Building learning organizations. Management Research Paper

Building Learning Organizations
Name
Institution
Due Date
Building Learning Organizations
Introduction
A non-learning organization is often characterized by various characteristics such as high level of bureaucracy, lack of initiative, poor vertical communication, poor cross-functional collaboration, poor teamwork as well as lack of knowledge management and leadership skills. The non-learning organizations are identified by their proficiency in ignoring crucial aspects of the organization and allows for the organization's discretion. On the other hand, a learning organization as described by Senge (2014), refers to the place that provides individuals with the opportunity to continually learn and expand their capacity and capability to create the desired outcome. The failure of an organization in establishing necessary conditions can well be attributable to their suffering from learning disabilities. The various learning disabilities occur owing to the fundamental ways through which individuals are conditioned or trained to think as well as act in the quest towards overcoming barriers, discovering alongside the provision of solutions to organizational problems (Kareem, 2016).
Case Analysis
The aspect that describes the organization’s failure in a specific department calls for the application of learning organization tools as well as resources capable of helping in rebuilding the status of the company. This is since individual employees continually focus on the processes that add to their collective awareness as well as capabilities (Senge et al., 2006). The 82nd Airborne Brigade is a unit within the military which is a tactical force with a strategic offensive that maintains the highest state of readiness (Winograd, 2000).
The motto of the 82nd Airborne Division entails “All the way!” or “Death from above” and their march slogan reads “The All-American Soldier”. Their mission entails unconventional warfare, direct action, involvement in the foreign internal defense, and providing security assistance amongst other duties (Winograd, 2000).
The 82nd Airborne Division's current tactical network environment does not have provisions that allow for an optimized expeditionary, mobile as well as hardened or simple intuitive network that has the capability of managing operation under all conditions. In the case where the commanders face a disconnected intermittent limited situation, for instance, in the occurrence of an electronic warfare attack, there is a necessity that the unit should look out for alternative communication methods. Such cases of using various communication channels are found critical to expeditionary, early entry, early phase operations when soldiers depend heavily on effective communications for the purposes of undertaking their missions. This is before other support mechanisms are availed such as vehicles and other high-capability systems join the battle (Winograd, 2000).
On many occasions there occurs various cases of disconnect between units of operations that lead to the concept of lack of unified perspective. They instead turn out to be self-reliant which makes them likened to a satellite spinning out of control in the diaspora. In such cases, there is a need for proper realignment that is consistent with the provided military principles. Some of the consistencies are required in Army learning models, necessary requirements as well as command of system knowledge (Nyukorong, 2016).
The challenge
The growth of the organization demands that the employees also grow along with the provided changes. The 82nd Airborne Division has a number of officers that have been employed there for several years. The policies of the division, as well as the practices, have for the most been organized and disciplined, however, things are usually not the same within the operation fields. The level of cooperation between the commanders and the members of the division during missions is punctuated by a lack of direct communications.
The learning disabilities usually occur in the event that the organization fails to learn from past challenging experiences. The present highly dynamic mission trails demand that organizations develop learning programs constantly to enable them to counter the upcoming challenges. There is a need for a cohesive working environment that enables officers to embrace new learning as well as initiatives. In this unit, the learning disabilities, as well as system archetypes, relates to discrimination where the unit has always been under controversies that relate to unjust-termination, discrimination, and also failing to recognize the efforts made by new officers. The other challenge is that as new recruits are hired, the veteran officers fail to deliver to them the secrets which are rather classified and practices as required, therefore, they do things without proper guidance. The learning disability, in this case, is the delusion of learning from experience and the system archetype relates to limits to growth.
Diagnosis of the Problem
According to Senge (2006), the delusion of learning from experience refers to the case “Where our actions have consequences beyond our learning horizon, therefore, making it impossible to learn from direct experience. We learn best from experience, but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important decisions” (Senge, 2006, p. 23).
Under such learning disabilities, 82nd Airborne Division shows that policies and practices are rarely followed due to a lack of proper communication channels in case of an electronic warfare attack, therefore, making commanding officers come up with their own ways of completing missions. The consequence of not following procedures makes the Commanders of the unit fail in their management styles. This eventually affects the junior officers, in terms of their productivity, personality as well as their morale. Such distorted way of leadership that does not permit freedom of expression has made both junior and commanders to become comfortable with their beliefs, making it difficult for the new recruits to begin doing things in anew and formal way.
The other learning disability entails the myth of the management team which is clearly portrayed within the division. The myth of the management team refers to experience where “various teams in business focusing on spending their time fighting for turf and avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, therefore, pretending that everyone is behind the team’s collective strategy” (Senge, 2006). In this case, the commanders of units always apply the principle of dictatorship on the juniors for the purposes of suppressing their freedom of expression for the reasons of protecting reputation. In this disability, there is always pretense that every army officer is behind every move and strategy of the entire unit. However, the most important aspect of learning as represented by different learning domains is the concept of what is learned. This is clearly revealed depending on the various facilitating factors such as the climate of openness.
In this case, the 82nd Airborne Division at times design and implement strategies that are not aligned with their organizational demands or mission, therefore, miss on the objective of providing service to institutional objective, despite few top commanders stakeholders benefiting from such actions. There are also some aspects where the organization engages in dysfunctional learning processes that entail biases as well as subjective judgments that supersede the underlying objective realities (Senge, 2014).
System Archetype
In this case, the system archetype is limiting to growth which is evident and refers to the existing balance of the growth process as well as the limiting process (Senge, 2006). The challenge of striving to cope with the current procedures, there is the issue of discipline as relates to the handling of the classified information. This has seen many officers being laid off due to a lack of discipline in keeping with secrets. At the same time, there is the issue that surrounds the communication stability that increases the viability of missions. The division devised software that would help in the reporting of the cases that would allow the aspect of monitoring and coordination from other divisions within the army (Scanlon, 2007).
The other system archetype in this division correlates to the seeking of the wrong goal whereby the commanders usually pursue various individualized goals not necessarily aligned to the vision of the army. Such pursuit of the wrong goal by the juniors is self-selected by the commander in authority. Afterward, the junior officers are rewarded for loyalty with ranks and medals for having pledged loyalty to the authority. For instance, those in the combat unit operate on a high-tech communication system chain of command that suffers from the “self-reliance” condition.
Recommendations and Action Plan
Recommendations according to Senge’s five disciplines
* Personal Mastery – The organization should adopt the Management Leadership style
* Shared Vision – All the units within the Army Department should share the same vision
* Systems Thinking &ndash...