Dealing with change  is one of the biggest challenges most business and team face. Google ‘dealing with change’ and you will get almost 9 million results. The concept of the learning organization enabled Peter Senge and his various collaborators articulate a way of looking at change and it’s connection with learning.

When we look for a definition of ‘life’ we find it best described as something with the capacity to learn. In other words anything incapable of learning is (by this particular definition) as ‘dead’.  Is your team dead or alive by this definition. The team and organization most capable of learning is going to be the most capable of coping with the rapid rate of change occurring  in the business (and global) arena. Developing the Collaborative Intelligence of a team is a really good way to encourage the learning that is so vital to it’s health.

Taken from ‘The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook’ Peter Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard Ross and Bryan Smith:

‘If there is one single thing a learning organization does well, it is helping people embrace change. People in learning organizations react more quickly when their environment changes because they know how to anticipate changes that are going to occur (which is different than trying to predict the future), and how to create the kinds of changes they want. Change and learning may not exactly be synonymous, but they are inextricably linked.’