Reading Observations Part 4

Part four of the 5th Discipline is composed of stories of learning organizations and their successes. There are many stories and many ways that learning is broken down throughout part four, in this section they describe learning and show that learning can be done in a multitude of different ways. I want to touch on some of those ways and ask questions that sparked my curiosity.

They touch on reflective openness at the beginning and communication. I found this very applicable in my own experiences lately. Communication and reflective openness allow for an individual to hear and learn through another’s experiences and then analyze their own experiences against that. My question for this section is how does one not over compare experiences? It must be especially hard to compare experiences in a conversation without feeling criticized? As a leader and teacher how does one communicate and compare with effectiveness?

In the section “how the work gets done,” they talk about collaboration and how work cannot get done without it because knowledge is power and if you combine knowledge from more than one person you are more likely to have success. How does one allow for collaboration without having too many ideas? Sometimes in team’s there can be too many options… what is the best way to determine which is the best route to go?

After reading section four, I found a very common theme that the most successful teams and organizations “have managers always at the line of battle,” it makes sense that managers and leaders should be experiencing work from the lowest level to the top to see and observe what is going correctly and how well things are running. Unfortunately, this is almost never the case. Why don’t companies recognize this? As someone who is not in management how does one encourage this to happen? He later speaks about being bicultural, meaning allowing to jump back and forth from a management to non-management position. I think if more leaders were able to be bicultural their would be a genuine understanding and maybe less problems between management and non-management.

In the strategies chapter I found it really important to ask these questions “One, what are our aims? What are the fundamental areas of growth and innovation that define a learning culture and make it robust? Two, where do leaders focus their attention and efforts to create such a culture?” (Pg. 284) I believe that if all teams sat down and discussed goals for an organization and then brainstormed what type of culture do we need to do that, it would create an area for openness and give better chances of success. Teams collaborating on ideas allows for not just results but quality results.

In a story about Intel, Galloway says “Our aim is to build real shared understanding and commitment to what we say we will do. What felection says it that we hear everything. It does not say we’re going to attend to everyone’s needs.” (Pg. 289) I found this quote really interesting and I think I learned a lot from it. A teams purpose for open communication should be to understand what the vision is and to understand what each individual needs. Although it is almost impossible to satisfy every individuals needs, it is important to display listening and consideration in order to allow for that door to stay 0pen. If an individual’s ideas or needs are not listened to that person may feel closed off or not important.

AAR’s seem like they will be very helpful within reflection and bridging the gap between what what happened and what should be. I want to begin testing this in my own work place.

Senge also touched on learning in practice fields and how there must be room for trial and error for one to learn. Classroom education is not enough for one to actually learn. I agree that in order to actively learn one must have practice but I also believe that a textbook knowledge is still very important. For example, I am able to reflect my textbook knowledges into my everyday work. If one were to just be thrown into a field without that sort of knowledge I think they would waste more time learning by trial and error than if they had some textbook knowledge.

Lastly, I wanted to touch on the section that talked about finding out who we are and individuals troubles with aligning their job with their organizations. Senge says that “they do not go deeply enough into themselves to discover what is truly calling them, and they do not go deeply enough into the organization to discover what is stands for,” (Pg. 305) my question regarding this identity issue revolves around why? Why do individuals not dig deeply enough into their why to align it with an organizations why? What is the point in working for anything if you do not have a reason for doing so?