LDRS 310 BA in Leadership Team Learning Case Study
Today’s organizations are struggling to adapt to an increasingly complex world undergoing rapid change. Homer-Dixon (2003) describes the problem as an ingenuity gap—that is, there is a growing gap between the complexity, pace and unpredictability of events facing organizations and our collective ability to be smart enough at the right time, and in the right places, to keep pace with the emerging challenges and opportunities. A promising strategy for organizations to close this gap is to become more intentional about learning (Garvin, 2000; Marquardt, 2011; Senge, 1990). This learning organization approach to adaptation seeks to enhance an organization’s ability to (a) know what to do, (b) do what it knows, and (c) continuously grow its capacity to learn new things and act on new knowledge (Garvin, 2000; Senge, 1990). How can leaders help an organization learn? Marquardt (2011) argues action learning is an effective way to build learning organizations, because “action learning groups themselves are mini-learning organizations that model perfectly what a learning organization is and how it should operate” (p. 19). In this paper, I shall reflect on the development of an action learning team I experienced as a student in the context of a university leadership course.
Description of the Situation
The setting of the team learning experience considered in this paper is a third-year university course titled The Learning Organization. The participants are made up of working adult learners with a wide range of cultural and industry backgrounds. Our group met three times over a five-week period using a process called action learning in which we worked together to solve problems and develop leadership and team abilities.
Review of the Action Learning Concept
[Delete this sentence and briefly summarize what is action learning. This section is written as a critical review of the literature on the concept/practice of action learning.]
Action Learning Team Experience
[Delete this sentence and just start writing.]
2. Discussion of the Issues
The analysis of my action learning team experience will consider three basic levels of structure, which Yanowitz, Ober, and Kantor (1995) propose “as a diagnostic and a planning framework to guide learning and enhance performance” (p. 2). First, is the social structures level, which the authors define as [delete this and finish writing this sentence] . Second, the face-to-face structures level, or what I will refer in this paper as interpersonal structures, are [delete this and finish writing this sentence] . Third, is the individual structures level, the [delete this and finish writing this sentence] .
Next, I will use these three levels as my framework for analyzing my experience within my team and identifying areas where my team’s performance could be improved.
3. Social Structures
[Delete this and analyse the social structures shaping your group.]
4. Interpersonal Structures
[Delete this and analyse the interpersonal structures of your group.]
5. Individual Structures
[Delete this and analyse how individual structures affected the group.]
6. Summary of Critical Issues
[Delete this and summarize the problem-solving, teamwork and/or leadership development issues that you have observed over the period of the case study.]
Design for Action
[Delete this and write what you feel is the priority issue and why.]
Future Coaching Action
[Delete this and outline what you would do as the action learning coach to continue the group’s development as an action learning team.]
7. Conclusion
[Delete this and write your concluding thoughts on this paper.]
8. References
Garvin, D. A. (2000). Learning in action: A guide to putting the learning organization to work. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.
Homer-Dixon, T. (2003). Human Adaptation and the Ingenuity Gap. Brook Education, 12(3), 1-22.
Marquardt, M. J. (2011). Building the learning organization: Achieving strategic advantage through a commitment to learning (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey.