A Learning organization and key learning principles.

In order to gain the correct benefit from training and development, a learning culture should be created within the company. Learning organizations are different to other organizations. The decision making is a collective and creative. “The motivation is vastly recognized of an employee   in a learning organization, as it is a fundamental asset of the employee, The shared vision and the commitment to that vision, they will motivate them self to learn” (Braham, 1995).

Figure 01: what is a learning organization?

Source: (Sprouts, 2017).

 “The organization itself cannot be held responsible in creating a learning culture in the working environment. There is an equal responsibility of the employee too, of having an eager to gather knowledge on what he has been specialized or being responsible of executing the task given by the employer. But there is a difference of the weight of responsibility both the employer and employee holds” (Braham, 1995).

(Braham, 1995) explains how the responsibility of the each side differs; “The organization is responsible for providing learning opportunities and a structure that supports learning, equally important, it needs to remove barriers to learning- learn how to get out of the way. Even with the best design learning structure, the individual within the organization will need to use the opportunities made available to them. It is the individual who is responsible for translating knowledge into learning on a day-to-day basis”.

Like every organization, a learning organization also holds important values. This can be identified as the disciplines of a learning organization. (Senge, 1990) explains the 05 disciplines of a successful learning organization;

·         System Thinking- A way of thinking and understanding the unseen forces and the relationship of a system behaves. It is a conceptual framework and a body of knowledge that’s helps an individual to asses on how the future market changes will take in place.

·         Personal Mastery- An individual who will develop his/her personal capacity to achieve the result that he/she prefers the most. The individual creates the environment where the fellow colleagues are also encouraged to reach towards the goals that they desire.

·         Mental Models- A person who is displaying, clarifying and unveiling his/her internal picture of the world, and perceive how they shape personal actions and decisions.

·         Shared Vision- An individual creates dedication within his/her team members and constructing shared image of common and desirable future.

·         Team Learning- Involves thinking skills which enables team members to develop intelligence. An ability which is larger than the amount of individual member’s talent.

Every learning organization follows five strengths. Garvin et al (1993) explains this as five skills in a learning organization. Though most of the companies practice these skills, only few organizations totally depends on these skills and making their learning effectively. they can be explained as follows;

·         Systematic problem solving- Mainly relying on fact based methods, data collections, hypothesis testing techniques and statistical generating tools. Training will be conducted based on practical examples,

·         Experimentation- Relying on methodical learning of searching and testing new knowledge. Employee will learn to find opportunities from ongoing programs and unique demonstration projects. The experiment projects are small, but the outcome of it is immense knowledge.

·         Learning from past experience- Relies on the systematical assessment on the organization’s past, and make it accessible to the employees to learn and gain new knowledge. It’s a very cost effective method as it need only a system of keeping records of the companies past successes and failures where employees make decisions based on the recorded facts.

·         Learning from others- A way of learning strategies from the outside immediate working environment. It may be a completely different business environment. But the idea is to gather information from those organizations, process it, and adapt to the current working conditions. This is also called “bench-marking” or “steal it shamelessly” process.

·         Transferring Knowledge- This method is consisting sharing the gathered knowledge to the entire organization. Rather than having the knowledge and the skills only to the top management, the process shares the information to the entire employees of the organization. So it will have a maximum impact in the organization. Process includes site visits, tours, training programs, visual and oral reports where everyone will have an idea of each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Aviation industry is an example for a learning organization. The organization I am working is a leading airline in the country. currently the organization practice most of the skills mentioned above. In-flight service delivery is one main division constantly focusing on learning skills. Most of the above mentioned skills are currently practiced in the working environment.

Past experience is broadly used in training methods. In-flight training is mainly based on past experience gathered by the crew. All safety related training is designed and conducted mainly from the information gathered from the company environment. The gathered information are processed to the present working conditions and practiced. It has given positive results, as the airline has been transformed to one of the few 7 star airlines in the region which holds for its reputation for safety standards.

Transferring knowledge is used in the company. In order to enhance customer satisfaction, a passenger survey is conducted on a random selection. The survey covers the entire divisions of the organization where the passenger gets in touch. The date is gathered on a weekly basis and published to the entire organization where every employee has access. By doing this, relevant departments have an idea on how they’ve been performed.

 

References.

Braham, B.J. (1995).Creating a learning organization; promoting excellence through education. California, Crisp [Online].Available at<https://archive.org/stream/creatinglearning0000brah?ref=ol#page/n1/mode/2up>. [Accessed on 13^th May 2020].

Braham, B.J. (1995).Creating a learning organization; promoting excellence through education. California, Crisp [Online].Available at<https://archive.org/stream/creatinglearning0000brah?ref=ol#page/n1/mode/2up>. [Accessed on 13^th May 2020].

Braham, B.J. (1995).Creating a learning organization; promoting excellence through education. California, Crisp [Online].Available at<https://archive.org/stream/creatinglearning0000brah?ref=ol#page/n1/mode/2up>. [Accessed on 13^th May 2020].

Garvin, D.A., (1993).Building a learning organization. Harvard Business Review [online]. Available at <https://hbr.org/1993/07/building-a-learning-organization>. [Accessed on 13^th May 2020].

Senge, P.M. (1990). The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization.1^st Ed. New York, Doubleday [Online]. Available at < https://archive.org/stream/fifthdisciplineasen00seng?ref=ol#page/n7/mode/2up>. [Accessed on 13^th May 2020].

Sprouts (2017). what is a learning organization? [Online].Available at < https://youtu.be/40meQNZl3KU>. [Accessed on 13^th May 2020].