In my last post, Two Common Obstructions to Building a Learning Organization – Part 1, I covered the first of the common impediments to building a learning organization — examples of some current management practices. Today, I want to talk about some specific learning disabilities that might exist in the culture of the organization or in specific behaviors within the
organization. While some of the current management practices examine in the prior post may be quite recognizable and easier to identify and address, these learning disabilities may be harder to identify both from the outside and by those involved. However, to begin building a learning organization (for an overview of how I see a “learning organization”, refer back to Miracle on Ice! – and the “Learning Organization”), it will be quite significant to determine if individuals and groups exhibit any of these types of learning impairments.
1. The “Not my Job” and “Not My Fault” View
This first overall class of behaviors and mindsets that will certainly impair learning stems from an individual or group that views work only within the context of their own job or function. In other words, they see their job as just the tasks assigned, or the specific functions they perform, and don’t feel connected to the overall organization and larger purpose for a variety of reason. They may be isolated from information or other groups. They may feel left-out of any decision processes. They may be unassertive or insecure. They may part of a former “unhappy” merger. Whatever the reason, the resulting behaviors and attitudes usually appear the same way.
These individuals or even groups end up saying things like “it’s not my job”, or “nobody asked us to do that”, or “that’s someone else’s responsibility” and that leads directly to the usual “that’s someone’s else’s fault”, “don’t blame that on me or us”, and then finger pointing, blaming the
environment or anything or anyone else that seems logical rather than being accountable for anything other than their perceived “job” or tasks.
2. The “Rosy Success” or “Warm Comfort” Glasses View
Let’s face it, when something dramatic shifts in the environment related to your business (losing key customers, major market shifts, big technology introduction), those dramatic events catch the attention of managers and others within the company. However, slower changes or perhaps the slower changes preceding the larger shifts can easily be missed by those with some learning
impairment. There are two common ways that individuals or groups easily ignore or just miss slow changes in the environment.
Those wearing the “Rosy Success” glasses are basking in their past and current successes. Their position is fortified, the money is rolling in, and everyone is enjoying that feeling of “being on top.” However, what is really happening is that the world keeps moving, the environment is
still changing, new challenges are rising, and the rosy tent on those glasses masks the oncoming wave of change. And normally, the greater the past success, the harder it is to see the next wave of change unless diligent to look for it.
The “warm comfort” glasses are similar, but the source of the comfort is not satisfaction with great success, but rather just a comfort in the familiar and perhaps “easy” situation. In other words, some individuals or groups are just generally complacent, even with mediocrity as
long as nobody rocks the boat. This is a very dangerous position and certainly impair learning by simply not looking outward at all to learn.
Peter Singe, in The Fifth Discipline, and quite a few other authors retell the story of the Boiling Frog when discussing the idea around complacency. When a frog is placed in water of normal temperature and then you slowly raise the temperature of the water to a boil, the frog simply sits and lays in the water gradually adjusting to the heat until it gets groggy and falls asleep and then is boiled! However, if you raise the temperature too quickly or attempt to put the frog in water that is already hot or boiling, the frog will leap out. You get the points. We leap when faced with dramatic events, but the learning impaired may fail to see the slow, gradual changes unless focused on finding them.
3. The Fixation on Events and Reactions View
This is directly related to the point above but worth a brief separate discussion. When individuals or group focus primarily on specific events (e.g., competitive price changes, this quarter’s earnings, last month’s sales), this can lead to a “reactive” type of behavior and reactive management and certainly to spending time only trying to predict or explain events rather than
truly learning to create your own future.
Basically, in an environment where focus is dominated by specific events, it becomes increasingly difficult to examine root causes behind events or that may cause future events, distracts from focusing on changes in the external environment shaping the future, and takes away from the overall “big picture” thinking needed to stay in front of those changes vs. only reacting to those changes within the environment, the competitive landscape, and internal
developments.
4. The Management Team Knows Best View
When groups have either been trained or managed to accept, or simply voluntarily accepted the view that “the management team knows best”, this can greatly impair learning. Given the reporting structure and also who in an organization has the power to change this view, I should probably rephrase this to say that learning impairment occurs when a management team stops listening for and inviting “learning” from the outside or from those that work for them – when they believe their own myth.
There are many organizations where key leaders (the senior team) talk about openness and transparency but simultaneously do not actively build a culture where two-way communication is truly valued or encouraged, especially if one is challenging a leader’s “sacred cows” of their own thinking. For an organization to learn, two-way communication and sharing and challenging ideas must be welcome and cultivated, not buried by this “we know best” myth. Note that I am not saying that a management team should not make decisions they view as best for everyone, but I am addressing the perception and reality of the process of making those decisions.
5. The Experience View
The final learning impairment is related to a reliance on learning from experiences. Obviously, learning from experience is a good thing, but you have to be very careful in defining “experience.” One subtlety to this is to determine are you learning from the experiences of an event or actions, or from the consequences of decisions and actions. Many times, individuals are not in a position to see the full consequences of the decisions they make or actions and therefore, learning from experience is limited.
I have certainly met many people who had years of experience in their particular industry. Some of those people unfortunately had the same year of experience multiple times vs. others that had truly grown in experience and skills. The primary difference was learning from experience (i.e., learning from consequences of decisions and actions) rather than just having
experiences.
When you truly examine cause and effect over the long-term and understand the consequences, then you can learn from experience. Have you experienced the consequences of decisions and learned from them? That is the pertinent question about experience vs. just experiences of things you are have tried or done before.
Recognizing Challenges and Moving Forward
These past two posts have focused on specific challenges that you may face in wanting to build a learning organization. It is certainly important to look for and recognize some of these obstructions that might stand in the way, but more importantly, it is more important today to truly build a learning organization — to start building and create an environment where individuals and groups learn together, resulting in a culture of learning and innovation. In future
posts I will write about the building blocks of the learning organization and the path to that end.
