SMB 3004

Strategies for
developing a
Learning
Organisation
• The business of business is learning –
and all else will follow.

“Learning inside an organisation must be

equal to or greater than change outside
the organisation.”

- Reg Revans -
• Critical issues facing today’s corporations?
– Reorganisation, restructuring, and reengineering.
– Increased skills shortages, with schools unable
to adequately prepare for work in the 21st
century.
– Doubling of knowledge every two to three years.
– Global competition from the world’s most
powerful companies.
– Overwhelming breakthroughs of new and
advanced technologies.
– Spiralling need for organisations to adapt to
change.
“The behaviours that define learning
and the behaviours that define
being productive
are one and the same.
Learning is the heart of productive
activity.
- learning is the new form of labour.”

Shoshana Zuboff
• Learning in organisational settings in today’s
environment will represent a new form of learning in
the following ways:
1. Learning is performance-based (tied to business objectives).
2. Importance is placed on learning processes (learning how to
learn).
3. The ability to define learning needs is as important as the
answers.
4. Organisation-wide opportunities exist to develop
knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
5. Learning is part of work, a part of everybody’s job
description.
• The full richness of the learning organisation
incorporates five distinct subsystems – learning,
organisation, people, knowledge and technology.
• Organisations that learn faster will be able to
adapt quicker and thereby achieve significant
strategic advantages.
• There are four major areas, which have
changed profoundly over the last years:
1. Economic, social and scientific environment
– globalisation
– economic and marketing competition
– environmental end ecological pressures
– new sciences of quantum physics and chaos
theory (understanding of quantum physics means
that one cannot predict with absolute certainty,
that chaos is a part of the reality)
– Knowledge era (knowledge that exists in an
organisation is the sum of everything everybody
in your company knows that gives you a
competitive edge. The greatest challenge is to
create an organisation that can redistribute its
knowledge.)
– societal turbulence
2. Workplace environment
– Information technology and the informated
organisation (Informated organisations are
able to immediately acquire information that
can be used to get a job dine, generate new
information as a by-product, and develop new
information)
– Organisation structure and size
• Key resource of business is not capital,
personnel, or facilities, but rather
knowledge, information, and ideas.
• Another form of restructuring is a virtual
organisation, a temporary network of
independent companies, suppliers,
customers, and even rivals linked by
information technology to share skills,
costs, and access to one another’s
markets.
• Three other emerging management
theories gaining popularity is
reengineering core competencies and
organisational architecture.)
 – Total quality management movement
• Competitive advantage comes from the
continuous, incremental innovation and
refinement of a variety of ideas that spread
throughout the organisation.
– Workforce diversity and mobility
– Boom in temporary help
3. customer expectations (cost, quality, time,
service, innovation, customisation)
4. Workers – Those who thrive will have problem
identifier skills, problem solving skills and
strategic broker skills.
– Corporations depend on the specialised
knowledge of their employees.
– Knowledge workers do, in fact, own the
means of production and they can take it out
of the door with them at any moment.)
 The Systems-Lined Organisation
Model
• A systematically define learning organisation
is an organisation which learns powerfully and
collectively and is continually transforming
itself to better collect, manage, and use
knowledge for corporate success.
• It empowers people within and outside the
company to learn as they work.
• Organisational learning refers to how
organisational learning occurs, the skills and
processes of building and utilising knowledge.
• There are a number of dimensions of a
learning organisation:
– Learning is accomplished by the organisational
system as a whole.
– Organisational members recognise the
importance of ongoing organisationwide
learning.
– Learning is a continuous, strategically used
process – integrated with and running parallel to
work.
– There is a focus on creativity and generative
learning.
 – Systems thinking is fundamental
– People have continuous access to information and
data resources.
– A corporate climate exists that encourages,
rewards, and accelerates individual and group
learning
• Workers network inside and outside the
organisation.
• Change is embraced, and surprises and even
failures are viewed as opportunities to learn.
• It is agile and flexible.
• Everyone is driven by a desire for quality and
continuous improvement.
• Activities are characterised by aspiration,
reflection, and conceptualisation.
• There are well-developed core competencies
that serve as a taking-off point for new
products and services.
• It possesses the ability to continuously adapt,
renew, and revitalise itself in response to the
changing environment.
• The systems-linked learning organisation
model is made up of five closely interrelated
subsystems:
– learning
– organisation
– people
– knowledge
– technology
• If any subsystem is weak or absent, the
effectiveness of the other subsystems is
significantly weakened.
• It is important to remember that one
never fully is a learning organisation.
• Change always continues, as well as
learning.
• There are 16 steps taken by various
organisations in order to become learning
organisations :
1. Commit to becoming a learning
organisation.
2. Connect learning with business
operations (direct connections between
learning and improved business
operations makes it easier to persuade
people)
3. Assess the organisation’s capability on
each subsystem of the systems learning
model.
4. Communicate the vision of a learning
organisation (the most sophisticated vision is
of no use unless it can be clearly understood
by others)
5. Recognise the importance of systems
thinking and action (a company cannot
become a learning organisation by
focusing on just one subsystem or on
one part of the organisation)
6. Leaders demonstrate and model
commitment to learning
7. Transform the organisational culture to
one of continuous learning and
improvement
8. Establish corporate-wide strategies of
learning (encourage experimentation,
recognise and praise learners, reward learning,
spread the word about new learnings, apply
the new learnings)
9. Cut bureaucracy and streamline the structure
10. Empower (to possess the necessary freedom,
trust, influence, opportunity, recognition, and
authority) and enable (to possess the necessary
skills, knowledge, values, and ability)
employees. Significant resources of time,
money, and people are allocated to increase
employees’ skills not only in present job but
also for future, unforeseen challenges.
11. Extend organisational learning to the
entire business chain
12. Capture learnings and release
knowledge (quickly throughout the
organisation)
13. Acquire and apply best of technology
to the best of learning.
14. Encourage, expect, and enhance
learning at individual, group, and
organisation levels
15. Learn more about learning
organisations.
16. Continuous adaptation, improvement,
and learning.
 Starting the Process

• Org started the process for variety of

reasons:
a) Significant external change
b) New Leader
c) Clear Champion
d) Desire to become a learning organisation
 What are they doing?
• Based on Pedler’s model:
a) Strategy
b) Looking In: activities that support the vision.
c) Structures: flatter organisation and flexible working pattern.
d) Looking Out:networking and co-operative ventures,develop
people and systems to access external information.
e) Learning Opportunities
• Develop people oriented and participative
culture.
• Encouraging personal growth and development.
• Encouraging feedback and reflections.
 Role of Managers and Leaders
1. Visionary
• Vision are clear statements which are
focused and directed towards something or
state that everyone in the organisation can
aspire and work towards.
3. Empowerer
• Give individual members of staff both the
power and responsibility to manage
themselves and their activities in the
workplace.
1. Risk-taker
• Mayo describes the ways in which calculated
risks may be encouraged in the workplace by:
• Throw away the rule books
• Investing in innovation
• Creating alliances with competitors
• Learning from mistakes and share their
learning.
• Encourage creative dialogue
4. Learner
• managers are leaner.
• Manager encourage empowerment.
5. Coach
• Guide staff and encourage caching
activities within team
6.Collaborator
• Work together with any parties.
• Mediator
 Building, Maintaining, and Sustaining the
Learning Organisation

• Building a learning organisation may be difficult, but

so is maintaining and sustaining it when it is
operating.
• Many an excellent, even learning company has
dropped from its high perch.
• It is preferable to begin building a learning
organisation at the very top – to get top leadership
committed.
• But it is possible to begin in any part that has the
potential to affect the others.
• Start where the energy is! Things to consider include:
• Work with the directors, managers, union and human
resources department
• Begin with a diagnosis
• Raise consciousness and start with a company
conference
• Start with one department and Focus on one of the key
business issues.
– Keys to a successful transformation into a learning
organisation:
– Establish a strong sense of urgency about becoming a
learning organisation. The idea is to make the status quo
seem more dangerous than the unknown.
– Form a powerful coalition pushing for the learning
organisation
– Create a vision of the learning organisation.
Without a vision, the effort can dissolve into a list
of confusing and incompatible projects.
Communicate and practice the vision. Remove
obstacles (bureaucracy, competitiveness of
individuals rather than collaboration, control. Poor
communications, poor leaders, rigid hierarchy) that
prevent others from acting on the new vision of a
learning organisation.
– create short-term wins. Most people won’t stay
on the long march unless the journey has some
short-term successes.
– Consolidate progress achieved and push for
continued movement. Declaring the war won
can be catastrophic until changes sink deeply
into the culture.
• Ten facilitating factors that support and
sustain the learning organisation:
1. Scanning imperative. Learning cannot
continue without a solid awareness of the
environment
2. Performance gap. Performance shortfalls are
opportunities for learning.
3. Concern for measurement. Discourse over
metrics is a learning activity.
4. Experimental mindset. Support the practice of
trying new things and being curious about
how things work.
5. Climate of openness. Debate and conflict remain
acceptable ways of solving problems.
6. Continuous education. One is never finished
learning and practising.
7. Operational variety. There is more ways than one
to accomplish business objectives and work goals.
8. Multiple advocates or champions.
9. Involved leadership. Creating vision is not
enough. Leadership at any organisational level
must engage in hands-on implementation of the
vision.
10. Systems perspective.
The End

Thank You