HUMAN LEARNING - NATURAL DRIFT TO LOOSE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

HUMAN LEARNING - PROFESSOR CONCEDES CoP AS GOLD STANDARD IN EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT

 HUMAN LEARNING - 3,000 CoPS AT CATERPILLAR WORLDWIDE

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'They (the radical core ideas) imply a fundamental set of new personal and interpersonal competencies that sit solidly in opposition to widely shared cultural norms.'

'As children, most of us learn in our families how to avoid blame, to win and not lose in interpersonal conflicts, and to maintain the appearance of being in control. Children in school learn how to display behaviors that teachers judge as competent, to get 'right' answers and avoid 'wrong' answers. From the beginning of one's professional work career, all manner of attention is devoted to extending this impression of competence....Bosses fear that acknowledging their uncertainties will cause them to lose credibility, just as subordinates fear admitting that they are not in control of tasks for which they are accountable.'

'To detect an error is to acknowledge incompetence. Doing so publicly in a work setting is often seen as "career limiting," discouragement enough, even if it wasn't also personally threatening.'

'This is why most work cultures around the world still today place a great deal of emphasis on face-saving and denying error, rather than detecting and correcting it.'

(Argyris) concluded that it was going to take "a long, long time," powerful evidence for just how radical learning how-to-learn can actually be.

2. First signs of a culture shift has occurred.

Interest in organisational learning has not abated. The 'learning mandate' is more widespread and more powerful than ever before he purports.

3. KM practitioners have re-discovered that human learning's product is changed behaviour, not intellectual search libraries or even intellectual understanding.

'I find that a great many practitioners today appreciate that learning is fundamentally about action.'

'One of the rude awakenings from the substantial investments in "knowledge management" systems was discovering that "lessons learned" data bases and the like are of little inherent worth. Information, even information about "lessons learned," is only useful when it leads to new and more productive actions. While this may seem obvious, confusion between what constitutes information and what constitutes knowledge lay at the heart of many failed knowledge management initiatives. If people had agreed that knowledge is "the capacity for effective action," they would not have confused the information in their data bases with knowledge, nor would they continue to assume that better information will lead to change. Conversely, even inaccurate and incomplete information can be useful--it all depends on the context of application.'

4. Sustained changed behaviour - true change - is PERSONAL. Real learning always is personally challenging...'intimate and systemic.'

"I am prepared to learn and change myself"

5. Sustained organisational change is PERSONAL. "Rolling out a program" remains pure fantasy. Compliance to the new program always remains unsatisfactory unless the staff see desired changes being modelled by their leaders first. Leaders must be the examples of desired change.

'This idea still has probably not yet penetrated into the mainstream.'

6. Personal change requires not only high self-awareness levels but perseverance.

'I believe this growing recognition comes in large measure from appreciating that the behaviors and assumptions of managers are a part of the problem, that we do have embedded defenses against seeing gaps in our own actions, and that confronting these problems requires deep personal commitment.'

I think recognizing that real learning surfaces deep and pervasive issues that are daunting is a refreshing sign of maturity.'

7. The majority really only learn in periodic crises. Senge concludes this in his 25 years analysis of the market's response to Argyris and Schon's premier work on organisational learning.

'There can be great needs to learn. But so long as people feel that their conventional ways of handling their affairs can work, they are not yet motivated to really break out of their habitual ways of doing things. Consequently, learning of the sort that Argyris and Schön advocate still largely occurs on the margin. The real opportunities for methods like theirs will come when such learning is no longer an option, something I expect to see with increasing frequency in the future.'

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