CHE Transitions Blog

Organizational transitions require that we are a learning organization

One More Time: How to Build a Learning Organization
(Five Perspectives for Top Managers)
by David M. Noer

In both the popular and academic press, there has been an increasing amount of discussion concerning learning organizations and stimulating organizational learning. Unfortunately much of this material is either clouded in academic jargon or oversimplified to the level of trivial slogans and labels for it to be of much value for top managers. Here are five practical perspectives for top managers seeking to create a learning culture.

Outside In Won't Work

You Can't Engineer a Learning Organization
Technically organizations don't learn anything - organizations are shared abstractions - they don't exist in a biological sense and to really think they are capable of learning is to practice reification: the application of human traits to the non-human. This means that you can't do anything to an organization to make it a learning organization. Top management or outside consultants can't simply write a vision statement, hold a workshop, or read a book and decree a learning organization. You can't engineer organizational learning. This is an outside in approach and will only result in the same old people, performing in the same dysfunctional, parochial, and political manner as in the past.

Inside Out Does Work

You Can Create a Learning Culture
What people can do is create organizational cultures that stimulate learning. The words a learning culture, are much more useful than a learning organization. Learning cultures are not engineered, they are behaved. Cultures are formed by people doing things - interacting with each other. Ross and his colleagues clearly articulate this active definition, "At its essence, every organization is a product of how its members think and interact." (1) The way leaders create learning organizations is to interact with each other in ways that create a culture that stimulates and reinforces learning. This is an inside out approach and the only one that works.

Belief in Collective Wisdom Requires Courage

Behaving in a manner that stimulates organizational learning is an against the grain process for most top managers. The most difficult aspect involves refraining from individual action taking and seeking the input of the collective organization. A cornerstone of organizational learning involves honoring the collective wisdom and testing individual assumptions and reference frames before making decisions. Since top executives are often judged by their ability to make quick and crisp decisions, the patience and perspective to seek the collective voice is negatively reinforced. Top managers must have the faith that a group decision is better in content, process, and ownership, than an individual decision, and the courage to resist those who press them for individual action.

Win/Loss Thinking Shuts Down Organizational Learning

Despite political correctness and an ecumenical veneer, many top managers have been conditioned to win/loss thinking. Part of this is a carry-over from the market place where they are rewarded for "beating" the competition. Unfortunately this "I'm right, you're wrong - win/lose" polar thinking is an anathema to learning cultures. It plays out in mergers where "my" side is better than your side. It is found in strategy formulation where "my" way is better than your way. It appears in information analysis where "my" data is right and yours is inaccurate. In many top management cultures, the currency of the realm is debate when what really spends is dialogue. In order to behave in a manner that stimulates the creation of a learning culture, top managers need to stop debating and seeking a dichotomous win/loss answer, and start dialoguing and seeking mutual understanding and learning. There are countless war stories of top executives winning the argument, and losing market share and sometimes the company.

Honor All Perspectives

Killing Messengers Kills Learning
Killing, or at least wounding, the messenger is alive and well in most organizations. People are labeled as whiners, nay-sayers, whistle-blowers, pessimists; organizations are sales prevention departments, purveyors of doom and gloom, and filled with stereotypes as in "accounting types," "legal types," and "human resource types." Labeling, stereotyping and discounting peoples' organizational and professional roles serves to disempower them and shut them down. Learning cultures value and honor all data - good and bad. Top managers need to confront their defensiveness and remain open to all messages. It is always more fun to celebrate good news and easy to like and favor those who bring it. Top managers have to find a way to stimulate and rapidly dissiminate bad, contradictory, and confusing news. If they don't do that, people will tell them only what they want to hear and they will be deaf to the kind of vital information that will help their organizations grow and thrive.

(1) Ross, R., Smith, B., Roberts, C., and Kleiner, A. in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. P. 48, Doubleday, 1994

Posted by sbaugher at April 4, 2005 7:03 AM | TrackBack