Learning Organizations

Organizations need to learn more than ever as they confront intensifying competition, advances in technology, and shifts in customer preferences. Each company must become a learning organization.

The concept is not a new one. It flourished in the 1990s, stimulated by Peter M. Senge’s The Fifth Discipline and countless other publications, workshops, and websites.

The result was a compelling vision of an organization made up of employees skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge. These people could help their firms cultivate tolerance, foster open discussion, and think holistically and systemically. Such learning organizations would be able to adapt to the unpredictable more quickly than their competitors could.

Building blocks of the Learning Organization

1. Supportive Learning Environment: An environment that supports Learning has following distinct characteristics:
i) Psychological Safety
ii) Appreciation of Differences
iii) Openness to new Idea
iv) Time for reflection

2. Concrete Learning Processes and Practices
i) Experimentation
ii) Information collection
iii) Analysis
iv) Education and training
v) Information transfer

3. Leadership that reinforces Learning

Content adapted from the March 2008 Harvard Business Review article, Is Yours a Learning Organization?, by David A. Garvin, Amy C. Edmondson, and Francesca Gino.