Learning organization

The concept of the learning organization is that the successful organisation must - and does - continually adapt and learn in order to respond to changes in environment and to grow. This raises a range of scholarly and theoretical questions relating to what it means for an organisation to learn, and practical questions around what organisations need to do in order to learn and adapt.

Peter Senge and the Learning Organization
In his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge defined a learning organization as human beings cooperating in dynamical systems that are in a state of continuous adaptation and improvement.

According to Peter Senge:
 * "Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning."

The reality each of us sees and understands depend on what we believe is there. By learning the principles of the five disciplines, teams begin to understand how they can think and inquire that reality, so that they can collaborate in discussions and in working together create the results that matter (to them)!

Often the practitioner has seen the work as a vital yet viable means of developing a cadre of high performance leaders able to mobilise peoples' commitment towards results and change in organizations with ease.


 * Feedback: Organizations that are adapted for maximum organizational learning that build feedback loops deliberately to maximize their own learning.


 * Taxonomy: A learning organization may create a specific enterprise taxonomy - a common and agreed upon understanding of terms, concepts, categories and keywords that apply within that organization.


 * Challenging assumptions: Once it has established what they are, learning organization must constantly challenge its processes, instructions, assumptions and even its basic structure. The true learning organization is redesigning itself constantly.