The Power of Collaborative Leadership: : Lessons for the Learning Organization

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Summary: Find your OWN path to organizational learning
Review: I have known one of the authors, Iva Wilson, for many years. When I served with her on a Board I thought she had a remarkable ability to distill an idea that was in the air in such a way that we all took full credit. Based on this experience, I anticipated that this book would help me with organizational learning, which it did.

The authors have written a very useful and stimulating volume. For me, as a senior manager and then as a consultant, Organizational Learning has been an abstract and academic topic. In contrast, this book relates the actual experiences of two CEO's - both their successes and failures - in terms I can relate to my own experiences.

One of the great strengths of the book - though it will be a source of discomfort to those who want easy, tidy, answers - is that it makes clear how individual each organizational learning effort is and must be. The route is often not clear; changing directions is a necessity, not a detour from a know-able optimal path.

The differences in the CEO's experiences can make for difficult reading because they do NOT prescribe a single approach or method. I found it hard to keep straight what each one was recommending. Finally, I realized that I needed to craft my own approach using their stories as stimulus. Eureka! A very worthwhile experience.

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Summary: Learning Takes Courage
Review: Learning, true learning, takes courage. Being a life-long-learner means being comfortable admitting that all our previous thoughts, feelings and actions-while they were the best we could do at the time-were limited by what we had not yet learned. Being a learner means admitting that the answers we believe in today are always limited by what we will learn tomorrow.

One of the things I love about this book is the courage the authors model in admitting that learning has inherent risk. I know Iva Wilson, but I had no idea of the power of her story until I read this book. I gained a whole new perspective of the pain and heartache that can come from being a CEO with a vision that others do not fully appreciate. I am thankful that she and Bert are willing to tell of their failures as well as their successes in their journey to create organizations where people can be more authentic and humane. This book asks me to stop, the next time I am being judgmental of another's' passion, and listen more deeply to their story.

I have studied much about organizational learning, but this book gave me many stories that brought the meanings behind Peter Senge's book, The Fifth Discipline, into a new light. I understand organizational double-loop learning in a new way. And thanks to Iva, I have a new appreciation of the risk and the power of dialogue.

This book would be a comforting companion for anyone who fears they are not smart enough to "do it right the first time." None of us are.

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Summary: Practical Approach to Organizational Learning -- Finally!
Review: This is the first book on OL that I would feel comfortable passing on to a business manager. Most of the others I've read are more geared toward researchers in the area. But the work is thoroughly researched and referenced, so even researchers will find the book a good lesson in how to write for the business audience! The summaries of key contributions in the field (esp Argyris, Schon, Senge) at the beginning would be a great primer for someone new to this area of research, and the practical advice in the later part of the book in terms of questions to answer at each stage of going forward with your OL effort were highly appropriate.