Dave Pollard wrote:
>
> I'd be very interested in any threads that
> deal with my four favourite subjects about learning:
> (a) How do you motivate and reward Continuous Learning in organizations?
> (the "I'm to busy to learn about that" problem)
> (b) -snip-
> (c) How do you deal with irascible senior executives who think that,
> because they have been successful (by traditional short-focus measures)
> in business, they don't need to learn new things (like how to use
> computers)?
> (d) How do you strike the magic balance between specialized learning
> (necessary to develop distinctive competencies) and generalist learning
> (necessary to creativity, innovation and idea cross-pollination)?
Dave,
FWIW (for what it's worth),
a) motivating and rewarding (for having participated in?) Continuous
Learning in organizations is not potentially as successful without a key
element - that being the need for a "critical mass" of Learning-oriented
managers/employees. In a "downsized" company, this might not be possible
at all, since too few have too much, leaving too little (time, energy,
opportunity, etc.)
c) you don't.
d) since I'm a generalist who loves learning new things, I would offer
that even generalists have specialties which they have acquired over
time...the key element being time. (A downsized company may not have any
aged veterans who can act as mentors, nor might there be any generalists
at all, since they might not have been seen as "useful" by the
corporation, and certainly were too expensive anyway. Hmmm.) That's it,
that's all, there ain't no more...for now.
Happy that it looks like rain...
John Constantine
Rainbird Management Consulting
Santa Fe, NM
http://www.trail.com/~rainbird
--John Constantine <rainbird@trail.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>