On Sun, 27 Oct 1996, Richard Karash wrote:
> I'll write soon with my notes on what was said.
Senge Keynote -- Pegasus Conference 10/2/96
Below are my notes of Peter Senge's keynote address at the Pegasus
Conference 10/2/96. These notes are my paraphrasing, my own
reconstruction, including many of my own words, in an attempt to convey
Peter's message. Where this reads roughly or garbled, that's most likely
my paraphrasing.
LO participants on the Web have seen (in my previous msg) Nancy
Margulies' mindscapes which include some of these ideas.
Video and audio tapes of this talk are available from Pegasus
Communications (617-576-1231) and summaries of the Keynote talks will
appear in the next issue of "The Systems Thinker."
Others please join in with your recollections or notes. And, let this be
a starting point for discussion.
-- Rick
---- Notes below are paraphrasing Senge's talk ----
I'll talk about a journey that we've been making for the past 2-3 years.
We've been rethinking what we've been doing at the MIT OLC (Organizational
Learning Center). We've had limits to success and also a deeper set of
needs.
A little bit different way of looking at this work. We've been working on
the disciplines for about 20 years. The term "Learning Organization"
arose 10 years ago. It might miss something quite fundamental; there
might be a different way of talking about this that will bring out more.
Chris Argyris asked, "What is an organization that *it* can learn?"
[Peter showed the Charthouse Personal Mastery tape, the violin maker in
Cremora Italy. A community of passionate violin makers.]
We tend to see an individual absent their context. There are other people
involved. The violin maker is part of a larger learning community. The
video did not mention the violin player... or the composer. There would
be no music if it were not for them.
Maybe it's not about an organization, it may be about the community.
250 years after Stradavari, people are still coming to Cremora to be part
of a community of passionate violin makers.
A simple idea... Probably what all of this work is about is about
creating learning communitites. The questions are:
- What's their nature?
- How do they come into being?
- What forces make them richer and stronger?
- What forces make them wither?
These are different questions from the five disciplines. The 5D's are
about theories and methods, how we think and interact. The single biggest
criticism of The Fifth Discipline is that it's not about organizational
learning, it's about how individuals and groups learn.
When we worked on The Fifth Discipline, it was clear that teams were an
important learning unit. A team is any group of people who need one
another in order to get something done. It was clear then that without
team learning, it would be impossible for an organization to learn. Then,
we lacked a strong enough theory of organizing...
An answer might be in understanding what a learning community is. The
vitality of an institution is related to the vitality of the community it
can foster.
If there is to be learning, there will have to be research and practice.
- Research is a disciplined approach to discovery and understanding with
a commitment to share.
- Practice is the application of energy, tools, and effort to achieve
something.
One definition of "science" is "to put the data of one's experience in
order."
A learning community is a system for producing theory, methods, and tools
and practical knowhow.
A learning community will also have capacity building. [Peter drew a
diagram with three fuzzy clouds, somewhat overlapping, for Research,
Practice, and Capacity Building.]
Knowledge would include conceptual... through to practical application.
Our knowledge creating system about managing and organizing is a system
which is deeply fragmented... especially about how the parts get
coordinated. This whole system isn't functioning well for building
knowledge about managing and organizing.
Research in universities, academia... Practice in companies and other
organizations... Capacity building by consultants. Big gaps... Not
working.
Look at the relationships pairwise. Lots of gaps and collusion going on.
Consider consultants and companies. Most consultants consider their
methods proprietary. The essence of research is public testing, but this
is generally kept private in consulting firms. Individual consultants may
be involved in co-dependent relationships, colluding with their clients.
Big money is involved in consulting relationships; what if the person
paying the bill *is* the problem?
Companies are hooked on fixes and fads... which the consulting firms and
universities are happy to provide. Notice how rapidly the big consulting
firms shifted from quality... to re-engineering... to learning.
Our society's definition of knowledge has evolved... Don Schon says that
the old version was "technical rationality" in which the sequence was: 1)
get theory, 2) apply theory. His books (The Reflective Practitioner)
suggest a radically different picture of knowledge.
>From Michael Polanyi, "We know much more than we can ever say." Can we
ever explain how an infant recognizes faces? Our ability to do is much
richer than the part of it we can express.
Technical rationality is great... if all you have to do is talk. That's
why artistic communities have never fallen into this trap. We'd laugh at
an artistic community in which no-one ever performed, they just talked
about how great they were. Don Schon studied artistic communities. In the
arts, and only in the arts, the sequence is 1) copy, 2) then improvise.
Don invented the concept of "Lead user analysis" in which a company
creates new products with their customers. The company and the customers
form a learning community.
In our organizations, where are the researchers? That is, who in our
organizations is practicing a disciplined approach to discovery and
understanding with a commitment to share? Until someone is doing this
there will be no org learning.
--
Richard Karash ("Rick") | <http://world.std.com/~rkarash>
Speaker, Facilitator, Trainer | email: rkarash@karash.com
"Towards learning organizations" | Host for Learning-Org Mailing List
(617)227-0106, fax (617)523-3839 | <http://world.std.com/~lo>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations
For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>