Is Ignorance Bliss? 3-On Organisational Learning

Originally the nature of my work was driven from a primarily ‘sales and marketing’ perspective and its concern with:

Championing a ‘market’ orientation for the organisation, formulating and implementing marketing strategies and Educating the organisation about the scope, nature and value of the ‘marketing philosophy’, and its tools and techniques

This view evolved into a broader concern with total ‘organisational effectiveness’ by adding to (rather than replacing) marketing‘s concern with the identification, understanding and profitable of ‘customer’ needs (whatever profitable and customer mean to you!) as a path to organisational success by a concern for the development of personal thinking and sense making capability throughout the organisation. Formulating and implementing open and useful management processes that take account of the diversity of stakeholders who hold an interest in the organisation and its activities and educating the organisation about the scope, nature and value of the organisational learning philosophy

With this evolution a personal management perspective has emerged in which a more direct and explicit link than some might initially prefer to acknowledge is made between the way things are done inside the organisation (in here) and the results that are created in the organisations operating environment (out there). In other words it is a perspective that believes things at work aren’t just problematic because of the external factors of political, economical, sociological and technological change or competitive activity, we often create our own difficulties through poor sense making, un-imaginative strategy making, inappropriate interpersonal behaviour and dogmatic thinking. Plainly expressed if you put garbage into the system you’re going to get garbage out.

Furthermore, it is worth recognising that the notion of ‘in here and out there’ need not be exclusively restricted to making a distinction between the organisation and it’s environment, it can clearly apply in any situation where people feel they ‘belong’ or ‘don’t belong’ in any departmental, cultural, political or relationship situation too.