Learning Organization-Creating a Learning Organization and Leading it

LEADING A LEARNING ORGANIZATION

As Peter Senge says, there are two ways of resolving creative tension. First, raise the current reality towards vision and second, lower vision towards reality. Organizations which learn to work with creative tension know how to channel the energy created by that tension to move reality towards their visions.

Leader as a Designer

An organization with poor design will be an ineffective organization, even if it is led by a great leader. Organization design is concerned with designing governing ideas of purpose, vision, and core values by which people will live. The first task of leadership is designing governing ideas to be followed by policies, strategies, and structures that can translate guiding ideas into business decisions. The appropriateness of policies, strategies, and structures to a large extent depends upon effective learning processes. Thus the leader’s third task in a learning organization is to create such processes.

Leader as a Teacher

A leader’s main responsibility is to define reality. He should help his people get accurate, insightful, and empowering views of current reality. Thus the leader assumes the role of a teacher. According to Peter Senge, teaching role in a learning organization can be developed by giving attention to people’s mental models and with the help of systems thinking. A leader as a teacher has to bring people’s mental models of important issues to surface. This is important because, a mental picture of how the world works (people hold this mental picture), influences how people perceive various problems and opportunities. It also influences how the courses of action are identified and how people make their choices.

A leader’s job is not over with revealing the hidden assumptions. People mistake reality for events. They see the pressures they have to borne, the crises they must react to, and the limitations they must accept as reality. But these are just obvious and temporary conditions. There are some underlying causes that cause these problems. A leader as a teacher shows what is beyond these obvious events. There can be a pattern behind these events. And there can be basic problem behind this pattern. A leader has to make his people restructure their views of reality. By addressing the problems behind pattern of events (here crises, and pressures), a leader can help his people create a new future.

Reality can be viewed at three different levels: events, patterns of behaviors, and systemic structure. Now the question is where does a leader focus his attention, and the attention of the organization? Contemporary society concentrates mostly part on events. The media encourages this by highlighting short-term, and dramatic events. It tries to explain what is happening in terms of the events. For example, stock market analysts may say that Sensex has dropped because Prime Minister got ill. Analysts believe in this explanation and people naturally accept this explanation. But there can be a pattern in this Sensex drop and earlier drops. Trend analysis takes care of this. Reality can be understood at this pattern level as well. Systemic structural explanations seek to explain “what causes the pattern of behavior.” There can be some underlying chronic problem or reason which is causing these patterns of behavior. Understanding reality at this systemic level is understanding the persisting problem or reason.

All the three level explanations are right. But these explanations are different in their usefulness. Explanations that explain events promote a reactive stance to change. Pattern of behavior explanations attempt to identify long-term trends and measure their implications. These explanations help organizations over a period of time to adapt to changing circumstances. Structural explanations are the most beneficial. They try to provide explanations on underlying causes of behavior. With these explanations they offer a hope that patterns of behavior can be changed to organization’s advantage. Today’s leaders mostly concentrate on events and to a lesser extent on patterns of behavior. Under their leadership, organizations also largely do the same (concentrate more on events and to a certain extent on patterns of behavior). This is the reason why most of the organizations are reactive and a few are generative. Leaders in learning organizations try to understand reality at all the three levels but concentrate more on systematic structure. They also encourage their people to do the same. As a result, learning organizations are better prepared for the future.

Leader as a Steward

Regarding the role of leader as steward, Peter Senge says, “This is the subtlest role of leadership. Unlike the roles of designer and teacher, it is almost solely a matter of attitude. It is an attitude critical to learning organizations.”

Peter Senge says that while people have realized that stewardship is an aspect of leadership, its source is not properly understood. He feels that Robert Greenleaf’s seminal book, Servant Leadership, provides some explanation on stewardship. In this book, Greenleaf says, “The servant leader is servant first...It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. This conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions.”

As a steward, a leader can operate at two levels. First, stewardship for people and second, stewardship for the larger mission that underlies the organization. At the first level, the leader understands the impact his leadership can have on his people. He understands that people can suffer economically, emotionally, and spiritually under incompetent leadership. People working in a learning organization are going to be more influenced by their leader due to their commitment and sense of ownership. A leader who understands all this develops a sense of responsibility.

At the second level, leaders of learning organizations have a sense of personal purpose and commitment towards achieving their organization’s larger mission. As Peter Senge says, they unleash energies of their people by appealing to their natural impulse to learn. They do this by engaging their people in endeavor they consider worthy of their fullest commitment. Lawrence Miller [4] puts it beautifully, “Achieving return on equity does not, as a goal, mobilize the most noble forces of our soul.” Leaders involved in building learning organizations feel part of a higher purpose that extends beyond their organization. They attempt to transform the way businesses operate with the conviction to create organizations that are more productive; that can achieve higher levels of organizational successes; and that  provide personal satisfaction.

[4] Art Director, Production Designer