Not Commanding but Persuading and Shaping that Make a Learning Organization

摘要

generating a willingness to learn from an individual is not a straightforward task. The same applies to an organization which is a group of people that collectively try to achieve mutual and agreed objectives. Consequently, the strategic leaders who initiate the learning process should raise the "sense of urgency" inside the mind of the candidate learning partners at first as the main source of the need to shape their company to be a learning organization. In this respect the sense of urgency is: "The raising of energy within the strategic leaders so they committed to save their company". Secondly, the strategic leaders should continuously embed and develop learning and can-do attitude of the learning partners. Thirdly, the strategic leaders together with the learning partners should from time-to-time evaluate the learning result by measuring the learner's firm competitiveness in the market. The current change in business landscape into the digital era has demanded organizations further to be a learning organization, particularly to have an ability to learn fast so that it can take the benefits of the first mover advantage. Based on the experience of many companies in the past twenty five years, they suggested that commanding people does not make a learning organization. Instead, it is by persuading and shaping that create a learning organization. Hence, strategic leaders can also identify the effective methods to persuade and to shape the companies to be a learning organization. The identified methods consist of three. Firstly, the strategic leaders who offer a high value challenge which is difficult to be turned down by the candidate of learning partners. Secondly, the learning partners are always accompanied by the strategic leaders. Thirdly, the strategic leaders continuously inspire the learning partners to actively seek for breakthrough which creates value. The result of this study suggested some research questions as a starting point for further research.