Bill Hendry wrote:
>I read "The Systems Thinker" article in the Dec. 1995/Jan. 1996 issue
>titled "Charting a Corporate Learning Strategy" by Marilyn Darling and
>Gregory Hennessy. <snip>
>Has anyone out there used this instrument, or one like it, with a team of
>managers as they suggest? And if so, what was the outcome? The Harvard
>Law School Library was one org. that used it with good results.
Bill,
Recently, I used the program we described with great success (their
assessment) with a small 50-year old industrial manufacturing
organization. They have spent most of their corporate life owning their
niche market with their one product and recently recognized that they
would need to broaden their mission, addressing new and changing markets
with new products and services. Again, not a hot bed of leading edge
thinking, but the group (50 senior, middle, entry- level managers from
across the company) came through with some real insight -- enough for
participants to be able to open their next week's calendars and plan to do
specific things differently to improve their collective learning about
their changing mission.
I am constantly reminded with this kind of design how much wisdom exists
in the work group, and how little it is possible for an outsider like me
to know about what it means for them to learn collectively.
Marilyn Darling
Signet Consulting Group/GKA
(617) 242-7214, fax (617) 241-5760
mdarling@warren.med.harvard.edu
--mdarling@warren.med.harvard.edu
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>