Learning organization existed anytime and anyplace

By Emma

After reading the five learning disciplines, I discovered many learning organizations can be found around us. Here, firstly, I want to reflect briefly but comprehensively what I have learned about learning disciplines proposed by Senge et al.

In the book, he strengthened that one good learning organization should be included five parts:

(1) personal mastery: individuals need to have their own visions, cultivating and developing themselves in certain areas to achieve higher aims and create life.

(2) shared vision: we have found that most people do not like sharing information with others, especially personal issues. People like hiding something or putting themselves in shadow. But in fact, learning is a process of interaction. There is a proverb, ‘Three bad smell cobbler, carry pieces of Zhu Ge-liang’, which means the team power is huge. people with a common purpose can learn to nourish a sense of commitment in a group or organization by developing shared images of the future they seek to create and the principles and guiding practices by which they hope to get there.

(3) mental models: Working with mental models can help you more clearly and honestly define current reality. But one thing needs to be considered, one organization should guarantee talk freedom or talk safely, promoting brainstorm and proper argument, so that the organization can grow up much quicker and better.

(4) team leading: team members in one organization need to communicate and share information with others more often, leaders should encourage fellows more think, more talk, more create.

(5) system thinking: we inspire thinking more, but if fellows do some mythical void at all, it’s invalid and insignificant. Therefore, people learn to better understand interdependency and change and thereby are able to deal more effectively with forces that shape the consequences of their actions.

I am going to take my father’s company- motor component manufacturer as my research object.

The organization structure as follow

The organization structure
Boss
Marketing department	Financial department	Administration department	Product lines	Warehouse section

I can say in every department, there existed one learning organization. Product line is a little special, every line can be seen as a section, and every line can be called one learning organization, which is judged by Senge’s five learning principles.

Take one product line for example.

every employee has their own dream on working—raise salary, but it depends on the quantity and quality of the product they can make. So on the promise, they have to learn more technical things to improve their skill, which enlightens their working passion and inspires them to learn more . furthermore, it makes them do more communicating and enquiring with other experienced workers. In the working days, I can see workers talk and learn mutually with chief manager or colleagues often. All in all, the organization has a good learning environment.

P.S.Group learning

Here, I would like to share my story of learning together with classmates. In my previous school, teacher recommended team working, especially for the course of business case study. Before the final report and presentation, team members need to do much work, such as current situation research of certain corporation, data collection, potential problem existing in the company, solution proposing, etc. In the process, we learnt together on the culture of corporation, brainstormed about the possible reasons of success or failure of certain products or services, took best advantage of theoretical knowledge. Sometimes we proposed questions and doubted on the opinion of members, sometimes we gave support on members’ ideas, which improved our capability of analysis and helped us take care more aspects to see problems.

I am impressed that learning and discuss in one group can correct some wrong concepts, and the explanation from classmates is more directed and clear than teacher’ sometimes (because teachers are more inclined to use professional words to take lecture to reflect their professionalism I think).

What’s more, learning in a group can increase efficiency, but on the basis, all members should have a responsibility on information sharing and collecting, not just sit and steal others’ fruits in order to finish assignment or something else.