| What is a Learning Organization? It takes most everyday notions of learning, i.e. it is a process whereby individuals enhance the capacity to do what they want and taking that to the aggregate of organizations. So Learning Organization is really nothing more than an organization that continually enhances the capacity to create outcomes (as distinct from leaders having to manage performance) members as a whole want to create. It comprises five disciplines i.e. Personal Mastery, Shared Vision, Mental Models, Team Learning and Systems Thinking. Each of the five disciplines represents a lifelong body of study and practice for individuals and teams in organizations. Business and other human endeavors are systems, bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years (the process of change) to fully play out their effects on each other. This is often the reason why issues become resistant to change. And since we are part of the lacework, it’s doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead there is a deep tendency to see the changes we need to make as being in our outer world, not in our inner world. The central message of the five disciplines is more radical than “radical organization design” – which our organizations and patterns of change work the way they work, ultimately because of how we think and how we interact. It is by changing how we think that we can change deeply embedded policies and practices. Only by changing how we interact can shared visions, shared understandings, and new capacities for coordinated action be established. However, instead of the above, we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get solved. Learning Organization is a conceptual framework, of knowledge and tools, to make the full patterns clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively and often at substantially lower costs. The central territory of the work is made up of three core processes:
For more information on this programme, contact : Office of the President, +267-7138-3023, Botswana |
Thinking)?
Learning Organizations
Work to-date and what we may expect to happen going forward This project is the extension of a series of programes we have had for the public sector since mid-2007 in understanding and using the works of Learning Organization in dealing with persistent issues of the day. Work in 2005-7: 2005 - Facilitation of a one-day retreat for the cabinet (in Oct 2005). The tools of Systems Thinking offered a systemic way of understanding (complex) issues that had stayed resistant to change and implementation. 2007 - Did a four-day workshop session for Permanent Secretaries. This led to the compilation of the Botswana Key Success Loops. These present a systemic ‘perspectivee’ of causes of the deepest challenges we face as a country and ways our eforts may overcome them.
intermittently with senior management - Permanent Secretaries, Deputy Permanent Secretaries, Directors, and Performance Improvement Coordinators - across the public service of all Ministries. This paved the way to enable Ministries develop key action areas critical for their Ministry. Work in 2008: Apr-June: 21 of such loops were developed. Plans are afoot to develop the remaining 22 or so of such works and equip key senior, middle and leadership management within Central and Local Government learn to help bring the lessons of this work to personnel with their Ministries and parastatals. All Ministries have begun that journey. Work in (early) 2009: The findings from the loops were used as input towards the drafting of the National Development Plans 10 (NDP10) in mid 2008. The intention was to help teams zoom in on leverage action strategies (small well- focused actions) that did not dig deep into our pockets to get there. This effort realized a savings of BWP 60B. However, it also became apparent during this exercise that anyone lacking in these skills can significantly impede the quality of strategic interventions that we could use to lead systemic changes in this country. The project recognized the need to close this gap. Work in 2009-2011: The purpose of this project was to level this playing field across the public sector. This time the programmes included more levels within the Central and Local Government. There are two parts to these programmes:
All would go through both parts. Specifically, the project aims at training all personnel in senior and mid-level leadership positions across the public sector in understanding and using the (five) disciplines of this work to lead the public service in improving performance strategically. Click here for notes on planning for these sessions. The programmes are intended to develop capacities in the areas of Leadership Development, Strategy Development and Implementation; aspects we hope would spread across the nation. Increasingly Ministries are seeing more of their middle and senior management (including officers till Heads of Divisions) staff attend the programme. Outcome to-date:
Work going forward: We continue to be somewhat concerned (a concern shared in early 2010) that we have not seeng the very senior personnel (PS, DPSs and some Directors) within organizations undergo the in-house programmes. We notice when units see their members co-attend the workshops with them, they more likely able to use and pracrice the tools they learn at the workshops at their workplaces. Over time as internal directorate staff along with their regional staff appreciate the tools of this work together, they are more likely to appreciate the systemic issues facing their Ministry and therefore become more mindful of the approaches needed in turning the issues around that face them. We propose planning a series of open as well as jointly held workshops for the groups in the coming quarters. This could eventually include the Ministers, Assistant Ministers, the MPs, the tribal leaders, parastatals and anyone who had missed the earlier rounds. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Building Capacities for Learning Organizations FOR THE PUBLIC SECTOR OF THE REPUBLIC OF BOTSWANA |