Nokia

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5034784.html

Team learning is the second of Peter Senge’s group-centric disciplines outlined in his book The Fifth Discipline, and it's the final discipline we will cover in this series of articles. From the perspective of the nimble project manager, team learning has absolutely nothing to do with training. Team learning in this context focuses instead on the transmission of both tacit and explicit knowledge throughout the group as well as the creation of an environment in which focused creativity can flourish.

Previous articles in this series

The first five articles in our exploration of Peter Senge's core disciplines discussed personal mastery, the concept of mental models, systems thinking, and shared vision:

"Develop 'personal mastery' for effective project management"

"How to understand the bias of mental models"

“Understanding your mental models can help sharpen PM skills”

"Adopt systems thinking strategy to boost project success"

"Shared vision: A key to project success"

Senge defines three dimensions of team learning that we will want to explore:

The ability to think insightfully about complex issues

The ability to take innovative, coordinated action

The ability to create a network that will allow other teams to take action as well

Thinking about complex issues

Senge defines a good systems thinker in an organizational setting as "…someone who can see four levels operating simultaneously: events, patterns of behavior, systems, and mental models.”

One of the key elements of team learning is a willingness to deeply explore a problem. We can develop this skill individually using personal mastery, but something unique happens when we bring our willingness to explore a problem into a group situation. According to Senge, a group's collective IQ is much higher than the IQ in an individual if the group can coalesce and begin to use each other as a springboard for understanding and...