Learning Conversations

"It turns out you need other people to know things.
You have to share with other people. Two people, working
together, learn things faster than individuals alone.
Pairs solve problems faster than individuals can."
-- Bill Miller, Steelcase's Head of R&D

Sometime ago, Soneeta Grogan, sgrogan@cce.cornell.edu, suggested a question for us regarding how to get people to have productive conversations leading to organizational learning.

BACKGROUND
Charlotte Roberts, co-author of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization with Peter Senge and other colleagues, indicates organizations wanting to have collective learning as a core competency need to engage in productive conversations for team learning. In team learning, members of the teams have to begin to examine their thinking, their mental models--the pictures members have in their heads about how the world works. She says that in this culture, there's almost an intolerance for thinking together and not doing. She asks, "Can we slow down and think why do we think this is the right answer?" She provides guidance for how to engage in productive conversations.

QUESTIONS
So, here's my question, "How are people in organizations finding or making the time to think together, to have productive conversations together in the context of a culture in which 'there's almost an intolerance for thinking together and not doing?'" "What are leaders in organizations doing to support and legitimize individuals and teams engaging in productive conversations and thinking together during paid work time?"

Please send brief discriptions of what your organization is doing to support learning conversations ...
TO: talk@thinksmart.com
SUBJECT: LEARNING TALK

Thanks for your contribution to this question.
-- Joyce Wycoff