What Is A Learning Organization?

Forget your tired old ideas about leadership, says Fortune magazine. The most successful corporation of the 1990's and the future will be something called a learning organization. In essence, it is an organization full of learners at all levels. Arie De Geus, head of strategic planning for Royal Dutch/Shell states emphatically that the ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.
The jury is still out on the TQM initiatives of the 1980's; but the heads of the world's most successful companies agree--the only organizations that will truly excel in the future are those that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization (Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline Handbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization).
At one time or another, says Senge in his book, The Fifth Discipline, most people have been part of a great "team" experience--a group of people who functioned together as one in extraordinary ways, who trusted one another, who complemented one another's strengths and gladly compensated for each others' limitations, and who were committed to goals larger than individual aspirations, and who produced extraordinary results. If you are one of these lucky people, then you have experienced a learning organization--a team that learned how to produce extraordinary results!
At the core of a learning organization are five lifelong learning disciplines:

• Personal Mastery--learning to expand our personal capacity to create the results we most desire
• Mental Models--recognizing how our internal images of the world shape our actions and decisions
• Shared Vision--building a sense of group commitment to shared visions of the future and the principles and procedures for getting there
• Team Learning--developing conversational and group thinking skills so that teams of people can develop intelligence and abilities greater than the sum of individual members' talents
• Systems Thinking--recognizing and understanding the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems, and learning how to change systems more effectively

The ability to learn faster than your competitors...the only sustainable competitive advantage.--Arie De Geus, Royal Dutch/Shell

Why Bother? How Will It Help My Company Be Successful?

Why bother? Richard Teerlink, President & CEO of Harley-Davidson, Inc., maintains that only learning organizations will survive the decade. Why?--because "people are the only long-term competitive advantage, and lifelong learning is the only way to fully develop that advantage."

Q & A: WHY BOTHER?

" ...because people are the only long-term competitive advantage, and lifelong learning is the only way to fully develop that advantage."--Richard Teerlink, Harley-Davidson, Inc.
Why bother? "Good ideas drive out bad ideas," observes William O'Brien, formerly CEO of the Hanover Insurance Company. "Here we are, at the beginning of the twenty-first century era. The problem with most companies is that they have no good ideas; instead, they are driven by bad ideas!"
Here's the bottom line: All of the recent thinking about organizational strategies and management practices is aimed at one thing--getting superior economic performance from employees whose individual development closely matches the needs and goals of their employers. That's what a learning organization is all about! That's why it drives out bad ideas that drain the life from companies.

Ingredients for Success

What do you want to do with the rest of your life? Spend it coping with politics and other organizational diseases? O'Brien reached a turning point in his life when he answered "no" to that question and decided he wanted to spend his time building a great company--a learning organization.
Here are the Ingredients For Success that O'Brien sees as crucial to such winning organizations:

• re-distributing decision-making authority
• gaining systematic understanding of information
• learning to communicate successfully when it counts
• developing leadership skills that produce voluntary followers

Gain the knowledge and strength of a learning organization partnership with the University of New Orleans. Help your organization prepare for change, become a truly great, productive and winning team by working with UNO.
Together, we will make it possible for your organization to develop the qualities and skills that are the ingredients for successful, winning companies.

THE UNO LEARNING ORGANIZATION

Benefit Plan For Partners

What Do I Gain From My Learning Partnership With UNO?

• Complimentary consultation in design and implementation of employee education plans
• Complimentary consulting (1/2 day) informal assessment of training needs
• Special Rates on implementation of instruments for needs assessment and testing services
• Discounts (up to 30%) on individual public course enrollments
• Special fee incentives and promotions for using tuition reimbursement plans for non-credit courses
• On-site knowledge fairs for employees
• Course and instructor formal evaluations
• Documentation and record keeping of CEU's
• Certificates of completion for employees (with statement of CEU's earned when appropriate)
• Seasonal and special opportunities for complimentary videoconferences

What Is My Investment?