Replying to LO26014 --
Larry makes the point that all organisations that survive are LOs just as
an individual who is not learning dies.
I was going along quite comfortably with this thread until Larry joined
in. It is a really good way of thinking about it and, to my mind, suggests
that there is no distinction to be made. Just as you don't need to say
that one individual is a learner and another individual is an effective
learner, or a high performance individual. These terms would be
pejorative. And so I think to apply any black and white distinction would
be perjorative. Similarly, for an organisation to describe itself as a LO
would be presumptuous.
It reminds me that Senge makes this point in the intro the The Fifth
Discipline.
Surely the same applies to any other term we might try to use. All orgns
are to some extent effective while they are still in existence.
So while Larry's post has made me sit up and think that there is not point
in trying to label an organisation as 'learning' or not, we should strive
to increase and sharpen the learning capacity and learning activity of
organisations. The LO concept gives us a framework to do that (just as we
could describe the activities that would show us that an individual is
learning), but let's try not to grade organisations.
regards
Chris
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