Organizational Learning
Collective learning by members of various organizations is a key determinant of the continued performance and survival of their organizations. The process involves discovery of relevant new ideas, sharing these ideas with the members of the organization who need the ideas, and application of the relevant ideas to improve the organizational processes. However, the process of collective learning has faced some challenges since most organizations are unable to master the process. The organizations therefore need to conduct collective learning to ensure that the innovative ideas that are raised during the collective learning are executed accordingly. In my In Class Organization, ICO, the task of selling an App called campus for schools, student record grade, and register class, collective learning was very necessary to ensure that every member in a given department gains full knowledge of the services provided by our ICO.
The main objective for our ICO learning was to prevent the weaknesses in the core processes of discovery, diffusion and application of new ideas. In the department of marketing, we made effort to ensure some key procedures like customer service and advertising are efficient in the case of my ICO. For the process of collective learning to be successful, the members of our organization appointed me as the leader of the process. The task was a challenging one since I had to motivate individuals to work with the new discoveries and to work extra hard to ensure our product captures the interest of many campuses and schools. My leadership influenced the ICO collective learning by encouraging the use of procedures that increase creative ideas, nurturing ideas that seem promising, obtaining resources needed to develop these ideas, encouraging members to experiment these new ideas without fear of failing, analyzing the teams processes and incorporating relevant knowledge about team leadership into a multi-level theory on leadership of organizational learning.
The reason for the choice of the App was after conducting a collective research in different schools and colleges and discovered the need for this App to ensure accurate and efficient data presentation in schools. This will save on the time spent to keep the manual registers and records as the time could be used on other productive processes in the institutions. The ICO was well designed with different department, for example, the IT department which were responsible for installing the App in different institution to work as their internal control system. The marketing team which visited various institutions to market the App.
Many startup businesses undergo numerous challenges due to poor management practices and lack of exposure and relevant experience. The major challenge facing the new businesses is the access to competitive market. The marketing strategy is very challenging since it requires the organizations management to provide the targeted market with full knowledge about the product. This could be achieved through collective learning where the members of the marketing department will first gain the full knowledge of the product before they diffuse it to the relevant groups and departments. In the case my ICO, collective learning will as well create a platform for the members to review the frequently asked questions by the customers and come up with standard solutions to these questions, thereby avoiding confusion to the targeted users who are schools and colleges. The organizations should therefore ensure they conduct relevant research on their products and services through collective learning and allowing active participation by members in the process. This will reduce the risks new businesses are exposed to in terms of long term performance and survival.