ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

THE LEARNING CULTURE AND THE LEARNING LEADER 405top-down training program, but as experience in the field accumulated,the learning process has shifted to local innovation, which isthen circulated to the rest of the organization. Innovative solutionsto environmental, health, and safety issues are captured in videotapesand circulated throughout the organization. Monthly awardlunches are held, at which successful teams meet with senior managementand each other to share “how they did it” and to communicatesolutions to other teams.In the end we have to recognize that even the concept of learningis heavily colored by cultural assumptions and that learning canmean very different things in different cultures and subcultures. Thedimensions I listed above reflect only my own cultural understandingand should therefore be taken only as a first approximation ofwhat a learning culture should emphasize.As we do more research at the national, organizational, andsubgroup levels, other dimensions will surface. It does seem obvious,however, that some conceptual clarity about how we get organizationsto learn and—to learn faster—is becoming a priority issue,and that we cannot get such clarity without tackling the difficultconceptual problem of how a culture itself can be a perpetual learningsystem.To summarize, the learning culture must assume that:• The world can be managed• It is appropriate for humans to be proactive problem solvers• Reality and truth must be pragmatically discovered• Human nature is basically good and in any case mutable• The best kind of time horizon is somewhere between far andnear future• The best kinds of units of time are medium-length ones• Accurate and relevant information must be capable of flowingfreely in a fully connected network• Diverse but connected units are desirable