Learning Organization 1

By Group 4 Varinder Kaur Vaibhav Soni Yogesh Gupta

"A Learning Organisation is one in which people at all levels, individuals and collectively, are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about."  

What is Learning ?  What is Organization ?  What is Learning Organization? 

Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom. It is the product of experience and the goal of education

An organization is a social arrangement which pursues collective goals, which controls its own performance, and which has a boundary separating it from its environment. Company, corporation, firm, enterprise, authority or institution, or part or combination thereof, whether incorporated or not, public or private

The Learning Organization is a concept that is becoming an increasingly widespread philosophy in modern companies, from the largest multinationals to the smallest ventures. What is achieved by this philosophy depends considerably on one's interpretation of it and commitment to it .

A Company that perform badly is easily recognizable .Can you spot the sign ?  Do your employee seem unmotivated or uninterested in their work ?  Does your workforce lack the skill & knowledge to adjust to new jobs ?  Do you seem to be the only one to come up with all ideas?  And does your workforce simply follow orders ?  Do your team argue constantly and lack real productivity?  or lack communication between each other? If any of these points sound familiar the answer for you could be Learning Organization

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The Building Blocks Implementation Strategies The Golden Rules People Behavior

Before a learning organizations can be implemented , a sole foundation can be made by taking into account the following:  Awareness  Environment  Leadership  Empowerment  Learning  

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Awareness Organization must be aware that learning is necessary before they can develop into a Learning organization. This may seems to be strange statement but this learning must be take place at all levels, not just the management level.

 Environment

  Centralised, mechanistic structures do not create a good environment. Individuals do not have a comprehensive picture of the whole organisation and its goals. This causes political and parochial systems to be set up which stifle the learning process

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Leadership Leaders should foster the Systems Thinking concept and encourage learning to help both the individual and organisation in learning. It is the leader's responsibility to help restructure the individual views of team members

 Empowerment

The focus of control shifts from managers to workers. This is where the term Empowerment is introduced. The workers become responsible for their actions; but the managers do not lose their involvement. They still need to encourage, enthuse and co-ordinate the workers  

 Learning

Companies can learn to achieve these aims in Learning Labs. These are small-scale models of real-life settings where management teams learn how to learn together through simulation games. They need to find out what failure is like so that they can learn from their mistakes in the future.

Any organisation that wants to implement a learning organisation philosophy requires an overall strategy with clear, well defined goals. Once these have been established, the tools needed to facilitate the strategy must be identified.  It is clear that everyone has their own interpretation of the "Learning Organisation" idea, so to produce an action plan that will transform groups into Learning Organisations might seem impossible. However, it is possible to identify three generic strategies that highlight possible routes to developing Learning Organisations . 

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Thrive on Change

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Don’t be scared Learning Organizations feed on change. Go all the way (no half-way house) Committed :focused Know objectives; plan

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2.Encourage Experimentation  experimentation is a necessary risk  individual input rewarded.  encourage throughout the company 3. Communicate Success and Failure  review  assessment (continuous/self) 4. Facilitate learning from the surrounding Environment  find internal & external source of information  learn form experience from other companies (open  your eyes).  above all discuss customer needs

5.Facilitate learning from Employees  encourage participation and experimentation (linked to point 2)  invest in training - multiskilling (getting most from employees), morale  empowerment/responsibility  remove hierarchy 6. Reward Learning  everybody's wants their work to be appreciated boost morale  benchmarks for performance appraisal  rewards  

7.A proper Selfishness  clear goals/objectives  hints on clarifying objectives 8. A Sense of Caring  care for the individual  ways of implementing this care

There are five disciplines (As described by Peter Senge) which are essential to a learning organisation and should be encouraged at all times. These are:  Team Learning  Shared Visions  Mental Models  Personal Mastery  Systems Thinking 

SYSTEMS THINKING

Personal Mastery

Shared Vision

Mental Models

Team Learning

SYSTEMS THINKING LEARNING ORGANISATION

1.The People Develop  Greater Motivation  The workforce is more flexible  People are more creative  Improved social Interaction 2. Teams and group work better  Knowledge sharing  Interdependency

3.The Company Benefits  Breakdown of traditional communication barriers  Customers relations  Information resources  Innovation and creativity  

Maintaining level of innovation and remaining competitive.  Being better place to respond to external pressure.  Improving quality of outputs at all level.  Having knowledge to better link resources to customer needs.  Increase the pace of change within the organization.  Improving corporate image by becoming more people oriented. 

In the future the following areas will become increasingly more important.  Investment in Learning  Technology  Information Highway  Knowledge is the key  Unemployment  Learning Culture  Customer-Client Relationship  Conclusion