Learning Agenda

As seen in Figure 3.1, the first step in becoming a learning organization is to have a learning agenda. Otherwise, what you have is an adaptive organization, bowing with the wind of business, rolling with the punches of the competition.

If your organization has a learning agenda, as discussed earlier in this chapter, then it will be ready to move on to the next stage: being open to conflicts.

Open to Conflicts

At this stage, the learning organization will face a lot of conflicts, as it will be faced with the different and individual agendas of several senior staff members and the organization as a whole.

To avoid these conflicts can be fatal for the organization. It can bring the organization back to its first stage, where a learning agenda needs to be redefined or truly established. However, if the organization is open for conflicts, it can then deal with the acceptable differences, goals, and mission statements, and get a unified set of goals for the entire company. Once senior staff and the rest of the organization are unified in an understanding of what they are, where they are, and where they want to go, as well as what it will take to get them there, then the organization is ready to move to the next stage: avoiding mistakes.

Avoiding Mistakes

This is an equally important stage. At this point, learning organizations should have a well-defined learning agenda, which means they should know where they need to go and have a plan to get there. The organization should also have purged the demons afflicting its goals, and resolved any conflicts it had with members of the team and strategies for achieving such goals.

Now, it is time to avoid the mistakes of the past, and learn from current mistakes so as to avoid them in the future. Failure in doing so will inevitably bring the organization back to the previous stage, being open to conflicts.

Invariably, this is the cause of recurring mistakes, either because they were not dealt with in the past, or because there was conflict avoidance when dealing with it that prevented the organization from learning from it. Beware that once an organization steps back into a previous stage, the lack of momentum and increased inertia tends to bring the organization all the way back to the eye of the knowledge gap tornado! Therefore, at this stage, the organization must be very keen to avoid repeated mistakes, and concentrate on getting ready, shielded from potential loss of knowledge, in case of losing a key professional or group.

Preventing the Loss of Knowledge

At this stage, the learning organization has shifted from an adaptive learning to a generative learning mode. It is now thinking proactively, instead of reactively. The goal here is to proactively shield itself from loss of knowledge, which would bring the organization back to a repeated mistake, a previous stage. At this point an organization should not only be ready to prevent the loss of knowledge but also to turn learning into action.

Turning Learning into Action

This is the final stage of the knowledge gap tornado before the organization restarts the process, now the outer ring of the tornado. If successful, the learning organization will be able not only to turn learning into action, which will tangibly and measurably impact the organization and the business bottom line, but also to receive a sort of reward, by acquiring a silos of knowledge developed during its growth and transformation into a learning organization.

This silos of information is very important in fueling the next cycle of growth of the company, making it knowledgeably stronger, more competitive, and united on all fronts. At this stage the company breaks free from the stronger centrifugal forces of the tornado, as it distances itself from the eye. In addition, the company has business and learning momentum in its favor.

As with all the other stages, if the learning organization is not able to turn learning into action, chances are it is lacking knowledge somewhere, or it has lost knowledge in the process, either through the departure of a key professional, where knowledge had not been institutionalized or by a failure in the institutionalization of knowledge within the organization.