Organisational Learning

Learning is a developmental process that integrates thinking and doing. It provides a link between the past and the future, requiring us to look for meaning in our actions and giving purpose to our thoughts. Learning enriches what we do as individuals and collectively, and is central to organisational effectiveness, to developing the quality of our work and to organisational adaptability, innovation and sustainability.

No-one would deny the importance of learning to our development as individuals and yet we often find it difficult to apply our understanding of learning to our work together in NGOs. In some ways the importance of learning to NGOs seems obvious and yet we are surrounded by evidence of how organisations find it difficult to translate understanding into practical action.

To be a learning NGO requires organisations to balance the need to take a strategic approach to organisational learning (at the highest level of organisational planning and management) with the recognition that learning is also an intensely personal process that goes on in the minds of individuals.

Although much has been written on the conceptual frameworks for organisational learning and knowledge management, most of these are ‘Western’-orientated and people are still concerned about how to translate these theories into practice.