In 30 seconds
- Learning happens at individual, team and organization level.
- Mistakes and experiments feed shared knowledge.
- Systems thinking connects the parts.
The five disciplines
- Systems thinking: seeing the whole
- Personal mastery: continual personal growth
- Mental models: examining assumptions
- Shared vision: a common picture of the future
- Team learning: thinking together
Peter Senge set these out in The Fifth Discipline (1990).
Signs of a learning organization
- Postmortems are shared and acted on
- Communities of practice exist across teams
- Time is set aside for learning
- Decisions are revisited when evidence changes
Agile's contribution
Retrospectives, blameless reviews and short feedback loops build learning into everyday work.
Myth vs reality
Myth · Learning means training courses.
Reality · Most learning happens through work and reflection.
Myth · Only leaders need to learn.
Reality · Everyone does, at every level.
Myth · Learning slows delivery.
Reality · It prevents repeating costly mistakes.
FAQ
How do we share learning across teams?
Communities of practice, shared write-ups and demos.
How do we measure learning?
Look for repeated mistakes going down.
What's double-loop learning?
Questioning the assumptions behind a goal, not just the actions.