Some years ago, during an internal project to define and develop the company as a learning organization I came up with this definition:

We learn to learn together, to get the results we want together (after Senge).

Whereas the project sponsor wanted something tangible and process-led, I pushed back. Learning and understanding is co-created and evolved and iterated. It is in flux, it is a flow.

I wish, at the time, I had heard of Harald Jarche. His work, amongst many others, has influenced my own in recent years and would have helped greatly wrangling that ‘learning organization’ project to fruition.

Another excellent summation of Jarche’s thinking on net work (sic) and network learning is in this recent post:

A professional learning network, with its redundant connections, repetition of information and indirect communications, is a much more resilient system than any designed development program can be.

Yes!

Rather than ignore, deny or obfuscate this instead we should acknowledge the necessity of repetition and redundancy. The greater the turn of data, the more churn of thoughts, the more channels of research, the richer the harvest.

It sounds luxurious, but it is not. Digital, networked conversations are cheap and cheerful, quick and dirty, rich and rewarding. We need more of them!

←This Much We Know.→