Abstract
The purpose of the assignment is to present recommendations for NCOA through using the Senge’s five disciplines of the learning organization. It has been determined that the organization is suffering for the issues system archetypes such as shifting the burden and limit to growth. The organization is not able to deliver the latest knowledge of supply techniques. The top management of the organization lacks in personal mastery, as leaders preferred traditional systems and wanted that instructor also follow the same.
The failure of the organization in achieving its goals is the evidence that the firm is suffering from shared vision problem. Therefore, some recommendations have been proposed about the ways the organization can use these disciplines of learning organization in NCOA and the ways of implementing these disciplines within the NCOA.
-Define five disciplines of the learning organization within the NCOA
-Systems Thinking
The system is a combination of elements that interact to function as whole; system thinking is a discipline that evolved out from system theory and encourages the practical use of system theory. System thinking is the cornerstone of all other four disciplines, for standing the other four disciplines, system thinking is important (Senge et al., 1994; Senge, 2006). System thinking allows organizations to realize the organizational structure, events, and patterns. It allows organizations to determine the real cause of issues and suggests the ways through which these issues can be resolved. It is a system of observing interrelationships for seeing patterns of change. The organization is lacking in system thinking, as the company is not able to realize the practices that affect the system as whole and due to which delays are occurring in approving designed courses by instructors. In result, things that are taught to soldiers become outdated. The major purpose of instructors at the organization was to instruct the future logistical soldiers about the greatest and latest supply techniques. The organization is not able to realize the issues that are creating the problem for training soldiers with outdated material despite introducing latest changes in the course (Smith, 2008).
-Personal Mastery
Personal mastery refers to the commitment of life long learning of individuals. It is a keystone of learning organization. The fundamental component of personal mastery is to see and tell the truth. It has been perceived that at the organization, no one is interested in either seeing the truth or telling the truth because the organization is constantly suffering from a problem, and no one is considering the problem. For the assessment of current reality, it is pivotal that leaders or management solicit both optimistic and pessimistic from people around themselves. The learning organization is dependent on the wish of its individuals to aspire and grow to greater knowledge. However, it has been observed that the upper management of G-army has an abundance of midlevel managers; leaders at the upper-level were just not traditional but also wanted other to be traditional like them. This means that people in NCOA or upper management at the organization lacked in personal mastery, as they are not willing to gain knowledge (Smith, 2008).
-Mental Models
Mental models are the ways people sense and view of the world in the system. Everyone has mental models, and organizations cannot avoid them. Mental models are the explanation of the thought process of an individual about the ways things work in real world. Mental models influence the way individual react and interact to situations. For being successful, it is essential that people in the organization understand mental models. If the incomplete or faulty mental models of thinking processes are shared by core people working in the organization, then results can be devastating. The leaders of NACO are involved in wrong mental models they do not want to learn any think and perceive the world around them in the traditional manner that is creating problems for the organization (Smith, 2008).
-Building Shared Vision
Organizations for inspiring people around the common sense of destiny and identity require shared vision. Building a shared vision is a procedure of examination the organizational members’ individual visions and searching for commonalities that can emerge into one. For the success of the organization, it is pivotal that all instructors give their efforts to a shared vision of providing an advanced learning experience to soldiers. However, the case analysis disclosed that instructors are not able to provide greatest and latest knowledge regarding supply techniques to future logistical soldiers. This situation demonstrates that the organization is failing in its vision of teaching soldiers new supply technique that depicts the lacking of shared vision. Means the G-army’s top management was not on one page in term of vision (Smith, 2008).
-Team Learning
Team learning is an important aspect of learning organization. Learning organization is based on team learning, as if people do not come together, then organizations cannot learn. Team learning is a procedure of creating required results for having goals in mind and working together for the attainment of those goals. Team learning becomes a channel for learning all through the company. For being a learning organization, it is essential for NCOA to build a team learning organization, as it will help the organization in surpassing the individual’s intelligence (Smith, 2008).
-Recommendations on how to use the five disciplines of the learning organization within the NCOA
The tools that have been presented in the first section of recommendation can be used to promote the environment of learning and can encourage sustainable change within the organization. The purpose of this section is to present the strategies through which these tools can be used to sustain and promote long-term change.
-Systems Thinking
A system is a set of systematic structures. Understanding cycles and patterns are referred as feedback loops, and feedback loops drive every change that occurs over time. Learning organizations are system thinkers they understand that every action brings some reaction that in turn can create future problems. They do not blame something that is external and believes on interconnection. It has been determined that the organization is suffering from system archetypes problems such as limited growth and shifting burden. The organization to reduce these issues should focus on describing constant feedback loops. The army is changing its course in every few years, and the instructor is not able to keep that course, so rather focusing on the improvements, of course, the army first should focus on removing the limits that are leading instructors to teach the outdated material to soldiers. The organization is shifting the burden because the army may know the fundamental solution to the real problem, but unwilling to do so (Braun, 2002; Goffin, 2013).
-Personal Mastery
Personal mastery convinces people that the vision is important, and they need to change their lives to reach that vision. Personal mastery encourages them to be committed to achieve those goals and they feel compelled, the attainment of those goals. The organization can use the personal mastery for moving from traditional ways to modern ways. Personal mastery does not mean the acquisition of more information, but it is the description of proficiency of special level. Personal mastery encourages individuals to be best that will serve the organization with best soldiers. The discipline takes individuals beyond the compilation of good ideas that help in organizational growth. The organization can use personal mastery for thinking out of the box solutions, to understand the changes that are required in the organization, to build a culture of collaboration and control issues proactively (Martins, 2015; Smith, 2008).
-Mental Models
It is essential that mental models are managed as they prevent organizational practices and powerful insights from becoming implemented. The process of mental model starts with self-reflection. Mental models are beliefs and ideas that guide the actions of people; they use these models to explain their cause and effect and to give meaning to their experiences. The problem with mental models is that if they are not defined, they are not recognized. Unrecognized mental model is a trap that prevents individual from future learning. The organization or top management should use the mental models for challenging their practices and processes otherwise; these wrong practices will become the norm that will continue to harm the organization with late approvals and outdated learning. Lack of mental models is same as a wrong mental model (Creative advantage, 2016).
-Building Shared Vision
The vision of NCOA is to prepare future logistic soldiers with greatest and latest techniques. A shared vision is not only a dream, but the organization can also use shared vision for the collection of particular ideas and actions that individuals for the attainment of organizational goal can put into action. The organization can use the shared vision to build the trust culture of teamwork. For example, in the absence of shared vision instructors may believe that the top management is taking work from them for their own benefit not for the organization (Smith, 2008).
-Team Learning
The organization can use team-building techniques for finding commonalities in purpose and direction while efforts harmonize. The firm through team building learning environment can align and develop the capacity of organizational members for creating the desired outcome of offering the knowledge of latest supply techniques to future logistics soldiers. It is clear that the organization never realized the fundamental purpose of providing the knowledge of greatest and latest supply techniques to future logistics soldiers. Collaborative learning will allow the organization to realize the difficulties are occurring in the attainment organizational goals and gain effective solution for the problem. It will also increase the confidence of staff and will help instructors in achieving their goals of offering latest knowledge through developing course guideline collectively. The approval process will be short as collaborative learning will allow top management to be the part of course design that will enable them to make approval quickly (Smith, 2008).
-Action plan for implementing the five disciplines of the learning organization within the NCOA
-Systems Thinking
It has been determined that the process of course approval is lengthy that cause to delay the course that its reach to its limit and get outdated that in result limit the growth and this is because of not applying the fundamental solution to the problem (shifting the burden). Therefore, first, the organization should facilitate the real-time exchange of information through enhancing collaboration and integration. For this purpose, the army should use latest communication technologies so the course can be designed by considering all the future perspective and approval process can be speed up. This will allow the organization to identify balancing loops and potential limits to the growth and changes required in the system to deal with those limits. The army can map the quick fixes to keep the issues under control through identifying the impact of solutions on the overall organization. Collaborative organizational culture is a key to realize real issues and find fundamental solutions to those issues (Braun, 2002).
-Personal Mastery
For bringing the personal mastery in the organization and make it true learning place, the company needs to encourage people who have personal mastery by distinguishing them from those who do not have. The organization should practice personal mastery, as top management before making any decision regarding courses should consult with instructors and should think of the outcome that can be the result of designed plan. The army and top management need to focus on the processes as well with the desired results that will help them in building personal mastery. For practicing personal mastery, management can learn to keep a clear picture of current reality and personal vision. This practice creates tension; and the most common solution to resolve this tension is to move towards what management wants (SOL, 2016; Smith, 2008).
-Mental Models
For the implementation of mental models, the organization can take action that it can encourage people to contribute in decision-making and share their ideas if they find different possibilities to solve the problems. The company should encourage instructors to question practices and procedure of the organizations. The organization should build the culture where instructors can find the mistake and discuss opportunities. The organization should ensure that the firm is open to change and will not just adopt the suggested change but will help others in moving them forward. The mental model is a set of believes the army contain about its practices that need to be challenged (Creative Advantage, 2016).
-Building Shared Vision
Building Shared Vision is fundamental to learning organizations, as people seek to learn only when they are interested in accomplishing something. Learning organizations with shared visions encourage their individual to develop their personal visions. By putting the individual vision together, the organization can generate a powerful synergy for enabling collective achievements. The organization should pent-up the tensions over current concerns and problems. Allow people to talk about their hopes, as through this people realize commonalities that lead them to actions. In other words, create shared vision; honestly describe current realities of NCOA that will create tension. The tension will force to build strategies and actions to move forward from the situation. Communicate the plan to employees that would help in gaining personal commitment (how it’s lived).
-Team Learning
Build team-learning environment through implementing advanced technologies and sharing the sense that two heads are better than one. Make sure that people in teams communicate with each other. Educate people in dialogues; give importance to other’s experiences and opinions. Share thoughts and asks instructors and other members to give their own perspective towards problems and their solutions. Encourage open communication and respect the ideas of others by not opposing directly. Build the environment of trust, ensure that from top management to the lower level of employees all are involved in collective learning (Smith, 2008).
References
Braun, W. (2002). The System Archetypes. Retrieved June 14, 2016, form http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gpr/PAD724/724WebArticles/sys_archetypes.pdf
Creative Advantage. (2016). Mental Model. Retrieved June 14, 2016, form http://www.createadvantage.com/glossary/mental-model
Goffin, S. T. (2013). Early Childhood Education for a New Era: Leading for Our Profession.
Martins, A. T. (2015). Personal Mastery and Leadership in Business. StrategicBusinessTeam.com. Retrieved June 14, 2016, form http://www.strategicbusinessteam.com/self-improvement-advice/personal-mastery-and-leadership-in-business/
Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. NewYork, NY: Currency/ Doubleday.
Senge, P., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Roberts, R. & Smith, B. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday.
Smith, D. S. (2008). The Relationship Between Learning Organizations and Student Achievement in USA: ProQuest.
SOL. (2016). Personal Mastery. Retrieved June 14, 2016, form https://www.solonline.org/?page=PersonalMastery
