John,
I am reading your message VERY late, but wanted to respond anyway. I hope
you got some more timely responses as well.
You suggest that there is a paradox between traditional measures and the
nature of a learning organization. I might agree. In fact, in my mind, the
paradox lies in the presupposition that there is some normative model
against which to measure. I am on a crusade myself to get practitioners
and clients to challenge their normative model of what a "learning
organization" is and to measure organizational learning only in the
context of how well it helps the organization accomplish its primary task,
whatever that is. When we do that, we can no longer simply assume that
doing more of the five disciplines constitutes "becoming a learning
organization."
Anyhow, I also wanted to make sure that someone had given you a heads up
about the Organizational Learning Inventory out of MIT, as well as GKA's
"Work Session on Organizational Learning" that uses it to help a group
define their own organizational learning charter.
If you don't have this information and would like it, send me your snail
mail address and I'll send something off to you. Or, you can read about it
in the Dec.95/Jan.96 _The Systems Thinker_
Regards,
Marilyn Darling
Signet Consulting Group/GKA
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/>