Healthy organizations are learning organizations
Jeffrey Beeson MBA/MA
Network Leadership Pioneer | Strategy and Leadership Enabler | Transition of Organizations into Network Organizations | Author of ?Network Leadership“ (Cambridge University Press) | Keynote Speaker
Healthy organisms adapt to their environment through learning.
The natural curiosity with which we are all born is noticeable throughout a healthy organization - from the CEO to the shop floor worker. A healthy organization encourages this sense of curiosity in order to enable it to adapt to the ever-accelerating rate of change.
TINKERING IS NOT LONGER THE WAY TO DEAL WITH THE RAPID RATE OF CHANGE
All industries are currently experiencing a rapid rate of change in our digital era. This is exactly the circumstance which advocates a necessary switch of our understanding of organizations:
From the metaphor of a machine
to the to the metaphor of a living biological organism.
From the machine paradigm perspective, businesses adapt to change by tinkering with the machinery and making continual adjustments. Eventually tinkering is just not enough. To come to grips with changed conditions, an investment in a bigger machine to ensure increased capacity or a complete re-thinking of the machine and/or process becomes the imperative.
This paradigm presents an re-current and troublesome undertaking. In order to adapt to the constant change, businesses have to constantly re-invent the entire machine and/or process.
Isn’t there a better way?
DEVELOPING A NIMBLE CAPACITY FOR ADAPTATION
In contrast, a biological organism adapts to change naturally and continuously. Via incremental changes over time, a living organism adapts to its continually changing environment.
An urban bird which has lost its natural habitat provides an excellent example of this capacity for continual adaptation. These urban dwellers learn to live on electrical wires instead of tree branches, make nests in the nooks and crannies throughout the urban landscape instead of trees and discover bird-feeders as an substitute for the seeds it would normally have eaten. Such adaptations are a self-driven response to the change in the bird’s new habitat.
LEARNING LIES AT THE HEART OF A HEALTHY ORGANIZATION
We can learn a lot from these urban newcomers. At the heart of mastering change in a world of continuous disruption is the adoption of a broad spectrum of such nimble approaches.
Similar learning and adaptation lies at the heart of a healthy organization. When individuals or organizations cease learning, they stop adapting. It is the responsibility of Network Leaders throughout an organization to champion the natural capacity of every human being in their business to continue to be curious.
When continuous learning is both understood and valued by employees as a indispensable aspect of their job, the solid foundation for the organization to learn as a whole entity is ensured. This is the inherent capacity which all organizations must develop in order to adapt to our continually changing business environments.
True change come from within.
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Change Communication Culture Collaboration Coaching
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Co-creating ways to cultivate connections between people to foster optimal collaboration and well-being
1 年A healthy organization retains a company's most creative people and attracts the cutting-edge talent which any business needs to thrive.