Learning Organization

LEARNING ORGANIZATION

What we will learn • Learning Organization Definition. • Key functions and tasks of learning organization. • Characteristics of Learning organization. • Need for Learning organization.

Learning Organization Definition : Peter Senge ■ From The Fifth Discipline , 1990: “…Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together.”

Learning Organization Definition : David Garvin ■ From

Learning in Action, Action 2000 : “ A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring, and retaining knowledge, and at purposely modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.”

Learning Organization is ►the one that has developed the capacity to

adopt and change. ►the one that uses new information which challenges accepted organizational norms and practices…..to reexamine the way in which the organization performs its functions, and thus helps the organization ‘unlearn’ its previously used dysfunctional patterns. ►the one in which people at all levels, individually and collectively, are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about.

Key Functions Of Learning Organization ♦ Information gathering and problem solving. ♦ Experimentation. ♦ Learning from the past. ♦ Learning best practices. ♦ Transferring knowledge.

Four Tasks Of a Learning Organization ◘ Designing learning settings. ◘ Promoting a culture of learning. ◘ Leading a learning process. ◘ Demonstrating personal investment in learning.

Characteristics of a Learning Organization System Thinking

Shared vision

Team Learning Senge’s 5 Disciplines

Mental Models

Personal Mastery

System Thinking • Brief Definition : Understanding the interconnections and interrelationships that shape the behavior of the systems in which we exist.

System Thinking: • Organizations are made up of interrelated elements that functions as a whole (i.e., a system) • Changes in one element or part of the system can cause changes in other elements. • Depending upon the effect of the change, overall organizational performance can be either greatly enhanced or diminished. • Therefore managers are required to view the structural aspects of organizational performance rather than individual performance.

System Thinking : • Framework for focusing on patterns and interrelationships. • Involves the ability to see interconnections between issues, events and information as a whole or as patterns, rather than as a series of unconnected parts. • Involves adopting a holistic approach to problem solving. • Widens people’s perspectives.

Personal Mastery: • Brief Definition: Learning to expand one’s personal capacity to create the future and results one most desires.

Personal Mastery: •

It is the basic human need to learn , grow, and achieve personal mastery that fuels and provides substance to all learning organizations.

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No organization can truly be a learning organization without its individual members begin free to learn.

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Employee must be taught, encouraged, and granted permission to become creative architects of their own work lives.

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Organizations need to encourage their employees to continually learn and improve their skills and abilities.

Mental Models : • Brief Definition: Surfacing, clarifying, testing, and improving one’s internal representation of the world and understanding how these representations, along with their accompanying implicit assumptions, shape one’s decisions and actions.

Mental Models: • Mental models are images, assumptions, and beliefs that everyone carries around in their heads. • They include strongly held beliefs about self, family members, employing organizations, and the world at large which exist in the subconscious. • Mental models can influence employee’s behavior in organizations substantially. • Mental models can serve as powerful constraints in an organization’s ability to gain new insight and innovations.

Shared Vision: • Brief Definition: Building a common sense of purpose and commitment by developing shared images of the future that we seek to create.

Shared vision: • It is a critical component to organizational success. • Learning organization and high performing teams can not excel or even exist without shared vision. • In a learning organization all workers, regardless of their position, are invited and provided with opportunities to create, test, communicate. and promote the organization’s mission.

Shared vision: • Employees are asked to play a strategic part in setting the goals and quality standards that will turn their organization’s shared vision into reality. • Workers are also encouraged and given assistance in setting and aligning their own personal visions and goals with those of organization. • In this way, learning organizations have a definite advantage over their competitors.

Team Learning: • Brief Definition: Reflecting on action as a team and transforming collective thinking skills so that the team can develop intelligence and ability greater than the sum of individual member’s talents.

Team Learning: • Team learning is the building block for organizational learning. • Working and sharing information among team members is a vital element of the learning organization. • Team members can learn and think of more things collectively than they can individually. • It is the ability of a group of individuals to suspend personal assumptions about each other and engage in ‘dialogue’ rather than ‘discussion’.

Need For Learning Organization Learning organizations are essential as ► ●

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Only it can survive tomorrow’s knowledgebased economy. Only it can manage tomorrow’s intense global competition. Only it can cope with tomorrow’s rapid fire technological changes. Only it can handle tomorrow’s demanding and fragmented market. Only it can build a people based work system in a company.

Conclusion: