According to Senge, learning organizations are organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results that they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.
The reason behind this is that as the world move to a global stage and become more interconnected, businesses also become complex and for am organization to survive, it should be able to tap into peoples commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in the organization. He says, “The most successful companies of the 1990s will be something called learning organization, the ability to learn faster than your competitors, because through learning, we can re-create ourselves. It is possible to institute learning organizations because man is naturally a learner, from birth, no one teaches you how to walk or run but as we move through life, we learn. Now learning in an organization is more in-depth since man has moved past the traditional perspective of work where work was just a means to an end to a deeper level of self actualization which man will continue to seek until we build work environments that aligns mans higher aspirations beyond food, shelter and clothing.
‘Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning, we re-create ourselves become able to do something that we never were able to do, perceive the world and our relationship to it and extend our capacity to create to be a part of a generative process of life. For a learning organization, learning should be beyond survival. Though survival (adaptive learning) is a necessary condition, it is not sufficient, combined with generative learning endow us with a creative capacity. The distinguishing features between learning organizations and the traditional Authoritarian “controlling” organization will be the mastery of certain basic disciplines. The first discipline of learning organizations is systems thinking, also the fifth discipline which integrates the other components, fusing them together to be whole. It focuses on our ability to figure out the whole whilst understanding the parts that interrelated to make the whole. Systems thinking is a body of knowledge and tools that make the related patterns lucid. Without systems thinking, you can never relate the other parts to attain the whole. It integrates disciplines of personal mastery, mental model, building shared vision and team learning. Personal Mastery is the continuous effort to increase and deepen our personal aspirations. It extends beyond competence and skills and more of proficiency. Personal mastery is a continuous process of learning; there is no destination for it. People here are very much aware of what they do not know and need to learn to develop, a lifelong discipline. It is a personal vision and the learning organizations spiritual foundation. However, very few organizations encourage members to grow in this discipline and leave mush resources underutilized. The drive and desire with which people enters an organization dies as the age in the organization and do nothing to develop personal mastery.Mental model, the second discipline are firmly established assumptions, generalizations or mental images or pictures of influence our perception and understanding of the world and how we act towards it. Our quest to surface these inner desires and bring them to reality requires learning new skills and developing new orientations. It requires a cognitive change towards basic assumptions in the organization. A third discipline Building shared vision, affirming your vision for the organization has a potential of encouraging innovation and creativity. When everyone is aware of the future aspiration, they are more focused on ways to achieve that vision and people are motivated to excel and learn not because they are told to but because they want to be a part of the vision. Visions get across as people talk about it and as time goes on it becomes clearer and foster enthusiasm to grow. Leaders should share their vision and utilize member’s skills and competencies in achieving it. People then learn to be able to contribute to the vision. Since an organization is a complex entity with different subgroups, learning as a team is very essential, thus the fourth discipline, Team learning. People need to be able to act together. When teams learn together, the author suggests, not only can there be good results for the organization but members will grow more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise. This discipline starts with a dialogue where members are made to leave behind their personal assumptions to be able to belong to a body that thinks together as one. Team learning involves the creation and development of capacities of the team to create a unified desire of the members. Teams are very important because not individuals but teams, divisions, functional units are what makes the organization and they are the fundamental learning units if the enterprise so unless teams can learn, the organization is at a standstill.
Systems thinking integrate all these disciplines as a whole, a key feature of a learning organization. All the discipline can be realized only when there is a mental shift of mind-Metanoia. People are just agents that are able to act upon the entities that they are part of. Learning has a lot to do with a shift of mind.