What's the Buzz about Organizational Learning? 5

Taking charge of your 'learning' looks a pretty important aspect of avoiding 'gullibility'. This, in turn, means that learning becomes something a bit more different than sitting at a desk and being told what to know. Now this is scary!. An episode of 'gullibility' is a signal that you've encountered something that you have not been taught about. This might be the 'thing' itself, or something more profound about 'you' and the way you make sense of the world. So if you ask a question such as (i)'how do I stop my friends taking advantage of me?' or (ii)'how do I stop my competitors producing better products than me?' then why not stop and think what you are really asking.

If you are in place where you expect to be 'given the answer' then the answer to your question is very different from that expected by a person who is more 'self-directed' in their learning. e.g. q(i) if you are in a 'dualistic state' see Perry et al Then chances are you will be expecting to be 'told' by someone you regard as a higher authority what to do, such as "manage your time better and get better at saying NO", or "stop reacting to the guilt trips of others". If you take a more self directed approach, see the work of Jack Mezirow,B.S.Bloom,R.Gagne then answers to q(i) will be things like 'develop a more critical outlook', 'study the sense-making processes of indiviudals', 'get familiar with the communicative processes of generalization, distortion, and deletion'. No of course path two requires more effort of the individual.

Significantly however its requries us to become more explicitly aware and understanding of previously hidden/partially processes like 'learning' such that we achieve a meta-awareness. Gregory Bateson originally described this as the process of learning how to learn - or deutero learning.

so - how do I stop being gullible?, how does my organization learn? how do I stop my friends taking advantage of me? - a good place to begin is to learn how to learn.