Ilfryn Price asks -
> However in the spirit of your last sentence Tobin I am moved to ask the
> list a different question. How do we create individual and organisational
> 'Unlearning'?. How do we even approach personal 'unlearning'?. Takers?
Unlearning is a more difficult to orchestrate process than learning.
In learning, we are assimilating new knowledge and have no need of
disproving old knowledge or sometimes of even proving the verity of
the new knowledge.
But to unlearn, one must first discover what knowledge must be
unlearned. This is an individual issue and each person subjected to
the old knowledge will have a different set of whys and hows. The
teacher must disprove and answer each how and why of the old
knowledge to the satisfaction of each person. The teacher must then
provide the new knowledge complete with compelling common sense whys
which prove beyond doubt the verity of this new knowledge. Note that
this criteria is more stringent than that used to provide the
original knowledge, solely because we are now asking the person to
change. Change is therefore more difficult than establishment of
original behavior. There is also an element of time, time to mull
over this new information and become comfortable with it before
marching off to use it. The amount of time required varies by the
complexity of the change and by individual.
After initial training, considerable on site follow-up to verify use
and understanding of the new knowledge is necessary to complete the
change. This is no different than for original learning, but it must
be more carefully conducted in order to succeed.
Much initial training is also fraught with problems because the
teacher does not realize that some unlearning needs to take place.
Being able to ask penetrating questions and listening carefully to
responses turns out to be crucial skills, ones in which many teachers
lack proficiency.
You ask of organizational learning and that sounds like an oxymoron.
Organizations are made up of people and since they act individually,
they must learn and unlearn individually.
Hope this helps, Joan
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Joan Pomo The Finest Tools for Managing People
Simonton Associates Based on the book
jpomo@gate.net "How to Unleash the Power of People"
--"jpomo@gate.net" <jpomo@gate.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>