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The Learning Organization

"...Most top-down change strategies are doomed from the start. Driving change from the top is like a gardener standing over his plants and telling them to grow harder. A good gardener addresses the balancing processes, making sure there is enough water and nutrients. Likewise, leaders should focus less on change itself and more on planning for the natural reactions against it. If people do something new that is effective, they will want to do more of it." - Peter Senge

Learning Organization Links

In 1990, Peter Senge popularized the "Learning Organization" in The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization . He describes the organization as an organism with the capacity to enhance its capabilities and shape its own future. A learning organization is any organization (e.g. school, business, government agency) that understands itself as a complex, organic system that has a vision and purpose. It uses feedback systems and alignment mechanisms to achieve its goals. It values teams and leadership throughout the ranks.

He followed that book with 1999's The Dance of Change: The Challenge to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations which shows the difficulty of achieving the learning organization.

The five disciplines are:

  1. System Thinking - It allows one to look at the events in an organization and see a pattern of complex relationships.
  2. Personal Mastery - Seeing what is and what could be and then changing to meet the vision.
  3. Mental Models - Assumptions about how we see the world.
  4. Shared Vision - A team competency in which everyone has a common goal or shared picture.
  5. Team Learning - The team suspend their assumptions and take up dialogue that embraces the collective good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes
Big Dog's HRD Page
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donclark@nwlink.com
 Copyright 1999 by Donald Clark
Created December 1, 1999
Last Update January 22, 2000
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