Continuous Learning Culture
Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning, we recreate ourselves. Through learning, we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning, we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning, we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning.
— Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline
Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. This applies to individual as well as organizational growth. Learning organizations supplant adaptive learning with generative learning. Learning enhances the ability to create, acquire, and transfer knowledge while modifying practices to integrate the new insights. The mastery of five key disciplines, as described by Senge in his book “the fifth discipline” distinguish learning organizations from ordinary organizations. The five disciplines of learning organizations are:
Systems Thinking
Systems thinking is the discipline that integrates the other four disciplines. We have a tendency to focus on the visible pieces rather than the complete picture, and as a result, we fail to recognise the organisation as a living organism. The long-term or holistic perspective is often emphasised in the systems thinking approach. There are three main aspects of systems thinking:
- The solution itself is a system
Team members should identify the system and its interaction with the environment and systems around it. For the system to behave well as a system, intended behavior and some higher-level understanding of its architecture must be understood. Intentional design is fundamental to systems thinking.
2. The Enterprise Building the System Is a System, Too
The second aspect of systems thinking is talking about the people, management, and processes of the organization that builds the system are also system. Optimizing a component does not optimize the system, therefore optimizing local teams or functional departments does not enhance the flow of value through the enterprise. Accelerating flow delivery requires eliminating silos and creating cross-functional organizations.
3. Optimize the Full Value Stream
Understanding and optimizing the full development value stream is the third aspect of systems thinking. It is the only way to reduce the lead time. According to systems thinking leaders and practitioners must understand and continuously optimize the full development value stream.
Personal Mastery
Persona mastery is the practice of clarifying and deepening one’s personal awareness of invisible systems. It’s also crucial to share your knowledge about invisible systems with others with whom you collaborate, otherwise, it will be like the fable of the blind men encountering an elephant for the first time. One man encounters the trunk, one the tusks, one the ears, one the legs, one the belly, and one the tail. Each man develops their own reality of elephants based on their observations until all blind men come together, share, and accept the perspective of each other.
Mental Models
Mental models are deeply ingrained beliefs, assumptions, and images that influence how we understand the world around us. For an organisation to develop The ability to work with mental models, People must first learn new skills and adopt an orientation of trust and openness to the thoughts and perspectives of other people. These models make complex concepts easy to understand and apply for teams.
Building a Shared Vision
The importance of a shared vision in a system thinking approach cannot be overstated. A shared vision integrates an organization’s individual efforts toward accomplishing a single objective that everyone has become personally involved in achieving. People are forced to learn more about the vision as a result of the discussion, allowing the vision to be more refined and the vision to become increasingly clearer. Individuals get engaged in the Shared Vision as it expands and becomes clearer, and they will not let it die.
Team Learning
Team learning builds on both the personal mastery of individuals and a shared vision of defined objectives to establish an environment of sharing and creating knowledge. Teams work collectively to achieve common objectives by sharing knowledge, suspending assumptions, and ‘thinking together’. They complement each other’s skills for group problem solving and learning.
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