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SoL and SoL France
An Overview
ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING : a new approach for management
Enterprises live increasingly in a constantly changing environment and need to adapt pro-actively. Past experience has shown that companies that have remained in existence over the longest periods of time have been those able to anticipate change in their environment, develop new ideas and manage their resources with care. The business enterprise, with keen awareness of its identity, grows according to its own biological cycles which are linked in particular to processes of knowledge and experience exchange. The ability to « learn together » is therefore one of the cornerstones of modern management and it creates most favourable conditions for sharing experiences and best practices.
A little history: The first movement toward learning organizations took place in the 1970’s within Royal Dutch Shell when the company decided to innovate in its strategy formulation by creating think tanks. Peter Wack was at the heart of a Planning Group, which had the responsibility of developing scenarios allowing the Group, in the midst of the oil crisis, to develop the visionary and forward-thinking capabilities of its managers. In the early 1980’s Arie de Geus took the leadership of Group Planning and reached out a few years later to MIT where he met Peter Senge. They would together create the « Center for Organizational Learning », a laboratory for research in management.
This laid the seeds for Peter Senge’s, « The Fifth Discipline » followed a few years later by Arie de Geus’s book, « The Living Company. » The concept of the « learning organization » was born and Peter Senge described its 5 disciplines:
⋅ Building Shared Vision
⋅ Personal Mastery
⋅ Team Learning
⋅ Mental Models
⋅ Systems Thinking
SOL International : A global applied learning community, SOL was founded in 1997 at MIT (Boston) by Peter Senge and Arie de Geus. It developed through the launch of sister organizations in 30 some countries, including most countries in Europe, Australia, Brazil and others. Sol International offers its members the chance to share practice experience, results of action research programs and to attend international conferences.
SoL France (Société pour l’Organisation Apprenante) is a non-profit organization legally established in January 1999 (but active as early as 1998) and a member of the international Society for Organizational Learning.
Its aim is to encourage profound and sustainable change within organizations through exchanges of experience and the realization of intra and intercompany projects bringing together operational managers, consultants and researchers. Such « learning together » creates the conditions for the interdependent development of organizations, networks and of the people within them.
Its members include the following organizations, Bonduelle, Danfoss Socla, Danone Waters France, Groupe DANONE, France Télécom\Orange, GARF, International Mozaik, L’Oréal Professionnel, RATP, SNCF, and Solvay, as well as ten independent consultants. The members of SoL France (and of Sol International) place learning within their core competencies and believe that sharing learning with other ventures increases their capacity to accomplish the profound changes necessary for their long-term viability.
The originality of SoL France’s approach resides in the creation of a genuine learning community within its members. Several streams of activity help to shape and form this community:
1. Exchanges of experience and perspectives on the methods used in France and in other countries for developing capabilities in learning and knowledge management through bimonthly (Companies Circle) and quarterly (Exchanges Group) meetings, online communication and document sharing.
2. Running pilot projects to facilitate learning through experimentation within each organization and the sharing of experiences among members in a spirit of openness and transparency. The involvement of SoL France’s consultant researchers promotes the transfer of knowledge from one project, and one organization, to another.
3. Training pilot project and field managers in the practices of the key learning disciplines in two, three-day seminars, « The Fundamentals of Organizational Learning » and « Team Learning for success » which develop a common language, fine-tune actual change projects and promote the common and direct understanding of the questions raised and the resources offered by each of the participating members.
4. Participation in intercompany action research projects such as the « 10-Year Action Research Program » launched in 2008 under the leadership of social anthropologist Alain de Vulpian.
5. Participation in conferences and seminars of SoL International, such as the three Global Forums held in Helsinki, Vienna and most recently, Oman, in April 2008.
6. Privileged access to research results and to methods and tools in development within the SoL international network, which the American journal « Reflections » and the French « Cahiers de SoL France » help to publish.
Member organizations most benefit from their involvement in SoL France when they have at once the long-term support of senior management and of one or two internal change champions (change agents) who play an active role in the exchanges with other members, and when they choose to launch one or two pilot projects key for their future facilitated by managers who commit personally to a learning approach.
Documents and articles:
Click here for more informations about the guiding principles of SoL.
« Sustainable leadership in a changing society ». Click here to read the article by Alain de Vulpian and Irène Dupoux-Couturier.
« Towards a more human capitalism ». Click here to read the article by Alain de Vulpian.
