Resources

Research

White Papers

Transforming an Existing Organization into a Learning Organization

by Douglas Guthrie, PhD

© 1996 Group Decision Support Systems, Inc.

In her seminal essay on the sociology of culture, Ann Swidler has set forth several important insights for how we view culture. Swidler’s view of culture is presented as an alternative to the longstanding view of culture as a monolithic set of values and beliefs that are shared by large groups of people. Culture is comprised of values and beliefs, but as Swidler argues, the monolithic and unmalleable view of culture does not hold true to the empirical world. In reality, culture is often shifting, and individuals from one group may hold a set of values and beliefs at one point in time, while holding another set of values and beliefs at another. And at times, the cultural values and beliefs may appear to be in conflict. For example, how does the cultural belief in American individualism fit with and exist in company with the group orientation of ethnicity in America? Swidler answers this conundrum by developing the idea of the cultural toolkit. From Swidler’s perspective, culture is like a toolkit from which individuals draw cultural tools to solve problems and interpret their worlds. There are any number of different cultural values and beliefs in an individual’s cultural toolkit depending upon the various environments and experiences in which the individual is situated. Many of the beliefs and values within the cultural toolkit will be shared by people across a society, but some tools will also be absent from some people’s toolkits. For example, for a Chinese American individual who was raised Catholic, her understandings and views of the rituals and symbols of the Catholic tradition will be a set of tools that are shared with many other Americans who were raised in the Catholic tradition. Yet she will also have within her cultural repertoire the tools to interpret and understand cultural symbols and beliefs from a Chinese tradition. This part of her toolkit may have more in common with other Asians or Asian Americans than it does with other Americans who have not been exposed to the same sets of symbols, values, and beliefs. Similarly, she may not have the cultural tools to interpret a Kawanzaa celebration, though individuals in an African-American community may be equipped with the cultural tools to understand such a celebration. In sum, culture is a set of values and beliefs, but individuals are equipped with cultural tools that allow them to understand, interpret, and utilize the cultural symbols they are presented with in the everyday world.

We present Swidler’s view of culture here because it is relevant to our overall discussion of the learning organization for three reasons. First, we view culture as central to the actions and decisions that individuals make in social worlds. Inasmuch as organizations are social worlds, organizational culture is fundamental to understanding the factors that define action and behavior in organizations. An organization’s culture is a fundamental part of its structure, and culture is central to organizational action, power dynamics, and organizational behavior. Second, while culture is central to social life and organizational structure, we also believe that culture is not monolithic; culture is fluid and shifting, and individuals’ cultural repertoires are derived from many different backgrounds, experiences, and environments. Inasmuch as culture is fluid and malleable, introducing structural changes into organizations will have an impact on the cultural of the organization itself. Third, as students of organizational change, we have a strong affinity for metaphors that place tools as central to the concepts they aspire to explain. One of the greatest follies of the consulting profession has been that consultants have an inexhaustible number of things to say about what is wrong with organizations and how they should be different, but they are able to present surprisingly few concrete actions for managers to take. Typically consultants are able to present managers with few instruments or tools to implement changes within an organization. This does a great disservice to the managers dealing with consultants, because, while the managers are trying to maintain some continuity with the overall organizational purpose, they are also held responsible for incorporating and implementing the changes that consultants are paid to suggest. If managers are not presented with concrete tools and instruments to aid them in institutionalizing the changes that consultants suggest, the process of change is bound to fail. For example, while The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (Senge et al. 1994) is a well-written and easy-to-read document about the principles of the learning organization, it offers few tools and instruments that managers can utilize. There are many anecdotes and exercises that individuals can digest, but the book offers few concrete tools or instruments for organizational change. In addition, the Fieldbook, as does most organizational consulting, commits an ecological fallacy in that it offers individual level solutions (in the form of interpersonal relations, e.g., personal mastery) for organizational level problems. Thus, it appears in the Fieldbook that organizational change emerges from individual transformation; personal mastery at the individual level will bring about organizational transformation in the aggregate. This is a nice idea, but the problem with this view is that it ignores the importance of institutions and culture in organizations. Organizations are aggregations of individuals, but they are also systems of routinized institutional structures and cultures. In order to truly transform organizations--in order to build a learning organization--we must not only offer visions of ideal practices and changes at the individual level, but we must also offer a visions of the institutional changes that will facilitate these cultural changes. We must offer the tools to help dismantle and discard old institutions and old cultural systems and build new institutions and cultures that facilitate learning at all levels. In sum, in order to transform organizations, we need to offer insights and tools that will help create a new institutional structure and organizational culture within the organization.

One of the central ideas that organizational theory has taught is that, while organizations are influenced by the broader institutional environments in which they are situated, they are also influenced by the visions and decisions of actors within the organizations. In addition, actions within and by organizations are also shaped by the institutional structures and the organizational culture that pervade the organization. Today we live in a rapidly changing post-industrial society that is becoming increasingly complex and increasingly fluid; it is an environment that increasingly requires reflexive decision-making and rapid change within organizations. Surviving and thriving in this rapidly changing landscape becomes a function of an organization’s ability to learn, grow, and break down institutional structures within the organization that impede the growth process. As such, organizations that can incorporate growth and change as the fundamental institutions and ideals upon which the organization is built will be at an advantage in the post-industrial era. As Eric Hoffer so aptly puts it, “In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped for a world that no longer exists.” In constructing an organization that is able to incorporate growth and change as a fundamental part of the organization, we must uncover ways to expose and illuminate the institutional structures upon which the organization currently rests, and we must replace these old institutional structures with institutional systems and structures that place learning at the core of the organization. The challenge for organizations in this rapidly changing world is to build a learning organization from existing organizational structures.

What is a learning organization? How is a learning organization structured? How is a learning organization built from an existing organizational structure? The discussion that follows will deal with these questions in both theoretical and substantive ways. The first section of this paper will discuss the concept of the learning organization, what it means, how it is structured, and the internal processes that comprise the learning organization. It will also focus on the creation of a learning organization within the structure of a given organizational framework. There will be an explicit focus in this section on the restructuring decisions that must be implemented to create a learning organization. The second section will focus more explicitly on the tools necessary in the creation of a learning organization. In this section we will also outline some diagnostics that enable managers to observe progression along the road to becoming a learning organization. The third section will discuss these arguments in the context of a existing organizational structures and different organizational types. This substantive discussion will not only focus on how becoming a learning organization will improve the efficiency and structure of organizations themselves but also on how becoming a learning organization will have an important influential effect across different organizational fields. As new institutional practices spread across organizational fields--through a process of institutional isomorphism--the institutional practices will define the shape of the fields and the norms of action within that field. For public organizations such as the World Bank or organizations within the Department of Defense, the principles of the learning organization actually have an impact of the structure of the organizations with which the Bank and the DoD organizations are dealing. When the World Bank comes into contact with organizations within developing nations, it is in the unique position of influencing and passing on the institutional practices that it carries out; in effect, the Bank is in the position of passing on the principles of the learning organization--through example--to other organizations in the nations with which it deals. For commercial organizations, there is also an extra value added: the practices of the learning organization will spill over into the customer relationships, making the organization not only more efficient internally but also more expedient in the ways in which it deals with other individuals and organizations. The organizations that have adopted these organizational practices ahead of the curve will be at a considerable comparative advantage because of their pioneering work in the structure of the organizational fields.

In order to understand what a learning organization is, we need to first put this discussion in the context of organizational structures in general. A general discussion of organizational structures will revolve around the concepts of institutions, routinized action, and how these concepts relate to the aggregate structures of organizations. It will also incorporate the distinction between individual actions within the organization and organizational action (i.e., action of the organization or the aggregate whole). When we speak of organizations, we are typically referring to large organizations that have developed management structures, organizational hierarchies, and a developed bureaucratic structure that allows the organization to maintain a certain amount of continuity over time. This is important because much of the discussion on institutions and routinized action presented here is contingent upon the existence of a large organizational structure; small organizations typically do not operate under the same types of bureaucratic and institutional constraints as large organizations.


Institutions and Organizational Structure: More than the Sum of its Parts

In a very basic sense, organizations are aggregations of individuals. Individuals are brought together for the larger purpose of fulfilling the organizational goals and mission, and they are compensated for their contribution to that project. However, organizations are also far more than the sum of their individual parts. One of the main reasons for this is that organizations are, in addition to being aggregations of individuals, the sum of institutional structures, systems, and cultures; structures, systems, and cultures become Institutionalized over time and are often unintended--but also unavoidable--consequences of the organizational history and structure. Organizations are structured by institutions--myths, systems, and routinized ways of doing things--that constrain and define the actions of individuals within the organization. When individuals enter an organization, the ways in which they choose to carry out a given action are based upon the accepted norms for action within that organization. Thus actions and norms become routinized and institutionalized within the organization itself, most often independent of the utility that these systems and norms have for achievement of the larger organizational goals. These institutional patterns and structures are often taken for granted as simply “the way the organization is set up” or “the way we do things here”; these institutionalized and routinized patterns of action and behavior are, in effect, the culture of the organization. When organizational restructuring occurs (for example, downsizing or management retraining), the routinized patterns of behavior are most often left in place; the setting in which these actions and patterns of behavior take place may be proportionally smaller or rearranged in some way, but the patterns of action and behavior themselves--the organizational culture--remain the same.


How a Learning Organization is Different

A learning organization differs from this type of organizational structure in fundamental ways. A learning organization is an organization where, through learning, individuals are continually re-perceiving and re-interpreting their world and their relationship to it. A learning organization incorporates the practice of continually challenging its paradigms and accepted ways of doing things. Built into the structure of the organization is a system that allows for the institutional structures and routinized models of action to be constantly questioned and transformed. As Senge (1990) defines it, a learning organization is an organizational structure in which “people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.” In this sense, a learning organization is an organization that is continually expanding its ability to create and re-create the very patterns and structures by which it operates. This type of organizational structure is not simply about incorporating talented leadership that is open to change in organizational structure and direction; nor is it about simply restructuring and retraining existing management; changing and retraining leadership while leaving more basic institutional structures and patterns of behavior intact does little to alter the core frameworks in which members of the organization act and learn from each other. The construction of the learning organization is about fundamentally altering the systems and environments in which people operate. It is important to note that a true learning organization is never constructed, but it is always being constructed. That is, there is no end to the process of learning that goes along with building a learning organization; once an organization stops learning or feels that it has reached an endpoint (of organizational restructuring) then it is no longer a learning organization. Learning is a life long process and the construction of a learning organization depends upon the establishment of feedback loops and recursive learning processes that become fundamental to the very structure of the organization and thus never allow the organization to stop changing. This then is the most important dynamic of the learning organization: whereas certain organizational practices have become institutionalized and routinized as organizational structures, learning organizations aspire to institutionalize something new; learning organizations aspire to institutionalize the feedback loops and recursive learning processes that make organizational change and growth themselves a constant. In other words, organizations must routinize the very structures and practices that will continuously break down old patterns and systems. Thus learning organizations replace old institutionalized patterns of behavior and practices with a new type of institution, a type of institution that constantly pushes for learning, growth, and change of the patterns of behavior in the organization as a whole and of the individuals within the organization. The learning organization establishes a culture within the organization of which learning and questioning are a fundamental part.

Learning organizations are based on several ideas and principles that are integral to the very structure of the organization both internally--in terms of how individuals within the organization are encouraged to interact with each other--and externally--in terms of how inter-organizational practices are carried out. These include explicit mental modeling, systems thinking, shared vision, public learning and team learning, dialogue, acting in high levels of ambiguity, and personal mastery. These principles have subtly different meanings for leadership and staff, and we will make explicit the meanings for each level in our discussion. We will also make explicit the type of action into which each of these principles translates. Translating these principles into action is a crucial part of this discussion for two reasons. First, without a discussion of how to translate these principles and practices into action within the organization, these issues have little meaning for the construction of a learning organization. Second, as these principles and practices are translated into action within the organization--provided enough emphasis is placed on their importance--they will become institutionalized within the organization and thus become part of the central institutional structures around which the organization revolves. These principles and practices will become the culture of the organization, and when that happens, the organization will begin to take on the functional qualities of a learning organization.

Mental Modeling. Mental modeling is a fundamental principle of the learning organization because it allows the organization and individuals within the organization to think about and reflect upon the structure and direction of the organization and also on the world outside of the organization. Explicit mental modeling allows individuals to articulate and understand the deeply ingrained ways in which they think about individual action within the organization and how they think about and perceive the organization itself. It is important to note that modeling here does not refer to the type of quantitative modeling which most often has as its explicit goal the prediction of different outcomes. Rather, the type of modeling we are referring to here is a map-making or framework-oriented modeling that allows individuals to review how they have approached problems, the actions they have taken as a result of these approaches, the assumptions and information upon which these choices were made. This type of mental modeling then leads to greaterunderstanding of how and why individuals make the choices and decisions they do and thus a greater level of understanding the next time a similar scenario or set of circumstances is presented. The concept of shared mental models takes this idea one step further, as individuals are encouraged to construct and define their mental models together and come to a general understanding of their own mental models through interactive and collective participation in constructing mental models with others. Eventually, mental models may come to resemble each other enough that the mental models themselves--and not just the process of mental modeling--may be truly shared mental models and collective understandings of the ways in which the organization is structured and they ways in which individuals’ decisions, choices, and actions fit into that organizational structure.

Mental modeling is not only important for managers and the leadership within organizations, but it is also important for the workers at lower levels of the organization. For the leadership, mental modeling forces managers to think explicitly about how they are thinking about the organization, the assumptions they are making in the choices they have made and will make, the information and decisions that have lead them to where they currently are. Workers, who are often member of groups or teams (see below) are also always making choices based on ingrained perceptions and assumptions about the way the organization and the world outside the organization are structured. Mental modeling with others within their groups or teams allows individuals to understand how they arrived at the decisions, or choices they made, the web of factors that contributed to those decisions, and the ways in which their perceptions inform their actions in general.

Operationalizing the principle of explicit mental modeling within an organization is based on creating the time, space, and broader understanding throughout the organization of the importance of this practice. Institutionalizing this type of practice would mean that, during management meetings, for example, the group would take the time to explicitly model what they have done over the last week, what the web of factors influencing the decisions and choices during that time period were, how realities and outcomes coincided with or confounded expectations, what can be learned about the social world with and outside of the organization. Mental modeling also addresses the assumptions that are embedded in a given issue or question. Individuals should question and explore the very types of questions they were asking that brought them to a given course of action. Are the views surrounding a given way of thinking about an issue obligatory (we should do this, we should do that), critical (what are the criteria for this issue), instrumental (how should we do it), factual, or conceptual? The mental framework and mental model of a given set of issues--past or future--must be understood if individuals are to learn from the choices they have made and the outcomes they have experienced. It is also critical that time be made for explicit mental modeling among workers in group or team meetings to allow them to address similar issues and questions.

Shared Vision. Shared vision is a general picture of the organization and organizational action that bind people together around a common identity and sense of destiny. It is a picture both of what the organization is--its structure, its makeup, its design--and what the organization does--how the organization as a whole relates to the outside world. Organizations are founded on certain principles, goals, purposes, and missions. Typically, in classical organizational structures, there are extreme information asymmetries between management and staff. Principle-agent theory in economics makes these information asymmetries central to the emergence of institutional structures that organize the workplace and management-staff (principle-agent) relations.However, in the learning organization, it is important that the individuals within the organization have a collective understanding and vision of what the principles, goals, and purposes of the organization are. By making explicit the principles, goals, etc. of the organization, management transforms a potentially alienated workforce into a integrated part of the whole. This type of institutional structure can be made part of the broader organization by emphasizing with a great degree of openness and clarity exactly what the vision of the organization is. Articulating the vision of the organization can have an impact on two levels. First, open (and frequent) articulation of the organizational vision by management can incorporate workers into this vision. Second, the act of articulating the organizational vision also forces the management to define for themselves what they think that vision is.

Public and Team Learning. Public and team learning are learning and growth oriented principles that are given emphasis within the learning organization. Public learning is the principle through which individuals are encouraged to openly learn and explore that which they do not know. An individual that is unwilling to learn outside of her or his position or battery of knowledge is not useful in a learning organization. Similarly, an organization that does not exhort individuals to push themselves to explore and learn beyond their individual positions or realms of knowledge cannot become a learning organization. Within the organization there must be a culture of public learning where the norm is for individuals to expand their knowledge and learn through conversations with other individuals, discussions in meetings, etc. Public learning not only becomes a norm within a learning organization, but the public nature of this principle reinforces the culture of learning and exploration within the organization.

Team learning is the discipline whereby groups of individuals develop capacities for coordinated action such that the intelligence and capacity of the team improves to a point that it exceeds the aggregate intelligence and capacity of the individuals that make up the team. This discipline begins with dialogue among team members and between the team and other teams in the organization. The discipline also involves “learning how to recognize the patterns of interaction that undermine learning.” Patterns of interaction often and quickly become routinized (institutionalized), and certain patterns are antithetical to team learning (e.g., defensiveness, blame, extreme hierarchical structures within teams). For example, imagine a team in which one individual has greater abilities than other members of the team. If that individual has the tendency to take on greater and more important responsibilities than the other members of the team, the abilities of the other team members (which are already less than the talented individual’s abilities) not only remain at a status quo; it is more likely that they will actually atrophy due to lack of challenges and expectations. This pattern of interaction would impede the Team’s learning capacity as a whole and impede the learning capacities of individuals within the Team. Teams must have the capacity to analyze patterns of interaction and recognize those patterns that inhibit the learning process (and then act to change those patterns) Team learning is crucial because teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning units in modern organizations. Unless teams can learn, the organizations, which are made up of teams, cannot learn. It must be a cultural norm of the organization for individuals to learn passionately and publicly.

In practice, public learning and team learning have relevance for both management and workers. Through public and team learning management not only expand their own knowledge and understanding of unknowns, but they also help create a culture of public learning in the organization itself. Public and active team learning must be fundamental parts of the way management conducts itself amongst themselves behind closed doors, and they must be fundamental to the ways in which management relates to workers. Among management, public and team learning engender cooperation, dialogue, listening, creativity, harmony, and relationships within management tiers and across tiers from management to workers. For workers, a culture of public and team learning engenders self expression, contribution, creativity, social unity, and relationships with co-workers and with management.

Personal Mastery. Personal mastery is a cultural and institutional norm within the organization that applies to the way all individuals in the organization act and see themselves. It is a discipline where individuals are continually clarifying and deepening personal vision, focusing energies, developing patience, seeing reality as objectively as possible and also acknowledging that reality is always, to some extent, subjective. Personal mastery is an institutional and cultural idea that must occur within the organization at the individual level (from vice presidents down to researchers and workers) in the construction of the learning organization. For leadership within the learning organization, personal mastery means compassion, self and other acceptance, shared power, sensitivity, humility, tolerance, and valuing ambiguity.

Acting in High Levels of Ambiguity. Within the learning organization, individuals must be encouraged to act in high levels of ambiguity. If the scientific and financial ages of management engendered cultures of precision and clarity within organizations, the design and learning age of management must engender a culture of comfort in fields of ambiguity. An institutional and cultural commitment to this principle is a necessary part of the learning organization, because it is integral to accepting the fact that the future and the very structure of the organization itself are constantly changing. Management and workers must be comfortable with acting in high levels of ambiguity, as it is through action in high levels of ambiguity that the most informative and important learning occurs. As with each of the principles of the learning organization, acting in high levels of ambiguity begins with example in the leadership tier. But, as is also the case with the other principles, it is extended and integrated into the organization through the creation of a institutionalized culture of which acting in high levels of ambiguity is a fundamental part; it is an expectation.

Dialogue Generatively. Dialogue is a fundamental part of the learning organization. In a very basic sense, dialogue is communication. It is embedded in all interactions within the organization. Through dialogue, individuals interactively explore and examine any and all aspects of action within the organization, how they perceive the systems and structure of the organization, what their visions of the organization is. Dialogue is a fundamental part of public learning; it is only through dialogue that individuals can interactively explore issues within the organization. The point of dialogue is not only to understand what is happening within the organization, how individuals are experiencing the structures and processes within the organization, but also to allow for new models, new openings, new paths to effective action, and deeper understandings and truths. Dialogue is a fundamental building block, the basic process, that makes each of these other principles of the learning organization possible. Employees need the time, space, and a culture that facilitates dialogue over thoughts, issues, and visions, in the organization.

Systems Thinking. Systems thinking is a conceptual framework. It is a way of analyzing and thinking about the integration of all of the disciplines of organizational learning. Without the ability to analyze, and integrate the disciplines of organizational learning, it is impossible to translate these disciplines into broader organizational action. Systems thinking gives management the ability to have perspective on how the organization is currently structured, where the organization is going, and how all of the disciplines of the learning organization are working in concert. The ability to think about systems broadly and model the systems such that the understanding of the system is explicit is an important step in understanding organizational structure, culture, and action. The stock and flow model below shows one type of modeling that is necessary for learning organization to be comfortable with. This specific model refers to an example of the type of systems dynamics model an organization in the health care sector would construct. It is necessary for an organization to be able to account for and think about the interactions among all factors in a given organization or a given system. This type of modeling should become second nature in the organization as individuals are constantly encourage to conceptualize the factors which influence different systems, how those factors influence each other, and so on.

Viewing the Organization as an Integrated Whole. Finally there is the view of the organization as it is held by the individuals within the organization. First, the organization must be viewed by all those within it as an integrated whole. Seeing the larger picture of the organization as a dynamic whole is crucial to understanding how the organization operates and how individuals within the organization operate. The actions of managers have an impact on the organizational culture and therefore on the social settings in which individuals within the organization act. Similarly, the actions and structure of different sectors or departments within the organization have an impact on the general cultures and institutional systems within the organization. No individual’s or division’s action or output can be seen a disconnected from the integrated whole of the organization. Viewing the organization as a dynamic integrated whole is a critical step in understanding the overall structure of the learning organization. Second, the organization must be viewed as a socially constructed world in which processes and outcomes are the result of a web of social factors that all combine in confusing and ambiguous ways. If an organization wants to understand the forces influencing output, for example, it is necessary to take a multivariate approach to this problem and accept the fact that some of the variables that affect output simply may not be quantifiable. If an organization wants to understand performance of individual workers, it is necessary to recognize that these workers exist in social worlds that are constructed within the organization, in the organizational cultures and institutions therein, and in the social world outside of the organization. Viewing the organization as a socially constructed world where local cultures and institutions are integral parts of the system is part of the vision that is critical to beginning to construct the learning organization.


Conscious and Unconscious Action

Constructing the learning organization begins with the conscious implementation of the principles and practices discussed above. These principles and practices must be consciously carried out by individuals within the organization, particularly by the leadership at first, and they must be viewed as fundamental to the organizational structure and the processes within the organization. During the implementation phase, the early stages of constructing the learning organization, the individuals within the organization will be conscious and aware that they are acting within the revolutionizing patterns of these new (recursive and learning-oriented) organizational structures. However, this is only the beginning phase of constructing the learning organization. The learning organization extends beyond this phase by institutionalizing and creating a culture surrounding these actions and structures. Under these new institutionalized systems and cultures, actions based on the principles of the learning organization will become the norm; they will become unconscious. The very logic of the culture and institutions in the learning organization will continuously push individuals to learn and grow, and therefore the organization itself will become a system that is constantly learning and growing. Unconscious action based on the principles of the learning organization is the ultimate goal in constructing a learning organization. Table 1 presents the institutional, organizational, and cultural structure of the learning organization compared to the classical (non-learning) organization.

It is crucial to understand the interactions among institutions, behavior, and culture within organizations and how these interactions translate into on-the-ground results. Structures and institutions influence individual behavior within the organization, and they shape the culture of the organization. Individual behavior is recursively related to organizational culture: organizational culture shapes behavior, and behavior influences and reinforces the culture itself. Figure 2 shows graphically the interactions among these organizational factors.




As this causal model shows, the only path from overall business objectives to on-the-ground-results is through individual behavior and the organizational culture. It is through these mechanisms that the objectives of the organization are carried out. And these mechanisms themselves are simultaneously influencing each other. Individual behavior is influenced by organizational culture; how individuals frame problems, problem solve, carry out tasks, work are influenced and shaped by the culture of the organization. Those very behaviors have a reinforcing effect on the culture of the organization. Thus, it is critical in any type of organizational restructuring or organizational reform to actually change the very culture of the organization. In building a learning organization, staff behaviors and the organizational culture must be embedded with the principles of the learning organization.


Distinguishing Between Infrastructural and Action-Guiding Institutions

While the argument here is that the learning organization must have embedded within it the types of institutions--the rules and very culture of the organization--that cause all institutions to be questioned and open to change, a few distinctions are necessary. It would be extremely inefficient if an organization suddenly began to question the very procedural institutions upon which the foundations of the organization stood. For example, payroll systems are an institution that, for large organizations, have presumably developed over a significant period of time and make sense for the procedure of remuneration. For small or young organizations it may become a necessity to question the way they are handling such basic institutional procedures, but for large organizations, questioning very basic institutional structures would be a waste of mental energy and potentially chaotic. The advantage that an organization has is that certain practices and procedures have become institutionalized over time and can be carried out without thought or strategy. Therefore, a necessary part of constructing the learning organization is distinguishing between institutions that are infrastructural and institutions that are, what we call, action-guiding. In reality, all institutions are action-guiding: they are the rules of the system that inform us of how to approach a given problem or set of issues. However, some action-guiding institutions are more closely related to carrying out procedures which are an infrastructural part of the organization; they are the institutions that allow the organization to exist. Others are more closely related to actions and decisions that are integral to carrying out the objectives and goals of the organization; they are the institutions that define how workers do their jobs. It is the latter that we are primarily concerned with reforming in building the learning organization. This is not to say that, at times, it will not also be appropriate to reform infrastructural institutions. The learning organization is always asking itself how are we accomplishing our objectives? How should we be accomplishing our objectives. And there will be occasions where it will become clear that infrastructural changes are necessary as a means for accomplishing those objectives; the learning organization knows when and how to make those choices. But the institutional structures we are most concerned with in constructing the learning organization are action-guiding institutions that define the procedures and practices by which individuals operate to accomplish the objectives of their jobs.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty in constructing a learning organization is constructing and implementing the tools that facilitate the interactive and reflexive ideas described above. One of the central problems of the majority of consulting in the area of organizational learning is that there is often an ecological fallacy in the solutions that are offered as prescriptions for organizational restructuring. The problem here is that personal mastery, dialogue, and an open management style are all individual level changes and solutions to a larger organizational (structural and cultural) problem. The principles of the learning organization are important, but we must acknowledge that we are prescribing these changes within an existing organizational (structural and cultural) context. If we are going to bring about organizational change and the construction of a learning organization, we must offer the tools and systems that can help build institutions that will drive the learning behavior central to the learning organization. The point here is that structure drives behavior, yet Senge et al. are arguing that organizational structure can be changed through modifying behavior at the individual level (but if structure drives behavior, how can that be?). What we need is the behavioral changes that epitomize the learning organization, but at the same time, we need the organizational (structural and cultural) changes that will drive those behavioral changes. Dialogue and recursive learning systems are central to the structure of the learning organization, but how exactly are these systems implemented? What new institutions will facilitate these changes within the organization? What are the tools that help construct and facilitate these institutional changes? At this point we will focus directly on a few tools that aid in the construction of the learning organization.


Facilitated Learning Sessions and Learning Labs

The learning process must begin with facilitated learning sessions. Facilitated learning sessions allow managers and staff to work through some of the issues that are sure to arise as the organization begins and continues the transformation to the learning organization. They also provide a forum in which managers and staff can incorporate, voice skepticism, and articulate the problems of implementing the institutional and cultural changes necessary in the construction of a learning organization. GDSS has integrated the principles of the learning organization in many Fortune 200 companies and public sector organizations, and the experience that GDSS brings to the facilitation process is among the best in the consulting field. GDSS can provide a group of facilitators that collectively have over 1000 sessions of facilitation experience with executive management groups. Approximately 15,000 individuals in executive management positions have benefited from facilitated sessions run by GDSS.

There are four central approaches and techniques utilized in sessions facilitated by GDSS.