We are very interested in redefining our work in terms of learning at all
levels of the organisation (we are a research organisation), and employing
principles of learning organisations. Which leads to my question:
"are there any measures of effectiveness for assessing a learning
organisation?"
For example, we can measure the effectiveness of strategic planning by how
well the strategic planning was executed (e.g the number of deviations
from the strategic plan). However, this measure seems to defeat the nature
of learning organisations - we explicitly want people to find new and
better ways of doing things, which will probably lead to deviations from
the strategic plan.
Traditional measures of effectiveness are based on minimal deviance from a
process. Learning organisations (as I understand them) are about finding
new and better processses - thus leading to deviations from the original
definition of the neasure of effectiveness. More questions:
Are measures of effectiveness relevant in a learning organisation? If so,
what are they measuring? what is the central process?
There seems to be a paradox here between traditional measures of
effectiveness and the very nature of learning organisations. Am I
misunderstanding something basic, or does someone have some suggestions
here?
John O'Neill
DSTO C3 Research Centre, Australia
email: jao@itd.dsto.gov.au
--"John O'Neill" <jao@itd0.dsto.gov.au>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>