Last Tuesday, I attended a seminar so as to understand more about organizational learning and knowledge management. The speaker, Ms Waltraut Ritter, is specializing in research and advisory services, especially focusing on innovation. It was very impressive and it triggered me lots of experience about how to improve the competence of knowledge management.In the seminar, Ms Waltraut Ritter raised three vital questions of individual learning:
1. How do you learn?
2. Where do you learn?
3. How do you know that you learnt?
Apart from memorizing the lessons of knowledge management in last seminar, it also made me think of my working experience in Ocean Park. Let me share some of my opinions and apply some essential concepts into my experience.
Formal Learning, Operational Level of learning:Firstly, when I started to work in Ocean Park, there was a brief training in order to teach me several basic skills, like explaining the map of Ocean Park, teaching how to use the walky-talky to communicate with others, the steps of facilitating the tourists to solve their problems etc. For the workplace learning, this training is a formal learning as it’s followed by routine procedures and the training materials were documented. Also, it’s an operational level of learning since it provided me some techniques with steps to know-how.
2. I learnt in a room with a projector and computer for training.
3. I knew that I was learning because during the training, I was educated lots of new knowledge and the knowledge stimulated me a continuous thinking and analysis.
Informal learning can be everywhere:
During the lunch time or spare time, I always talked with my colleagues and asked them various questions. For example, I asked what they responded if they met some rude and harsh tourists. Then they expressed their opinions based on their accumulated experience. It’s an informal learning as it’s not followed by systematic procedures and it’s happened in a relaxed way. Moreover, I and my colleague shared each other’s feelings mutually, like how we thought about the operations of Ocean Park, how the Ocean Park could perform more effectively etc.
1. I learnt with several colleagues through chit-chat in a relaxed atmosphere.
2. I learnt in the canteen or the office of Ocean Park.
3. I knew that I was learning because I gain more experience and techniques from my colleagues and the skills can facilitate me to perfom better.
Incidental Learning:For the incidental learning, Ocean Park sometimes sent some staffs out of the office and observed the needs of customers. For example, before implementing some new events, Ocean Park will send the staffs to do some surveys to interview some tourists in order to grasp the interests of the tourists. For the Behind-the-scenes, Ocean Park had asked for varied opinions from the tourists of what animals that they were mostly interested to know more. Hence according to the outcomes, Ocean Park implemented Pandas & Dolphins Ed-Venture to let the customers to know more about the diets and the health maintenance of pandas and dolphins.
1. I learnt from various customers during the surveys in Ocean Park.
2. I learnt in the Ocean Park out of the office.
3. I knew that I was learning because during the interviewing, I understood more and more opinions from the customers, like improvements, deficiencies etc.
Organizational Learning is the sum of Individual Learning?
In my point of view, organizational learning is not equal to the sum of individual learning. However, individual learning is the main basis of organizational learning. Then organizational learning is more or less the sum of individual learning? It depends on the situation, like different culture among the staffs or the strategies of the organization. It influences the performance and operations of the organization, as well as the decision-making.
For my experience of Ocean Park, organizational learning was more than the sum of individual learning because the strategy of Ocean Park encouraged sharing between the staffs and inspired the staffs to give their feedbacks. Thus, it could motivate the tacit knowledge of the staffs and stimulate some of the new ideas. Furthermore, Ocean Park fully utilized the skills of the staffs and distributed the most suitable tasks to them.
Reference:
http://www.oceanpark.com.hk/chi/main/index.html
