Value of Team Learning and

Value of Team Learning and Its Application in the Work Setting The Value of Team Learning and its Application in the Work-setting recent trend of the managerial act is to support team learning within the organization. The method is expected to generate beneficial effects upon the teams' productivity, but also to the company as a whole. The initiator of this trend was Dr. Peter Senge at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who advocates that companies should be learning organizations.

According to the author of the Fifth Discipline, learning organizations are "organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together." In order to reach the status of a learning organization, the company has to start by implementing what is called team learning.

A definition of the processes has been attempted by numerous scholars, a representative one being given by Dick McCann. According to him, "team learning is an adaptation of action learning originally proposed in the UK by Reg Revans. It focuses on providing solutions to business problems by developing an open approach to questioning. The business world is changing at such a pace that the solutions to problems are not found in books or journals, nor in the mind of 'the expert'.

They are found by team members themselves, who, through the process of Team Learning, identify the key questions to be addressed. They then seek to use their resources to find the answers, often through trial and error." In other words, the concept of team learning is based on the belief that a team formed of several individuals has increased chances of resolving the company's problem, in comparison to the chances of solving the same problem possessed by a single individual.

Even if the sole individual possesses the most adequate skills to solve the arising issue, the team would still do a better job. This is generally due to the fact that the team can approach the issue from several view points with increased efficiency. Take for instance the case of an it company who desires to hire two new developers for their C++ department. There are two persons best suited to handle the hiring process.

For once, there is the manager of the human resource department who has the appropriate training and expertise to recruit the candidates and present them the benefits of the developer position within the company. Secondly, there is the operational manager of the C++ department who best knows the required skills for the new developers and the features of the job. All in all, the two managers are both required for the hiring process, but neither one can solely complete the hiring process.

In this case, a team is the best solution. A team formed of C++ and human resource specialists could best resolve the problem. Part of the team members would focus on recruiting, interviewing and selecting the candidates, whereas the other team members would focus on presenting the required skills and hiring those candidates that best meet the company's demands. The process of team learning is extremely valuable for the organization and its employees for several reasons.

First of all, it offers employees a chance to work in a stimulating environment that promotes equality and fairness towards all workers. Secondly, the employees are introduced to a world of solidarity that unites their individual goals with the team's goals and eventually with the company's overall goals. This process helps workers get better trainings and enrich their knowledge.

Once they've implemented the team learning process, organizational managers can benefit from personnel with increased and improved skills, teams that are efficient and save the company time and money, and nonetheless, teams that can look at a problem from several view points and offer solutions and alternatives to the solutions proposed. But in order for the system to properly function, the management has to insure employees with sufficient.