Thursday 9 September 2010

5 tools for understanding and assessing organisational learning

Organisational learning is a vast discipline full of theories, models and frameworks.  The ability for an individual, team or organisation to learn is a key factor in determining whether the results of a project will be sustainable beyond the duration of the project.


  1. The Society for Organisational Learning is the home of the topic and the first port of call for information. There is an excellent overview of OL for beginners and the timeline is interesting for anyone who feels they have heard something similar before but not sure when.
  2. SCSI (Social care institute for excellence) has a resource pack that works well for health and social care public sector programs. This pack is designed to allow organisations to assess whether they are a learning organisation, that is, an organisation that uses evidence-based practice and informed decision-making. The resource pack will be beneficial to chief executives, senior managers, frontline staff, service users and carers. The pack has been developed by SCIE Practice Development staff, in collaboration with service users, carers and staff in social care. We would like to thank all those who contributed to the production of this resource pack.
  3. Harvard Business Review have an online version of an OL survey for personal use. It links to the article,  "Is Yours a Learning Organization?"
  4. The Learning Needs Analysis Toolkit is a useful source not only for the survey but also a variety of links to underpinning theories.
  5. European Consortium for Learning Organisations has resources for download with a knowledge management bias.
The above links comprise only a small selection of a vast quantity of resources available.  Feel free to add your favourite link in the comments below.

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