Part One: Analysis of the Military
The military is a key area that deserves to be given substantial attention in terms of the nature of the choices made by the leadership. The military leadership should be robust and should only further courses that promote learning and improvement within the defense entity. Questions as to whether the military entity is a perfect learning organization has been posed to by many critics. Criticism has clouded the operations of the army as to the credibility of their activities and operations in the war fields. Many lives of soldiers and innocent civilians are lost in absurd circumstances. The situation is not getting better even in several armies across the world. Do the issues that ensue in the military get proper attention? Are there any lessons drawn from the problems and mistakes done in the military department? The situation further triggers the critics to consider the army as an entity that has a learning disability. This paper diagnoses the current situation of the military based on the learning disability of Peter Senge. Relevant archetypes to the military body will be captured. Recommendations and suitable action plan will be drawn based on Peter’s five principles of a Learning Organization. The paper concludes by a presentation of personal mastery of the principles and the lessons learnt from the topic of learning organization.
According to Peter’s theory of learning disability, even the most successful organizations and entities fall short of the potential of becoming effective learning organizations. When proper analyses are done to the activities of such firms, flaws are often encountered with the leadership of the firms resorting to blame games. The military is of no exemption though by design, it is expected to be the most sensitive organization on the land. The expectation of many personalities is that the leadership of the military should not commit any mistakes in their dealings because the lives of the citizens are in their hands. The situation in the military is not any better, and it has been associated with several learning disabilities and flaws as evidenced by the existing system archetypes.
It is not by misfortune that the military learns poorly. The way, in which the military has been designed, the style of management and the way the soldiers have been taught creates vital learning disabilities (Senge, 1990). The occurrence of this phenomenon is attributed to the idea that people are not committed and are ignorant. The flaws that are witnessed in the military that cause mass deaths are experienced because of embracing of ingrained belief systems rather ineffective practices. The common system archetype that is witnessed in the military is that of “I am my position.” The leadership of the military has often confused their identities with their job positions. The military resist initiatives for change due to the fear that the change will alter the way in which they do their jobs. The fear of the change in their identity is also exhibited. Currently, many officers in the military are less receptive to change (Black, 2005). They tend to associate change to the idea that campaigning for change will insinuate that the military is weak, and this will ultimately belittle their identity. The feeling also limits the level of interaction among the soldiers and the leadership. Minimal interaction among the leaders has led to the development of little sense of responsibility towards any other position.
Most of the times, the military has also been seen to practice blame games when things fail to work out in their way. The notion that, “the enemy is out there,” has been held long. It has been used to offer an explanation for many flaws. Currently, many military entities often blame the enemy for being strong and for causing the deaths that occur. When fighting the enemy, one has to be prepared to face death. Death is what the military should be well prepared to avoid. Instead of blaming their structures for causing the mess, the blame continues to be placed on the external enemy and on their changing tactics. The practice of shifting the burden has led to the lack of proper comprehension of how the problems that occur can be solved appropriately. If the military had ceased to extract themselves from the vicinity of the problems, they would have had a better opportunity to concentrate on the plans of solving the problems that they caused. The shift of the burden has led to the tripling of the number of the active duty soldiers who get involved in sex crimes and shift the blames on innocent members of the public since 2003. A number of the soldiers who have been rendered disabled are 675000 in the U.S in the two wars over that past decade. The saddening events would have been avoided if the military had not shifted the blames to an outside enemy.
The system archetype that can be associated with the case of the military is “success to the successful.” It is a state where efforts are in a competition for the same resources during the time of allocation. The most successful effort is granted a disproportionate greater share of the resources to the disadvantage of the other less successful projects. The success of the project with less resource allocation is, therefore, hindered further as the growth in the other entity increases. The picture of unfavorable resource allocation is witnessed in the military entity. Most of the resources are channeled towards the purchase of military armament as opposed to the remuneration of the soldiers (Flynn, 2013). It is because the soldiers are seen to underperform in the field while the presence of the armament is deemed to be a sign of better preparedness for war. The leadership overlooks the idea of providing effective remuneration to the soldiers who are responsible for the use of the machines. The military would rather invest in machines than in human resources.
Part Two: Recommendations and Action Plan for the Military
The military as analyzed above is faced with unending problems of learning disability based on the problems highlighted. The leadership is faced with the passion for resisting reforms that would revolutionize the sector. The blame game on the flaws that occur and the shifting of the burdens has also been seen to exist among the military experts. The system archetype associated with the allocation of resources is also witnessed widely in the military entity. Relevant recommendations and appropriate action plan will be established to help revolutionize the sector and to make the military a better learning organization.
Personal Mastery
A vivid action plan on solving the issues of the military should be worked out based on the disciplines of Peter Senge. To begin with, the discipline of personal learning and growth, Personal Mystery, should be embraced. It has been established that people with personal mastery continuously expand their ability to create desired results that they seek in life. Therefore, for effective achievement of the goals in the military, the leadership should embrace the idea of emphasizing on the benefits of personal mastery. In doing this, the leaders should continually clarify the important elements within the sector. They should boost the initiatives of the workers to see the reality of the life events more clearly. The leadership should learn to appreciate that learning is a long life process, and they should exercise patience in waiting to see the results of learning. The integration of intuition and reason in the dealing of the offices within the military should be encouraged (Owoyemi, 2011). Personal vision should be triggered in the individuals. Personal vision will help the military officers feel alive at work. The workers in the military should be guided in identifying the creative tension within them to instill substantial energy to drive the workers towards achieving the vision of the organization. Above all, the need to instill a good coping strategy in the military is quite important.
Mental Models
The military should undertake various initiatives in line with the mental model discipline. The initiatives will change the way the workers in the military see the world and what it has in store for them. How the military views the enemy is inclusive. The military need to be effectively trained on how to avoid pitfalls when making judgments. The military should be taught how to leap through abstractions. The initiative will assist soldiers in desisting from rushing into conclusions when dealing with the enemy (Tyrrell, 2006). The perceptions of undermining the strength of the enemy shall also be done away with effectively. The members of the military organization should be encouraged to ask other colleagues about their opinions before rushing to conclude anything about a given aspect. Dialog should, therefore, be embraced to the latter. The military officers should be taken through lessons on how to go through the ladder of inference, as it will also help in improving their delivery in the line of duty.
Shared Vision
The military officers should be led into a session of identifying the shared vision of the organization. Instead of fighting for a goal and vision that is unknown, the soldiers should be made to comprehend the course for which they are fighting. They should be guided through the understanding of the deeper meaning that exists in the purpose of the military and the core values of their entity. The activities of the military should be gaged to check whether they correlate with the existing mission, mission and the core values of the organization. The individuals should then be led into coming up with personal visions. Enthusiasm, commitment and communication should be enforced among the members of the military during the process of deepening the comprehension of values of the organization. If all this is undertaken successfully, the extent of connectedness of the individuals to the larger goal and vision of the military organization will be manifested.
Team Learning
Team learning process encompasses developing and aligning the capacity of the team to produce results that the members envision and desire. The team is said to be aligned if the team functions as a whole. The military should work on the realignment of their departments to conform to a given state of perfection. The realignments serve to ensure that there is unity in undertaking the activities of the military. The realignment should focus of the individual and the group. It is necessary to do so to ensure that both the group and the individual is empowered and prepared for change and learning experience. The military body should embrace insightful thinking when dealing with complex a complex issue. The military need to be innovative in the coordination of action. The teams should also be made to understand that their actions trigger influences on the activities undertaken by the other teams. In implementing, team learning in the military discussions on various issues should be encouraged. Divergent viewpoints should be welcomed and defended with substantial facts. The culture of dialog should be adopted by the military organization. Reflection and inquiry should characterize the process of dialog. During the process of indulging in dialog, group insights should be created; the complex issues should be explored, and the dialog should be divergent at the start. Towards the end of the dialog, a course to converge the divergent viewpoints into one elaborate thought should be pursued. The individual thoughts should be observed during the course of the dialog. Dialogue is quite important for group learning as it contributes in revealing of the hidden prejudice that is derived from the beliefs of an organization (Hehir, 2004).
System Thinking
The military should embrace the system thinking approach in their actions. It should recognize the elements of departments that make up a larger system. It should value all the department equally even when allocating resources. The organization and coordination of the arms of the military should be perfect to ensure that there is no collision when carrying out obligations. The interaction between the arms should also be encouraged to a great extent so as to facilitate the execution of activities that require the participation of more than one department. The military should understand that making adjustments to any branch of the system should not cause it to fluctuate. The stability of the body must not waiver. Another important aspect of the system that the military should observe is the creation of a system of feedback. May actions can be undertaken, but without feedback the administration cannot be sure of the extent of progress of the military.
Action Plan on Resource Distribution
The issue of disparity in resource allocation should be tackled in a more carefully. The allocation of more resources on the purchasing of arms is ill advised, though it seems to be more justified. Provision of inadequate remuneration to the soldiers is inappropriate as it serves to demotivate them. The outline of addressing this problem should be as follows. The people concerned should be made aware of the situation that has ensued. The outcome of the situation should be outlined appropriately and weighed. In this case, the outcomes of under-paying the soldiers should be reflected upon vividly. The entities that are competing for attention should be linked for a win-win outcome. The competitive link between the entities should then be broken or weakened. Afterward, the resource allocation should be done on a different basis from the ones that were used initially. The basis of success should not be the sole criterion for deciding on the amount of resources to allocate to a given entity. There could be other limiting factors that hinder the growth of the entity that is underperforming. A close analysis of the basis for allocation should be done. The military should then plan to expand the available resources to reduce the tendency of scrambling between entities (Cooper and Roll, 2004).
Part III: Personal Mastery
The lesson was quite interesting and compatible with my ability and interests in wanting to learn more in the subjects of learning organizations. Over the learning session, I have come to learn of many new concepts about the corporate world. I had always wondered why organizations fail in to execute their activities in a changing environment. The answers to the question have been successfully reached. I learned that organizations, however large, may have learning disabilities that could contribute in bringing them down. The military has been an area of interests and through the lesson I have learnt to associate the problems that engulfs it to the learning disabilities.
I have known that embracing dialog in the course of carrying out the activities of the organization is vital. Through it, individuals get to share information and the levels of interaction are also boosted. The importance of working as a system has also been portrayed. With effective coordination of all the arms of the organization, the probability of achieving the goals of the organization is enhanced. Therefore, treating all the arms of the organization equally is of importance. Resource allocation mechanisms should also be fair. The lesson helped me understand the season why some organizations can do poorly in some sectors and perform very well in others. The criterion of allocating resources can cause this phenomenon to occur. I have also learnt the importance of widening the resource base so as to minimize conflicts that may arise during the distribution process. Organizations that have enough resources get involved in conflicts less often.
The key changes that I would propose to the whole idea of trying to be a perfect learning organization is that introducing too much formality in the process of learning of individuals should be discouraged. Research shows that informal learning is quite effective than the formal learning (Streumer, 2006). Therefore, it is important for the organizations to consider putting in place programs that facilitate learning in bits so as to help the employees learn faster in the job environment. I have also observed that the current workforce in every sector desires to be rewarded. The idea of introducing a better strategy of rewarding employees can boost the receptiveness of the employees to new and vibrant ideas that can help them achieve their goals (Connor et al., 2007).
Application of Disciplines in Leadership
The application of the disciplines of Senge in leadership is vital. Leaders should learn to allow people to make mistakes. I believe that the best learning that an individual can experience is learning based on a mistake. Mistakes should be the steppingstone of a learning organization. As a leader, mobilizing workers in claiming a shared vision will be my priority. My strategy of achieving this will be through the creation of regular sessions of interaction. During the sessions, the corporate values and the vision of the organization will be elaborated to everyone. Blame game in the organization will not be condoned. Leaders within my docket who have been proved to have involved themselves in any king of blame game shall be dropped. Accountability and responsibility for one’s action will be emphasized. In case a problem occurs, the leader should rally the employees into observing and keenly taking note of the reasons for the occurrence to avoid repetition of the same. Above all, as a leader I will always act as designer to create realistic objectives, a teacher to alleviate ignorance in the minds of the employees and as a steward to employ better management skills at work.
In conclusion, learning organization are organizations that embrace progressive learning of new ways of undertaking duties. The military as an organization has been criticized for weaknesses in carrying out their obligation. Various learning disabilities have been associated with the body. With proper implementation of the recommendations of the action plans outlined, the military can revolutionize its systems to align to a given state of perfection. The coursework has been effective in instilling fresh knowledge and in inspiring students to be good leaders in the future.
References
Black, J. (2005). Military Organizations and Military Change in Historical Perspective. The Journal of Military History, 62(4), 871.
Connor, B. N., Bronner, M., & Delaney, C. (2007). Learning at work how to support individual and organizational learning. Amherst, Mass.: HRD Press.
Cooper, R. V., & Roll, C. R. (2003). The allocation of military resources; implications for capital-labor substitution. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corp.].
Flynn, M. E. (2013). Military Leadership, Institutional Change, and Priorities in Military Spending. Foreign Policy Analysis, 23(3), 23-34.
Hehir, J. B. (2004). Liberty and power a dialogue on religion and U.S. foreign policy in an unjust world. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Owoyemi, O. A. (2011). Exploring Workplace Bullying in a Para-Military Organization (PMO) in the UK: A Qualitative Study. International Business Research, 4(2), 23-34.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday/Currency.
Streumer, J. N. (2006). Work-related learning. Dordrecht: Springer.
Tyrrell, F. H. (2006). Modern Methods of Military Organization. Royal United Services Institution. Journal, 52(365), 936-947.
