Why the Learning Organization Remains an Illusion and How It Can Become Real

Despite countless knowledge transfer initiatives, training, and workshops, many organizations have not achieved the expected impact and transformation and remain far from becoming learning organizations.

In the years before the pandemic, agility was a major buzzword, and everything somehow became “agile,” not only product development but also HR, Marketing, Sales, and even Accounting. Concepts like Scrum were introduced, hierarchies flattened, and new tools implemented across the board. All this in the name of adaptability, innovation, and humanity.

To achieve that, the topic of organizational learning came into focus. The secret recipe? Knowledge transfer with a pinch of social “togetherness.” Trendsetters called it Social Learning, Peer Learning, or Cohort Learning, and so it ended up on the New Work buzzword menu. The goal was clearly defined: to become an organization that constantly learns, in the spirit of MIT professor Peter Senge and his remarkable book The Fifth Discipline.

Despite countless initiatives, trainings, and workshops, the expected effects and transformation never occurred. The usual explanation: “The problem is the employees. They lack the right mindset, maturity, or don’t want to learn.” But is that really the case? Or are the true causes hidden elsewhere?

Before diving deeper into the possible causes, I invite you to pause and reflect on two short questions before continuing to read: 

• How do you recognize in your organization that learning has actually taken place, and 

• How do you realize that it has not?

The Context: Complexity – often mentioned, rarely understood

Today’s reality is often described using acronyms such as VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) or the newer version BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible). These are precisely the reasons why leadership teams recognize the need for organizational transformation.

Although these terms, due to their overuse and the many methods developed around them, have rarely led to genuine understanding or change, and often evoke a cynical smile from employees, their descriptions cannot be dismissed as inaccurate.

Let’s take complexity. What does it actually mean when we keep reading that we live and work in “complex times”? A brief explanation: complexity arises when many interconnected parts, through feedback loops and nonlinear interactions, produce unexpected, emergent properties.

Small changes can lead to significant, hard-to-predict consequences because the dynamics are nonlinear. That is why complex systems can only be managed to a limited extent.

Learning in organizations should help people navigate complex environments and their dynamics more effectively. But learning projects usually follow a linear pattern: an expert, internal or external, is brought in who supposedly knows something the organization doesn’t, and this knowledge is then transferred through training sessions and workshops. In the end, materials, tools, and canvases are delivered. All of that has its place, but it is not enough.

In complex environments, we face problems we don’t know and often don’t even know exist. The brilliant systems theorist Russell L. Ackoff called these “messes” and described them as follows:

“People do not face problems, they face messes… dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of many interacting problems.”

What makes a mess dangerous is that, unlike tragedies, which often bring people closer, in messes, people, if untrained, begin to drift apart. Messes require the ability to deal with uncertainty. There are no right or wrong solutions; what matters is finding the relevant ones. The foundation for that is that employees jointly develop an understanding of their working context.

Training and classic e-learning do not help here because they transfer solutions to problems that are already known. Understanding, however, cannot be transferred, which is why it also doesn’t work when a few people are trained and then “sent” to spread that understanding further.

For jointly building and deepening understanding, conversation, the exchange of perspectives, and the ability to deal with the friction that arises, dialogue is necessary.

When learning projects are initiated, it is essential to be aware of the context in which they take place; without that awareness, the effect will be missing.

Mindset: Is the employee or their mindset really the problem?

Let’s go deeper, from context to people, and the question: are they really the problem? As mentioned earlier, leadership or HR voices often claim so. You can hear statements like, “People need to be developed; someone has to take them by the hand; meet them where they are, and change their mindset.” The result? Coaches are hired to supposedly “reset” people, and then the organization will magically become different, more learning-oriented, agile, and modern.

But that is an illusion. This approach does not bring results at the organizational level. On the contrary, it infantilizes people, because who has the right to claim that a colleague needs coaching and “development”?

That is everything but what collective learning should aim for: the development of critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills. A thought by Heinz von Foerster that we should take to heart says: “One cannot teach a person anything, but a person can learn.”

If, therefore, the person is not the problem, where can we place the lever for change? That leads us to the structures and processes necessary for social learning to be possible at all.

Structures and processes: Is working on organizational culture actually an escape from changing structures?

Working on structures and processes is hard work and requires management decisions. That’s why a seemingly softer alternative is often chosen, working on organizational culture. When organizations work on culture, it usually means developing new values, accompanied by nicely told stories and various artifacts. This is what is called working on the “fore stage”, the part visible to employees and stakeholders. (P.S. All of this can be additionally packaged and sold as employer branding.) But what is actually missing, and what alone brings real impact, is work on processes and structures.

When we discuss organizational learning, we mean creating structures that provide space (physical or virtual) and time for people to exchange experiences, jointly develop solutions, and reflect on their work context, thereby building a shared understanding of what truly matters. Japanese economist and leading knowledge management expert Ikujiro Nonaka was among the first to emphasize the importance of such spaces. He called them

“Ba”, spaces where people build relationships, interact, and where new knowledge emerges. “Ba” provides a platform for expanding individual and collective knowledge. 

Knowledge, after all, is not a static package of information transferred from one place to another, but a dynamic process in continuous development.

Three prerequisites for social learning

Social learning means that people learn with each other from each other for each other. It happens through observation, reflection, and shared experiences, aiming to develop the ability to solve complex problems. There are three prerequisites for creating its framework:

1. Create space and time. Space is not a seminar in a fancy hotel; it emerges when people talk about important topics. Time must be clearly defined – limited sessions become exploration spaces for illuminating blind spots and reorganizing relationships.

   
   

2. Invitation instead of coercion. Participation must be voluntary. An invitation opens space for different perspectives, strengthens motivation, and reduces resistance. The message is: “You are welcome, but the choice is yours.” This creates trust, the key resource for learning.

   
   

3. The power of the small group. The Ringelmann effect shows that individual contribution decreases as the group grows. That’s why groups of 4–6 people are the most effective: everyone is visible, engaged, and contributes to shared knowledge. Real change arises from the intensity of small, synchronized groups – not from the masses.

Conclusion:

Social learning succeeds only where there is trust in people that they can learn independently and think critically. Learning is not just “fun,” but a complex process, just like reality itself. Only when we acknowledge that does it become the true driving force of an organization.

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*An adapted version of the article appeared in Croatia's premier business magazine "Lider" in October 2025.