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
The University of Minnesota has been engaged in a strategic planning process with three separate committees working over the past year. The first committee established frameworks to define excellence and I served on that committee. A second committee focused on academic recommendations and a third committee focused on administrative recommendations. The reports from the last two committees were made public today. You may read a full report of the reports at:
http://www.umn.edu/systemwide/strategic_positioning/ .
We continue to be in a consultative process and the Board of Regents will make their final decisions June 2005. The President and Provost will seek input from the University community about these recommendations over the next two months and I strongly encourage you to express your voice and perspective to the discussions.
I am pleased with the task force report and recommendations. Those include the creation of a College of Design, which will include our current Department of Design Housing and Apparel; the recreation and realignment of the College of Education and Human Development to include the Department of Family Social Science and the School of Social Work. The new college will create new synergies to address education and human development across the life span. The Department of Food Science and Nutrition will be integrated into an appropriate College, based upon its present strengths and mission to engage in research and teaching related to the science of safe and healthy foods.
The recommendations reflect the spirit of the vision of the philosophical constructs of human ecology...the relationship of people to their environments across the lifespan. Though the structures are different than what we currently know, the work of our scholarship will continue. I believe that as we continue our work through the next year of transition planning, we will discover great opportunities that will allow us to be even more excellent in our respective disciplines and professions
I invite you to celebrate with us as we create our new future at the University of Minnesota. Our community will do so with pride, integrity and a deep commitment to the excellence of our field. We will need to share our wisdom, insights, passion, and sense of humor as we continue the journey.
Thank you for your support as we continue our work at Minnesota.
Shirley