Richard Goodale commented
>MOST DISCUSSIONS OF LEARNING ORGANISATIONS FINESSE THESE ISSUES. THEIR
>FOCUS IS HIGH PHILOSOPHY AND GRAND THEMES, SWEEPING METAPHORS RATHER THAN
>THE GRITTY DETAILS OF PRACTICE (my caps)."
>
>This criticism was written more than 5 years ago. Can we not do better?
I certainly hope so Richard. let me offer a couple of examples from our
experience.
An IT reseller who set up learning contracts where the company's time
commitment to formal staff learning was matched by the staff's
out-of-hours commitment. Result - Rapid and considerable increases in
competence which increased customer satisfaction and the companies ability
to develop new markets.
An "old fashioned" food manufacturer where the first line supervisors
developed a shared vision for the company, determined how they could
contribute to that, designed an action plan for process and skill
development. As a result, they increased formal and informal staff
learning, set up a range of improvement groups where staff were competing
to participate, reduced waste, reduced abseteeism, etc, etc. Senior
management, seeing the results, expanded the initiative to other areas of
the factory and so it continues.
A surgical prosthetic company who altered their admin systems to take out
the barriers to effective selling (a bit of systems thinking there), built
understanding and common purpose between sales and customer service (team
learning) and addressed some fundamental selling skill needs (it's not all
LO!). Result - within 5 months figures had risen more than 15%, well ahead
of target.
Anybody want to throw in some more? It's not all about reaching the holy
grail of "being a learning company" It's doing the good stuff that moves
you along the road.
Paul Foley
--Paul Foley <paul@kynesis.co.uk>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>