Replying to LO17047
Tom Christoffel wrote: "I've been drawn to the learning organization
idea, but am mystified as to how to implement "a passion for learning" in
a small organization....Without internal bench marking against personal
goals, what really motivates people to learn and perform?
Tom, thanks for your comments on the Employee Ranking Discussion. I've
isolated just a small part of it to address here. Without knowing the
size of your organization, I hope some of my comments are relevant to your
situation.
I'm reminded of the metaphor: you can lead a horse to water, but you
can't make him drink works well here...so how do we make the horse
thirsty? How can a passion for learning be instilled in an organization?
My experience: a passion for learning can only come from the individuals
themselves, not from the level or "organization". To paraphrase Kevin
Kelly in Out of Control (a great book on the application to complexity and
chaos theory to all types of organizations): the 'life' of an organization
is an emergent, self-organized entity that arises out from it's parts.
Since the culture of an organization self-organizes, we can provide input
only at the level of it's parts, and not at the level of the organization
itself. Ultimately, it's a warm-blooded human being that learns and
applies something new...or an assemblage of humans. Individuals learning
and changing ultimately shifts the organization.
As to passion: We've done a lot of work with individuals to assist them
to re-discover their "passion" for learning. I say re-discover, because
people have a natural curiosity that drives them to learning; and passion
for learning is entirely natural. Just watch pre-school kids to see what I
mean. The reasons for losing touch with it (in selective or even all
situations) vary with the individual and can range from a childhood
incident with a math teacher, fatigue / non-specific burnout or anxiety,
to a lack of training in cognitive skills required to process increasing
rates of information. Ultimately, people are motivated to learn because
it's pleasurable...they are either interested and curious or they are
minimizing a low-level of anxiety.
Personal goals are key: When people can internalize new attitudes,
cognitive models and some basic cognitive skills training, they can learn
at accelerated rates with a lot of pleasure. Even if they initially apply
these new skills only to non-work / high interest areas, there is a
positive reinforcement loop towards continued application and their new
skills and attitudes soon extend to include work-related projects.
Identifying personal learning goals is the key to beginning motivated
practice and learning "learning" behaviors.
Tie with organizational goals: Let's assume you've now got all your
people passionate about learning...how to you direct the object of their
passion? This is where inspiring people with the mission comes in. This
is incredibly difficult to do - and, depending on your skill level, you
will reach some, but typically a lot of lipservice occurs among others. I
believe the best way is to have people in the right jobs, where their
individual learning goals are in alignment with the business goals (or at
least try to maximize the overlap between the organizational and personal
goals.)
System-wide change: Assembling a learning organization is somewhat like
assembling a prairie or a new ecological system: it's very contextural -
it has to be grown and nourished, rather than implemented from the top
down...
I do think there's a lot that can be done from a management perspective to
actively encourage an organizational culture that facilitates individuals
learning and sharing all different types of knowledge, skills and
procedures. For instance, information systems can be designed with human
factors in mind, management can educate individuals of the reality of the
need to learn continuously in the workplace and/or a learning mentor
program can be established. Best of all, management can actively model
the desired behavior.
Hope these thoughts help you out!
Synthia Smith
Mastery of Learning
synsmith@aol.com
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