Continuos Learning and Intranets LO8492

John Zavacki (jzavacki@epix.net)
Mon, 15 Jul 1996 05:06:25 -0400

Replying to LO8487 --

On July 14th, Yogesh Malhorta wrote:

snip
> Some case studies of the organizations that are using intranets for
> various [internal] objectives are accessible at the following URL:
>
> http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/EmergOrg.htm
snip
> Most organizations
> are still trying to figure out the optimal model for deployment of
> intranets as far as the continuous learning of their employees is
> concerned. Jury is still out on the following question: Will the
> 'democratic technology' of the Internet, when brought inside the
> enterprise, unleash continuous learning of all employees or would it
> straitjacket the individual level learning processes? IMHO, it depends
> upon whether the organizations are able to clone not only the
> 'democratic'
> technology, but also the culture of the Net.

The whole issue lies in this last sentence. The essence of "democratic"
technology and the culture that make it effective in continuously learning
do not come in the box with the web browser, the router, or the HTML
editor. Intranet technology can be as static and cumbersome in the hands
of the wrong developer as the legacy systems we see every day which
generate lists instead of information. Without a systems thinking, team
learning approach, the Intranet may have no more effect than the list
generator on creating a learning environment.

Candidates for Intranet development are management flight simulators,
discussion bases such as this one, and project by project improvement
tools which assist in managing the structured, disciplined approach to
PDCA and virtual teams. I'd be interested in discussing this on or off
line.

-- 

jzavacki@epix.net John Zavacki The Wolff Group 900 James Avenue Scranton, PA 18510 Phone: 717-346-1218 Fax: 717-346-1388

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>