>Don't get me wrong, I truly believe that learning organizations are
>critical for our future and that SOMEONE must think about them from an
>academic perspective...I just think that sometimes we can get a little
>carried away with ourselves and forget about the people who make
>organizations thrive, who just get things done as best they can.
Nancy,
Thanks for opening a dialog on the day-to-day nitty gritty of what it
means to create a learning organization with people with varying
understandings of what that means and with the competing pressures of
everyday life. I am the executive director of a nonprofit agency that is
developing the community leadership skills of young people. For the last
18 months, I have been trying move the organization to focus on learning
and away from doing the activities of the organization in same ways that
they have always been done or in the same ways modeled by other
organizations. My staff is young, not very well paid, and their lives are
full of other interests and priorities. Though the process is much slower
than I would like, I have discovered that all people are open to learning
if we create the space for them to bring their whole lives to work and use
the richness of that experience as a launching point for learning.
I am looking forward to the ensuing dialog on this issue.
Meredith Emmett
galmer@compuserve.com
--Meredith Emmett <galmer@compuserve.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>