Drawing Learning Charters

Abstract

Despite competing demands, modern organizations should not forget that learning is the best way to meet the challenges of the time. Learning charters demonstrate commitment: they are a touchstone against which provision and practice can be tested and a waymark with which to guide, monitor, and evaluate progress. It is difficult to argue that what learning charters advocate is not worth striving for.

In a Word Despite competing demands, modern organizations should not forget that learning is the best way to meet the challenges of the time. Learning charters demonstrate commitment: they are a touchstone against which provision and practice can be tested and a waymark with which to guide, monitor, and evaluate progress. It is difficult to argue that what learning charters advocate is not worth striving for.

Communicating for Change

Often, strategic reversals in organizational change are failures of execution. Poor communications explain much. That is because the real power of the vision that underpins change can only be unleashed if institutional commitment is verbalized to frame a desirable future; share core beliefs, common values, and understandings; and help motivate and coordinate the actions that drive transformation.

To spark action, credible, focused, jargon-free, on-time, liberal, face-to-face, and two-way communication¹ in the right context is necessary. Effective visions cannot be imposed on people: they must be set in motion by way of persuasion. Progressively then, communication for change (i) raises awareness and informs stakeholders of vision, progress, and outcomes; (ii) edifies stakeholders regarding their active involvement in the change process and imparts skills, knowledge, and appreciation; and (iii) generates buy-in and a sense of excitement about the transformation.² Personnel who communicate well incorporate each day, at every conceivable opportunity, messages that update, educate, and commit. They preach a vision through conversation and storytelling. They continually reaffirm it. The best visions call on the past, relate to the present, and link to the future.

Drawing Learning Charters

He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.

—Francis Bacon

A charter is a written instrument given as evidence of agreement.³ It can also be a document setting forth the aims and principles of a united group to inform stakeholders in an endeavor and serve as a reference of authority for the future. A clear, concise statement of the direction of an organization that outlines purposes and results is a useful tool with which to stimulate enthusiasm.

For example, the Learning Declaration Group (Cunningham 2006) has promoted learning and development for many years. The 13 signatories⁴ to its Declaration on Learning, people who have researched and written extensively about effective learning ⁵, have isolated the benefits for society, organizations, and individuals. The declaration spells out what these are and invites responses from policy makers; leaders in organizations; teachers, trainers, and developers; and individual learners . The notable tenets of the declaration include:

• Learning reinforces the informed, conscious, and discriminating choices that underpin democracy.

• Learning is the only source of sustainable development.

• Learning to learn is the most fundamental learning of all.

• Learning is the key to developing your identity and potential.

• Society, and the communities of which it is comprised, survives, adapts, and thrives through developing and sharing learning .

• Regular and rigorous use of learning processes increases everyone’s capacity to contribute to the success of organizations by challenging, reshaping, and meeting its goals.

• Learning expands the horizons of who we are and what we can become.

Since the first version of the declaration was launched in 1998, the group has received reactions ranging from “It’s not very radical” to “It’s too radical for us to implement”. More critically, others have decried the communication mode of the declaration—which mixes principles, analyses, and plans of action somewhat indigestibly—or demonstrated its dominant discourses and assumptions.⁶ Yet, its avowed intention is only to promote dialogue on learning in organizations , and its originality lies in the fact that very few organizations practice what is suggested in the paper. It poses fascinating questions : specifically, how can policy makers; leaders in organizations; teachers, trainers, and developers; and individual learners maximize the learning ability of people by encouraging and supporting individual and collective learning that enables society, organizations, and individuals to change and adapt more effectively ?

Learning for Change in ADB

A publication of the Asian Development Bank (2009a) examined what that organization might say, to what purposes and results, and through what commitments to corporate action, if it were to make a statement of intent on learning for change in ADB. If its staff members were to pledge themselves to individual actions, what might these be? The learning charter that the document champions is not prescriptive, nor is it exhaustive. But it is assuredly specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (Table 103.1).

Table 103.1 A learning charter for ADB

ADB offers other recent examples of statements on learning. On 31 July 2009, Haruhiko Kuroda—ADB President and concurrent Chairperson of ADB’s Board of Directors (2008, 2009b)—approved Enhancing Knowledge Management Under Strategy 2020 to advance the knowledge management agenda under Strategy 2020: The Long-Term Strategic Framework of the Asian Development Bank (2008–2020). Four pillars will support the plan of action: (i) sharpening the knowledge focus in all ADB operations, (ii) promoting and empowering communities of practice for knowledge capture and sharing , (iii) strengthening external knowledge partnerships to develop and disseminate knowledge, and (iv) scaling-up staff development programs to improve technical skills and manage knowledge. In relation to the second, ADB’s Knowledge Management Center proposed for adoption by ADB’s communities of practice a dynamic, interactive, and organic framework that articulates the need to ask, learn, and share at individual, team, and community levels. From a knowledge sharing and learning perspective, translating the framework into inputs, activities, and outputs for key outcomes will help maintain focus on the things that matter to communities of practice and serve the needs and aspirations of their members (Fig. 103.1).

Fig. 103.1

Knowledge behaviors. Source Author