1. aninda shome, july 2012

2. Scope
• What is a Learning Organization (LO)?
• Why bother with LOs?
• “Old order changes yielding place to new”
• Examples of Learning Organizations
• What do they look like?
– Organizational Structure
• What do they feel like?
– Organizational culture
• Why are they needed?

3. What is a Learning Organization?
• The concept of Learning
Organizations (LOs) has existed for
decades.
• Drucker (1959) called such
organizations knowledge based
organizations.

4. What is a Learning Organization?
Senge (1990) of MIT, defined the
learning organization as a
system that exhibits the
capability to learn and adapt to
create alternate futures.

5. Characteristics of LOs
• There are five characteristics of LOs identified by Senge
(1990):
– System Thinking, which is the ability to think through problems, while
considering the enterprise-wide impact.
– Team Learning,
– Shared Vision,
– Mental Models,
– Personal Mastery,

6. What is a Learning Organization?
Garvin, of the Harvard
Business School : "an
organization skilled at
creating, acquiring, and
transferring knowledge, and
at modifying its behavior to
reflect new knowledge and
insights” (1993, p 3).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUP4WcfNyAA

7. Learning Organization…why bother?

8. Learning Organization…why bother?

9. Analysis

10. Findings: some indicators for
our future
1000
900 873
800
Total Revenue of top 20
700
600
1972
500
400 1992
339
300 2012
200 161
100
0
Revenue ($ BN)

11. Findings: some indicators for
our future
16
14
14
No. of new entrants into the Top 20
12
10
8 1972
8
1992
6
2012
4
2
0
New entrant/ drop out

12. “Old order must
change, yielding place to new”

13. “Old order must
change, yielding place to new”

14. “Old order must
change, yielding place to new”

15. New = ???
Has the time for Learning
Organizations arrived?

16. Is it time for the LOs?
Traditional Hierarchical Traditional Matrix
Modern

21. Why is this happening?
How things change (4:22)
How American workforce is changing (3:40)
World in 2020 (5:20)
Future of our world (5:40)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1sPWiywJ5U&feature=related

22. So why not convert all
Traditional Organizations to
LOs?

23. United Kingdom : NHS

24. USA

25. Common reasons for failure
• Top management intervention
• Existing power structures
• Internal politics
• Covert resistance to change
• Existing “comfort” levels
• Too much time needed
• No immediate gains to be seen
(Sheaff & Pilgrim, 2006)

26. Failure rates in Change
management initiatives of large
organization is close to 70%
(Senge, 1999)

27. An exception, did they borrow
from LOs ?

28. An exception, did they borrow
from LOs ?

29. Question : if all of that is
true, why will investors wait ?

30. Question : where will you put
your money?

32. The story so far…..
• Business world is extremely volatile
• Large companies are losing money and investors
• A different genre of companies are emerging
and beginning to lead
• These types of companies have not been
classified as yet
• Their business practices maybe close to those of
Learning Organization

33. What do these companies look
like?

34. What is the impact of these
companies?
COMPANY LISTING MARKET CAP INDUSTRY
Intel 1986 (26 years) 134 Billion IT
GE 1962 (50 years) 222 Billion Manufacturing/
Services/Finance
Google 2004 (8 years) 210 Billion Internet/
Information
Amazon 1998 (14 years) 106 Billion Internet/ Retail
Face book 2012 (< 1 year) 45 Billion Internet/
Socialization

35. Fundamental differences
between these companies?
COMPANY
Intel
Traditional
GE
Organization
Google Structure
Organization
Amazon Culture
New
generation
Face book

36. Fundamental differences
between these companies?
Organization
COMPANY
Structure
Intel
GE
Google
Amazon
Face book

37. Fundamental differences
between these companies?
Organization
COMPANY
Culture
Intel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DMZaKTUfWo
GE
Google http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F-
zUPTxMEw&feature=related
Amazon
Face book http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdh
1BaZgXSI&feature=related

38. Thank you!