The Learning Organisation: Success Factors and Recommendations for Action

What are "learning organisations"?

Learning organisations are organisations that are continuously evolving

There are different definitions for Learning organisations. In this article, we set out the definition of Peter Senge which he coined in the 1990s and which is still valid today. Peter Senge was director of the Centre for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management and head of the Society for Organizational Learning.

For Peter Senge, the main way Learning organisations distinguish themselves is not by offering a broad training programme or by sending employees to external seminars to acquire explicit knowledge. Rather, Learning organisations for him is that through the interplay of culture, organisational design, leadership and IT, they create framework conditions that enable and promote informal (and thus self-directed, casual and unconscious) learning, knowledge storage and knowledge exchange.

In his book "The Fifth Discipline", Senge describes what it takes for a company to become a Learner organisation. I take up Senge's impulses and develop them further with the help of our experiences.

What framework conditions do "learning organisations" need?

For Senge, five basic conditions must be in place for an organisation to develop continuously:

• Personal Mastery - the pursuit of personal growth
• Mental Models - the further development of mental images
• Shared Vision - the development of common goals and objectives
• Team Learning - learning in a team
• Systems Thinking - thinking in complex systems

Let's look at all the elements in detail.

Personal Mastery - the pursuit of personal growth

A basic thesis of Senge's is that the "commitment of an organisation to want to learn can only ever be as great as the commitment of its members." ¹.

This means that every employee in a learning organisation feels the inner urge to continuously develop themselves and become a master in a specific subject or discipline.

Mental Models - the further development of beliefs and convictions

For Senge, another prerequisite of a Learner organisationthat its members are in a position to continuously review, develop or even discard their own convictions, beliefs, patterns and ideas. This also includes the continuous development of management and leadership styles.

Shared Vision - Development of common goals

"If ever there was a single leadership idea that has inspired organisations since time immemorial, it is the ability to create and sustain a shared vision of the future." ¹.

A shared vision, a common purpose, shared values and goals that both motivate and inspire are prerequisites for an organisation to be successful in the first place, and are therefore also prerequisites for organisations to develop further.

Team Learning - Learning in a Team

It is well known that the intelligence of the swarm exceeds the intelligence of the individuals. "When teams are truly learning, they not only achieve outstanding results, but the individual members also develop faster than would ever be possible otherwise." ¹.

This shared learning in the team begins with dialogue and acceptance of others. It requires that each team member does not see a lack of knowledge or mistakes made as a devaluation of his or her own person and does not misuse personal know-how to devalue those lacking specific knowledge.

But learning in a team also means creating learning spaces in the team. Interaction is a basic prerequisite for this. And since learning usually works better without time pressure, time is also needed for real exchange, joint observation, questioning, exploring and experimenting.

Unfortunately, the education system in Germany still does not lay the foundation for learning to work naturally in a community. Companies are therefore explicitly called upon to establish team learning as a matter of course, even when teams work across organisations, the keyword being open innovation.

Systems Thinking - Systemic Thinking

The fifth discipline, according to Senge, is the integrative discipline that links all the other four. Through systems thinking, the complex interrelationships of the whole are recognised and become transparent, so that the conscious and unconscious influence of one framework condition on the others can be taken into account. In Senge's theory, organisation and individual are closely linked. On the one hand, it is the organisation that influences the individual, i.e. the people working in it or for it; on the other hand, the organisation itself cannot learn. It is the people who learn and develop the organisation.

What concrete first steps can you take in your company to establish a "learning organisation"?

You can take the following first steps towards a learning organisation:

• Anchoring a culture of trust in the company
• Define a shared vision and purpose
• Drive your own development and exemplify a growth mindset
• Create learning spaces
• Submit decisions

What can you do specifically?

Step 1: Anchoring a culture of trust in the company

The role of psychological safety

An aspect that Peter Senge does not explicitly address, but which, in our experience, is crucial for Learning organisations is psychological safety. Why is this important? I would like to highlight this question by looking at characteristics that occur when an organisation does not provide this psychological safety.

What happens when psychological security is not given?

• There is more silence than communication.
  And also when it comes to introducing new ideas, because if the individual is not 100% sure that it is a good idea and accepted by everyone, he will not express it.
• Mistakes are not admitted, possibly even covered up.
• People remain in their comfort zone.
• There is no experimentation. New things are not tried out. Consequently, no innovation is possible.
• Instructions, tasks or procedures are not questioned.
• Things are only verbalised when it is to one's own advantage.
• Information and knowledge are bunkered and instrumentalised
• Conflicts are not dealt with openly. This means that a productive solution is hardly possible.
• Organisation and team confidence continuously decline and with it also the self-confidence of the individual.

Psychological safety is not only the core of a learning organisation and the key element of a culture of trust. Achieving psychological safety throughout the entire organisation is also the most difficult cultural transformation to master. This is because it involves changing deeply rooted human patterns and behaviours. It is therefore important to have a management team that creates key framework conditions that contribute to psychological safety and trusting behaviour through the way they work together and the way they lead.

How does that work?

Concrete recommendations for action for more trust in the company

Three management tools make a decisive contribution to a trusting relationship:

• Information transparency
• Fault tolerance
• Honest and constructive feedback

Making information and knowledge transparent

Good knowledge management was and still is a very big challenge for Learning organisations. There are many knowledge management systems from which companies can choose. But in our experience, the main sticking point is not the system. Rather, the following things should be at the centre of your leadership when it comes to making information and knowledge transparent in your company:

• No undocumented know-how: It must be a matter of course to document and thus share knowledge and information.
• Processes before systems: Before you invest in an expensive knowledge management system, mould your information and communication processes into a future-proof design. After all, if you don't do your homework and don't keep it up to date, the system you invest in will only be moderately successful. Key questions that will help you to design your information and communication processes for the future:
  • Who needs what information? In what form?
  • Where is knowledge created? In what form?
  • What is the easiest way to share this?
  • What dependencies exist between the different processes?
  • Which information and exchange spaces suit your everyday life?
• Easy access, low complexity: It should a central system that uses an intelligent search engine to provide access to all available information and knowledge, a kind of corporate Google.
• Someone wears the hat: There must be a team that is responsible for the further development and maintenance of the system and ensures that defined "input guidelines" are adhered to, insofar as this is not done by AI.
• A language that everyone understands: Communication must be understandable for everyone. Therefore, only use abbreviations and technical terms that everyone knows.
• Everyone works with us: The further development of stored knowledge contributions must be possible by everyone.
• Timeliness is a must: Processes, templates, guidelines, documents... must always be up-to-date.
• First-hand information at the same time: Say goodbye to having information intended for all members of your organisation announced through the different levels of the hierarchy according to the silent mail principle. If you have information for everyone, then address everyone, e.g. via a video message.

Living a culture of fault tolerance and feedback

An organisation only becomes an organisation Learner organisationThe company's leadership culture must also succeed in taking away the fear of new things from people who tend to value security. This requires a culture of error tolerance and honest, constructive feedback.

In a culture of error tolerance, mistakes are part of the learning and development process. In order to make others less afraid of making mistakes and to talk about them, it is important that you as a manager also talk openly about your own mistakes. Be transparent about what you have learned from this mistake and how you can prevent it from happening to you or others in your organisation again.

This fault tolerance culture implies a constructive feedback culture. Without constructive feedback, any further development is made difficult.

Oops! 10 tips for a constructive culture of fault tolerance.

Step 2: Define a common vision and purpose

We have already pointed out in several articles how central a common vision and a common purpose are for the success of a company. With regard to a Learning organisation, a common vision sets the focus. What do we focus on? In which direction do we look, think and experiment? Where do we invest? Where not? What will be our content anchor? A shared vision that everyone stands behind is therefore not only motivating, but above all it guides decisions and makes it possible to deploy resources in a targeted manner, which in turn can lead to visible successes more quickly.

Step 3: Drive your own development and exemplify a growth mindset

Everything contains possibilities. Whether you find a situation pleasant or unpleasant, they are no different in their fundamental nature: a situation is something that offers possibilities. ... To decide that any situation is something that offers possibilities is growth." ². Only leaders who go through life with this attitude can have an Learning organisation, develop and lead. This does not mean that risks should be negated or minimised. It means that situations are considered and analysed in a value-neutral way in order to decide which path to take - always guided by the central question: "What is the best option for us in this situation? In this context, it is helpful not to make fundamental decisions that have far-reaching consequences for organisations in a small circle, but to include as many perspective providers and experiences as possible.

Step 4: Create learning spaces

Before permanent learning becomes a matter of course, it is important that learning is given an explicit temporal space. Set up times in your company for exchanges within the team and, if necessary, define questions to be dealt with in teams at certain times. Create time slots in which employees give presentations on certain topics or invite keynote speakers from outside. This is also possible in a virtual setting. For companies that are already using the Agile working method, retrospectives are another learning space from which the essence of what has been learned should be made accessible to the organisation.

Step 5: Submit decisions

Another important element in building a Learner organisation is to give the teams decision-making authority and thus strengthen their self-efficacy. This self-efficacy requires clarity of purpose, room for manoeuvre in decision-making and a culture of feedback and error tolerance. Self-efficacy in organisations therefore often goes hand in hand with greater self-organisation of the teams. You can read more about this in our articles "Giving decision-making authority to the team" and "Leading self-organised teams".

Giving decision-making authority to the team

Leading self-organised teams

Building a "learning organisation": the role of Human Resources (HR)

Even if the described framework conditions have to be created and lived out by all members of an organisation, HR in Learning organisations plays, in my view, a key role on several levels. On the one hand, they should be drivers of this development and role models alongside the top managers. On the other hand, it is their task to create conscious and unconscious learning spaces and to provide concepts and facilitators for their design.

What does that mean in concrete terms? Below I list some of the tasks:

• Focus the selection process of new hires on people with a growth mindset.
• Define the competence profiles accordingly.
• Design and develop a multi-level training programme that, in addition to teaching methods and input-based learning, focuses on the personal development of three key skills: comprehensive awareness, building self- and relational confidence and situational empathic action. This can be done within the framework of individual coaching and group-based formats and requires that external service providers are able to facilitate purely situational and participant-focused learning based on targeted learning experiences only.
• Provide internal and external resources which also can provide ad-hoc support with learning and development processes in teams. i.e. are learning and development companions.
• Attract external impulse providers and "learning partners", such as universities, start-ups, research centres, customers for the company and create framework conditions for uncomplicated creative exchange.
• Develop a pool of supervisors to act as sparring partners for internal learning and development facilitators.
• Actively address breaches of psychological safety in teams and the organisation and use them as learning and development opportunities for the organisation.

If you would like to know what you as an HR team can specifically do in your company to help your organisation move towards a Learner organisation and play a significant role in shaping the future, contact us.

"Learning organisations" are sustainable organisations

"A Learning organisation, is a place where people continually discover that they create their own reality. And that they can change this reality. ¹.

A Learning organisation, requires five central framework conditions:

• Personal Mastery - the pursuit of personal growth
• Mental Models - the further development of mental images
• Shared Vision - the development of common goals and objectives
• Team Learning - learning in a team
• Systems Thinking - thinking in complex systems

Learning organisations as a motor for a learning society

If we entrepreneurs succeed in becoming Learning organisation, If they are able to develop a new society, they are making a significant contribution to a new society; a society that is characterised by trust, that sees and seizes opportunities instead of manoeuvring itself into an inability to act out of fear of risks. The path to this goal is certainly characterised by challenges, but it opens up the opportunity to make continuous learning and personal growth a matter of course!

¹ Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline, 11th edition, Schäfer / Poeschel
² Safi Nidiaye, The Voice of the Heart, Bastei Lübbe, Year 2000