Learning Organization

by Bizhan Nasseh

1. The development of critical thinking skills within a wide range of activities is an effective means facilitating change. Critical thinking about our daily work enables us to see needs and problems which we have not been aware of before. These new findings will enable us to see the necessity of learning and improvement. UCS can arrange workshops in teaching critical thinking by inviting our local experts in this field from Teacher's College.
2. Design a Learning Committee made up of members from different sections of UCS in order to evaluate and recommend the formal and informal educational needs of UCS. This committee also would oversee all the activities related to learning activities and report the results twice a year to the director of UCS.
3. Having higher education degrees will help employees in understanding the university needs and operations. UCS employees can use the university's two educational advancement systems: educational system (paying half of tuition) and staff development (financial support) in the case of a direct relation between courses taken and job responsibilities.
4. Reward financially those staff members who earned a new degree in the form of additional raise in the annual salary raise decision making.
5. Design a formal learning environment for UCS staff to participate in learning new subjects such as networking (most employees have problems following our networking systems), database management systems (we have many different types of databases), client server systems (an important part of future operations,...). These courses should be taught by our staff experts in UCS.
6. Facilitate and help to design a career advancement plan for employees which will provide motivation for learning new competency. This matter should be taken seriously by both the supervisor and group members in the annual performance appraisal.
7. Emphasize and support the informal learning which is the most effective, available, and inexpensive way of staff development in a technology oriented organization such as UCS. Each supervisor should evaluate the needs, possibilities, and preferred forms (practice, peers, ...) of informal learning for the members of his/her group. Based on the preferred forms and times the supervisor should provide support and facility for informal learning activities in his/her group.
8. Under direction of the Learning Committee, establish a number of interest groups that can meet bi-weekly to discuss their views and experience in an hour-long informal setting. Each interest group will have a mediator who will inform the Learning Committee about the benefits and effects of each interest group.
9. Invite local (university) experts to speak on topics such as: how to be a life-long-educator, self-directed learner, education and society, ethical issues in team work, team work, and multidimensional employees. These learning opportunities should be arranged a few times a year for all the UCS employees.
10. Our current departmental appraisal is mostly concerned with the quality of outcomes of assignments. The planning section of performance appraisal should receive more attention and consideration by supervisors and employees for planning the informal and formal learning activities of UCS employees.
11. In order for us to operate at maximum capacity, UCS should have a vision for a comprehensive staff development program in the next few years. This vision should be accepted by the whole organization in order to be implemented effectively. Bringing vision to the reality is the responsibility of UCS employees and management system.

     In the final section of my discussion, I will try to explain major issues such as social context, process teams, change in knowledge, and informal learning, all of which directly influences the organizational commitment to the learning activities.

     The discussion of life long learning, continuing education, self-directed learning, and informal learning are better understood by looking at the social context in which it takes place. The procedures, structures, tradition, culture, and social systems are very powerful factors in shaping the design, commitment, and implementation of learning activities in UCS. Most UCS employees are senior members of the organization with traditional ways of doing assignments. This brings up the question "Can we change our traditionally viewed learning activities in terms of processes and procedures to the outcomes oriented and self-managed individual learning activities?" These senior members also have a strong commitment to UCS objectives and improving its performance, which can make all the learning activities supportive by employees. The main issue is the management support and vision in designing and facilitating learning activities.

     The conversion from a hierarchical to a flat structure has brought about the necessity of team work for accomplishment of assignments. In UCS, more and more activities and assignments are based on the arrangement of a virtual or permanent team. The members of the teams are from diverse areas within UCS and the contribution of each member is crucial to the achievement and success of the assignment. Formal and informal education are the only ways to convert task-oriented employees to the multidimensional employees that can contribute effectively to the team members and the process.

     Every work place is being transformed by two major trends. The first one is the rapid expansion of technology and knowledge. "90 percent of all scientific knowledge has been generated during last 30 years. This knowledge pool will double by the end of the century, making any set of skills and products obsolete in the five to ten years" (Robert Hostader 1990). The second trend is the necessity of controlling cost, even in some cases reducing the cost of operation. These two trends re-emphasize the vital role of life-long learning in technology-oriented organizations such as UCS. Fortunately, more and more organizations understand that only way of survival is to provide opportunities formal and informal learning activities for employees. Fortunately, more and more employees understand that the only way they can continue their job is to improve performance by learning new competency or update the current competency.

     The main question is how to implement a broad and proactive learning activity program in UCS, where the employees have divers backgrounds and multiple responsibilities with daily commitments to multiple jobs and clients. My personal belief is that any positive step toward facilitating learning activities will improve employee performance and happiness. I also believe that our current management system and employees understand the necessity of having a stronger learning activity program at UCS, but I am not sure they can design and implement learning activities without help from experts in the field. We know that an organization with a vision is a powerful organization and UCS has the potential to provide proactive and aggressive learning activities for all the employees.

     Finally, employers recognize the need to provide education and training to equip their employees to use these new technologies, tools, and techniques. Increasingly, companies are using managers and internal experts to conduct training, but still higher educational institutions or private education providers have a major share of conducting learning activities in the learning organizations.

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