Doc Hall returns to our newsletter with a thought-provoking three-part essay on the risk of thinking we know the truth of things. Part III challenges us to build organizations that excel at vigorous learning.
Dr. Robert Hall, Professor Emeritus of Operations Management Despite its flaws in practice, science is organized for learning; active learning that pushes back on ignorance and self-deception, learning that takes us closer to reality. And science covers a wide swath of fields. The rest of society is not organized for learning in this sense. Excepting perhaps educational institutions, learning is directed at other goals. Businesses research customers and learn how to improve efficiency serving them. None would say that they are not learning, but it is not central to their mission.
Given the magnitude of environmental perils coming at us, the Compression Institute has proposed that almost all work organizations become Vigorous Learning Organizations, structured and culturally tuned for operationally learning how to improve the human condition in a rapidly changing world; have leadership for learning, think systemically, have a common mission, and cultivate behavior for learning – for starters.
We’re optimistic that real people can collectively learn much better. But we have to concentrate on it, and put much more emotional energy into it, as well as intellectual energy. If an organization can attain its goal (make a profit) without this, it probably won’t work up the extra human energy. However, the time is upon us to totally reconceive how an economy must work in an ecologically regenerative world.
Balancing the needs of nature with the human stakeholders of a work organization mandates more complex objectives than profitability, as challenging as that goal may seem today. And these objectives are not static. The present troubles of learning by science show that this is no small human challenge.
Pessimists speculate that advancing human civilization cannot escape destroying itself. We’re optimistic that the human race can actually step up to a new level of civilization. Technology will probably aid learning, but it is biased too, just like we are, and part of learning is overcoming our biases, or preconceptions. Vigorous Learning implies new objectives in life, abandoning our self-deceptions of a bygone world fading fast. Truth is just a better lie from which we can learn more.
Given the magnitude of environmental perils coming at us, the Compression Institute has proposed that almost all work organizations become Vigorous Learning Organizations, structured and culturally tuned for operationally learning how to improve the human condition in a rapidly changing world; have leadership for learning, think systemically, have a common mission, and cultivate behavior for learning – for starters.
We’re optimistic that real people can collectively learn much better. But we have to concentrate on it, and put much more emotional energy into it, as well as intellectual energy. If an organization can attain its goal (make a profit) without this, it probably won’t work up the extra human energy. However, the time is upon us to totally reconceive how an economy must work in an ecologically regenerative world.
Balancing the needs of nature with the human stakeholders of a work organization mandates more complex objectives than profitability, as challenging as that goal may seem today. And these objectives are not static. The present troubles of learning by science show that this is no small human challenge.
Pessimists speculate that advancing human civilization cannot escape destroying itself. We’re optimistic that the human race can actually step up to a new level of civilization. Technology will probably aid learning, but it is biased too, just like we are, and part of learning is overcoming our biases, or preconceptions. Vigorous Learning implies new objectives in life, abandoning our self-deceptions of a bygone world fading fast. Truth is just a better lie from which we can learn more.
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