Learning Organizations

1. Learning Organizations

2. Think of an Organization Where: • You can experiment • It was ok to make (and admit) a mistake • Furthering your education / development was not just encouraged, but expected • Leadership has open door policies • Leadership openly seekcritiques of the organization • Enjoy going to workplace

3. Daniel Pink - Drive • Three Principles • Autonomy: Power to choose your direction • Mastery: Support for Professional Development • Purpose: Having a sense of meaning to your job and feeling valued

4. Google as an Example • Employees’ ideas are considered as important as executives’ ideas • 20% Project • New Parent Benefits • $500 Take out benefit first 6 weeks at home • 18 weeks paid leave for mothers • 7 weeks paid leave for fathers • Free gourmet, healthy meals on site • TGIF sessions with leaders where any question can be asked

5. Other Qualities • Active efforts to identify and solve organizational problems • Failure is Rewarded / Encouraged • Encourages new approaches • Encourages experimentation • Lessons Learned • Sharing failures / successes • Looking beyond your organization • Pathways to transfer knowledge

6. Other Qualities Cont. • Time • Experiment • Education / Professional Development • Create a Desire for Change & Improvement • Collaborative Efforts • Does not necessarily equate to more meetings! • Make “Work” a place employees want to come to

7. Are There Other Qualities • Systems Thinking • Process Improvement • Networks, relationships, team-centric approaches • Self-Organizing (trust in mid-level management and employees) • What Else?

8. Systems Thinking • interdependency and change • focus on whole not individual parts • long-term goals vs. short-term benefits • better appreciation of systems leads to more appropriate action

9. Personal Mastery • organizations learn only through individuals who learn • never reach destination; should be in continuous learning mode • Work to clarify and deepen personal vision • deeply aware of growth areas and gaps between vision and reality

10. Shared Vision • A genuine vision leads to people wanting to excel and learn • Leaders must translate personal visions into shared visions • Unearthing shared ‘pictures of the future’ that foster genuine commitment rather than compliance • Leaders learn the counter-productiveness of trying to dictate a vision, no matter how heartfelt. (Senge 1990: 9)

11. Team Learning • Team learning starts with ‘dialogue’= the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter genuine ‘thinking together’ • Allows the group to discover insights not attainable individually • Shows group how to recognize the patterns of interaction that undermine learning (Senge 1990: 10)

12. A Learning Organization Is... • Where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire • Where new patterns of thinking are nurtured • Where collective aspiration is set free • Where people are continually learning to see the whole together • “When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative.” (Senge 1990: 13)