Creating a Learning Organisation

The article emphasises the importance of maintaining a learning environment within an organisation.

A learning organisation is one that can effectively develop and use knowledge to make change for the better. Lawyers too need to create learning organisations for themselves. The question of how to create and lead organisations in which continuous learning occurs has been at the top of the list of management techniques to consider. 

The problem with the old, command-and-control way of practising law is that it is built on the premise that the world and all that goes on within it, is predictable. There’s only one problem with that particular view of things: the world is not predictable. The global world of business is chaos  — what is true today will surely be washed away tomorrow as the next wave of change hits. The only thing that is predictable in today’s organisations is that they do change. And change. And change again. 

The idea of the learning organisation is designed around the assumption that organisations are going through rapid change and that the people that manage them should expect the unexpected. Indeed, managers who work for learning organisations welcome the inevitable unexpected events that occur within an organisation, because they consider them to be opportunities, not problems. Instead of static organisations that are strictly hierarchical, learning organisations are flexible and less hierarchical than traditional organisations. This structure makes it much better for those in leadership positions like Managing Partners and Partners to lead change instead of merely reacting to change. 

Several characteristics are particularly important as you consider turning your own firm into a learning organisation. The more of each characteristic your firm exhibits, the closer it is to being a learning organisation  — one that thrives in times of rapid change.

Encourage Objectivity

Over the course of our careers, we have seen people make many organisational decisions simply to please someone with power, influence, or an incredible ego. Such subjective decisions  — reached not through a reasoned consideration of the facts but through emotion  — are rarely as good as decisions made on an objective review of the facts. Leadership in the firm should encourage objectivity in the lawyers and support staff and practise objectivity in decision-making. 

Seek Openness

For an organisation to learn, everyone has to be willing to tell each other the truth. To make this openness possible, the firm must create safe environments for lawyers and support staff to say what is really on their minds and to tell the Partners or Managing Partner bad news without fear of retribution. Driving fear out of the firm should be a top priority of every Managing Partner who wants to build a learning organisation. 

Insist on Teamwork

Deploying teams is a very important part in the development of learning organisations. You would be hard pressed to name any learning organisation that hasn’t implemented teams widely throughout the organisation. When a firm relies on individuals to respond to changes in its environment, one or two individuals may pick up the torch and run with it; however, when a firm relies on teams to respond to change, many more people are mobilised much more quickly. Not only that, but the best solution will more likely be reached because the team obtains the benefits of all its members. And this can mean the difference between life and death in the ever-changing global business environment.

Create Useful Tools

Learning organisations need the tools that enable everyone to quickly and easily obtain the information that they need to do their jobs. Computer networks, for example, have to be set up with access for all employees, lawyers and support staff  — including the receptionist, and they have to provide the kinds of information that people need to make the right decisions. The best tools are those that get the right information to the right people at the right time. 

Consider the Behaviour You are Rewarding

‘You get what you reward.’ What actions are you rewarding, and what behaviours are you getting in return? If you want to build a learning organisation, rewarding the behaviours that help you create a learning organisation is essential. Stop rewarding behaviours that are inconsistent with building a learning organisation, such as subjectivity and individualism. The sooner you accomplish this, the better. 

Stanley Jeremiah
Goodwins Law Corporation
E-mail: stanley_jeremiah@goodwinslaw.com