The Learning Organization

Summary

The fundamental idea behind promoting the learning organization is that learning is the process essential to expanding organizational capacity at all levels and so must be purposefully supported and nurtured. What managers, scientists and staff learn and know constitutes the organization’s most valuable resource. An organization’s performance depends not only on its efficiency, effectiveness, relevance and financial viability, but also on how effectively it values, promotes, and facilitates learning among its people so that old and new knowledge is shared, combined, augmented, and then used to best effect. By taking concrete steps to overcome the constraints to sharing and using relevant knowledge and nurturing the characteristics essential to learning, managers and scientists together can create an effective learning organization that functions as a unified system.

Introduction

This chapter offers suggestions as to how projects, programmes or entire organizations can promote learning to adapt to changes in their environment and thereby enhance their performance by serving their clients well, meeting stakeholder expectations, and remaining relevant and sustainable. It will be of practical interest to institutional learning and change (ILAC) practitioners and to agricultural research managers and scientists who wish to promote ILAC in their projects, programs and organizations. It will also be useful to human resources managers and knowledge management practitioners. The term “organization” is used here to refer to organizations as a whole but also to smaller constituent units.

The working environment of R4D organizations has become less predictable and more challenging. This reality elevates the knowledge that their people possess, learn and use to take effective action to the level of their most valuable resource. Organizational units of any size whose work is shared or overlaps -- teams, projects, programs or entire R4D institutes -- can benefit from its members creating, acquiring and sharing knowledge in order to convert it into more effective ideas and approaches to pursue their goals and objectives.

Organizational Learning

Concepts

The term learning organization refers to an organization capable of learning that allows it to adapt to changes in its environment and thereby to perform better by collaborating with its partners, serving its clients, meeting their expectations, maintaining relevance, and ensuring its longer-term sustainability (Senge, 1990).
In earlier, relatively more stable times, success could be achieved through a direct-and-control culture. Organizations, projects and programs were able to build and refine their capacities to such a point that they would run effectively on optimized routines, policies and procedures. However, as the working environment of R4D organizations has become less predictable they must find ways of continuously learning to adapt and adjust while still performing well.
Organizational learning is the process of change in thought and action that permits units at every level of the organization from the individual to the largest grouping to identify and share what they know in order to bring appropriate solutions to problems -- solutions that are consistent with the mission and the strategic goals of the organization.. Such learning is an essential contribution to success in both the public and the private sectors. For example, public sector organizations such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the Canadian International Development Agency) private sector firms such as Motorola, Monsanto, Hoffmann-LaRoche, Hewlett-Packard, and BP Amoco all actively engage in organizational learning and they all view learning as a key initiative that contributes to their successful performance (HRDC, 1997; Bouthillier and Shearer, 2004).

Single and Double Loop Learning

Organizational learning is neither a simple nor a unitary term (Argyris, 1999). A distinction is made between single loop learning and double loop learning. The intention of single loop learning (also called adaptive learning) is to correct errors and keep the organization “on-track”. It focuses on discrete and immediate problems that interfere with the quality of organizational outputs that result from deviating from the rules or the plan. Double loop learning (also called generative learning) on the other hand, asks whether what is being done is being done well but also asks whether these are the right things for the organization to be doing in the first place. Depending on how the second part of the question is answered, more appropriate organizational goals might be identified and pursued. Double loop learning is about linear learning but also about thinking outside the box.
 

Prerequisites to organizational learning

Each organization has its own strategic requirements for learning
Successful organizations must strategically manage the learning of their people if they are to optimize the effectiveness of their workforces and thereby achieve their objectives. This requires that the reasons for and focus of learning are made explicit to all concerned. Additionally the processes used to promote learning must be chosen to support the organization’s goals and objectives. Simply having a “training program” is not enough. Neither is the uncritical transfer of even the most successful practices from the private to the public sector entirely appropriate. Successful private sector organizational learning efforts are subtly different from those of organizations in the public sector (Bouthillier and Shearer 2004). The former tend to focus on learning how to become more efficient, to reduce production cycle times and costs, and to confine information to the organization. The latter include sharing knowledge about their expertise not only internally but also with partners and the general public. This difference in focus and objectives reflects on the one hand the mandate of public sector organizations including R4D organizations to generate public goods and on the other, the essentially competitive nature of private firms.

Each organization must nurture a supportive learning environment
Purposeful efforts at organizational learning require an environment in which learning is valued -- where opportunities are made for reflection on successful and unsuccessful experiences in order to extract insights and enhanced understanding. Well managed, organizational learning can reconfigure and develop what is already known but unassimilated into novel ideas. This means the promotion of positive attitudes to learning at all levels of the organization to encourage a predisposition to learn.

Adoption of multi-stakeholder engagement processes
R4D organizations often manage multi-stakeholder projects and so work with multiple and varied partner organizations. If innovative solutions to problems of common concern are to be found, learning has to occur with and across all partners and all groups. Wageningen University and Research Centre (http://portals.wi.wur.nl/msp/?Wageningen_International) asserts that innovative solutions are created when diverse stakeholders are able to meet to share experiences and learn together and use what they learn to make joint decisions. This is achieved through facilitating multi-stakeholder processes and social learning. Some of these are illustrated in Box 1.

Drawn from Wageningen International http://portals.wi.wur.nl/msp/?Methodologies

By bringing the entire range of stakeholders – from governments, NGOs, the private sector, and civil society together in a participatory process of interaction, dialogue and social learning the R4D organization is increasing the likelihood that all participants will share a common agenda and thereby promote more broadly sustainable development.

The ILAC initiative believes that organisational learning is central to successful change and to that en has many publications that address this issue.

These Briefs are available at available at http://www.cgiar-ilac.org/

Linking adaptive and generative learning
Adaptive and generative learning complement each other because both are necessary for ultimate success. The questions embedded in the Performance Management and Planning (PMP) framework” (Box 3) (Audit Scotland, 1999) represents one highly practical way of engaging in both of these types of learning.

Applying the PMP framework involves managers and staff in pursuing answers to the four concrete management key questions highlighted (Box 3). Each question is accompanied by one or more transparent criteria to help guide reflection and judgements. Managers and staff use the framework to examine a unit in their organization, learn its strengths and weaknesses, and then determine what and how to improve. Question 1 How do we know we’re doing the right things? demands generative learning – thinking outside the box -- because it questions the fundamental role and mission of the organization. Question 2 How do we know we’re doing things right? on the other hand, demands only adaptive learning since it questions the quality of the processes and activities being undertaken to accomplish the mission. It asks if the unit is following best practices.

Behaviours that constrain Organizational Learning
It is no easy task to create a learning organization. There are many challenges to overcome including:

Competition as opposed to collaboration among different levels of the organization. Extreme competitiveness can result in one group jealously guarding what they learn from another.
Professional territoriality can tend to create boundaries and individual scientists or work groups can be over-protective to a point that closes the door on sharing.
Weak whole-organization identity may implicitly isolate scientists from support staff and others and so discourage whole-organization learning.
Weak whole-project or whole-program identity: Many R4D projects and programs involve many stakeholder organizations. The role of each may be critical to project success but because collaboration can be challenging and time-consuming and all partners tend to be over-worked, a common platform for learning may be overlooked.
Exaggerated conformity to the knowledge and best practices “handed down” by senior managers or other authoritative groups may stifle healthy dissent. Learning should emerge from discussion, the sharing of experiences that lead to innovative insights. Even dissent serves to challenge the status quo.

Instead of engaging in collaborative learning that leads to effective action, groups can find themselves locked into a debilitating syndrome – the gap between knowing and doing. A kind of paralysis can overwhelm the members of the organization. This paralysis typically happens in two situations:

(i) When confronted with a challenge to be resolved, the group allows talk to substitute for action, almost as if discussion alone were as effective as learning and taking action.

(ii) When key personnel undermine action by aggressive critical commentary – a kind of “smart talk” that sounds profound and well informed but may serve to aggrandize the speaker rather than to move towards a constructive resolution to a problem. This can cause confusion in the group and reduce the confidence to act. (Pfeffer and Sutton, 1994).

Organizational learning thrives in a context of open, respectful communication where people share positive and constructive values and attitudes to problem solving. These authors have summarised successful learning organizations as those which:

• have leaders who, through their intimate knowledge of people, products and processes, turn knowledge into action and prevent the knowing-doing gap from opening up in the first place
• insist that those who raise objections also suggest ways to overcome the obstacles they perceive
• have mechanisms to ensure decisions get implemented, e.g. a circulated, written record of who is committed to doing what by when, ensures that peer pressure influences action.
• believe that experience is the best teacher and so turn activities into opportunities to learn (op. cit.).

Overcoming challenges
To become a learning organization, even modest but concrete actions must be taken to expand the workplace into a learning place. One such initial action might be to reflect on the extent to which an organization’s managers make an active commitment to encouraging and using staff knowledge and capabilities (Box 4).

Armed with even informal answers to these questions (Weir et al., 1999), scientists and managers can consider how they might convert negative responses into positive ones.

An appropriate starting point for those interested in building learning into their organization might be the free on-line survey that Garvin, Edmondson and Gino (2008) offer at https://surveys.hbs.edu/perseus/se.ashx?s=381B5FE533C282FF
The survey results can be used to diagnose how well your work unit functions as a learning organization. Having staff reflect on their unit’s strengths and weaknesses can be a first step in promoting constructive dialogue and fostering learning.

Practical conclusions about encouraging organizational learning
To build a successful learning organization requires planning, persistence and effort. Organizational research suggests that there are five essential building blocks (Alegre and Chiva, 2007), experimentation, risk taking, interaction with the external environment, dialogue, and participative decision making:

(i) Experimentation is the degree to which initiative is encouraged and new ideas are supported. Risk taking refers to the tolerance within the organization for the ambiguity that inevitably results form venturing into unknown territory.
(ii) Interaction with the external environment refers to the encouragement given to staff to interact with those external to the organization including competitors, in order to obtain information that otherwise would be unavailable.
(iii) Dialogue refers to the level of encouragement given to staff to sustain collective inquiry into the validity of the processes and assumptions that make up the everyday experience of the organization and to discuss and communicate the results across work teams and levels of management.
(iv) Participatory decision making refers to the level of influence that individuals and work teams at all levels have on the decision making process.

A constructive example
An example of encouraging the development of each of these five attributes and providing specific learning opportunities within in a large R4D project, sharing the learning gained and using it to guide the evolution of the project is provided in Box 5.

This “organic” approach to project design was based on well-chosen, purposeful and effective learning strategies including extensive information sharing by effective use of project websites in order to address learning challenges as they were encountered. Proactive learning provided the in situ conservation project with the flexibility necessary to fine tune direction and provide optimal guidance on the strategies and actions most likely to achieve project goals. Its learning activities were critical in carrying the project forward to a highly successful conclusion (based on Mackay, 2006).

References

Websites
Audit Scotland (1999).Performance Management and Planning Audit: A manager’s Guide. Available at: http://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/publications/pubs1999.htm
Center for Organizational Learning: Founded at MIT in 1991 by Peter Senge. The mission is to foster collaboration among organizations committed to fundamental organizational change and to advance the state of the art in building learning organizationshttp://www.solonline.org/aboutsol/history/
HRDC (1997). Getting Results through Learning http://www.opm.gov/hrd/lead/handbook2/Toc.htm
The “Learning Organization Survey” associated with the article Garvin, D., Edmondson, and Gino, F. (ref. below). can be freely accessed on-line at: https://surveys.hbs.edu/perseus/se.ashx?s=381B5FE533C282FF
Wageningen University and Research Centre, Multi-stakeholder processes and social learning resource portal http://portals.wi.wur.nl/msp/index.php?

Documents
Alegre, R. and Chiva, J. 2007. Gaining from Organizational Learning Capacity MIT Sloan Management review Fall 2007 Vol. 49 No 1.
Argyris, C. (1999). On Organizational Learning, Second Edition. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Bouthillier and Shearer (2002). Information Research, Vol. 8 No. 1, October 2002
Garvin, D., Edmondson, A., and Gino, F. (2008). Is Your Organization a Learning Organization? Harvard Business Review, March, 109-116.
Mackay. R. (2006). Impact Assessment of IPGRI’s project Strengthening the Scientific Basis of In Situ Conservation of Agricultural Biodiversity On-farm. Rome: IPGRI.
Pfeffer, J. and Sutton, R.I. (1994). The Smart-Talk Trap. In Harvard Business Review on Organizational Learning. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline – The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday.
Weir, W., Farhall, J. and Carter, J. (1999). The workplace as a learning place. Chapter 8 in Learning Together. Deakin Human Services Australia. Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia.