The Wisdom of Strategic Learning: The self managed learning solution (2nd Edition)

by Ian Cunningham

Many organisations recognize that all too often they are 'information rich but knowledge poor' - the information is increasingly available but the ability to use it has not kept pace with its accumulation.

Associated with the concept of knowledge management is the need for organisations to collect, store and analyse data efficiently and to be able to access and use the information. And it is that last feature - being able to use knowledge - which is the hardest part of the process. It is here that the interface exists between knowledge and learning. As the great American humorist Dorothy Parker once observed, "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think!" The technology exists today to make managers and their organisations knowledge wealthy, but the ability to use that knowledge for the benefit of the organisation is not bundled with the software - managers have to supply that themselves.

It is here that Cunningham's model of strategic learning makes a significant contribution. He argues that management development has to be self-managed - that managers must take responsibility for their own learning, setting objectives and monitoring their own performance, but that this must be done in the context of an organisational strategy to encourage and support learning and to use it for the benefit of the organisation. He suggests that organisations fall into one of four categories when it comes to supporting management learning:

• Apathetic/antagonistic - the 'why train them, they'll only leave' school of thought.
• Reactive - to individual initiative or external threat, using development as a palliative rather than constructively, to develop the organisation.
• Bureaucratic - where learning = training, and where access is based on grade or role, rather than need or opportunity.
• Strategic - business needs and learning activity are linked together, and senior managers actively support and encourage management development through coaching, mentoring and other strategies as well resourcing it.

This ARBS model is one that many managers and management trainers will recognise, I've no doubt. The problem is - how do you convert to being a strategic learning organisation? The starting point is to recognise that conventional notions of strategy, whereby you forecast the future, plan for it and then monitor performance to see that actuality matches the plans, is increasingly untenable. The world has become more and more unstable, and in an unstable world, we are faced with a variety of possible futures. Strategic learning means preparing as much for the unforeseen as for the foreseen, an uncomfortable situation for many managers who yearn for certainty. In this context, management development needs to be tied into what managers are doing and the signals that they are receiving from the world they inhabit, so that they focus on addressing their own learning needs whilst they deal with the challenges facing their organisations.

However, Cunningham is hard on the notion of competence, comparing it rather blithely with capability and with wisdom, which he ranks higher in value. In part this reflects a rather narrow view of competence and also a because he fails to relate the three concepts. Capability he defines much in the way of personal competences, the ability to learn, be self aware and solve problems for example, whereas he defines competence very much as a set of behaviours which are learnt mechanically. Wisdom he appears to see as what is elsewhere called 'meta-knowledge' - the ability to judge what knowledge, competence or capability is appropriate to the circumstance. The one weakness in the book, for me, is the failure to emphasise that these are inter-related and relevant at different times. The ability to do something which needs doing, and to do it consistently well, is what competence is all about. The ability to understand and to draw on a knowledge bank, to apply skills and techniques to particular situation and to explain why things happen the way they do is capability. And the ability to examine a situation, to recognise when you are faced with a problem which demands a conventional solution and when it doesn't, to recognise when you have the ability to deal with it and when you don't, and the ability to reflect and learn from your successes and your mistakes, all these are the beginning of wisdom.

Dominc Swords of the Henley Centre once described an aeroplane coming in to land; the airline has said that it is committed to:

• Getting it right first time, every time
• Continuous improvement
• Innovation

Which of these strategies would you wan the pilot to be implementing as the 'plane lands? This is the challenge for managers and management developers, to select the model of management behaviour and learning which is appropriate at the time - and to be able to distinguish between them so that the right decision about the decision-making process can be made.

The centrepiece of the book, a model of self managed learning based around action learning sets (see our last issue for Bernard Blain's article on learning sets in the building industry) demonstrates how these traits can be developed by managers, and the book is worth reading solely for Part Four, in which Cunningham outlines a strategy and tactics for implementing a self managed learning model. There is much to learn in the book - and some ideas which can be challenged, but managers and management developers alike will get a lot of value from it and from reflecting on their practices and assumptions about the role of learning in their organisations.

Publisher and Price: Gower £45

Review from 'Progress' published by NEBS Management, June 1999