Hi Jim and Tom,
There is an excellent case study of members of the Marine Core becoming a
learning organization. It is "Evans Carlson and the Carlson Raiders"
Harvard Business School Case 9-481-193. It tells the story of how, after
Pearl Harbor, FDR commissioned Evans Carlson to form a Raider battalion to
strike back quickly in the Pacific. In the teeth of Marine Core opposition
Carlson did this and organized it along Communist Chinese principles!
Carlson had spent 18 months with Mao's army in China. Officers wore no
badges of rank and had to be able to do everything with the men etc. The
Raiders did brilliantly in combat both militarily and socially but were
eventually "killed" by the Marine Corps.
Space doesn't permit me to go into all the nuggets there are about
learning in this case - the role of crisis, importance of networks, an
egalitarian structure, the temporary nature of the process etc. but I have
used it in-house with great success with shopfloor people who would not be
interested in a pure business case.
-- David Hurst, Speaker, Consultant and Writer on Management dhurst1046@aol.com