This is my first response to this community of Learning Organisation
enthusiasts. I joined initially in January this year and have found the
experience of your discussions fascinating. I am also new to the internet
and all of this is a new learning experience for me.
I believe that there are 2 issues relevant to the "safe" learning
environment and adult learning in particular.
1. Adults in perceiving a need to learn or change previous learnings or
experiences need a feeling of "unsafeness" or "dis-ease" before they
are motivated to re-structure or re-learn previous learnings and create
new learnings. Cognitive Dissonance has been documented as a most
unpleasant experience.
2. Adults as well as children need a "safe" environment to practice and
learn new or re-structured knowledge and skills. Rehearsal time away
from the audience is a necessary precursor to successful performance
and rehearsal needs to take place in a supportive environment where
experimentation, improvisation and making mistakes is encouraged.
The challenge for any organisation is to provide sufficient discomfort for
individuals to stimulate their need for learning but sufficient support to
enable that learning to take place through experimentation etc.
The role of the manager as challenger, mentor, coach, leader and
representative of the organisational structure also provides many
challenges at the personal level.
I have no prescriptive answer to all this but change and subsequent growth
cannot take place either at the personal or organisational level without a
recognition and reconciliation of these 2 issues.
Regards
Mike Scandrett-Smith
ph (08) 8343 2693 Fax (08) 83432622
E mail : Mike.Scandrett-Smith@Roads.SA.Gov.AU
--"Scandrett-Smith, Mike (DOT)" <Mike.Scandrett-Smith@roads.sa.gov.au>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>