Peter Senge’s Learning Organizations

The learning organization

According to Peter Senge learning organizations are:

…where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together

The learning organization

The basic rationale for learning organizations is that in situations of rapid change only those that are flexible, adaptive and productive will excel

For this to happen, it is argued, organizations need to ‘discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels

Personal Mastery

Organizations learn only through individuals who learn

Continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision

Focusing our energies Employees create an organizational

environment that encourages all fellow employees to develop themselves toward the goals and purposes that they desire

Seeing reality objectively Deeply aware of growth areas and tension

between vision and reality

Personal Mastery

It embodies two underlying movements. The first is continually clarifying what is important to us The second is continually learning how to see current reality more clearly

A clear picture of current reality (where we are relative to what we want) generates what we call "creative tension": a force to bring them together, caused by the natural tendency of tension to seek resolution. The essence of personal mastery is learning how to generate and sustain creative tension in our lives.

Mental Models Deeply ingrained assumptions and

generalizations that influence how we understand the world and how we take action

Starts with turning the mirror inward; learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world, to bring them to the surface and hold them rigorously to scrutiny. It also includes the ability to carry on "learningful" conversations that balance inquiry and advocacy, where people expose their own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of others

Mental Models

Personality Perception Process

What is Personality?

The dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment. - Gordon Allport– The sum total of ways in which an

individual reacts and interacts with others, the measurable traits a person exhibits

Perception

Unique interpretation of the situation, not an exact recording of it. Perception is a very complex cognitive process that yields a unique picture of the world, a picture that may be quite different from reality

Perception is largely learned, and no one has the same learnings and experience, then every employee has a unique filter, and the same situations/stimuli may produce very different reactions and behaviors

Shared Vision

A genuine vision leads to people wanting to excel and learn one person's (or one group's) vision imposed on an organization.

Such visions, at best are command compliance—not commitment Leaders must translate personal visions into shared visions

because it provides the focus and energy for learning Unearthing shared ‘pictures of the future’ that foster genuine

commitment rather than compliance Leaders learn the counter-productiveness of trying to dictate a

vision, no matter how heartfelt

Team Learning

Team learning starts with ‘dialogue’. Greeks dia-logos meant a free-flowing of meaning through a group, allowing the group to discover insights not attainable individually the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter genuine ‘thinking together’

Shows group how to recognize the patterns of interaction that undermine learning

Systems thinking – the cornerstone of the learning organization

A cloud masses, the sky darkens, leaves twist upward, and we know that it will rain. Business and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each otherIntegrates the others, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practiceInterdependency and changeFocus on whole not individual partsLong-term goals vs. short-term benefitsBetter appreciation of systems leads to more appropriate action

All the disciplines are, in this way, ‘concerned with a shift of mind from seeing parts to seeing wholes, from seeing people as helpless reactors to seeing them as active participants in shaping their reality, from reacting to the present to creating the future’

METANOIA - A SHIFT OF MIND When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative

DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION HAVE A LEARNING DISABILITY? I AM MY POSITION – conc on own part only

and no integrated apch THE ENEMY IS OUT THERE - blaming others THE ILLUSION OF TAKING CHARGE – stop

waiting for others THE FIXATION ON EVENTS – predict the

events THE PARABLE OF THE BOILED FROG THE DELUSION OF LEARNING FROM

EXPERIENCE THE MYTH OF THE MANAGEMENT TEAM

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