Today I come to one of the most critical yet one of most mis-understood concepts in modern management -”learning organization”. What is it?
Do overload of training programs, waves of abondoned initiatives, and brain-storming sessions make your’s a learning organization? What if all these still leave customers dissatisfied and employees bewildered and cynical?
Learning must take place at individual level. Most companies do a good job of job specific terchnical training. But what is completely missed out and what can be very frustrating is a total lack of training in self-management. Somehow it is assumed that employees can manage themselves. This can be a huge mistake, given the work pressuress and changing profile of young employees. Lack of creative self management seriously hampers organization development efforts.
Learning must also take place at organizational level. Here too there are problems. Successes and failures are best discussed in the context of business processes, so that the learning can be captured and assimilated in the form of revised business processes. Unfortuntely even ISO 9001:2000 certified companies fail to leverage their business processes in this way. Most important reason for this is processes are not measured properly hence they are very opaque. A comprehensive business process measurement framework is essential for organizational learning.
What is your experience? Do you share these views> Is there anything specific that you are doing?
Original Post: http://exponient.com/blog/?p=21
