When you ask people about what it is like being
part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the
experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves,
of being connected, of being generative. It becomes quite clear that, for many,
their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of
life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for
ways to recapture that spirit.
The most accurate word in Western culture to
describe what happens in a learning
organization is one that hasn't had much
currency for the past several hundred years. It
is a word we have used in our work with
organizations for some ten years, but we always
caution them, and ourselves, to use it sparingly
in public. The word is "metanoia" and it means a shift of mind. The word has a rich history. For
the Greeks, it meant a fundamental shift or change, or more literally transcendence ("meta"—above or beyond,
as in "metaphysics") of mind ("noia," from the root "nous," of mind). In the
early (Gnostic) Christian tradition, it took on aspecial meaning of awakening shared intuition
and direct knowing of the highest, of God.
"Metanoia" was probably the key term
of such early Christians as John the Baptist. In the
Catholic corpus the word metanoia was eventually
translated as "repent."
To grasp the meaning of "metanoia" is
to grasp the deeper meaning of "learning," for learning also involves a fundamental shift or movement of
mind. The problem with talking about "learning organizations" is that the
"learning" has lost its central meaning in contemporary usage.
Most people's eyes glaze over if you talk to
them about "learning" or "learning organizations."
Little wonder—for, in everyday use, learning has
come to be synonymous with "taking in
information." "Yes, I learned all
about that at the course yesterday." Yet, taking in information is only distantly related to real learning. It
would be nonsensical to say, "I just read a great book about bicycle riding—I've now learned
that." Real learning gets to the heart of what it means
to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become
able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world
and our relationship to it.Through learning we extend our capacity to
create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep
hunger for this type of learning. It is, as Bill O'Brien of Hanover Insurance says, "as fundamental
to human beings as the sex drive." This, then, is the basic meaning of a
"learning organization"—an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its
future. For such an organization, it is not enough merely to survive. "Survival
learning" or what is more often termed "adaptive learning" is important—indeed it is
necessary. But for a learning organization, "adaptive learning" must be joined by
"generative learning," learning that enhances our capacity to create.
A few brave organizational pioneers are pointing
the way, but the territory of
building learning organizations is still largely
unexplored. It is my fondest hope that this
book can accelerate that exploration.
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