10 takeaways from Peter Senge’s landmark article on Leader’s New Work: Building Learning Organizations

W.Edwards Deming wrote “Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people”, and in many ways it gave an exact picture of the way organizations function in modern times. By ranking performances and penalizing non-performers, they have indirectly promoted an environment for mediocre performance. Peter M. Senge busts the myths and tells us exactly how we can build learning organizations and foster an atmosphere for continuous learning.

1. Increase adaptiveness

We are designed for learning right from birth and our impulse to learn along with our natural curiosity helps us pick important skills in no time.An ability to explore continuously is what sets apart an organization. Focus on collective genius of the organization rather than all decisions at the top needs to be the way forward.

2. Generative learning is the key

- Organizations need to focus on generative learning considering our eagerness to expand our capabilities. It calls for exploring new ways to understand the world around us through continuous experimentation and feedback, particularly while looking at the needs of our customers and drawing insights to manage the business more efficiently.

3. Embrace creative tension

The gap between vision and current reality creates the creative tension, which is necessary if you wish to use the energy it creates more efficiently in moving positively towards your vision. In order to have a compelling picture of a desired vision, it is important to have a good understanding of the current reality.

4. Lead by being a designer rather than a controller

Role of a leader has to be that of an organizational designer, not someone who moves boxes and lines but who creates the core purpose, vision and values of the organization. Design work of leadership is crucial, though it’s rarely visible or acknowledged.From governing ideas to designing policies & strategies that translate ideas into important business moves, the design task of leadership encompasses virtually every aspect of a business. Similarly, you need to be a teacher to get more insights about the current reality. As such, you could be a coach, a guide or a facilitator, bringing to the fore people’s mental attitudes towards important issues.

Under inept leadership, people suffer; but you can change this by assuming the role of a steward. Appreciating the impact leadership can have on others and understanding your purpose and commitment towards the ultimate mission of the organization can help the company prosper under your stewardship.

5. Build a shared vision

In order to build shared visions, you need to have personal visions, where ‘personal’ does not remain limited to self-interests but includes your overall ability to care. As such, you need to share your own vision rather than furthering just the corporate vision. Build a vision that balances the extrinsic and the intrinsic visions well so that the vision never loses its vitality and freshness.

6. Test mental models

Biggest challenge in implementation of good design ideas is that of the existing beliefs and the tendency to assume and generalize. This is called a mental model of an organization. For a leader, testing this mental model and challenging it for the better is a key to success.You need to have inquiry as well as advocacy skills to minimize the gap between espoused theory and the theory in use.

7. Become a systems thinker

Those who can, will have the ability to look beyond day-to-day events and concentrate more on underlying trends and forces of change. The key is to understand where high leverage lies and how small changes with the least efforts can create a positive impact.

8. Steer clear of symptomatic solutions

Rather than focusing on symptomatic quick fixes, it is important to arrive at more enduring solutions after analyzing the underlying causes. Unfortunately, a lot of organizations end up choosing symptomatic fixes, due to their inability to go beyond linear thinking.

9. Deal with core dilemmas effectively

It’s important to address core dilemmas using proper tools and techniques for continuous improvement and better learning. U.S. manufacturers, for instance, faced the low cost — high quality choice for a long time not realizing that many a firms internationally had chosen to improve both quality and cost, without limiting themselves by this either-or choice.

10. Take up the ‘left-hand column’ exercise

Developed by Chris Argyris and his team, this exercise can be used by managers to evaluate their own mental models. With its help, it’s easy to understand how swiftly we jump from data to generalization without testing its validity. Our internal dialogue can create a web of assumptions that can be detrimental to the issue at hand.Developed by Chris Argyris and his team, this exercise can be used by managers to evaluate their own mental models. With its help, it’s easy to understand how swiftly we jump from data to generalization without testing its validity. Our internal dialogue can create a web of assumptions that can be detrimental to the issue at hand.

Building a learning organization requires a set of leadership competencies that can be developed only with focused effort. These competencies indicate the evolution of organizational culture in modern times paving the path for a better leadership model that’s based on new roles, skills, and tools.

If would like to read the published article by Peter Senge on MIT Sloan Review, click here