face up to difficult issues, stop waiting for someone else to do something, and solve problems before they grow into crises, Managers are taking aggressive action against their employees.
• The fixation on events - If people's thinking in an organisation is dominated by short-term events, Learning cannot be sustained there. If an organisation focuses on events, they can predict before it happens and can react optimally. But they cannot learn to create.
• The delusion of Learning from Experience - The most powerful learning comes from direct experience. We learn best from experience but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important decisions.
• The myth of Management Team - The Management team of an organisation are supposed to sort out the complex cross-functional issues that are critical to the organisation. But there is a less confidence on their ability to overcome above learning disabilities.

Steps in Becoming a Learning Organisation

It is important that one never fulfil as a learning organisation. Change always continues, as well as learning. (Marquardt, 1996).Company can commit to become learning organisation through learning with the business operations with in the organisation.With in that learning environment employees can capture learning and release knowledge for better performance.The decision should be taken by the organisation it self to transform the organisational culture to one of continuous learning and improvement and acquire and apply best of technology to the best of learning.

References

Garvin, D.A., 1993. Building a Learning Organization. Harvard Business Review, (July - August ).

Garvin, D.A., Edmondson, A.C. & Gino, F., 2008. Is Yours a Learning Organization? Harvard Business Review, (March 2008).

Marquardt, M.J., 1996. Building the Learning Organization:A Systems Approach to Quantum Improvement. McGraw-Hill.

Senge, P.M., 1994. The Fifth Discipline- The Art Practice of The Learning Organization. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.