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LEARNING COMPANY

&LEVERAGE COMPANY

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LEARNING COMPANY

The company is a vision of what might be possible. It is not broughtabout simply by training individuals; it can happen only as a resultof learning at the whole organization level.

It is an organization that facilitates the learning of all its members &continuously transforms itself.

Many consultants & organizations have recognized the commercialsignificance of the learning organization.

It is important to be a learning company so that they can respond tothe various pressures they face in the business world.

According to Senge, A Learning Organization is one in where people

continually expand their capacity to create the results they trulydesire, where new & expensive pattern of thinking are nurtured,where collective aspiration is set free, & where people arecontinually learn to learn together.

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DEVELOPMENT

Organizations do not organically develop into learningorganizations; there are factors prompting their change.

As organizations grow, they lose heir capacity to learn as a companystructures & individual thinking becomes rigid.

When problems arise, the proposed solutions often turn out to beonly short term & re-emerge in the future.

To create a competitive advantage, companies need to learn fasterthan their competitors & to develop a customer responsive culture.

Argyris identified that organizations need to maintain knowledgeabout new products & processes, understand what is happening in

the outside environment & produce creative solutions using theknowledge & skills of all within the organization.

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BENEFITS

Maintaining levels of innovation & remaining competitive.

Being better placed to respond to external pressures.

Having the knowledge to better link resources to customer needs.

Improving quality of output at all levels.

Improving corporate image by becoming more people oriented.

Increasing the pace of change within the organiztion.

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most learning in the workplace is incidental, rather than the productof formal training, therefore it is important to develop a culturewhere personal mastery is practiced in daily life.

Mental ModelsThe assumptions held by individuals & organizations are calledmental models. To become a learning organization, these modelsmust be challenged. Individuals tend to espouse theories, which arewhat they intend to follow, & theories in use, which are what theyactually do. Similarly organizations tend to have memories which

preserve certain behaviors, norms & values. In creating a learningenvironment, it is important to replace confrontational attitudewith an open culture that promotes inquiry & trust.

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Shared Vision

The development of shared vision is important in motivating thestaff to learn, as it creates a common identity that provides focus &energy for learning. The most successful vision build on theindividual visions of the employees at all levels of the organizations,

thus the creation of a shared vision can be hindered by traditionalstructures where the company vision is imposed from the above.Therefore, learning organizations tend to have flat, decentralizedorganizational structures.

Team Learning

The benefits of team or shared learning is that staff grow morequickly & the problem solving capacity of the organization isimproved through better access to knowledge & expertise. Team

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learning requires individuals to engage in dialogue & discussion,

therefore team members must develop open communication,

shared meaning & shared understanding. Learning Organizations

typically have excellent knowledge management structures,allowing creation, acquisitions, dissemination, & implementation of

this knowledge in the organization.

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CONCEPTS

It mainly focuses on cultural dimension, & does not adequately takeinto account the other dimensions of an organization.

To transform an organization it is necessary to attend to structures& the organization of work as well as the culture & processes.

It favors individual & collective learning processes at all levels of theorganization, but does not connect them properly to theorganizations strategic objectives.

It is therefore, imperative, that the link between individual &collective learning & the organizations strategic objectives is made.

The exact functions of the organizational learning need to be more

clearly defined.

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BARRIERS

Even within the learning organization, problems can stall theprocess of learning or cause it to regress.

Once these problems can be identified, work can begin onimproving them.

Personal Mastery can even be seen as a threat to the organization.Senge points out, that, if individual do not engage themselves witha shared vision, personal mastery could be used to advance theirown personal visions.

In some organizations a lack of learning culture can be a barrier tolearning.

A learning organization needs to fully accept the removal oftraditional hierarchical structures. In addition, the size of theorganization may become the barrier to internal knowledge sharing.

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KNOWLEDGE LEVERAGING COMPANY

Knowledge Leveraging Companies is about having a culture &infrastructure that supports the knowledge needs of theorganization.

It requires strong leadership, unlearning of old ways, an opennessto new possibilities, promotion of learning & very seamless

communication on an enterprise wide level. This also requires willingness to learn from others regardless of who

they are; i.e. you must be willing to face the truth if you expect toleverage knowledge.

In a company, as in an economy, physical & mental or intellectualcapital generate all the economic wealth & value. Human capitalcomprises individual talents & knowledge that is acquired througheducation, training, experience, & cognition.

Clearly, intellectual capital is the fundamental input to all wealthgenerating processes.

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Intellectual Capital is therefore, a companys most importantstrategic resource for competing & winning, & its managementmust match its importance.

Take example of Accenture, which is leveraging knowledge to bettermeet client needs.

The knowledge base of Accentures employee represents a massiveresource & a critical asset.

Accentures Knowledge Management team, which is part of thecompanys HR organization, realized that the more efficiently thecompany could respond to the needs of its clients.

Knowledge Management is a critical component in helpingAccenture deliver solutions & services that achieve higherperformance for its clients.

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The Knowledge Management team collaborated with Accentures ITorganization to transition numerous knowledge repositories to acentralized system that would simplify access, improve search &streamline content management with a consistent user interface.

The knowledge management teams vision was to allow employees

to find more relevant content muchfaster, translating into less timespent delivering value to clients.

This time savings would also enable the Knowledge Managementteam to maximize the time it spends developing powerful assets tosupport sales & delivery activities.

Assets that are managed in the Knowledge Exchange includecredentials, proposals, project estimates & best practices.