I’m not a professional at 10 markers but I’ll try my best to give input and advice
Q. Using a business example that you have studied this year, describe and apply the principles of Senge’s Learning Organisation. (10 marks)
A. Senge’s Learning Organisation is a management theory developed by Peter Senge.
You didn’t need to add this part. Remember you have 2 hours to answer 75 marks, which many can’t complete. Try to cut some time.
The Learning Organisation theory contains five principles; personal mastery, team learning, mental models, shared vision, and systems thinking. A business that may use the principles of Senge’s Learning Organisation is Tesla Inc.
I would’ve defined Senge, list the five principles and then say “a business I studied this year is Tesla...”
The principle of personal mastery relates to employees of a business constantly improving upon their current level of success.
I think you need stronger definitions. Personal Mastery is more like “when employees contribute to the business individually by becoming life long learners”
This also involves employees knowing what they have achieved, what do they need to learn and how they need to address their personal gaps in learning.
Tesla Inc. can apply the principle of personal mastery by having policies where employees can be given their own time and opportunities and plan their own personal goals and gain a deeper understanding of what their ambitions are in the technology company and what can they do themselves to improve their personal growth. Tesla may also harness the drive to comprehend about technology, cars, automation within each employee by providing them with training.
I like the training one, because that’s what personal Mastery is all about. It’s giving employees the resources and training to expand their knowledge and contribute to the business in a unique way. However, I don’t think policies has anything to do with personal mastery (correct me if I’m wrong) as it doesn’t expand their knowledge
Senge states that all humans have mental models.
Again, go straight into definition. And not all humans have mental models. Some people (e.g. managers) may like the traditional way of running a business.
Mental models are deeply ingrained views and assumptions that people have about certain things and the way certain things operate or how certain group of people behave. According to Senge, we must learn to challenge these mental models so that humans can be open to new ways of perceiving and interpreting things, and thus learn more. This also includes getting rid of old methods of workplace politics. Tesla can help its employees to challenge mental models by creating an innovative work culture instead of a static car production environment, which can harness the ability of employees to be open, think in a different way and successfully challenge their current ideas about technology. For example, employees and managers can be more open to creating and testing self-driven cars.
This application is better! Really well done on relating it directly to Tesla’s outputs!
The principle of team learning moves slightly beyond personal mastery and mental models and involves growth of the business is a learner by forming teams instead of individually providing. Teams or groups are formed by businesses where ideas can be shared between employees and a dynamic way to thinking is adopted by employees as they have the opportunity to comprehend different and unique perspectives. Tesla Inc. can apply team learning by establishing workgroups for specific areas in their business. Considering Tesla Inc. seeks to be a company that is innovative and sustainable, forming teams would allow Tesla’s employees to gain insight and experience from other employees into different ways Tesla can innovate and become sustainable. This is important if CEO Elon Musk seeks to have his employees perform productively and generate innovative ideas that can benefit Tesla’s competitiveness.
This is fine, but try to go more in depth. Like “people who are knowledgeable in batteries can share their knowledge and skills with someone who’s an expert in driverless technology. This can spark innovation and henceforth provide a competitive advantage through differentiation.”
Shared vision is also a principle of Senge’s Learning Organisation. This principle encourages learning in an organisation by having managers establish a shared vision for all the employees of a business to follow.
Don’t define shared vision by using the term in the definition. Instead, say “A common goal within the business”
As such, the employees of a business can have a focus and their thinking can therefore be directed towards the achievement of a particular shared vision and employees can formulate different ways of achieving the shared vision. Tesla, being an ambitious business, can implement a shared vision for all its employees to follow by establishing or updating their mission and vision statement and create a culture where the vision and mission statement is constantly reinforced by senior managers, so that Tesla’s employees can collectively be focused and work towards achieving Tesla’s shared vision and be rewarded in doing so.
I like this too but go in depth again! Don’t be afraid to say “Tesla’s vision could be to implement driverless tech by 2020” and that by having a shared vision, it inspires risk taking and sparks innovation
The principle of Systems Thinking is considered as the backbone of all other principles of Senge’s Learning Organisation.
Go straight to definition. And don’t say backbone, because that is your opinion. Most might like Mental models more or Shared visions.
Systems Thinking involves a business not just being aware of what their change is, but understanding how the change became possible, the interaction between the other four principles of the Learning Organisation, and being able to proactively analyse the possible effects of the changes implemented as businesses do not exist in isolation. Tesla Inc. can adopt this principle by being confident about any change they want to create, such as automated cars, and since Tesla does not operation in isolation (it has many stakeholders), it should be evaluate the potential effects of producing and selling automated cars on employees, the environment and its conformation to legislation.
Systems thinking is more about looking as the business as a whole and how they intertwine. For example “If Tesla invests in Research and Development, this means they may need to cut costs from certain departments of the business such as the HR Function. Tesla therefore has to be wary of the impacts their decision has on all aspects of the business.”
A good example for systems thinking is Telstra. Because Telstra is down-sizing, they need to think about the impacts this has on their stakeholders, their new 5G network, infraco and where the money will go to what.
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Overall, good response. Just need to work on your definitions and go more into depth with the 5 principles. It’s highly likely this question will be assessed as it wasn’t in the last years exam
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