Becoming a Learning Organisation
A learning organisation is one that is skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge, and modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights. Without accompanying chnages in the way work gets done, only the potential for change exists.

"Organisations that will truly excel in the future will be those
that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity
to learn at all levels in an organisation."
Peter Senge 'The Fifth Discipline'

Learning organisations are usaully skilled at:

Systematic Problem Solving - using simple statistical and diagnostic tools to process data.

Experimentation - motivated by new opportunities rather than current difficulties. This can take the form of ongoing programmes designed to produce continuous improvement, and demonstration projects designed to deliver systemwide changes. Both will only have limited impact on the organisation unless the learning is transferrred and embedded.

Learning from Experience - can produce valuable lessons from failure as well as success. A productive failure is one that leads to insight and better understanding of what to do better next time. There are many examples of succcessful projects that fail the organisation because the lessons are not captured and applied.

Learning from Others - usually in groups or action learning sets. This is an effective way of gaining commitment for learning and creating a climate for wanting to improve by contributing to each other's personal development.

Transferring Knowledge - can be achieved through Communities of Practice, Intranets, Training Courses, Newsletters, Team Briefings, Surveys, etc.

Learning Styles
We all learn in different ways, and there are numerous mechanisms around to help you identify your personal Learning Style. This knowledge can help you deal better with ideas, work in teams, deal with conflict and solve day-to-day problems.
Hay/McBer use a framework that plots individual scores on a grid to show your learning preferences for one or more of the following:
CONCRETE EXPERIENCE (Learning by Experiencing)
You learn from specific experiences where you have to be sensitive to other people's feelings.
REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION (Learning by Reflecting)
You learn by observing situations and looking at problems from different perspectives - looking for meaning
ABSTRACT CONCEPTUALISATION (Learning by Thinking)
You learn by logically analysing ideas and planning systematically. You prefer to act on the basis of a thorough intellectual understanding of a situation.
ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION (Learning by Doing)
Learning comes from your ability to make things happen. This may involve taking calculated risks and influencing people and events as you go along.
Effective learning eventually involves all four phases, but you may have a preference for one or maybe a combination of two. You can begin a learning process in any of the four phases of the cycle and move onto others. Think about the ones you might skip and why.
If you are combination of two you will have a dominant style. For example:
CONCRETE - REFLECTIVE - You will be imaginative, wanting to understand people, recognise their problems and be open minded about possibilities.
To improve you will need to be more sensitive to values, listen with an open mind, gather information and imagine the implications and consequences of decisions and actions.
REFLECTIVE - ABSTRACT - You will want to plan, create models, define problems, develop theories and be patient.
To improve you need to focus on organising information, testing theories and ideas, build conceptual models, design experiments and learn how to analyse quantitative data.
ABSTRACT - ACTIVE - You will want to solve problems, make decisions, reason deductively and be logical.
To improve, you must create new ways of thinking an doing, experiment wit new ideas, choose the best solutions, set goals and make better decisions.
ACTIVE - CONCRETE - You will want to get things done, initiate action, get people organised, take risks and be both adaptable and practical.
To improve you need to commit to objectives, seek new opportunities, influence and lead others, become personally involved and deal with people direct.
Remember, you can find out more about how you learn by talking to friends, family, boss, co-workers, etc.
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Self-Managed Learning
The demands of the modern organisation are for managers and leaders who can manage their own learning to meet the challenges of continuous change. This is unlikely to be achieved by sitting in training rooms, listening to lectures or by doing case studies. Managers need to learn how to manage their own learning.

Learning Sets
This might mean joining action learning teams with five or six other managers, who meet for one day a month to negotiate and agree their individual Learning Contracts. These contracts would link personal development and skills to the operational and strategic needs of their organisation and work.

The Set receives the support of a skilled Learning Adviser - not in a teaching or facilitating role as such, but to help the learners find and meet their own objectives through questioning and making connections.
The Learning Contract requires all Learning Set participants to:
Catalogue their past experiences and achievements
Identify (using diagnostic tools) their personal styles of learning, managing and leading to understand their strengths and weaknesses
Think about what they want for themselves, the abilities they will need to develop and what that might mean when turned into learning goals
Draw up a plan of how they intend undertake the learning - when it would happen, the resources needed, obstacles to be overcome.
Set targets and measures to assess whether the goals they set themselves and their learning objectives have been met.
The role of the Learning Set is to help each member develop and deliver their Learning Contract. Experience suggests these Sets only work if everyone gives them the highest priority and are supported by their Head of Service.
The Learning Set must provide the right conditions for learning, offering a safe, supportive and challenging environment that is conducive to open and honest conversation. It must be free of overt pressure from bosses. As a result participants start to work more closely together, understanding where people are coming from and why they are doing what they're doing. They can then be mutually supportive.
A Learning Set is not like other team learning situations. Power in the group is distributed equally, because everyone is expected to both give and receive help. It is an Adult to Adult relationship. As a result the responsibility for learning lies in the hands of the learner, which also means that set members feel an obligation to attend meetings and be supportive. They can test their ideas out and get a range of perspectives from people who are 'all in the same boat'.
More information on how to set up and run Learning Sets effectively can be found in the Tools Section. You should also look at Ian Cunningham's book on The Wisdom of Strategic Learning or Mike Pedler's book on Action Learning in Practice.
Learning Sets become even more effective when they bring together the most talented people in the organisation - those who can, who know and who care about making real change happen. This is because they bring passion and entrepreneurship into the learning agenda which gives it vitality and purpose.

Leadership for Learning & Change

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