Learning as a way of being...............
I must declare complete and utter adoration of thinkers such as Deming, Senge, Schumacher, Kumar and Wheatley - all of whom I feel offer a creative and natural approach to understanding the issues and complexities of the busy corporate world.
Their thinking is rooted in understanding systems and offers us naturally occurring solutions to mechanistic problems and issues. Their messages are often grounded in patience and trust and celebrate the emergent and unfolding nature of lasting solutions.
For me the ideas and principles shared by these great people (and others) plays to the message of creative energy and helps us to reappraise our western economic values and take stock of nature's laws.
Time for reflection.........................................................................read on.
No cookie cutters: Meg Wheatley
I got in trouble with my academic colleagues recently when I was quoted as saying, "The idea that expertise can be transmitted needs to be abandoned." They said "Then why have graduate programs?" I was trying to say that the belief that any particular model or any particular body of knowledge transfers whole from one system to another is erroneous.
Knowledge, models, and expertise are co-created by thinking people working in and with their environment. Since that environment is different for every organization, it doesn't work to take something that has been developed in one place and just transfer it wholesale to another place.
We have tried that. We have tried it with program after program, and we have generated a well-earned cynicism among our workforce as they watch these programs come and go without creating the desired change. We have to do something different. We have to engage the whole system of the organization in figuring out what makes sense for that particular system.
The answers, the expertise, need to be created by the system that needs the expertise. Certainly, some people have expert knowledge, but the way to use that knowledge, these days, is to give people particular frameworks and ideas to play with -- realizing that as they play with them they are creating new knowledge.
They are not taking something that's tried and true and just applying it in cookie-cutter fashion. If they are making it work, they are creating new knowledge.
This article is taken from her wonderful website - www.margaretwheatley.com
The learning organization - Peter Senge
According to Peter Senge (1990: 3) learning organizations are:
…organizations 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 basic rationale for such 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’
While all people have the capacity to learn, the structures in which they have to function are often not conducive to reflection and engagement. Furthermore, people may lack the tools and guiding ideas to make sense of the situations they face. Organizations that are continually expanding their capacity to create their future require a fundamental shift of mind among their members.
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. It becomes quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit. (Senge 1990: 13)
For Peter Senge, real learning gets to the heart of what it is to be human. We become able to re-create ourselves. This applies to both individuals and organizations. Thus, for a ‘learning organization it is not enough to survive.
‘”Survival learning” or what is more often termed “adaptive learning” is important – indeed it is necessary. But for a learning organization, “adaptive learning” must be joined by “generative learning”, learning that enhances our capacity to create’ (Senge 1990:14).