Management and Organisational Learning - Essay Example

Management and Organisational Learning It is the duty of the organisation and its leader to provide the employees an optimal working environment. In that environment only, employees will optimize productivity and profit for the organisation. The favourable state of recruiting apt employees, providing optimal working environment, effective leadership traits, increasing productivity and good profits can be actualized and continued, till the achievement of the set goals. However, when the organisation does not perform up to expected levels, and in other cases wanted to expand and diversify its operations, the organisations need to learn new levels of management as well make the employees learn new organisational processes. This is where the concept of learning organisation comes into the picture. That is, learning organisation facilitates continuous learning with the employees learning new things and perspectives, thus leading to the structured changing or transitioning of employees, departments and the organisations as a whole from a current state to a favourable future state. When this change shows positive results, organisations can extricate from tough situations and achieve success. A learning organization values challenges, promotes flexibility, innovation and creativity, treats mistakes as stepping stones of development and encourages individuals to think. Learning is carried out by implementing various practices. Some of the key practices are help people value the effects of their learning on their organizations, link individual performance with organizational performance, tie rewards to key measures of performance and importantly create structures and procedures that support the learning process. Thus, learning organisations or organisations which indulge in learning process will try to learn newer and optimal strategies to optimize the organisational functioning. The Theories Peter M Senge, an American scientist, is one of the profound business thinkers and author. He analyzed many organizations and its workings for many years at MIT and the resultant theories and concepts were brought out by Peter Senge in his 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline. In that book, he brought out many organizational theories particularly the ones related to leadership under the concept of ‘learning organization. According to Peter Senge (1990, p.3) learning organizations are, “Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.” As an extension of this idea, Senge focused on formulating structures and systems that will be conducive and facilitates learning, by coming up with five distinct disciplines. They are 1) systems thinking; 2) personal mastery; 3) mental models; 4) shared vision; and 5) team learning. These employee centric five components of the learning organization were conceptualized to help employees become active participants in understanding their reality inside the organisation at present and shaping it for the future. (siliconfareast.com 2005). System thinking mainly focuses on the interconnection that needs to happen between the management and the employees, as well as among the employees themselves during the learning process. It acknowledges that organizations are complex systems composed of many inter-related components, and that it is very important to understand how the key components dynamically interact with each other to give life to the system that they comprise. (siliconfareast.com 2005). The disciple of Personal mastery refers to the personal vision of the employees to learn individually all the key things that are need to optimize organisational functioning. Rather than being reactive to the situations, employees should personally learn all the possibilities in the organisation including the processes to manage those possibilities. Mental models are about each employee’s ability to compare and analyse each new idea organisational optimization with the already existing assumptions about the organisational processes. That is, these already ingrained assumptions could block the employees from thinking and expanding their ideas. Therefore, it is important for an organization to foster openness among its employees while providing them with the right direction in order to prevent mental models from limiting the organizations ability to put new ideas into practice. (thechangeforum.com). On the other hand, the discipline of shared vision refers to the ability of a group of employees to formulate common ideas, instead of independent ideas and importantly hold to common vision of a desired future. According to Senge, a shared vision is "a vision that many people are truly committed to, because it reflects their own personal vision. Shared vision is vital for learning organizations because it provides the focus and energy for learning." (Senge 1990, p.23). With an optimal common and shared vision, employees will put in optimum productivity focusing on the vision. Senge’s final discipline of Team learning focuses on how employees should need to learn together, so they can act together. Team Learning happens when teams start ‘thinking together’, sharing their experience, insights, knowledge and skills with each other about how to do things better. (thechangeforum.com). Thus, team learning by suspending individual interests could lead to productive output. Mike Pedler, a leading academic and management consultant, is one of the trendsetters in the concept of learning organisation. Like, Peter Senge, Pedler put forward all this theories and studies on learning organisation in the form of book, titled A Concise Guide to the Learning Organization. In the book, Pedler discusses how learning in organisations can be carried out through the practice of Action Learning Sets. According to Pedler (1991, p.1), A learning organisation is an organisation which facilitates the learning of all of its members and continuously transforms itself in order to meet its strategic goals. Thus, when an organisation initiates the learning process and follows the Action Learning sets, it will incorporate few distinct features or theories for the employees to successfully learn the new perspectives. The first of the theories as part of Pedler’s learning organisation states that strategy formation and learning approach are intertwined and all employees of the organisation can participate in strategy formulation. This clearly shows that employees need to be made an integral part of the strategy formulation process as well as decision making process for the learning to be made optimal. Apart from learning through practical knowledge, Pedler also pointed out how Information technology can be made accessible to all the needful employees and can also be used in an optimal manner to facilitate learning. To make the employees learn in an optimal manner and to successfully implement those learnt things in work, the employees should be encouraged and motivated. And, as part of motivation, Pedler suggests to provide rewards to employees how successfully implemented the things they learnt. Also, Learning enterprises has no strict hierarchy that it cannot change as business environment changes. It can change according to the needs of the situation. When organisation or company as Pedler states, needs to transform into a better company, they have to first make sure that employees has started the learning process. As an organisation is nothing without employees, they need to indulge in the employees in the learning process and thus make them productive and thereby aid them to meet its strategic goals. Learning Enterprise is an organisation which facilitates the learning of all of its members and consciously transforms itself in order to meet its strategic goals. (Pedler, et. al, 1989). Relevant to today’s world, linking today’s work with the theories The basic rationale behind learning organizations is, in situations of rapid transformations, only the workers who are adaptive, productive and importantly willing to learn every new thing and also from the mistakes will succeed. For this to actualize, the organizations particularly its leader had to ‘discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels’ (Senge 1990, p.4). This can be done if the leader involves himself/herself in all the aspects of organizational functioning and importantly sets a good personal example for the workers to follow The good leadership trait that leader should show to actualize the concept of learning organization is getting involved in all the processes that will take place in the organization. The role of the leader should be visible in the overall functioning of an organization as designers, stewards and teachers. The role as a designer will come into the picture, when leader designs the governing principles or ideas of an organization, which includes the organization’s purpose, vision and importantly core values. When the governing principles are formulated, it can be imbued into all the employees and thereby the discipline of Systems Thinking can be implemented in the organisation. That is, when the leader initiates a common organisational process, the systems thinking has to be in place, so that all the employees interact and become part of that process. When this happens, the employees can exhibit the discipline of personal mastery. With system thinking being implemented, the employees will come up with their own strategies to further optimize the thinking and learning process. Leaders should encourage this discipline because apart from optimizing the process, it will also make the employees learn in a quick manner, as they themselves are providing ideas or suggestions. The leader who initiates or manages an organization should take care of it from the initial designing stage until someone could replace him/her. So, this way, the leader will be able to motivate or inspire the workers as the workers will see these actions of the leader in a positive light. They will have a positive mental model of the organisational process as well as about the leader. This model will inspire and motivate the employees to put their best foot forward. The start of inspiring (literally ‘to breathe life into’) the vision of the learning organization. (Senge 1990, p.340) Another good leadership trait, that should be exhibited by the leader during different stages of functioning is, the leader should live and work as an example for others to follow. That is, “Leader as teacher” does not mean “teaching” people how to work and achieve the goals, but inspiring and encouraging them to work following in the footsteps of the leader. So, by setting personal examples, the leader can foster every one to work. Such leaders will help the workers throughout the organization develop and achieve organizational goals. This is the key trait for the leader to imbibe and will surely motivate the workers to give cent percent and make the organization a sure success. The other aspect is, by inspiring the workers to follow his/her footstep, the leader can develop the practice of shared vision, which will form genuine commitment in the workers without any compliance and thereby enlist them in the working of the organization. When the leader creates organisational vision and implements or imposes on all the employees, it will create a kind of shared vision, thereby fulfilling Senge’s discipline of Shared Vision. Also, setting personal examples can allow the leader to point out the faults in his workers and correct them. “In mastering this discipline, leaders learn the counter-productiveness of trying to dictate a vision, no matter how heartfelt. (Senge 1990, p.9). To further effectivize this trait of setting example, the leaders formulate other strategies decentralization. That is, the leaders will not centralize their powers but ask their subordinates; you could be superiors to somebody, to lead by example and work as a team. This way, the subordinates can also become effective and contribute more towards the organization’s functioning, thereby fulfilling the last discipline of Team Learning. In essence, ‘the leaders’ task is designing the learning processes whereby people throughout the organization can deal productively themselves with the critical issues they face, and thereby develop their mastery in the learning disciplines’ (Senge 1990, p.345). So, this trait clearly stipulates that a good leader has to be an integral part of the organization functioning and thereby set a good example as well as teach subordinates the right way to do things. In any organizations, learning can be further optimized if work teams are successfully set or established. That is, during the process of decision-making, one of the approaches the leader could try is, putting for discussion his/ hers thoughts among the individuals, and asking them to learn about those strategies, analyze and come up with effective feedbacks. The workers can input their gained knowledge and experience in the decision making process. This strategy will have unexpected at the same time favourable results, because one may never know from where, when and importantly from whom a great idea could come. Lewin’s change theory (1951, in Murphy, 2006) suggests a bottom up approach, emphasising the necessity of the full participation and involvement of all staff that will be potentially affected by change, in order to increase their likelihood of accepting the change. As all the employees are involved productively in-group, it will lead to effective team formation. When the employees present his/her views among the employees, all of them will try to contribute their inputs and that will result in effective strategy formulation as well as team formation. Because of this reason only, Pedler as part of this reason only adopted the term "company" rather than "organisation", which they consider impersonal. According to him, the word company embraces ideas surrounding collective approaches to life "in company" with others to explore how best to work together. (Kelleher 2002). Implications for employees Each employee should exhibit optimum mental and physical output, taking full responsibility and coming up with good contributions for the eventual decision. For that, employees should be in tune with the learning process taking place inside the organisation. Thus, if the workers with good learning keep on participating in all the important decision making process, they will begin to comprehend all the intricacies of organization functioning. By this way, they can utilize their learnt knowledge and skill to come up with effective objectives and strategies for the well functioning of the organization. Even with automation and computerization happening in every segments of organization, the decision-making process mainly rests with the humans’ ‘filled’ management team. Correct decisions have to be taken by the leader and the management team in times of change, to make that change a success. So, for any organization to survive and shine in a competitive and highly evolving or changing environment, the organization and its employees need to learn a lot in order to adapt and change to all the appropriate or needed moments and situations... In some organizations, the challenge to this imposition of a new learning culture will come in the form of experienced workers who will be slugging out in the same job in the same environment, importantly in the same mindset for years. They could act as the disturbing element in the formation of learning organisation. That is, when majority of the workers form into teams, initiate the learning process and are working on a target, these experienced workers “could throw the spanner”, affecting the team’s or organization’s ability to reach its targets. Apart from not learning, they could also impede others, who are participating in the learning process. When the workers become lethargic, self-seeking troublemakers, having many bad attributes, he/she would not participate in the learning process with full interest as a team, and will avoid contributing ideas to the process. In these situations, the leader is only responsible for making them fall in line by motivating them or counselling them or even by initiating strict disciplinary measures against them, hereby making them part of the teams. ” Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate non performing individuals in important jobs” (Drucker 2006). According to Taylor’s scientific management theory employees could be motivated if the leaders or management give or reveal the benefits that could be incurred if they follow the optimal management practices. “…simply alerting workers and employers to the benefits that could be generalised by a scientific approach to management would ensure knowledge became the “master in industry” (Nyland and Heenan, 2005, p. 1359). Conclusion Any organisation and its leader should not stagnate and saturate. Schein (2004, p. 418) pushes forward this idea by stating “that the leader of the future must be a perpetual learner”. Perpetual learner in the sense, the leader or the manager should learn new levels of perception and acquire lot of insights for running an organisation. That is, when an organisation is underperforming or wanting to expand its operations further, it will indulge in change management or new form of management to achieve those objectives. However, the process of strategic intent of change will not be a smooth affair, with various obstacles blocking and also slowing the process. One of the obstacles as mentioned earlier, will be the lack of skills and knowledge among the employees to match new environment. In that case, learning process in the form of training, coaching, mentoring, etc would make the changes optimal. A wholesome learning process will do a world of good for the employees, as they will become equipped skill wise and knowledge wise, and will be able to undertake their allocated work as part of management change, with renewed confidence, to aid the leaders. When an effective leader with fullest efforts from the employees initiates and manages the strategic intent of change, then it can be a success. Leaders focus on developing corporate culture, patiently building trust and emotional commitment to the company through teamwork and communication. So, unison of humans into a team with an urge to usher an organisation by positively changing the organisation will be a successful endeavour, if the leader or manager exhibit optimum function. The main need for an organisation to change is to maximize the collective benefits for all the employees, managers and leaders, and thereby maximize the profit and standing of the organisation. And, if the leader as well as the managers, departments and employees learn good things as part of the learning organisation and show good work, then the organisation can actualize optimum management and would have a ubiquitous presence all over the world. References Drucker, P. F. 2006, Classic Drucker, Harvard Business Press, Boston. Kelleher, M 2002, The Learning Organisation –from metaphor to mode, viewed on March 23, 2010 http://www.learningfutures.co.uk/LFdocs/MKelleher_29-10-02_19-35-33.pdf. Lewin, K. 1951, Field Theory in the Social Sciences. New York: Harper & Row, cited in MURPHY, F. (2006) Using change in nursing practice: a case study approach. Journal of Nursing Management, vol.13, no.2, p.22-25 Nyland, C and Heenan, T 2005, Mary van Kleeck, Taylorism and the control of management Knowledge, Management Decision Vol. 43, no. 10, p.1358- 1374 Pedler, M., Burgoyne, J. and Boydell, T. 1989, The Learning Company, Studies in Continuing Education, Vol.11, no. 2, p.91 - 101 Pedler, M., Burgoyne, J. and Boydell, T. 1991, The Learning Company. A strategy for sustainable development, McGraw-Hill, London. Schein, E. H. 2004, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Ed Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Senge, P. 1990, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization, Century Business, London. siliconfareast.com 2005, The Learning Organization, viewed on March 23, 2010 http://www.siliconfareast.com/learning-organization.htm thechangeforum.com, Five Learning Disciplines..., viewed on March 23, 2010 http://www.thechangeforum.com/Learning_Disciplines.htm Read More