“CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPING A

LEARNING ORGANISATION”

by

Sattar Bawany
Executive MBA (Golden Gate University); B. Bus. (Marketing) (Curtin University)
Post-Graduate Dip. Marketing (CIM - UK); Dip. Marketing (MIS - S'pore);
F.P.MA. (UK); F.C.I.M. (UK); M.M.I.S. (S'pore); M.A.M.A. (USA); M.S.I.M. (S'pore);
M.M.D.I.S. (S'pore); M.S.H.R.I. (S’pore); M.I.K.M.S. (S’pore)

Founder & Chief Knowledge Architect

Bawany Associates

Contact Information:

Sattar Bawany
Chief Knowledge Architect
Bawany Associates Pte Ltd
259 Tampines Central
Singapore 915209

Tel: (65) 6789-0977

Fax: (65) 6789-0911
Email: knowledge@bawany.com.sg
Homepage: www.bawany.com.sg

Copyright © October 2003, Sattar Bawany

 Challenges of Developing a Learning Organisation

THE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE IN THE NEW KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

The fundamental challenge facing managers today in the knowledge based economy is to make
the effort needed to learn some of the new skills and techniques, and to put in processes that
engage their workforce in programmes of continuous capability development and the inculcate
the values of life-long-learning.

Learning should be integrated into the doing, as part and parcel of everyday work. It should also
be energising, stimulating and fun. Getting the best out of everybody, to meet the
insurmountable challenges ahead in this new economy.

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, we are constantly confronted with the need
to learn new skills and ways of achieving success. It is no longer valid for us to simply rely on
the education that we obtain through our schools and universities, we must develop our learning
skills and continue to effectively utilise them in both our personal and professional life.

WHY THE INTEREST IN 'LEARNING ORGANISATIONS’?

Basically, it's the search for the (unattainable) Holy Grail. Companies are seeking to improve
existing products and services (continuous improvement), and innovation (breakthrough
strategies). This has resulted in a plethora of initiatives such as TQM (Total Quality
Management) and BPR (Business Process Reengineering).

But companies are finding that such programmes succeed or fail depending on human factors,
such as skills, attitudes, organisational culture and leadership styles and its impact on
organisational climate. It also appears that many implementations are geared to highly specified
processes, defined for anticipated situations.

The current interest in the 'learning organisation' stems from the recognition that these
initiatives, by themselves, often do not work. Something more is needed to:
• Cope with rapid and unexpected changes where existing 'programmed' responses are
inadequate
• Provide flexibility to cope with dynamically changing situations
• Allow front-line staff to respond with initiative based on customer needs vs. being
constrained by business processes established for different circumstances

With the pace of change ever quickening, the need to develop mechanisms for continuous
learning and innovation is greater than ever.

WHAT IS ‘LEARNING ORGANISATION’ & ‘ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING’?

Learning is seen as so fundamental to business success that business gurus have coined the term
"learning organisation". The Learning Organisation concept is not new and has its roots since
the 1930’s. The accompanying Table 1 outlines the chronology of the various learning
organisation concepts that has been developed over these years by leading management thinkers
and organisation development specialists from both the academic world and the industry.

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 Challenges of Developing a Learning Organisation

TABLE 1

CHRONOLOGY OF LEARNING ORGANISATION CONCEPTS

1938 In his book "Experience and Education", John Dewey publicises the concept of
‘experiential learning’ as an ongoing cycle of activity.

1940s Scottish psychologist Kenneth Craik coins the term "mental models", which later
makes its way to MIT through Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert.

1946 Kurt Lewin, founding theorist of National Training Laboratories, proposes idea of a
"creative tension" between personal vision and a sense of reality.

1960 "The Human Side of Enterprise" by Douglas McGregor, is published.

1970 Chris Argyris and Donald Schon begin work on "action science" the study of how
espoused values clash with the values that underlies real actions.

1979 Consultant Charlie Kiefer, Jay Forrester, Peter Senge, and Robert Fritz design the
"Leadership and Mastery" seminar, at their new consulting firm, Innovation
Associates.

1982 Peter Senge, Arie de Geus, Bill O'Brien, Ray Stata, and other executive leaders
form a learning-organisation study group at MIT.

1989 "The Age of Unreason" by Charles Handy, is published.

1989 ‘The Center for Organisational Learning’ is formed at MIT, with Senge as director
and with Ed Schein, Chris Argyris, Arie de Geus, Ray Stata, and Bill O'Brien as key
advisers.

1990 "The Fifth Discipline" by Peter Senge is published. The book draws on many
influences: system dynamics, "personal mastery" mental models shared and team
learning.

1993 Harvard University professor David Garvin publishes an article on ‘Organisational

Learning’ in the Harvard Business Review, arguing that only learning that can be
measured will be useful to managers.

1997 "The Living Company" by Arie de Geus, is published.

1999 "The Dance of Change" by Peter Senge and colleagues is published.

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 Challenges of Developing a Learning Organisation

What is a "learning organisation"? David Garvin in his Harvard Business Review (August
1993) article defines it as "an organisation skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring
knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights."

What is “organisational learning”? Chris Argyris in his international best seller “On
Organisational Learning” (Blackwell Publications, 1997) defines “organisational learning”
as the process of "detection and correction of errors." In his view organisations learn through
individuals acting as agents for them: "The individuals' learning activities, in turn, are
facilitated or inhibited by an ecological system of factors that may be called an organisational
learning system".

It's been more than a decade since Peter Senge published "The Fifth Discipline: The Art &
Practice of the Learning Organisation" (Doubleday/Currency, 1990). The book was more
than a business best seller was; it was a breakthrough. It propelled Senge into the front ranks
of management thinkers; it created a language of change that people in all kinds of companies
could embrace, and it offered a vision of workplaces that were humane and of companies that
were built around learning. Along the way, the book sold more than 650,000 copies, spawned
a sequel - "The Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning
Organisation" (Doubleday/Currency, 1994) and gave birth to a world-wide movement.

Senge defines the Learning Organisation as the organisation "in which you cannot not learn
because learning is so insinuated into the fabric of life." Also, he defines Learning
Organisation as "a group of people continually enhancing their capacity to create what they
want to create." The concept of Learning Organisation is increasingly relevant given the
increasing complexity and uncertainty of the organisational environment. As Senge remarks:
"The rate at which organisations learn may become the only sustainable source of
competitive advantage."

Now Senge and his colleagues have published "The Dance of Change”
(Doubleday/Currency, 1999). According to Senge, who is a senior lecturer at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Society for Organisational
Learning (SoL) - a global consortium of companies and researchers who are examining
learning and change - the new book presents "what we've learned about learning."

“The Dance of Change” provides a formidable response to businesspeople wondering how to

make his programs stick. He outlines potential obstacles (such as initiating transformation,
personal fear and anxiety, and measuring the ‘unmeasurable’) and proposes ways to turn
these obstacles into sources of improvement. Senge and his colleagues presents an insider's
account of long-term maintenance efforts at General Electric, Harley-Davidson, the U.S.
Army, and others who are learning organisation, along with experience-based suggestions
and exercises for individuals and teams. "We are seeking to understand how people nurture
the reinforcing growth processes that naturally enable an organisation to evolve and
change," Senge explains, "and how they tend to the limiting processes that can impede or
stop that growth."

When all is said and done, an organisation is simply a group of people working with a
common purpose, so for an organisation to become a "learning organisation", it is the people
within that organisation who must be effective learners.

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 Challenges of Developing a Learning Organisation

INHIBITORS TO BECOMING A LEARNING ORGANISATION

In our work with various organisations, we observed that the most common obstacles to
becoming a learning organisation are:
• operational/fire fighting preoccupation - not creating time to sit back and think
strategically

• too focused on systems and process (e.g. ISO9000) to exclusion of other factors
(bureaucratic vs. thinking)

• reluctance to train (or invest in training), other than for obvious immediate needs

• too many hidden personal agendas

• too top-down driven, excessive supervision = lack of real empowerment

These and other obstacles to our ability to learn and can be broken down into three broad
groups - linguistic obstacles, emotional obstacles and generic obstacles.
• Linguistic obstacles involve the assessments that we make about ourselves and how we
learn. "I already know”, "I cannot learn" and "Learning will make no difference to me"
are examples that fall into this group.

• Emotional obstacles are those that get in the way of our learning because of our mood or
emotional state. This would include arrogance, confusion, resignation and fear.

• Generic obstacles are barriers such as cognitive blindness - "you don’t know that you
don’t know", and not allocating time to learn.

All of these obstacles can be overcome and awareness is the first step in that process. To
create a "learning organisation", we must first remove the emotional and linguistic barriers
that impair the individual’s learning. Individual behaviour is conditioned by the system in
which it takes place and that system is generated and transformed by the individuals within
that system. Therefore to become a "learning organisation", we must create an organisational
climate of innovation, trust, team commitment and flexibility.

Through our breakthrough research on the impact of the various dimensions of organisational
climate on organisational performance and individual superior performers, we are able to
transform business leaders so that they can create the right organisational climate that fosters
learning and leads to greater business success and superior organisational performance.

Copyright © October 2003, Sattar Bawany

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Brief Profile of Author:

The author, Sattar Bawany, is an entrepreneur, author, executive coach and educator. Sattar is the
founder & Chief Knowledge Architect of Bawany Associates, a network of management consultants
globally specialising in advising senior executives and management team on how to create and
implement successful corporate strategies through integration of proven and established knowledge
management methodology with the organisation’s business model and value chain. Sattar is also the
co-founder & Senior Vice President of eKranium Inc.. eKranium creates and provides contemporary,
practical, and relevant knowledge to professionals, managers, and executives worldwide.

Sattar is also presently a Fellow and Member of the Academic Board of The International Professional
Managers Association (IPMA) in UK. Sattar is also the Chief Examiner for IPMA’s Post-Graduate
Academic Programs.

Prior to establishing his own consulting firm and co-founding eKranium, Sattar was the Senior
Director of Forum Corporation Asian operations responsible for business development function and
managing the client relationships for Forum’s strategic global accounts. Sattar has also previously
assumed the role as the Senior Consultant (Hay/McBer’s Organizational Development & Leadership
Practice) and Director & Head of Hay Learning Services Asia business unit of Hay Management
Consultants (The Hay Group), which is the global leader in human resource management
consultancy and executive leadership development. Prior to being with Hay, Sattar was the Regional
Senior Consultant and Trainer of Mercuri International, the competence development specialist
within the management, sales and customer service functions.

Sattar speaks regularly at Conferences on “Knowledge Management” and “Intellectual Capital”

Several of his articles which was published in various local and regional publications, includes
“Managing in the Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE)”, “Journey to Knowledge Driven Economy
(KBE): What’s Your Role?”,” Creating and Sustaining a Knowledge-Driven Learning Organization”
and ”Challenges of Developing a Knowledge-Driven Learning Organization”. He is pursuing his
Ph.D. degree and his doctoral research is on “Identifying the Key Success Factors for Knowledge
Management for Organizations in the New Economy”.
Sattar Bawany can be contacted via email: knowledge@bawany.com.sg or
bawany@singnet.com.sg