SKILLS THAT TRANSFORM THINKING IN TEAMS THAT HELP MAKE SENSE OF THE REALITIES SO AS
TO CREATE RESULTS THAT MATTER (Senge, Fieldboook, 18-19)

We know that a genuine learning cycle is operating when we can do things we couldn't do before in the same reality.  
Evidence of new skills and capabilities deepen our confidence that, in fact, real learning is occurring.

The skills and capabilities that characterize learning organizations fall into three natural groupings:

Aspirations:        The capacity of individuals, teams and eventually larger organizations to orient themselves
toward what they they truly care about and to change because they want to, not just because they need to
(all of the learning disciplines, but particularly the practice of personal mastery and building shared vision,
develop these capabilities).

Generative
    Conversation:        The capacity to reflect on deep assumptions and patterns of behaviour, both individually
    and collectively.  Developing capacities for real conversation is not easy.  Most of what passes for conversation
    is more like a ping-pong game than true talking and thinking together.  Each individual tosses his or her view at
    the other. Each then responds.  “Learningful” conversations require individuals capable of their own thinking
    (these skills emerge especially strong in the disciplines of mental models and team learning)

Understanding
    Complexity:        The capacity to see larger systems and forces at play and to construct public, testable way
    of expressing our views.  What seemed so simple from my individual point of view looks much less so when I
    see it from others’ point of view.  And constructing coherent descriptions of the whole requires
    conceptualization skills not found in traditional organizations.  Charles Keifer with Jennifer Kemeny, Peter Senge
    and Michael Goodman  distilled 8 key themes / storylines in diagrams that help managers catalogue most of the
    common  complexities we face in organisations.  These were called archetypes. (systems thinking is vital for
    these skills especially with the reflectiveness and openness fostered by working with mental models.)

    Like any new skills, the skills and capabilities required in developing learning organisations shape what we can
    understand and accomplish.  But they are unusual because they affect us deeply.  They are not skills of
    specialization, like learning "financial accounting for executives".  They inevitably lead to new awareness
    because they bring about deep shifts in how we think and interact with one another.
THE FRAMEWORK OF A LEARNING ORGANISATION