To build an organization open to learning requires a change of focus in most organizations. We must go beyond the current perspective. The most precise word to define it is metanoia. It involves a mental transit.
With the organization's metanoia, learning is not enough for survival. Adaptive learning must be combined with generative learning. A learning that increases the creative capacity of the organization and the satisfaction of the people who compose it. With the global interconnection, complexity and dynamism of organizations, it is not enough for one or more people to have information and knowledge.
Organizations that will be able to compete in the new realities are those that discover how to harness the learning potential and enthusiasm of people at all levels of their structures. And this requires a shared vision that contemplates sustainable economic benefit and its balance with the social and environmental environment.
Bold pioneers we have started the journey. With our coaching system for building an organization open to learning, we want to help facilitate its exploration and accelerate its exploitation. Because as I already said, in the late 90s in Fortune Magazine, Arie de Geus:
"The ability to learn faster than competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage."
Also then, I already believed that the companies that would be successful in the coming decades would be something called an organization open to learning. Arie de Geus was Planning Director for Royal Dutch / Shell, possibly the first major organization to discover the potential of mental models.
Shell found that by helping managers clarify assumptions, training by finding internal contradictions in those assumptions, and building strategies based on new concepts, it gained many competitive advantages. She developed "scenario planning", a system to synthesize future trends. Back and her team understood that until now they had misinterpreted their work:
“Our task was no longer to produce a documented vision of the future….. Our goal was the mental models of managers… Now we wanted to create scenarios for managers to question their model of reality and change it when necessary”.
Its result was spectacular. In 1970, Shell was considered the weakest of the seven largest oil companies. Forbes magazine came to call her the "Ugly Sister." Instead, in 1979 it was perhaps the strongest. When the countries of the Middle East and North Africa took control of their lands, Shell's position was consolidated. In the 1980s, when the price collapse occurred in 1986, his training of managers with mental models was the key to the strategic planning process at Shell. They went so far as to build scenarios in which the company faced a world where suddenly there was an oil surplus. Managers trained to learn to manage in a possible reality.
Team Coaching with a systemic perspective for its construction.
In 2009, we are going through a crisis worldwide, many of us have become aware.
Organizations do not escape this… and within them, the learning crisis has been generated. Crises refer us to changes and opportunities, therefore it is the openness to learning that enables us to capitalize on moments of these characteristics.
The most advanced management techniques have failed, especially due to its fragmentation. And, on the other hand, they have destroyed many people in education, industry, services, agriculture and in the Public Administrations.
On the contrary, in Organizations open to learning, with the coaching of their teams with a systemic perspective, people find their motivation, self-esteem and the joy of learning. They are able to face difficulties, recognize opportunities and, above all, achieve their personal goals aligned with the shared goals of the organization.
Personal learning is necessary but not sufficient for the learning of organizations. Individuals can constantly learn, and yet there is no organizational learning. For this it is necessary that the teams learn. If teams learn they are like microorganisms that transfer learning throughout the organization.
In this way, organizations become agents of their own changes and are able to manage any type of crisis, recognize threats, discover new shared opportunities, better manage employment in terms of both security and flexibility, and make them more sustainable.
This will require an increase in indefinite hiring and higher quality contracts, for the benefit of workers, companies, organizations and society in general. This is one of the important contributions of the Open Organization for Learning.
