Towards a Learning Organisation Any organisation committed to future success must become a learning organisation. To compete and survive today commands continuous improvement. But any organisation is only as good as its people and continuous improvement in business is all about the development of people and therefore creating a learning culture. Indeed, if continuous development is to be seen as a viable way of improving performance and effectiveness in an organisation there needs to exist a culture in which it is valued and encouraged. Organisational barriers to learning as, for example, lack of information and access; lack of coaching and support; lack of real value for learning and lack of reward and recognition need to be removed. Learning organisations are those best skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and at modifying behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights. “Organisations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organisational learning. But without it no organisational learning occurs.” (Senge, 1990, p.139) References to learning organisations appear in the work of Garratt (1990), who looks at organisational development and learning, specifically at senior manager level in large organisations. A narrower view is given by Schein (1977) and Burgoyne (1988), who discuss implications for career planning. Kolb’s (1974) work relating to the concept of the ‘learning cycle’ - whose key stages are experience; reflection on that experience; analysis of learning points arising from it and the testing of implications of concepts in new situations - also has links with the learning organisation. Truly, the philosophies of a learning organisation necessitates that members not only develop learning abilities as individuals and work and learn as teams but also having the sort of climate and processes that an organisation to learn. This concept has emerged as an important objective for training managers and has gained wide experience as an expression of the desired or ideal state for human resource development in the organisation. It is apparent that the idea of the ‘learning organisation’ has strong links and even goes beyond the third stage - the focused approach of the Ashridge Model. Mayo (1995) asserts that to be better at individual, team and organisational levels, learning needs to be the key to competitiveness and the achievement of organisational strategy. In this regard the ‘learning organisation’ may be viewed as “a journey not a destination” with the whole organisation becoming a vehicle for the learning and growth of people. This is the ideal supportive climate which can enable an organisation harness the full brainpower and experience available to it, in order to evolve continually for the benefit of all its stakeholders. Indeed, it is now widely accepted that a real source of competitive advantage lies within the ability of both individuals and organisations to learn and share knowledge - constantly expanding on its capacity to create its future. As Senge (1990) quoting Arie De Geus of Royal Dutch/Shell asserts: “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.” (Senge 1990, p.4) | 
