Learning is a fundamental
human essence. Human
beings are learners from birth. Learning organizations are those
in which people are continually learning individually
and collaboratively targeting organizational excellence.
It promotes a flexible organization where people are open to
exchange of information between employees and accept and adapt to new
ideas and changes through a shared vision. In order to cope with
rapid and unexpected changes where existing responses are
inadequate and stereotyped the learning organization provides a
new direction. They maintain adapta-bility and operate themselves
as experimenting or self-designing organizations
maintaining themselves in a state of frequent and continuous change in
structures, processes, domains and goals. How organizations process
their managerial experiences is the key to a learning organization.
A learning organization ought to create a space for people
to achieve tremendous business and personal results. It should aim
at management of dissent, bring paradoxes, dilemmas and
functional conflicts to the surface instead of pushing them `under the rug'.
It should aim at building a culture of openness, bring cohesion
between strategy and behavior so that the employees are committed towards
a shared vision. In order for organizational learning to
occur, individuals in the organization must be willing and prepared
to work towards a unified perception of the organization that they
wish to create.
To create value, the leader has to play a significant role by
fostering a learning environment in the organization. It will be a
demanding process that not all will be able to accomplish. The leader needs to
set the tone for the organization's culture both by what he
says (strategy) and what he does (behavior). The leader's role is
to create rich, multidimensional learning environment in which
an employee can find an environment which helps them realize their
quest to learn, grow and contribute. He needs to focus on
creating mechanisms of unlearning previous mistakes,
failures, unmet expectations and targets; learning to adapt, to adopt and
appreciate small successes which will pave the way for bigger successes
and relearning that involves reinventing good practices, developing
change champions and building proactiveness across
the organization. He should endeavor to nurture synergetic
environment for holistic development at individual, group and
organizational level.
The most successful are products of carefully
cultivated attitudes, commitments, and management processes. They
slowly evolve over time. A learning organization values and
derives competitive advantage from continuing learning,
both individual and collective. The five disciplines are systems
thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team
learning (Senge, 1990). It is extremely essential to gauge as to what
extent an organization is functioning as a learning organization and
to understand the relationship among the factors that affect learning
in the organization. |
