The History of SoL
In 1991 The Center for Organizational Learning was founded at MIT with a mission of fostering collaboration among a group of corporations committed to fundamental organizational change and advancing the state of the art in building learning organizations. Our initial focus was on developing new learning capabilities in the areas of systems thinking, collaborative inquiry into tacit mental models, and nurturing personal and shared vision.In the ensuing years the consortium grew and by 1995, included 19 organizational partners: Amoco, AT&T, Chrysler, EDS, Federal Express, Ford Motor Company, Harley Davidson Motorcycle Company, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel Corporation, Lucent Technologies, Merck & Company, National Semi-Conductor, Pacific Bell, Philips, and the Quality Management Network (a consortium of healthcare organizations), Shell Oil Company, Texas Instruments, and US West. Working in partnership with researchers at MIT, a number of these companies undertook a variety of significant organizational experiments. Through these experiments, we have explored building learning capabilities in intact teams, developing new organizational learning infrastructures, transforming the assumptions and practices of executive leadership, and developing internal learning communities. Over time, some companies have involved thousands of people in these organizational experiments.
We gradually came to understand that the goals and activities of such a diverse learning community did not fit into any existing organization. We also came to realize that we had no established theory and few models for organizing for learning which could complement the theories and methods for developing new learning capabilities. In fact, the conflict became greater as more practical benefits were realized and progress was made.
This led a group from MIT, consortium companies, and affiliated consultants to embark on an extended process of reflection and inquiry into our underlying purpose and organizational concepts and structure in June 1995. We were guided in this process by Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of Visa International. The result was the creation of SoL, a non-profit member-governed organization, designed to maximize the potential for self-organizing and continuous evolution.