NONLINEAR LEARNING
A NONLINEAR APPROACH TO LEARNING ORGANIZATIONS
- For an organization steering its way on a knowledge landscape in the
knowledge era, becoming a learning organization is possibly the most
critical factor effecting its sustainablity. To gain a knowledge advantage
and maintain that knowledge advantage the organization will need to be a
learning organization. This nudges us into asking how can we assist our
organizations into become learning organizations?
- I have a feeling that possibly some of the work done on learning
organizations was done from a perspective of seeing organizational
learning as a linear process. If indeed this is so we may have to develop
new understandings of organizational learning starting from the assumption
that it is nonlinear. Such approaches may enrich the existing research and
knowhow on how to develop learning organizations.
NONLINEAR LEARNING
- Learning is a nonlinear process. Its not that some learning is linear
and some nonlinear. Nonlinear means that there is no a proportion between
input & output. A small input can give enormous results & vice versa. An
organization and its members learn in a nonlinear manner. Individual &
organizational learning is nonlinear because it is cyclical with the
outputs of one cycle becoming the inputs of the next cycle.You first learn
what CAS (Complex Adaptive Systems) are then based on the insights that
come from this this - you begin to learn and understand how an
organization as a CAS becomes a learning organization.
- Our learning at a point in time is not the sum of our learning until
then. It is not one learning plus another learning giving the sum of two
learnings. Joining two learnings together may create a completely new
theory. Learning often takes jumps throwing new light on and affecting
much that has been learned before. In learning sometimes a small input can
have enormous reverberations. We learn with disorderly jumps between whole
and parts, parts & whole. Learning as we shall soon attempt to demonstrate
is a nonlinear *self-organizing* process, where the new learning is not
the sum of former learnings.
- Glenda Eoyang describes how individual & group learning in community
should be: 1) nonlinear;
2) scaled to create integrity between individual learning & coherent
community learning;
3)dynamical to allow for multidimensional and disproportional cause &
effect relations.
We can add 4) fractal - to describe how every learning peak one climbs
reveals endless new vistas within it.
- John Cleveland, Joann Neuroth & Stephanie Marshal have developed a new
schema of nonlinear organizational learning:
* The learners are provided with a rich variety of inputs;
* Different learners follow different paths;
* The outcomes are emergent & cannot be foretold;
* Learning is self-organized by the learners activity in designing it;
* Disciplines are integrated & roles are flexible;
* There are rapid iterations between the parts & wholes;
* People coevolve together in a learning community.
THE LEARNING CYCLE
- In the above descriptions we can see the beginning of a nonlinear
approach to organizational learning, which may assist us in developing
learning organizations - that can be sustainable in the knowledge era.
Glenda Eoyang has enriched this by developing a three phase cyclical
learning model based on self-organization.
1) In phase one the learner recognizes that new stimuli differ from his
current schema.
2) In phase two the learner attempts to reconcile the differences.
3) In phase three, through self-organization the learner generates a
new model that incorporates the new and the old in a new context.
Its worthwhile for readers to try applying this model to a learning
experience they have had lately.
Glenda has developed this model to incorporate experiential learning & to
understand theory building. Glendas model may assist us in developing a
learning community & improving the learning process.
THE LARGER PICTURE
Lets return to the larger picture and insert these ideas into their
context. Here are some of the propositions:
1) We are looking for factors & strategies that may improve an
organizations fitness while roaming in the turbulent ruggedness of its
landscape.
2) We set out from a viewpoint of the landscape being a rugged one of
growing complexity, unpredictability, uncertainty & instability.
3) We suggest that it might be worthwhile to describe such landscapes in
terms of sustainability, to emphasize the critical factors of time
duration & renewal, that are not caught by the term fitness.
4) To ensure renewal, sustainable organizations constantly regenerate
themselves by self-organization, often through first order & less often
through second order change ( by a power law).
5) Organizations that constantly renew themselves through
self-organization need to be learning organizations.
6) As we have entered the Knowledge Era the landscape may also be
described as a knowledge landscape.
7) In knowledge landscapes, organizations with a knowledge advantage will
be more sustainable than others.
8) Organizations that maintain a knowledge (or intelligence) advantage
need to be learning organizations.
9) We can enhance our understanding of how to develop learning
organizations by developing a nonlinear, self-organizational approach to
learning.
10) The first steps in developing such an approach may possibly have
already been taken by people studying the application of the New Sciences
to organizations.
FUNCTONING AT THE EDGE OF CHAOS
- All of the above propositions lead to asking: Under what conditions does
an organization become a learning organization?
- In Complexity Science one of our answers is that an organization will
best function as a learning organization when it is at the edge of
chaos.
- Why is this so? Why go to the edge? John Cleveland gives a concise
answer:
...because its what gets you on the evolutinary escalator
It is where you can best:
* Process information
* Adapt to new information
* Learn
* Evolve
Why is this so? Thats a story for another posting!
Dr. Uri Merry umerry@shani.net
The Institute of Organizational Consultation
Worrkshop in London at the beginning of September
Website: http://pw2.netcom.com/~nmerry/Urihome
P.S. Dr. Scott Kelso of The Neurosciences Institute wrote me saying that
in his book "Dynamic Patterns: The self-Organization of Brain and
Behavior" (MIT Press). There are chapters based on "real" experiments in
which the work described there may help clothe some of my key ideas, e.g.
the self-organized nature of the learning process, using the normal canons
of science, theory and experiment.
--umerry <umerry@shani.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>