Why a Learning Organization? LO2313

John Woods (jwoods@execpc.com)
Wed, 02 Aug 95 19:14:16 -0700

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Host's Note: Earlier this year, we had a nice thread of comments on "Why
a Learning Organization" and these responses appear on the Learning-org
web pages. John is adding his response as invited on the web pages.

We have many newcomers on board -- you are welcome to add your responses.
Here is the original question:

Why a Learning Org?? Why bother... It does take effort. Why do we want
learning organizations? On a personal level, why do you want to build
learning organizations? Why do you want your own organization to be
more of a learning organization?

-- Rick Karash, rkarash@world.std.com, host for learning-org
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Why a learning organization? Why systems thinking? The answer, for me,
has nothing to do with fun or because it makes an organization a better
place to work. The answer is more fundamental than that. We already work
in learning organizations that are systems. The issue is not whether we
are learning. It is WHAT we are learning. In many organizations, what we
learn is how to get better and better at being mediocre. All
organizations are learning organizations. All organizations are systems.
We act as if that were not the case, and we get lousy results. We plug
into this reality of systems, and things get better. This not an
accident. We really all are in this together. When we acknowledge that,
use techniques that help us recognize the nature of our relationships, we
perform better and feel better. Deep down we all know that what we do is
dependent on what happens in the world and that we affect the world.
Systems thinking and the learning organization are just useful metaphors
for explaining what, for me, is basic reality. Systems thinking and the
learning organization, then, are not alternatives to the traditional
approach to organizations and our participation in them. Rather, these
ideas help explain why the old way doesn't work so well and what we can do
to change and get better.

--
John Woods <jwoods@execpc.com>