From Individual Learning To Organizational Learning
1. From Individual Learning to Organizational Learning Based on Chapter 1, Learning in Action by David A. Garvin Presented by Kevin McLogan MGT 501 www.kevinmclogan.com
Learning is going on all around us. In our houses, in our cars, in our relationships. My premise is this: Our lives are based on learning and we should incorporate leaning in the same way into our work.
We are all here taking a class, in a formal, credit-gaining environment, but what other kinds of learning projects have you undertaken? I’ll start!
We have to learn how to operate new technology to use new products.
We learn to adapt based on the knowledge that we gain about services as well as products.
Or sometimes we just learn lessons the hard way. Like me #3.
Well, why?
Not as important as it should be…
What is really important?
Without learning, the time in which the adoption of new, more productive technologies is extended and the productivity that would have been gained is delayed. Best practices are not identified. New technologies are not adopted because organizations talk to the wrong people. What examples can you identify that could have gone better had learning been incorporated in the process?
David Garvin talks about this in a training session he facilitates with wildfire fighters. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXwBw2EZKHE Click on David’s picture to link directly.
If you proceed in a new market, asking the same questions to the same customers may not get you to new markets.
Maybe you didn’t have a boss as demanding as Miranda Priestly or Anna Wintour. (Click on the pictures if you don’t know who they are.) But you have had a boss that wasn’t great. What was it about that boss that was lacking? Did it have something to do with their inability to nurture learning in the organization?
Is this sufficient or is there more that Garvin may be missing?
Think of it as a continuum Each aspect must lead to the next, and not stop.
Notice that all of the arrows go both ways, to and from the organization, and the only ones that do not cross through the organization are the ones from the employees to the managers. What do you think about this concept?
Have you worked for an organization that has these warning signs? Has the organization been able to overcome them?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo3uxqwTxk0 or click on Keenan’s picture. Short and amusing-you need a laugh!