Learning organisations have been talked about for more than 20 years. Does this really happen? Anne Bennett examines three models of learning and finds that perhaps the best of all three may be achieved through the ‘unlearned’ agenda – unlearning that which is unconsciously fed back through habit. This way, we both leave space for new things, but also space to define a sense of direction.

The change programme is motoring. Business processes are in place, new products are on line, customer behaviour is encouraging, we are getting smarter. Our ideas keep coming, the technology is on our side, strategies, budgets and systems are all giving us the green light. Some of the human software are yet to ‘get with the programme’. More training? Ensure managers are promoting the learning packages? Communications? Motivation? Within today’s HR strategies we find references to ‘creating the conditions’ for learning and development. But what happens where change seems slowed to the pace of learning rather than driven forward through it? Let’s ponder on the problem and its nature for just a while.

In any organisation there will be a portion of what could be described as ‘persistent non-learning’ – old habits dying hard or recurrent problems within a system. The symptoms might be the less-than customer focused call desk, the maintenance backlogs, the missing management information, and the lack of behaviours and conversation to model the message of a new culture. Other symptoms might include poor uptake of some forms of learning opportunity, or a fixed view that training is an allotment of time owed to individuals and an abstraction from real work.

When it is working, we expect to see high performance and results as well as people flourishing, with steady improvement and innovation along the way. It is hard to ‘engineer’ learning in the same way as other projects, although many current approaches adopt this tone – one of delivering a range of resources, through flexible channels, with focus on developing people against measurable competencies, and so on. Where ‘learning’ itself lives is at two levels either side of the obvious structured approach. First it lives within the learners themselves, and second it moves like a dynamic resource through the culture and systems which make up a community of actors within any organisation.

Which models of systems and culture support learning and development?

When it comes to learning organisations – the powerful models and ideas of Pedler¹, Burgoyne, et al notwithstanding – there is a chronic lack of a resilient working definition and model which can hold its own in today’s litany of business models. We are culturally dominated by certain models, to the extent that they add their lexicon to everyday management thinking in almost unconscious ways. Popular models such as ‘econometric’, ‘machine’ and ‘organic’ may be fit for a range of analysis of organisational life. However they may not serve so well a theory of learning in organisations.

In turn then – first the econometric model of learning. This can be both explicit and implicit. We ‘need more of it, there is a demand, a supply will be sourced. Improvement will be measured against competency based ratings and included with other performance indicators’. The learning process will be consciously designed and managed, and formal controls can be applied. As with real economics – the truth behind the numbers is a behavioural morass of chaos and covert, even unconscious forces and drivers. The data are relied on as a ‘real’ representation or reality, in place of experiential and intuitive ways of knowing.

Second – and a very common language indeed – we look at the machine model of organisations. In a mechanistic model of learning the appeal seems to be that ‘toolkits’, ‘engines’ and ‘levers’ convey to us a sense that organisations are complicated but controllable and fixable. Learning programmes are engineered, wired or bolted in, propelled and manipulated in ways that fit with a rational model of management. Clearly there are practical ideas to support learning and useful methods contained in the manuals that circulate inside our organisations. In the e-learning world this is essential. However, how can we avoid imposing learning media which might suit the measuring process more than the learning process?

Thirdly, organic metaphors take us a lot further in working with the subject of learning – the sense of growth, of change, of moving beyond forms into other ways of being. They also appeal to organisations trying to express their humanity and connect with the outside markets and stakeholders on ethical and emotional terms. However, they also cast a shadow for the learning agenda – not least the fact that learning and development seems often to be set apart from other core business activity.

‘Unlearning’ and managing paradox

Can such disparate models work together, or do they rub each other up the wrong way? If that question sounds rhetorical, perhaps a better one is ‘Why is this dynamic so common and persistent?’ And before we rush to solve it, do we understand the pay-offs that are implicit in this situation? What freedoms to learn might managers, staff, people in general be afforded by the portion of the whole system that stays outside the explicit ‘learning system’ or HR strategy? We will explore three elements of an ‘unlearning’ model. If it is true that (like evolution) organisations survive by their recruitment mistakes – then like good innovators and discoverers everywhere we encourage mistakes, we have counter culture, we have space to experiment. And if we have a ‘learning lab’, let’s not keep it too tidy, you never know what new wonders might be growing in there.

Learning point 1– remain open to learning taking place outside the formal, measured systems. In our approach we talk of ‘noticing, valuing and using human capital’. Many organisations have successfully used dialogues, story telling and informal communications as a robust process to sustain their people and build on their daily learning and experiences (see Prusak and Cohen, 2000). Anomalies, telling moments and test questions can all be paid attention through these methods, whereas more programmed learning may suppress or ignore them².

Next – can we translate what we know about individual learning to the concept of ‘organisational learning’? To understand culture we often describe it as an aggregation of human characteristics, feelings, attitudes , behaviours and values. Organisations then might have their own learning style – experimental perhaps, or highly rational. Do we address the climate and predilections of our workplace, or do we introduce learning programmes to ‘change it’ and which are in themselves a mismatch with either present or desired approaches to learning?

Learning point 2 – look at organisational learning events – including large group experiences and networked opportunities – as more than‘PR’or sheep-dipping. Technologies exist to help the organisation build up shared insights and knowledge. Our approach shows culture as a weave of histories (Figure 1). This metaphor helps us think about how learning systems might become woven in with these, using them and contributing to them. It also leads directly to our next ‘learning point’.

More precisely, we now look at conscious unlearning. When our human learning starts – on day one of our lives – we naturally explore and reflect and internalise our developing understanding. We don’t become less good at it with age, we just become more unconscious – both of our competencies and of our incompetencies. It is harder to accept the need to learn things we have managed without, and harder to explain how things work for us the way they are. It is similar for organisations, when they espouse existing or new norms, values and behaviours, based on a sense of what works/will work.

What is needed to complement this is a supportive and challenging process of 'decommissioning’ of old and current ideas.

FIGURE 1

They may have served a function, they may need to be celebrated, but they might also need a firm ejection. To do this well means not rejecting the people who have vested much in keeping old culture alive. Safe forums, skilled facilitation, open and inclusive channels, and healthy amounts of discussion can be dedicated to such a process. We need robust processes for tackling the organisation as a whole system, as a community. When there are unequal powers and voices, this process will also call for discrete supportand challenge and independent leadership.

Learning point 3 – Failure to unlearn will leave the organisation with gaps in its learning – the unconsciously retained learning may be highly positive and functional, or it may not. It may be both functional but unpalatable. But there are solutions which can be planned in to support your learning system. And as individuals practise new behaviours and put effort into changing old ones, this need not mean a ‘lag’ in the pace of change (as the learning agenda is often portrayed). It is this very process which drives change along and can take the lead on supplying ideas and understanding about required changes, strategy and direction of travel.

Finally – The ‘biodome’ approach. This notion borrows from the Eden Project in Cornwall. ‘Providing the right conditions for learning and development’ has new meaning in such a place. In your organisation, different conditions are needed and there is no individual that cannot adapt to growing in new climates. You pay attention to protecting, nursing and supporting growth, and show alertness to signs that things might not be going as expected. There is learning to be found in those unexpected events. We resist the feedback loops or reinforcing/corrective actions until we are clear we understand what the learning is, and then be led by the learners. We see more clearly the inter-relatedness of the experiences of different parts of the whole.

Whilst Eden is clearly about natural history, it is not just a new take on the organic metaphor. It can challenge our assumptions – such as ‘cultural change is slow’. Wholesale experiences of shock can shift a system (organisations, sectors, governments) overnight. Individuals can experience transformations, gradual or sudden, maybe a few times in a life. Both levels of experience challenge another assumption – that we can plan a culture change. It has been argued that culture is not something susceptible to ‘levers’ or to managed interventions.

This ‘unlearned’ agenda (along with a growing awareness of other paradoxes) is telling us something. It is raising ‘good questions’ whose value and usefulness may outweigh the traditional attraction of the ‘simple answer’.

We are told that global climate change will be more sudden and dramatic and unpredictable than we had – well – predicted. The challenge is to become more engaged in learning about learning across our complex messy human systems. And to feel good about unlearning – letting go of certainties, of ‘levers’ and ‘programmes’ - and perhaps then see our hoped for change in learning culture happening at speed.

¹ A Concise Guide to the Learning Organisation (1998) by Pedler K, Aspinwall, Lemos & Crane, London
² In Good Company: HowSocial Captial MakesOrganisations Work (2001)by Cohen D. & Prusak L.Harvard, Harvard BusinessSchool Press

For further information, please contact Anne Bennet:
T 44(0) 1223 31594
E anne.bennett@erconsultants.co.uk