GSN Invitation Letter, May 1998
Society for Organizational Learning
SoL Global Communities
Throughout the Industrial Era, the world has become populated with ever more institutions. A large number of those institutions are corporations. There is also a growing number of non-profit and government organizations. This institutional population, by its size and its importance, will directly influence the success or failure of our efforts to make the world a better place to live in.Most of today's institutions still follow the industrial age model: hierarchies organized on command and control, people viewed as resources to be used to meet the institutions' objectives, managers who sit at the top apparently in control. As we enter a new era, industrial age institutions face unprecedented changes. While no one could possibly say what all these changes will be, there is a growing consensus that continual learning and knowledge creation are becoming the keys for competitive advantage, and only through building learning-oriented cultures, will organizations become worthy of people's fullest commitment.
Starting at MIT over 15 years ago, a small group of top executives began to meet to explore these issues and discover what they could learn from one another. Building on work done at MIT and other academic institutions, as well as experiments in a handful of innovative firms, this group eventually grew into the MIT Organizational Learning Center (OLC), formed in 1990. The group shared the view that decision-making processes in organizations are inherently learning processes. They also came to believe that significant change in the effectiveness of these learning processes involved new skills and capabilities, new infrastructures and, ultimately, changes in values and culture. Gradually, they realized that such changes were extremely challenging, especially for successful institutions, and could best be achieved through genuine cooperation and sharing among diverse organizations from diverse cultures.
Since then, we've learned that it is indeed possible to improve institutional learning processes, thereby accelerating innovation and enhancing the effectiveness of institutions. We are now at a point where we have witnessed very encouraging results, showing that it is possible both to enhance the learning capabilities of working teams and organizational units and to achieve significant practical consequences. In some cases, these results are beginning to extend broadly throughout large corporations. To enable the results to continue to deepen and spread, the MIT OLC has been recreated as the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), a non-profit, member-governed organization.
The overall aim of the Society for Organizational Learning is to accelerate fundamental institutional innovation and build knowledge about such innovation. The purpose of the Society, as articulated in its Constitution, is "to discover, integrate and implement theories and practices for the interdependent development of people and their institutions." In order to realize this purpose, we now believe that it is essential to develop a global network of learning communities. Such a network could dramatically accelerate how new knowledge and capabilities are developed and shared within and amongst organizations around the world, strengthening the decision making processes and actions of institutions, whether they are commercial, governmental or non-governmental organizations. The time seems right to extend this work beyond its Anglo-American origins and create the conditions for experiments, research and practice of improved organizational learning processes in other cultural environments. The purpose of this letter is to invite you to join us in this undertaking.
The first such community of SoL is now established, based in Boston and involving US-based organizations. It includes institutional members (MIT, Ford, Shell Oil, Hewlett-Packard, Chrysler, Harley-Davidson, Intel, Detroit-Edison, EDS, FedEx, AT&T, the World Bank and eight other charter institutional members), and over 150 individual consultant and research members governed by a constitution enacted by an elected council. Over two years in development, SoL is organized around a basic pattern of organizing for knowledge creation, embracing equally:
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Research - disciplined pursuit of discovery and understanding
Capacity building - enhancing people's capabilities, individually and collectively, building on insights, methods and tools emerging from research;
Practice - the application and the increase in know-how within organizations to improve institutional performance.
Together, these activities define the knowledge creating process in the broadest possible sense, spanning theory and practice, and individual and institutional learning. But what is especially important is SoL's commitment to integrate these activities. The fundamental challenges faced by institutions and societies worldwide as we near the end of the Industrial Era cannot be addressed effectively by a fragmented knowledge creating process. University researchers, consultants, corporations and other institutions must learn to work more closely together for the common purpose of building knowledge for institutional learning.
As in all living systems, the growth of SoL as a global network cannot be controlled or pre-determined. Just as every cell is unique, every embodiment of SoL's basic pattern of organizing will be shaped by the institutions and individuals who comprise its members. Different chapters (fractals) will pursue their own aspirations and issues and will adapt SoL's basic design to the requirements of their social and cultural environment.
This thinking has led us to a particular strategy for how to organize SoL as a global network. One way to approach this would have been to extend internationally the work that has been done in the US-based institutions -- building outward from the Boston-based consortium, keeping it as a hub for the network. However, this would be inconsistent with the self-organizing principles embodied in SoL. Instead, we believe that it is important to build "inwards from the outward circle," by creating conditions for initiatives in other countries and cultures and tying them together with already existing and now-forming communities in Boston, other locations in the US, the UK, the Netherlands and elsewhere. This option allows for self-organizing. It permits local initiatives to take the form that suits them best. And, it will allow for rapid growth of a global community shaped by the possibilities of each local community. The pursuit of this option means that the existing SoL chapter (fractal) based in Boston will become one amongst many on the international scene.
Guided by this strategy, we are in the process of incorporating SoL International as a non-profit membership society composed of SoL chapters (fractals) worldwide. SoL International would be governed by a Council elected by its chapter (fractal) members, guided by a Constitution adapted from that developed for the Boston-based chapter (fractal). The primary functions of SoL International would be to establish a common purpose and principles to which all SoL members would subscribe, provide for the orderly growth of the global network, and to establish the information infrastructure to enable sharing and learning throughout the global network.
Some of the characteristics of this new global community are outlined in Appendix 1.
The signers of this letter are serving as a temporary International Organizing Committee which will be disbanded to make way for a membership election of the SoL International Council, once SoL International has been incorporated and the founding chapter (fractal) members established. In the meantime, we look forward to gaining the input from prospective founding institutional members.
We are presently working on the first draft of a Constitution for SoL International. For the moment, discussions are being held with emerging SoL chapters (fractals). British Petroleum (UK), Ford Visteon (Detroit, MI), and AT&T (Basking Ridge, NJ), have graciously given financial contributions as founding sponsors of SoL International. A couple of other international corporations are considering to do likewise. We would like to see five to six founding chapters (fractals) and the same number of founding sponsors to form a "founding body" to get SoL International established.
We are initially sending this letter to a selected group of people and organizations known to us to be interested in organizational learning. We would hope that this statement of our vision of a global SoL community may encourage you to probe the conditions in your own society to see whether a local initiative might be viable.
You can reach any of us by contacting Ms. Vicki Tweiten, Global SoL Network, 955 Massachusetts Ave. , Cambridge, MA 02139. (Phone: 617-300-9595 or (vtweiten@solonline.org)
Kind Regards,
Peter Senge, Arie de Geus, Göran Carstedt,
(Representing the International Organizing Committee)
Organizing Committee:
Mr. Arie de Geus, former Coordinator, Group Planning, Shell International;
Mr. Dee Hock, CEO Emeritus, Visa International;
Ms. Rita Cleary, Chairperson, Visions of A Better World Foundation;
Mr. Joseph Jaworski, Founder, Center for Generative Leadership;
Dr. Peter Senge, MIT, and Chairman, (Boston-based) Society for Organizational Learning;
Dr. Iva Wilson, former President Philips Display Components Company;
Dr. Göran Carstedt, acting Managing Director, Society for Organizational Learning (Boston) and former Executive at Volvo and IKEA
Appendix 1
Some characteristics of the SoL global community
1. The right of free assembly -- by which local chapters (fractals) and members are not forced into existing forms. Local chapters can create their own initiatives. Members can leave an existing chapter (fractal), join newly formed chapters (fractals) and, if interested, hold multiple chapter (fractal) memberships.
2. The right to organize -- by which new chapters (fractals) can form, including chapters (fractals) that are not geographically defined chapters (fractals) (e.g., between members of the same industry, or among non-governmental or government organizations, etc.). Given SoL's purpose of building knowledge of institutional change through integrating research, capacity building and practice, any new chapter (fractal) must have a reasonable number of each of the three-member categories (corporate, research, and consultant members) that SoL's constitution recognizes.
3. The right of access to research results -- by which research done in any SoL chapter (fractal) worldwide is available to all SoL members. Obviously, this requires that all chapters (fractals) have an obligation to make public within reasonable time their research results, to local members and worldwide. A central communications structure will be established to coordinate information flow and resource exchange.
4. With these rights come obligations -- notably, to subscribe to the statement of purpose and principles as defined in the International SoL Constitution (to be developed by an International Organizing Committee, using the constitution developed for the Boston-based community as a starting point), to accept the policies and quality standards established by SoL International, and to pay the membership fee for belonging to the global network. These policies, standards and membership fees will be set by the elected SoL International Council.
5. The International Society for Organizational Learning will be not-for-profit. This principle is likely to broaden considerably the attractiveness of SoL International to organizations beyond private enterprises.