You may have heard of a Learning Organization.  The term was popularized in the 1990’s book from Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline.  Almost everyone has or had a copy on their bookshelves; and everyone thought/thinks that it is a great idea.  “Yes, we should have/be a Learning Organization – it rhymes with innovation and everyone wants to be innovative in the 90’s and the 21st Century, right?”  

In the intervening almost 30 years, there have been many attempts at growing Learning Organizations, with varying degrees of success.  Some of the shortfalls include subscribing to a learning services company and posting the catalog of courses on the company intranet for anyone to enroll and complete.  (Issue – not aligned to any path for betterment or promotion, so they were rarely used.)  Others purchased LMS software and installed it on internal servers or licensed it as a SaaS; and some even licensed or developed content for it. (Issue – same as the catalog, so the default use has been for mandatory compliance-related courses.)  Some hired Learning & Development or Training specialists to develop curricula for the organization.  (Issue – again, not tied to any progress measure and resulted in spot courses based on departmental or company need that were sponsored by people with budget.)  And many hired “one and done” training specialists to deliver multi-hour and multi-day courses – on and off site. (Issue – they generated enthusiasm for about a week, and were promptly shelved and forgotten because they were not linked to an expected competency and behavior in the workplace, leading to a specified, measurable business result.

An Intentional Learning Organization implies that there is a grand design for the learning environment, and a reason for each learning activity that is proposed by the organization and undertaken by the participant.  That design includes:

• An Individual Development Plan (IDP) for every individual in the organization;
• A Team Development Plan (TDP) for each team that is assembled for a project lasting more than a Quarter;
• An inculcation of Manager-as-Coach for every person who supervises others – from Team Leaders to Executives;
• Competency in Vision-Alignment-Enablement approach to Leadership for all leaders at all levels.

 The Intentional Learning Organization presentation and interactive learning activity provides a 1-2-hour overview of this material, interactive exercises for various learning points, covering these topic areas:

•  Definition of an Intentional Learning Organization (ILO)
• Levels of the organization impacted by the ILO
• Benefits of deploying an ILO
• ILO integration models
• ILO and change management
• Complementarity with Lean/Agile models
• What an ILO is not
• Related concepts

To register, click here.