Building Learning Organizations With Action Learning

Very few organizations have ever been able to achieve their goal of becoming a learning organization due to the complexity of organizational learning and the impatience and lack of skills of organizational leaders. Over the past twenty-five years, the author of this chapter has discovered that the introduction of action learning programs into the organization is the most effective way of building a learning organization. This chapter briefly summarizes the five subsystems of a learning organization: (1) learning, (2) organization, (3) people, (4) knowledge, and (5) technology. Action learning is a powerful tool that enables a group to learn while in action. It has the unique ability to solve complex problems while simultaneously creating leaders, building teams, and developing each of the five learning organization subsystems.