Learning Organization

A learning organization , or qualifying organization, is a Organization which learns from sound Expérience and draws the benefit from the Compétence S that it acquires.

Introduction

The universalization and the shortening of the Life cycle of the products oblige the company to reconsider its Mode of production and of human Stock management. To be more flexible, effective, fast and to have always a train in advance on its competitors, the development of a learning organization appears being a solution. It is a question of putting the employee at the think tank, to regard it as a privileged partner in the acquisition of a Competitive advantage. The members of the personnel become a team of actors of organisational efficiency, and together, they learn from their errors.

Definitions

For Garvin (Harvard Business Re-examined June-July 1993) a learning organization is “an organization able to create, to acquire and transfer from the Connaissance and to modify its behavior to reflect new knowledge”.

How to implement this training concretely? Garvin estimates that to become learning the organization must develop five activities:

the solution to problem groups
of it the experimentation: to launch a project, to make a pilot experiment, etc are occasions of training.
To learn the lessons from the experiments: to take time to draw up an assessment of successes like failures.
To learn with the others: customers, partners, suppliers, etc
To transfer knowledge: it is a crucial point. It is necessary to place at the disposal of those which need some a base which gathers useful knowledge.

More than one model, a learning organization is a frame of mind. This step must be regarded as a true project of company implying the whole of the actors.

It rests on:

an organisational precondition: All the individuals have the potential to contribute to the rise of the company while developing a more important qualification, but this respect of the individual does not mean equality of the responsibilities.
an individual precondition: that requires not to regard its knowledge a private capacity but as an asset with the common development. To learn increases the possibilities for the intelligent action.

It is the emergence of the company of the knowledge. To contribute to the knowledge becomes a key criterion of all the activities of the organization. It is to implement the will to develop the capacity of the organization itself (and more only of the people) to learn from the experiment and to evolve/move by taking support on this one. It is to invest in the capacity of each person to go up in Compétence and in the collective capacity to evolve/move of the groups which compose the structure.

The organization centered on the training is built as an ecological system which stimulates the continuous training through work. Pragmatic step of evolution towards an objective of progress which falls under a logic of social responsibility of the company whose each project, each day increases the knowledge.

It is the principle of a target of organisational and professional progression which should be retained, by leaving open a share of uncertainty as well on contours as on the route to reach it. This moving target is a deeply coherent methodological principle from the point of view of a learning organization. It is a question of conceiving systems which are able to learn and adjust their action as a brain would do it.

A strong articulation with the situations of work, a collective step of confrontation, to mobilize the intelligence to build solutions and to implement them, to aim at a permanent reinvestment in the work of the acquired trainings. The finality remains the transfer the action on the ground. It is not a question only of the skill to create new knowledge but also of the skill to transmit them and to implement them.

Objectives

To learn how to learn from its experiment both for the structures the people; To implement a logic of development of the people, structures and tools in conformity with the needs for progressive evolution.

For the Actors of the structure

To cause and develop autonomy the catch of initiatives To use and develop the capacities of co-operation and adaptation to the change.

To widen the possibilities of being carried out in its work (that tends to improve health and quality of the life). It is together with different but complementary approaches that the events are explored. To exploit possible relations between close phenomena, that makes it possible to develop the resources of a logical reasoning and a common construction. It is the way in which the person includes/understands and exploits her experiment which returns meaning it. But it is also it which decides on its investment which learns how and chooses to implement. This decision depends on intrinsic and extrinsic factors for which the responsibility belongs as well to the person as with the organization. If the participation of the whole of the people supports the responsibilisation of each one, the installation of specific and targeted contributions of formation is a component impossible to circumvent in the success of the step. The structure and its actors must themselves of Knowing, Vouloir and To be able to acquire these new competences to become really a learning organization.

For the structure

The development of competences is to be regarded as a shared and permanent stake. The companies, the products, the organization of work, the devices change in flow continuous and tended, the capital competences of the people must evolve/move and make evolve/move that of the structure. Projection in the professional future and social tends to give direction to this investment. It is a question of revealing the reflexive return on the tasks and events like an ordinary and recognized component work. It is to be located in a communication not being reduced to simple information exchanges but to the division of the steps, methods of construction of the knowledge, knowledge under development. It is the will of miser on professional strategies of mobility (if not the steps could prove penalizing to achieve productive goals in the short run (economic and social)).

In this dynamics it is important to accompany the framing by proximity in the evolution of its missions. It is a state of permanent day before, where it is a question of multiplying the methods and the occasions of development of competences, but also of their recognition. The learning organization is also qualifying.

For the community activity

It is to consider in a positive way and optimist the events of the community activity. They are formidable occasions of trainings and evolution as well individual as for the organization. Aren't the problems the opportunities disguised in working clotheses? Very often the rules tally the professional action and direct the tasks towards an awaited result, then it acts to develop a posture complementary to exploration vis-a-vis the events which make the daily newspaper of any community activity. These events can be considered of two types: The events risks perceived as of the dysfunctions whose origin is involuntary but which actually is opportunities. The caused events it is then about a modification of the voluntary activity and it is in anticipation that will intervene the preliminary reflection.

For Chris Argyris and Donald Schön there are two levels of training. There is training in " simple boucle" (individual loop) losque the actors are able to detect an error and are satisfied to correct it. There is training in " double boucle" (double loop) when it is not only any more a question of correcting an error but of modifying the way of thinking. Only the organization able to modify the values which guide the strategies of action can be qualified " of organization apprenantes". The common reflexive communication is then an element impossible to circumvent of the production, it acts to reflect to act, the actors are also researchers, but especially discoverers implied in the action. The learning organization will make it possible to learn how to learn from its experiment.

For the pilots

He is a mediator, with qualities of audacity, imagination and modesty vis-a-vis the unforeseen one. He crystallizes the elements of the framework and creates the conditions of the training taking into consideration event but he is not, far from there, the only source of knowing and construction of competences. He ensures the installation of an evaluation in order to allow teaching readjustments uninterrupted or of contents. It is a cybernetic pedagogy where interact evaluation, further information and formation. Its role is to develop micro the changes, in the control of the events, work and its environment. It must return learning them actors from the transformation: to privilege the development of novel modes of co-operation; to exempt the formative contributions progressively; to quickly reinvest the trainings in work. An adult does not agree to be formed that if it finds in his situation by the formation an answer to his problems. The objective is here as much to reinforce competences of forming to find solutions, the pilot is guaranteeing appropriation and comprehension of this bond. To develop competences of communication, the language and thus the thought are current assets between pars, but also between actors of various levels and responsibility. The training carried out at various collective levels is of much higher than the sum of the individual trainings, it must allow that the system can be able “to learn how to learn” To guarantee the success of a change it is preferable to make evolve/move the whole of a collective of work. From this point of view, the intermediate framing must evolve to a role of animation and project control.

Conclusion

A conclusion which can be only provisional borrowed from Philippe Zarifian: The element which unifies all dimensions of a learning organization can be expressed as follows: To learn from instability and the changes and thus to become active vis-a-vis this instability, to learn how to clash positively with becoming which by definition is dubious and doing it together in steps of communication activate… .

The learning company

Diagram of a learning company, result of a strategy Knowledge management

Them (small the stickmen with the tended arm) directing of department, the project managers, the persons in charge of Communauté of practice (CoPs),… have more one role of Coaching of company (the coaching of team) that of managing hierarchical
Each employee has one profiles (materialized by its portfolio) which confers rights of access to him, according to its membership of a service, projects, one or of CoPs.
the experts (external and internal, stickmen with a bulb on the head) are indexed thanks to a Management system of expertise.
Each employee has at least an access to the expertise which it can need (stickmen with a question mark on the head)
the green cylinders represent the knowledge bases: Each COP maintains one of them on its subject, on the level of the company it there at the base of the experts,…
Each star green represents a junction with the networks, each COP, each project has of a Blog or a Wiki.

An employee depends on a department (decision of the service RH), but can take part in one or various projects, in one or more CoPs, to have access to a Base of knowledge or several, and to be in relation to many internal or external people with the company. As many sources of personal enrichments, motivations to collaboration, reasons to appreciate its environment of work, to decrease the Turnover, to support the Innovation…

Sources and resources

A.N.A.C.T. a step to build a Learning organization.
Quoted of Sciences learning Organization and training.
University of Geneva Research laboratory and innovation.
Agora Quebec learning organization.
François Beaujolin Towards a learning organization.
Philippe Zarifian the learning organization

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