Creating a Learning Organization

Wanda Loskot shares this article on her website www.loska.com and it is reproduced here with her permission:

In the Fall of 1997 I received a sad news that my friend Lester Heath died. He was one of those few people who had a huge influence on my life. His philosophy shaped my thinking and my coaching to a great degree and I feel so fortunate that I met him.

He changed lives of many people. While still alive, he was in charge of a large company called Albany Ladder. Lester Heath was not only outstanding human being but also exceptionally effective businessman and in 1995 the Entrepreneur Magazine awarded him the title Entrepreneur of the Year.

Jim Ullery(then his vice president) a few years ago for my TV program. I'm sure that you too will benefit from his thinking.

When it comes to creating successful relationships in a workplace, Albany Ladder is on the leading edge. This starts with abandoning traditional rigid business approaches and implementing guidelines instead of policies. Budgeting processes and job descriptions are also more flexible at this company than anywhere else.

And meetings or training sessions? Training activities have included putting employees in costumes of Arab sheiks and on the edge of a steep mountain cliff, sending them on a white water raft trip, and using an extensive two days session to write one specific document. Every one of these experiences pushes people to the edge, mentally, physically, and spiritually, so that they could really take a closer look at their core values.

Lester Heath: It is important to separate these two meanings: learning and training - because there is a big difference. Our real objective is to create an environment where people are learning all the time regardless of whether training is going on or not. As a result they're constantly self-assessing: is this what I wanted to accomplish? What am I going to do now? What can I learn from this? How could I do it better? This is the essence of the continuous improvement in the organization.

Learning means also that the more we know - the more we know that we don't know. It opens whole new vistas and helps to discover things that we need to learn in the future.

Wanda Loskot: What was the hardest part in the process of becoming the learning organization?"

Jim Ullery: Accepting the truth. Sometimes the truth isn't what we want to hear. I believe people often shield the truth to make themselves feel good, because they are afraid what the truth really represents. There is this tendency to distort the truth in order to make the situation appear better instead of dealing with the truth.
It happened to us and we recognized very early in our process that the truth can be almost devastating. Once we took a real close look at what was working and what was not working, there were some really hurtful things we discovered. Things were not working although both of us thought they were working very well.

Wanda Loskot: Such as? Which things surprised you so much?

Jim Ullery: That we didn't listen. We thought that we worked really hard at listening, but people's perception was that we didn't listen."

Lester Heath: And the matter of our mission statement, too. These two things hit us the hardest."

Wanda Loskot: What about the mission statement?"

Lester Heath: We started our learning process back in 1981 with writing the mission statement, but we made a fundamental tactical error. The management wrote it and imposed it on the workers. And that was exactly how the workers viewed it. It was "Lester's Mission" and, although it was quite accurate as to what we might have wanted to accomplish, it did not serve as a tool to provide useful direction for the company.

Wanda Loskot: How did you change it?

Lester Heath: We have changed the mission several times since then. The major difference is the process used in creating it, not the concept or theory behind it. This time all co-workers came together and drafted a mission statement in which they all feel a sense of ownership.

Wanda Loskot: As a result, how do people's attitudes differ?

Lester Heath: Their level of intellectual engagement is higher. Their sense of purpose is greater. I think people are finding more meaning in the work, and the atmosphere is wonderful. There are days when it is absolutely electric to work in Albany Ladder.

We're not trying to create the environment where people think alike or experience the same things, but where they are free to probe the full depth of the human experience whatever that might be for them. What we are trying to accomplish is to set up a sense of purpose and a general direction for a company, some guidelines within which co-workers have to stay, a sound basis in training - both in skills and in perspective - and in context to the business. And then allowing people to make their own decisions, as long as they stay in the same general direction we want to go, inside these guidelines.

Wanda Loskot: You also share your training with people from outside your company.

Jim Ullery: We became a sort of laboratory helping people to create a learning environment in their organizations and develop a sense of purpose and direction not only for their organizations but also for their lives. But I must stress that we are practitioners, not theorists. We talk about what has worked for us. We share the principles and experiences that worked for us. Hopefully they might have an application in other people's lives or industries, so we encourage them to go and try it.

Much of our training can be experienced over and over again. The first time people listen and engage only at a certain level. Then we encourage them to come back to become a part of the experience at a later date, with a fresh awareness, with a new level of comprehension. Those who have gone more than once report dramatic new levels of awareness.

Lester Heath: I remember a workshop we did for a group of business executives in New Jersey. It was a group of cigar-smoking, Mercedes-driving stiff people who didn't know each other. At the end of the six hour seminar they were all hugging.

But the real learning is the individual's capacity for reflective thinking and self-assessment. This processing is the experience where the learning occurs. It is noticing things about yourself, about the group during the process and then afterwards reflecting on it and learning from it.
Please visit Jim Ullery at http://www.ullerymanagement.com (and now in addtion see www.energyseekers.com and www.LetsPlayThePiano.com) for more information about creating learning organization.

LOSKA.COM Wanda Loskot - Success Connection 150 Heron's Run, Suite #124 - Sarasota, FL 34232 - USA Phone (941) 342-4203 - Fax (240) 358-7445

Professional business coach, author & speaker specializing in Internet marketing. Business seminars, corporate training and one-on-one coaching for self-employed sales professionals and small business owners. wanda@loska.com
All materials Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000 Wanda Loskot and Success Connection. All Rights Reserved. Do not reprint, or distribute without express written permission.