One of my favorite things to do when waiting for a customer in their office is browse their book shelves. It gives me a great sense for the models and theories that they already have in their head, which gives us a good foundation for shared understanding. It's also a great opportunity for my own learning!
Yesterday I was in a new customer's office and came across "The Fifith Discipline Fieldbook" by Peter Senge. I have seen Peter speak and read the original book years ago, but had not come across this particular version. My customer was generous enough to lend it to me.
Peter made famous the concepts of "systems thinking" and a "learning organization" just as we were coming out of the industrial age into the age of the knowledge worker. I was browsing through the text (as the author encourages) and found some very valuable and timeless insights and models. Some are almost a natural part of our collective consciousness, and some are concepts that clearly we are still struggling with in businesses of all sizes.
One chapter restated that the core of having a learning organization is based upon five "learning disciplines" - lifelong programs of study and practice. As I read it, I thought to myself: "for all my exposure to these concepts and familiarity with the book, I can't name the Five Disciplines" (I would love to hear from all of you masters that CAN!)
For those of us that need a refresher, or who have never been exposed to the key disciplines, here they are:
1. Personal Mastery - learning to expand our personal capacity to create the results we most desire
2. Mental Models - reflecting upon, continually clarifying and improving our internal pictures of the world, and seeing how they shape our actions and decisions
3. Shared vision - building a sense of comitment in a group by developing shared images of the future we seek to create
4. Team learning - transforming conversational and collective thinking so that groups of people can create ability greater than te sum of individual talents
5. Systems thinking- a way of thinking and communicating about the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems.
So here is my question. Are you a learning organizaition? Do you embody these disciplines as a leader? Do you promote and build the structure so that your team and business meets the criteria for a learning organization?
It is clear in these times, more than it was when the book was written, having a "learning organization" is critical for agility, competitive advantage, and even survival.
Please click here to read more from Senge's website, and make a commitment to take action on at least one of these ideas. If you need a little help getting started, just contact us!
Seize Tomorrow!
Here are some resources that I came across or used to help business owners and leaders over the past week:
1. Blogging for business- Click here for the ebook on this subject we used to kick off our TAB Social Media workshop series earlier this year. It covers why blogging is essential for business leaders as well as steps for getting started. It all starts with following and reading blogs (there is still time to add that KINDLE to your Christmas list- great way to keep up with blogs!) Please subscribe to our blog for a steady stream of resources for business leaders building their organizations for the future. Here are some of my favorite blogs on business from other great authors:
Small Business Marketing
Seth Godin
Small Biz Trends
Small Business Owner Blog
Awake at 2oclock
Still want more? Check out Inc.'s list of business bloggers you should follow now.
2. Standard Policies and Documents: Ben, one of our business advisory board members recommended "Business in a box" for off the shelf resources, including an employee policy for internet use. I took a brief look at it, seems like a broad resource for all sorts of business domains.
Along related lines, here is a copy of the standard employee manual that I provide to my customers. You can compare it to your own policy and adopt individual policies or, adopt the whole thing as your own by using "find and replace" with your name in word. Remember, best practice is to have your manual reviewed by your employment lawyer - this serves as a good foundation.
3. Dragon Dictation is a GREAT new app for the Iphone that was released this week. Among other things it allows you to speak your emails and text messages into the phone. The response time and accuracy of the conversion is amazing. One touch converts the message into an email or text.
Related posts:
Why-Apps-are-Essential-for-Biz-Leaders
the-blogging-three-step
Carpe Manana- Seize Tomorrow!
Here are some of my favorite resources of the week:
I posted links to two great resources on the Good Stuff section of my website:
If you like them, please take a moment to hit the vote button, so your favorites as a group rise to the top of the resource list. Also, I would love to hear your insights, so consider leaving comments.
One of my favorite books of the year is now out in executive summary: Who's Got Your Back by Keith Ferrazzi. Keith makes the case for business-owner-advisory-boards like TAB that create strong networks of people that enable you to "build deep, trusting relationships that create success - and won't let you fail.." He emphasizes some of the best practices we have at TAB of sharing goals and strategies and clearly establishing group commitments for ongoing success.
If you are still hungry for more...there are a few new blog posts too: Seize Tomorrow Blog
Smart, effective leaders share a common trait: the desire and ability to learn new things. To be successful in the future, and build organizations that are able to respond to continuous change, learning is a performance essential.
Business leaders need to be able to quickly learn new concepts, adopt them, and put them into practice within their organization. They also must ensure their employees are always learning.
Learning is a team sport, and winning means using the knowledge you and your team accumulate to gain competitive advantage, build a sustainable organization and achieve your vision. Here are three reasons why:
1. Effective learning requires reciprocity - interaction with others.
Every so often I meet a business owner who tells me that they don't need a peer advisory board because they read books. Now don't get me wrong... I love books, and blogs and all sorts of other content that I can get my hands on. But reading books on your own, pales in comparison to the effectiveness of reading something and then having an interactive conversation with peers to delve more deeply into the subject, how it might be relevant to your situation, and what action you can take. The act of interacting with others is called reciprocity and is a fundamental of learning. It is part of our biology since we are inherently social beings.
I am a big fan of online universities. One of the reasons they are effective is because interaction is built into the design of the course. Meetings with study groups, 1-1 conversations with peers and other similar techniques are very effective for learning. Even though the interaction is virtual, it can be more effective than the stale semi-comatose interaction we have all experienced of sitting in a room with a talking head, and not participating at all.
Online learning can be economical and effective. Just make sure your team has an opportunity to interact and continue conversations about what they've learned after watching the information. I work with teams who have unbelievable access to online content, but no one takes advantage of the courses. Make it a team event: set a time, buy pizza, watch it together, and stimulate some conversation afterward. The rewards will be tenfold.
2. Effective learning requires commitment, discipline and a game plan.
Learning is not a casual pursuit. There is a cost for learning, even if the content is free. Effective learning requires a conscious commitment to use time and resources to gain new capacities. Much like the need to practice before a game, you need to learn before you need to use the knowledge. That means you always need to be thinking ahead about the new practices and capacities you will need in the future. Then you need the discipline to devote time to the learning, even when a dozen urgent things are pulling at you.
3. Until you can put what you learned into action, you have not learned it sufficiently.
Effective learning is defined by gaining a new capacity to do something. In business, the new capacity must be relevant. Just understanding something doesn't cut it....reading about golf or Tiger Woods does not mean you can golf. Understanding is an important but preliminary step on the path to gaining new capacity. Practicing the new behavior, process or practice is essential for learning. Again, this requires others: colleagues, customers, coaches, mentors etc.
"Anything that we have to learn to do, we learn by the actual doing of it" Aristotle
If you are a business owner or business leader, make a commitment to your own learning. Find colleagues, peers advisory groups like TAB, teachers, mentors or coaches to work with. Then commit to building an organization that is always learning. Call us if you want someone to reciprocate with, we'll be glad to have a conversation with you about building effective and always learning organizations!
CARPE MANANA...
Seize Tomorrow!