Business

Part 1 The art and practice of learning organization.
Learning organization is an idea that tries to prove that different forces are joined together for better complex and dynamic business world. The world has been interconnected and businesses are taking another shape thus it makes the work of learning organization to be easy. An organization constitutes  of  teams  which at  once  were learners and  aims  at working  together to get  good  results. This is possible because every member of an organization is a learner and this is a way of coordinating activities in an organization (Part I, n.d). There  are  various  disciplines  that are  applied  to show  the  difference  between controlling  and learning organizations.

Five most important disciplines of learning organization include
Personal mastery that is being focused, visionary, real and to be patient.
Systems thinking include understanding the whole organization and not blaming anybody for personal problems.

Team learning, this discipline involves recognizing dialogue as the best policy for handling conflicts in an organization.

Mental models - a discipline that creates mental images on how an individual plans to understand an organization through learning.

Building a shared vision- people in an organization who have vision are in a good position of learning and excelling due to their commitment.

Discipline is the most important principle in organization learning and this involves shift of mind and systems thinking. Failure to observe these two results to learning disability. Good features of learning disability include clinging on to certain position, being in charge of everything, fixation on events, dilemma of learning from experience, parable of boiled frog, blaming other people for your mistakes and so much trust on management team.      

Part II Cornerstone of the learning organization
Organizations problems are as a result of yesterdays solutions that push the system hard and in response it acts in another direction. This process is called feedback and for good learning organization there must be effective system intervention. The growth of any complex system requires small changes and no blame game for individual problems. The outcomes of any given organization require system thinking that helps to resolve complex situations.

Process of system thinking is connected to shift in mind and starts by understanding feedback. However, there are some limitations related to system thinking. Causality is one of the major challenges that overturn the process of feedback leading to behavioral changes in an organization. Feedback provides that every individual in an organization is responsible for problems as are created by certain system put in place (Part, II, n.d.).

The most important aspect of learning organization is balancing or reinforcing feedback and delays. Reinforcing feedback is a way of self fulfillment where a small change may lead to satisfaction and positive comments. Reinforcing process requires solidarity that leads to balancing of system feedback. Balancing process, on the other hand, is a way of discovering stability and resistance. The success of any organization depends on explicit and implicit balancing processes. Leaders should learn how to balance than reinforce processes.

Balancing delays is the cornerstone of learning organization that leads to positive feedback. There are two important archetypes that control the pattern in which events occur in an organization. Firstly, limit to growth that entails management not to push for growth and to do away with factors that limit growth. Leverage in limit to growth lies in balancing loop other than reinforcing it. Second, there is shifting of the burden, this happens when people shift burden of their problems to find solutions in other areas. The management should be aware of how to handle certain organizations problems without shifting burden. To achieve leverage in a situation of shifting the burden, there is need of coming up with strong response system and weaken symptomatic response. Setting goals and saying the truth are the essence of management discipline where others fail to apply good tactics.

Part III Building the learning organization
Personal mastery is a discipline that is connected to learning organization. It means approaching life as creative work that enables organization to learn through individuals. Personal mastery is needed because it is a form of showing commitment, makes organization stronger and it is a sign of responsibility. Individual vision is another discipline that helps in learning organization. Failure of an organization is attributed to emotional tension where there is no creativity.

Failure to set goals leads to bad transformation in the way organization runs its events. Conflicts in the organization can be solved by applying strategies such as willpower, manipulation of conflicts and letting organizations vision to erode. The first step towards resolving conflicts in an organization is to recognize the conflicts. It is important to know what a person wants to achieve in live so as to put policies that will lead to achievement of personal ambitions (Part, III, n.d.).

Personal mastery includes integrating reason and intuition that help a leader to see interrelations and connections of the world. Managers in an organization are entitled to foster personal mastery in an organization by being role models. Mental models help managers to implement policies that seem hard to implement. The reason for implementing mental models is that they shape the way an individual acts.

Organizing, controlling and managing were the core values of managers in traditional authoritarian style. However, in the learning organization, the core values include vision, values and mental models. Mental models help managers in an organization to expose assumptions that were hidden and to restructure policies that reveal causes of certain problems. Integrating thinking and mental models are the pillars that lead to building of learning organization.

Team learning
Team learning is a process of developing the potential of a team to create or establish results at the team members desire. Teams are the major learning units in organizations. First insight of team is to think about complex issues, secondly, there is a need to coordinate and be innovative and thirdly, the role of team members on other teams. Team learning involves mastering dialogue practices that include understanding of complex issues and listening to each other. This results to a discussion that creates an environment for solving thorny issues.

Team learning leads to exploitation of human resource potential that results to higher level of teams IQ. Purpose of dialogue is to take personal understanding at higher level that leads to promotion of individual thinking. There are three important conditions necessary for dialogue such as suspension of individual assumptions, facilitator in charge of dialogue as each participant should consider one another as colleagues. Conflict is the backbone of team learning because it monitors movement of dialogue and discussion among great teams. This brings out the main difference between mediocre and great teams (Part, III, n.d.). Dealing with conflict in an organization between teams differentiates it from the daily actions that transfer social relationships.

Individuals in a team fear to indulge in discussions because they consider it as a way of exposing their weaknesses. Team learning incorporates learning gap and defensive routine that is self sealing. Defensive routines help to create a strong solution for shifting the burden structure. A defensive routine is a way of establishing strong signal to indicate that team learning is not occurring at the present time. The world is observed to be simple but in reality this is not the case. This is because archetypes provide powerful ways of language development that deals with complex situations.

Shared vision
Shared vision is empowering people to be focused and have energy for learning organization. Vision is said to be common when two different individuals have similar ways of viewing things thus they are committed towards one another. An organization must have vision that leads to manipulation of peoples views in regard to learning organization. Long term goals should be the reason behind establishment of shared vision in human lives. To build shared vision requires encouragement of individuals to have their own vision.

Changing of personal vision to shared vision does not necessarily mean changing the way things are observed in reality. Individuals should avoid relying on historical information that shared vision is the daily work of leaders. Spreading vision is a matter of three aspects that is compliance, enrollment and commitment. An individual becomes part of an organization through enrolment and commitment which involves being fully responsible for making an organization work towards its vision. Many people in an organization comply with requirements of law while fewer are committed.

Committed person is fully responsible for what happens in the organization. Commitment in an organization is very vital because it results to motivation which is achieved through fear and aspiration. Vision, therefore, is the most important aspect in learning organization because it leads to creation of a clear picture of what one wants to create. To have vision is the only way through which a manager can shape the future of an organization. Managers sometimes fail to deliver because they do not understand their capacity to transform an organization to high level.

Part IV Prototypes
Prototypes help to discover and solve main problems that occur between an idea and its full implementation in evolution of learning organization. Openness is the most important principle that dominates the process through which organizational politics are played. In a political environment, an individual is more important than any other aspect of the organization thus in learning organization it is considered as authoritarian environment.

Commitment to shared vision is the key to success for many organizations that necessitates participative openness leading to quality decisions. Openness and complexity promote learning organization by motivating individuals in an organization. Thinking and discussions lead to creation of an environment that is conducive for problem solving. There are two types of problems, convergent and divergent problems. The former has solutions while the latter has no correct solution (Part, IV, n.d.).

Freedom and localness to create desired results is created by the need of people to learn how to be responsible for their own actions. Localness is a cornerstone that helps to design learning organizations. This leads to control that helps to move from traditional authoritarian to local organization control. The need to cut down costs has led many organizations to choose locally controlled organizations. However, this may be associated with some risks but local managers must be ready to take risks. A good system of organization learning is the one that values work and family matters. The only barrier between work and family is system thinking.

Imbalance between successes is due to reinforcing feedback that results to non-self correcting imbalance. Conflict between work and family is an individuals concern that helps to shape learning organization. Leaders should be in a position of influencing people to consider reality in four dimensions such as purpose story, events, patterns of behavior and systematic structures. A leader or manager must be competent and courageous enough to lead other people because people have the habit of following natural leader who believes in achieving something. Natural leadership cannot be separated from other forms of leaders because they are learners who lead learning organization.

Part V Rewriting the code
There are basically two types of complexity according to system thinking that is detail and dynamic complexities. The outcomes of cause and effect cannot be associated with time or space. Detail complexity is contained on subconscious level and not on conscious one. Subconscious level can be trained through programming of cultures, beliefs and language programs.

Systems archetypes and feedback processes are forms of structured data that is mastered on subconscious level. Learning organization is treated as a tool that is for evolution of organizations and intelligence. The act of nature constitutes of wholes within wholes, including all living organisms on earth (Part V, n.d.). Anything new happening in an organization is deemed to have an impact on learning organization.