You may find the title of this article strange. I know that we are all used to articles and discussions on how to make an organization a learning organization. Well, its the same actually. Its just that I am more inclined to think that all organizations are already learning organizations even before the term was coined and became a fashionable statement. Organizations have always been learning and improving BUT they have not been doing it conciously nor was there any systematic way of doing that. NOKIA, BP, BMW and Lee Kum Kee are not some young kids on the block. They have been around for a long time and some of them have completely reengineered what they do as a business entity. I find it hard to beleive that they did all these while not being a learning organization. For me, the term may be new but the practise is as old as Genghis Khan.
Hence, whats more critical now is for the leadership of every organization to institute clear strategies of how its people can realize that they are a learning organization and how important it is to be a learning organization. Its not so much about learning new tools but rather learning new ways of using existing tools.
However, I do believe that certain factors can enhance how well an organization act like a learning organization. They are :
1. Tolerate mistakes
2. Reward originality
3. Invest in people development programs
4. Encourage sharing ( top down and vice versa)
5. Encourage team work
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