Tuesday, May 19, 2015

LEARNING ORGANIZATION.


My philosophy about learning organization comprises the notion of creating effective learning processes which will allow for continuous improvement of the policies, strategies, and structures of organization to strive for better. Learning organizations will help organization in creating and design possible ways of improving skills and knowledge in these competitive rapidly growth world. Over the years, a clear definition of learning organization has not found. David A. Garvin constructed a fairly general definition: “A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.’’7.
There are different ways how to promote learning organization in an institutional. There are building blocks which support learning organization; a supportive learning environment is one of them where by the leaders are responsible to create learning environment, where the employees will be very comfortable to open up with their contractive ideas, taking risks and explore the unknown and these can be done if the employees they are not overwhelming with busy schedule which give them the room to think analytically and put that idea to work for improvement and innovation.
Leaders should allow the mistake as challenge and these give employee to look for a better ways how to fix the situation so that will never happen again in future. The concrete learning process and practice is another block for building learning organization; these involve collection and interpretation of information’s in an organization. Employees should be given chance develop experiment for the new products, to identify and solve problems, seminars that will give them awareness of competitive, customers and technology trends and have a better system to share all the knowledge throughout the organization . Leadership reinforcement is another block for building learning organization; leader will play role as a teacher and mentor which means they are actively listen and ask question to employees. Leaders who spending time to  identify problems and share they are concerns and challenges with employees actually  give people power to finds new ideas, alternatives and other options to solve and share among themselves. Also, when you give the employees the opportunity to develop their skills is more likely to assure them with their expertise and facilitate their commitment to the organization. It’s give the employees the ability to be self direct and more responsibility and eager to learn more skills at work.
Johnson (2002) considers visioning, empowerment and leader’s role in learning as crucial skills for leaders of learning of learning organization. Building a learning organization needs to be flexible, adaptive to a changing environment. The leadership plays a very big role in the process; Senge (1990) which identified leaders as teacher and mentor, designer and stewards. They must initiate all the three the learning building blocks to develop learning organization. The successful of this will require a mix of different people, with different positions and who lead in different ways and have different experiences in different expertise to make a best learning organization.
In conclusion I would like to suggest that, organization must be kept on their agenda openness of learning, in order to maintain adaptability and flexibility in an ever changing world, the importance of organizational learning as a strategy for adaptation is impossible to overstate.  As I have stated above in creating a learning environment it is important to replace confrontational attitudes with an open culture that promotes inquiry and trust. The most successful visions build on the individual visions of the employees at all levels of the organization, thus the creation of a shared vision can be hindered by traditional structures where the company vision is imposed from above. The benefit of team or shared learning is that staffs grow more quickly and the problem solving capacity of the organization is improved through better access to knowledge and expertise. Learning organizations have structures that facilitate team learning with features such as boundary crossing and openness.


References
Gavin, D. A. (1993).  Building a learning organization. Harvard Business Review, 71(4), 78-91.
Johnson, J.R. 2002. Leading the learning organization: portrait of four leaders. Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 23(5):141-150
Senge, P. M. (1990). The leader's new work: Building learning organizations. MITSloan Management Review, Magazine: Fall 1990.


Monday, March 23, 2015

DEALING WITH DIFFICULTY PERSONALITIES?




Tips questions about dealing with difficult people:

  • Can you recall the last time you had to deal with a negative or difficult person?


  • Or the last time someone said something with the intention of hurting you? How did you handle it?


  • What was the result? What can you do in the future to get through these situations with peace and grace?


  • It is true that wherever we are going we will face people who are negative and who will oppose what you think it is right.


  • How can we handle negative situation when it happens?


Why we need to be careful when we are dealing with negative people or negative issues?

The Bible gives us some practical guidelines for managing difficult people. The first is found in Matthew 18:15-17 and Ephesians 4:15. Both of these passages instruct us to confront difficult people privately and in love. Take the initiative; but in doing so, be sure you are fair, firm and friendly.

According to the Bible the way to deal with difficult people is to love them, pray for them, expect to give rather than to receive, maintain a humble spirit, and relate to them in patience and kindness.

The Bible also cautions us that we also need to examine ourselves before judging others by praying for the Spirit’s power to change our own hearts and minds toward the difficult person and enable us to see them as needing the same love, grace and mercy that God extended toward us.

We have a clear example of Jesus forgave the men who were going to kill him, as we read in Luke 23:34-39. The way to deal with difficult people, then, is to practice Christ’s humility and love. That kind of response is both edifying to us and pleasing to the Lord. Pope John Paul II Demonstrating with his personal deeds, he visited the man who attempted to kill him and forgave him for his wrong doing. He exhorted the faithful to be merciful as our Heavenly Father is merciful. So what about us do we always utilize this merciful tool in our life towards difficult people?

If in our life we don’t do that what we create is holding grudge what does this means in our life, it is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. But we forget that the only person we hurt is ourselves. When we react to negativity, we are disturbing our inner space and mentally creating pain within ourselves.
Why people initiate negativity, it looks like it is a reflection of their inner state expressed externally and sometimes because our ego likes problems and conflict. People are often so bored and unhappy with their own lives that they want to take others down with them.

As I have explained before that when we are in a negative state or holding a grudge against someone, we don’t feel very good. We carry that energy with us as we go about our day. When we don’t feel very good, we lose sight of clarity and may react unconsciously to matters in other areas of our lives, unnecessarily.

We can run away from the truth that we are humans after all, and we have emotions and egos. And we need to understand that Negative people can be a source of energy. When you find yourself identifying with emotions and thoughts, bring your focus on your breath.  Need to remember that when we are  dealing with difficult people, don’t try to change the other person; you will only get into a power struggle, cause defensiveness, invite criticism, or otherwise make things worse. It also makes you a more difficult person to deal with.

Therefore lowering your expectations of people will make you more comfortable with difficult as James 1:19-20: said that "So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God"