11. Building a Learning Organization

For organizations wishing to remain relevant and thrive, learning better and faster is critically important. Many organizations apply quick and easy fixes often driven by technology. Most are futile attempts to create organizational change. However, organizational learning is neither possible nor sustainable without understanding what drives it. The below figure shows the subsystems of a learning organization: organization, people, knowledge, and technology. Each subsystem supports the others in magnifying the learning as it permeates across the system.

A learning organization values the role that learning can play in the development of organizational effectiveness. It demonstrates this by having an inspiring vision for learning and a learning strategy that will support the organization in achieving its vision.

The leadership of a learning organization is committed to the importance of learning and clearly communicates that learning is critical to organizational success. The leadership recognizes the importance of providing the motive, means, and opportunity for learning: (i) the motive being the “why?”—the purpose and reason for learning; (ii) the means being the “how and what?”—the models, methods, and competencies required; and (iii) the opportunity being the “where and when?”—the spaces for learning. Leaders take an exemplary leading role in creating and sustaining a supportive learning culture.

The structure of a learning organization takes into account the common obstacles to learning so it is carefully aligned with strategy, avoiding the development of “silos” and minimizing unnecessary levels of hierarchy.

Communication systems are used to facilitate the lateral transfer of information and knowledge across formal structural boundaries. In decentralized and geographically spread organizations, particular care is taken to use communication to encourage lateral communication and to overcome the increased danger of the development of “silos”.

Adequate resources are allocated for learning in terms of time, space, specialist support staff, and budgets for knowledge management and learning infrastructure, formal and informal communities of practice¹ and other value networks (both internal and external),² and learning and development programs. Support to communities of practice, for example, is extended in a structured manner throughout their life cycle.³

To stimulate creativity and generate new insights and innovative practices, a learning organization takes a balanced approach to the importance of both planned and emergent learning. Planned learning is addressed through the careful development of strategy, structure, systems, procedures, and plans. In a learning organization, planning is based on careful reflection through probing questions that draw on data and information from monitoring, review, and self- and independent evaluation.

Emergent learning is equally important but takes an inherently more speculative and opportunistic approach. It is dependent on encouraging a passion for learning and knowledge sharing among staff members, developing learning competencies, creating opportunities for informal sharing, and cultivating a supportive learning culture.

Failures and unintended outcomes are the focus of constructive discussions leading to new approaches. When such incidents involve clients, care is taken to protect their reputation.

A learning organization needs people who are intellectually curious about their work, who actively reflect on their experience, who develop experience-based theories of change and continuously test these in practice with colleagues, and who use their understanding and initiative to contribute to knowledge development. In short, it needs people who are reflective practitioners. Reflective practitioners understand their strengths and limitations and have a range of tools, methods, and approaches for knowledge management and learning, individually and in collaboration with others.

Reflective practice flourishes when people experience a high level of psychological safety and trust, and it is undermined when people feel exposed to unfair negative criticism and when they believe that they cannot rely on colleagues. Teamwork is, therefore, a vital ingredient of a genuine learning organization. Indeed, one characteristic of teams in learning organizations is that they operate as learning communities in which sensitively expressed dissent, conflict, and debate are encouraged as positive sources of learning. Developing the safety and trust upon which reflective practice and positive teamwork depend requires careful attention to relationship building and the management of individual and collective performance.

To grow and protect the investment made in staff members, a learning organization pays careful attention to developing and retaining its people. Closely linked to development and retention of staff members are the importance of recognition and incentives for learning. Learning organizations ensure that time and effort spent on effective knowledge management and learning are recognized as core activities in the organization’s time and performance management systems. Rewards for contributing to learning and knowledge development can be more conventional (e.g., career advancement, increased income, and greater formal status) or may be less conventional (e.g., informal peer status, time made available for study, or public acknowledgement for an innovative contribution made).

Learning organizations also provide a wide range of opportunities for individual and collective learning and development. Learning and development programs are available to ensure that individuals and teams develop the competencies of reflective practice and collaborative learning. While learning and development systems may focus on more formal programs, a learning organization is one where the maximum benefit is also leveraged from other learning opportunities such as day-to-day work experiences, team meetings, short-term secondments, and membership of task groups.

In a learning organization, an important source of individual learning and development is coaching and mentoring support from managers, specialists, and other experienced colleagues. High-quality coaching and mentoring can help reflective practice flourish. However, both involve skills that cannot be taken for granted and must be consciously developed in the organization. It cannot be assumed that good contract managers and technical specialists automatically make good coaches and mentors.

Learning organizations require and encourage the development of leadership competencies at all levels in the organizational hierarchy, not just at the top. Leadership is viewed as a valuable skill that is based on the possession of expertise and knowledge, not simply positional status.

Knowledge is a critical asset in every learning organization. Because learning is both a product of knowledge and its source, a learning organization recognizes that the two are inextricably linked and manages them accordingly.

The units of knowledge production are both the individual and the collective. Learning organizations understand that while knowledge is created in the minds of individuals, knowledge development thrives in a rich web of social contact among individuals, groups, and organizations. A learning organization provides creative opportunities for this knowledge to be developed and shared with others through interpersonal contact and access to documentation.

An organization’s main repositories of knowledge are the design and delivery of its products and services and the strategies, systems, and procedures it has developed to guide its decision-making. Learning organizations know how best to take a learning approach to the development of this embedded knowledge by putting in place the necessary systems and infrastructure for knowledge management (ADB 2008–).

Feedback is the dynamic process of presenting and disseminating information to improve performance. Feedback mechanisms are increasingly being recognized as key elements of learning. Key (and often underutilized) sources of knowledge in organizations are the data and information that emerge from monitoring systems and the analyses, conclusions, and recommendations that arise from self- and independent evaluations. Learning organizations have sophisticated ways of designing evaluations with learning (as well as accountability) in mind. Methods such as after-action reviews and retrospects⁴ are successfully adopted and generate lessons that are carefully targeted at specific audiences. Learning organizations have systems that ensure that the outputs of self- and independent evaluations are made widely available, used to question orthodox thinking, and trigger creativity and innovation. Most significant changes are collected, systematically selected, and interpreted.⁵ Peer assists,⁶ drawing on individuals’ expertise and documented lessons learned, are used in planning new initiatives to reduce the likelihood of repeated unintended negative outcomes. Action learning is used to tackle more intractable challenges.⁷

A learning organization recognizes the importance of a resilient organizational memory. Learning organizations ensure that individuals and teams are encouraged to use a range of ways of surfacing their tacit knowledge and making it available to others through carefully targeted documentation and collaborative working practices. Recognizing that organizations change in the direction in which they inquire, they leverage the powers of appreciative inquiry.⁸ Documentation is made accessible to others in the organization with a range of user-friendly information and communications technology.

Learning organizations are networked with the wider world. They know how to create and run partnerships.⁹ Collaborative mutual learning arrangements with other organizations are common and fruitful.

Learning organizations know how to harness the power of information and communications technology—without the technology constraining knowledge management and learning. In a learning organization, information and communications technology is used, among other purposes, to strengthen organizational identity; build and sustain learning communities; keep staff members, clients, and others informed and aware of corporate developments; create unexpected, helpful connections between people and provide access to their knowledge and ideas; encourage innovation and creativity; share and learn from good practices¹⁰ and unintended outcomes; strengthen relationships; develop and access organizational memory; share tools, methods, and approaches; celebrate successes; identify internal sources of expertise; and connect with the outside world.

The creative use of information and communications technology such as shared document drives, intranet pages, online communities and networks, wikis and other collaborative work spaces, blogging and online storytelling,¹¹ staff profile pages,¹² online webinars, podcasts, and social network analysis¹³ indicates that an organization takes learning seriously.

Finally, in a learning organization, sufficient opportunities are provided for staff members to learn how to make use of available information and communications technology for knowledge management and learning. Box 2 offers a structured questionnaire with which to gauge perceptions of competencies to learn for change.