So, what are some take home messages for organisations aiming to become learning organisations?
- Organisations must create a space for communication to occur – tacit knowledge should be able to be shared easily among employees.
- After information has been shared, ‘combination’ is critical for developing organisational knowledge and then transforming that into another tacit form.
- Leaders need to inspire employees and motivate them in order to promote OLKM.
- It is important that leaders demonstrate effective transformational characteristics where they collaborative with employees to work toward the personal goals of employees as well as the organisation's.
- Leaders also help in developing organisational strategy and should remember that short term strategies breed cynicism with employees and effect performance levels. Whereas, a long term strategy creates "buy-in" from the employees where they remain focused on their own goals and the organisation's goals.
- Transformational leadership can help empower employees to learn from their mistakes while also ancourage them to produce results.
- Organisations with horizontal, flat structures and organic designs tend to encourage OLKM more than hierarchical, bureucratic organisations but there needs to be balance between the two types of designs.
- Other aspects of infrastructure such as IT programs and reward policies and practices also play a vital role in developing a learning organisation.
- The culture of the organisation plays a vital role in OLKM. Organisations should promote a positive culture of trust and empowerment to increase the sharing of knowledge and learning.
- Leaders in organisations should encourage authentic dialogue in order to create transparency and enabling open discussion, bringing errors, flaws and new opportunities to the surface.
- Double loop learning allows opportunities will be analysed on a greater, long-term scale and errors will not only be addressed as events, but rather potential patterns of occurrences
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| Image from:http://www.penn-olson.com/2009/12/23/ social-media-its-not-the-steps-its-the-connection/ |
... And how does all this fit together?
Just as the human body is a complex series of inter-related components that need to work together in order to survive, organisational learning and knowledge management (OLKM) is made up of complex relationships which link its numerous elements. The Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) draws together the various
aspects within OLKM, highlighting their connections. To begin with, knowledge management plays a
role through ‘tacit knowledge’ increasing the ‘knowledge sharing opportunities’
that an organisation invests in. In
order for knowledge to be valued, there must be support through the
organisation’s leadership. ‘Senior
management support’ has a positive effect on ‘transformational leadership
style.’ This allows the organisation to be be designed with a 'horizontal structure'. ‘Organisational structure’ also decreases the
use of separate offices and there is an emphasis on the ‘public space use’
within the environment. This in turn
shows the ‘learning culture of the organisation’ that values ‘public space
use.’ Finally, the ‘transformational
leadership style’ enhances ‘authentic dialogue’ within the organisation; this
displays the role of feedback within organisational learning. For a company to truly function as a learning
organisation, these five aspects enhance their value of knowledge sharing and
consequently allows them not only to survive but to gain a competitive advantage and allow their success into the future.
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| Causal Loop Diagram for the OLKM Model |
