I have finally finished Peter Senge's book "The Fifth Discipline" and am
excited about the possibilities of what a learning organization has to
offer. However, I am not a manager. Rather, I am a 32-year old American in
a Japanese company (rather large auto maker) in Japan. I am considered
"staff", in other words, a non-manager, and, on top of this, an outsider
since I am not Japanese (however I do speak and read the language).
I have found Senge's ideas of personal mastery, vision, openness, and
compassion, "dialog vs. discussion", etc. very much in line with the
traditional Japanese arts (particularly aikido which I practice) and
Buddhism. However, when it comes to the Japanese _company_, it seems that
Japan kept the part about "respect your superiors", and threw everything
else away. Granted, Japanese companies (in Japan, particularly) were great
at the production side, but lack totally (from my experience with 3
different Japanese companies over 10 years) from the people-side. The
company I work for couldn't be farther from a learning organization.
Information is protected and horded, managers are respected to the point
where they are never questioned, training for personal mastery is
basically nil, and asking anyone about a shared vision would be
ludicrious.
So, my question is this: How can someone from a non-managerial position
help to implement the principles of a learning organization? In
particular, has this ever been done with Japan companies in Japan?
I have approach one of my managers about this. His idea is "we should all
communicate more". My big problem with this is that _people do not really
know how to communicate effectively_. I suggest training in communication.
However, his experience with training is that 60% or more is worthless.
(This is most likely true since I myself believe that a lot of training
out there doesn't really produce long-term, meaningful results.)
Any advice is appreciated.
Tony Padgett
Tokyo, Japan
--Tony Padgett <tony_padgett@yahoo.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>