LEARNING ORGANIZATION

What is a Learning Organization?

• A Learning Organization is a place where people are continually discovering how they create reality.

• Learning Organizations discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at ALL LEVELS of the organization.

• Learning Organizations realize that the ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.

  Learning Organizations are characterized by these five disciplines:

  • Systems Thinking
  • Personal Mastery
  • Mental Models
  • Shared Vision
  • Team Learning

1. Systems Thinking

• Business & other human endeavors are systems
• Systems are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions
• These often take years to fully play out their effects on each other
• Since we are part of the lacework, it's often hard for us to ?? the whole pattern of change
• We tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and
• Wonder WHY our deepest problems never seem to be solved
• Systems thinking helps us to SEE the full patterns
• Systems thinking helps us to CHANGE systems more effectively

2. Personal Mastery

• Mastery = Special level of proficiency

• People with a high level of personal mastery exhibit lifelong learning

• Personal mastery is an essential cornerstone of the learning organization

  Personal mastery is the discipline of:

• Continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision

• Focusing our energies

• Developing patience, and

• Seeing reality objectively

  Personal mastery is emphasized throughout the use of the LEONARD Personality Profile which gives each participant an insight into their own strengths and weaknesses. Participants are given feedback on their own emotional blindspots and encouraged to work on these weaknesses so as to ensure better teamwork.

3. Mental Models

• Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or perceptions that infuence how we perceive the world.
• Very often we are not consciously aware of our mental models.

4. Shared Vision

• Organizations of excellence have been built on a shared vision
• People in these organizations are bound together around a common identity and sense of destiny

• A genuine shared vision results in people excelling and learning, not because they have to, but because they want to

5. Team Learning

• In a learning organization, the collective IQ of the team exceeds the sum of the IQ of the individuals
• Learning teams develop extraordinary capacities for coordinated action
• Learning teams are able to dialogue