Somewhere over the rainbow

Brad Hinton asks the question: "is there a learning organisation out there?"

I haven't done an exhaustive study of every organisation in the universe but my guess is that no organisation fits the ideal model of a learning organisation. Some are better at collective learning than others. Some offer better personal learning opportunities than others. But most people in organisations struggle to balance the long-term & short-term as well as the individual & the collective.

I like the post by Ton Zijlstra that Brad identifies. Owning your own learning path is something I concur with - and something I have tried to put into practice after my own fashion. I may well steal Ton's model in the near future (with attribution).

There has been a lot of talk around "user-centred" learning - but this has tended towards the personalisation of elearning content delivery - "Hey, you are about to be fired, please take Course E2435 Why suing your ex-employer for wrongful dismissal is bad". Ton's model is about user-centred learning in the broader sense - which implies the user has enough self-knowledge to undertake their own personal curriculum development. Are your employees skillful enough to do that? And do you trust them enough to let them try?

So Brad, my short answer to your question is: "No, probably not, we're just going to have to make our own learning organisation gosh darnit"