I am also a doctoral student of Public Administration in the University of
Southern California, Washington DC campus program. I am currently doing
research in learning organizations and have accumulated a large number of
articles and books on learning organizations in this research. My
immediate goal is to put together a paper for a class on the theories of
learning organizations, apply those concepts to my organization, and do a
gap analysis. I will use the gap analysis on the job in beginning to
build the lacking pieces in our initiative to become more of a learning
organization (we have a long way to go).
Now to why I'm writing today - there has been a thread where the topic of
McDonalds falling short of being a learning organization has been
discussed. I found an interesting article that discusses that issue. It
is called "Unlearning the Organization" by Michael E. McGill and John W.
Slocum, Jr., and was reprinted from Organization Dynamics, Autumn/1993.
The authors say there are four organizational approaches to experience -
Knowing, Understanding, Thinking, and Learning. I will briefly describe
each:
Knowing - Dedicated to the one best way that is predictable, controlled
and efficient. Maintains control through rules and regulations, "by the
book."
Understanding - Dedicated to strong cultural values which guide strategy
and action. Belief in the "ruling myth." Use corporate values as
guides to behavior.
Thinking - A view of business as a series of problems. If it's broke,
fix it fast. Management focus is on identifying, isolating problems,
collecting data, and implementing solutions.
Learning - Examining, enhancing, and improving every business
experience, including how we experience.
McDonald's is cited by the authors as an example of a knowing
organization. "Kroc was not satisfied with seeking knowledge about "the
best way" in manuals, curricula, and classroom training. Nor was he
willing to rely totally on people and their potential for
unpredictability. McDonald's"engineered in" knowledge, designing machines
that mmake it virtually impossible to overcook the hamburgers, underserve
the amount of fries, or chortchange the customer. In short, the food at
McDonald's can be prepared and served only in the way that McDonald's
knows is best."
An understanding, strong culture organization guides strategy and action
by using a set of core values, described by some as the "ruling myth."
Examples cited were GM, IBM, Sears.
Thinking organization is one that diagnoses problems and quickly rolls out
a solution. Foleys Department Store was cited and it's "Think like a
Customer" (TLC) Program. The philosophy is if it's broke, fix it, and fix
it fast, but don't focus on why it broke.
Learning organization - process both the experience and the way the
organization experiences it. Home Depot was cited as example. Learning
is focused both on the customer and the workforce.
Each approach handles change differently. The learning organization always
has a great many changes underway. The rest of the article focuses on how
to "unlearn" the organization so that it can become and adopt learning
organization practices.
I apologize to the authors for my quick overview of their well thought
article and to readers of the list that wish I'd written more. This
will probably get truncated as it is.
--Penny Kingsbury rnpking <rnpking@erols.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>