VOLUME 6, NUMBERS 8–10

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

FEATURE ARTICLESFrom Brainwashing toOrganizational Therapy
Edgar Schein

Sri Lanka: Story of Hope
Karen Ayas

Stories from an African
Learning Village
Marianne Knuth

EMERGING KNOWLEDGE

Organizational Learningin China
Darl Kolb and Tianjian Jiang

Hindustan Petroleum’s
Structural Analysis of
Current Reality
Ashis Sen

Published by The Society for Organizational Learningreflections.solonline.org
ISSN 1524-1734

P U B L I S H E R ’ S N O T E : V ol . 6 , N o . 8 – 1 0

In this final issue of Volume 6 of Reflections, we consider the consequences of culture
for learning in practice, and benefit from a diverse set of illustrations in three feature articles and twocontributions to our Emerging Knowledge Forum. Because we recognize that you are more than “readers,” and that learning is supported by a variety of resources, we are also introducing audio downloads
as part of this issue. We look forward to your feedback about this new feature.
At SoL’s Research Greenhouse in 2004, Ed Schein, professor emeritus at MIT’s Sloan School ofManagement, a founding father of the field of organizational development, and one of SoL’s first trustees
shared his own cross-cultural journey, and how it has shaped his own practice. His story is told as a drama
in five acts: “From Brainwashing to Organizational Therapy: A Conceptual and Empirical Journey in
Search of Systemic Health and a General Model of Change Dynamics.” We are delighted to share an
article based on his talk, as well as the original talk itself as an audio download.
In various public statements, the leadership of China has stated its aspiration to be a learning country.
Darl G. Kolb and Tianjian Jiang share their observations and research in “Organizational Learning in
China: Inroads and Implications for the Awakening Dragon.” SoL China Project Coordinator C. Will
Zhang poses the possibility that organizational learning may be both the first and last imported “antidote”
that will help China reconnect with its rich history of harmony between action and reflection. In further
comments, Zhaoliang Qui (with Stephen Meng and Glenn Lauder) shares his experience of learning organization work in China, and a framework for encouraging a learning culture.
The language of systems thinking has often served a means to span organizational and cultural boundaries. “Hindustan Petroleum’s Structural Analysis of Current Reality,” by Ashis Sen, one of the company’s
team of internal coaches, documents how a locally dispersed regional sales team used this analysis to builda shared understanding of how they could effectively achieve the results they care about most.
Service projects in Sri Lanka following the tsunami provide the context for learning for managers fromUnilever’s Asian food business. “Sri Lanka: A Story of Hope” by Karen Ayas continues to document theleadership development approach of cultural immersion originally reported in the book To the Desert andBack, and in prior issues of Reflections.
Kufunda Village in Zimbabwe is the setting for “Stories from an African Learning Village” as told byvillage co-founder Marianne Knuth. One of the local community members supported by the village reports
this benefit: “I was helped to see myself as a person first. Not as a poor person.” This shift in mindset
from poverty and helplessness to dignity and possibility is the heart of the Kufunda culture. Those who
question the practicality of appreciative inquiry should find its use in this setting illuminating.
Finally, we appreciate our ability to promote dialogue on topics raised in prior issues. Dennis Sandow
offers a connection between his own work (reported on earlier this year in Reflections) and Alain de
Vulpian’s recent article. Readers (and listeners), please continue to write!
We expect to send the first issue of Volume 7 – and, if your subscription includes it, the printed
compilation of Volume 6 – in February. Happy New Year!

C. Sherry Immediato
Managing Director, SoL

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an arising social order
Alain de Vulpian’s “Listening to Ordinary People” (Reflections, 5.6–7) is a very important paper for the SOL community. De Vulpian describes a social transformation that is already underway – a self-organizing and self-regulating social system of networks that are generating personal andsocial well being.
For the past 15 years I have been studying the same phenomena. Using ethnography and social network mapping I have also been listening to “ordinary people,” workers in organizations in Latin
America, the U.S., and in China. It has been joyful to learn of workers supporting people with disabilities, engineers recycling waste water and creating hyper-pure drinking water, cooks cooking organic
meals for their co-workers, and workers teaching school children. As Alain de Vulpian explains, theseare dynamic and collaborative social systems that are replacing out-of-date, self-centric hierarchies inbusiness, education, and government. This is a spontaneous social order arising from the emotion oflove, in which ordinary people are creating extraordinary value. In one study, I documented how middle
school cooks, while cooking nutritious meals for children, simultaneously taught students, faculty, andadministrators mathematics in a network of collaboration. In all my years of research, I have nevermapped a hierarchical social network (organization chart), but instead have mapped social systems
where everyone in the network considers everyone else in the network a legitimate contributor. As
described by Professor Humberto Maturana, social systems arising through the emotion of love are thesource of intelligent action and vision. I believe that love is the organizing emotion in the new global
society.
The arising social order Alain de Vulpian describes is happening now! Formal change management
programs, tired organizational change strategies, and attempts to change people are no longer relevantmeans to creating a better world. Through the process of collective reflection which I call “social action
research,” I have found that social systems which generate social, biological, and financial well-being
are commonplace in networks of ordinary people. It is not change, but conservation that we should
attend to. Conserving the emergent social systems of social, biological, and financial well-being liesat the heart of the new economy. This will bring forth a new visioning process through which we cangenerate the future we wish to live.
I’d like to thank Alain de Vulpian for sharing his 50 years of social research. The longitudinal ethnographic research he has led is a tremendous gift for those of us interested in, and committed to, thedevelopment of modern organizations.
Dennis Sandow
Social Action Researcher
dsandow@earthlink.net............................................................................
Send your comments, questions, and suggestions to reflections@solonline.org.

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Readers Write iii

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FEATURE

From Brainwashing toOrganizational Therapy:
A Conceptual and Empirical Journey in
Search of “Systemic” Health and a General
Model of Change Dynamics
A D ra m a i n F iv e A cts

By Edgar H. Schein

Introduction

N
Edgar H. ScheinThis article was developed from a talkeither individual health nor organizational/sysgiven at SoL’s Research Greenhousetemic health can be understood without the ability
in 2004, and will appear in Cummings,
to take three different perspectives: 1) An individR. (Ed.) Handbook of Organizationalual perspective based on psychology; 2) a systemic perspective based on anthropology, sociology, political science
Development (Jossey-Bass, 2006). Audioand systems theory; and 3) An interactive process perspecdownloads of the speech can be foundtive based on social psychology, sociology and other theories of dynamic processes.
at https://www.soloinline.org/reflections/.
Individual perspectives are needed to understand theidiosyncrasies of the component parts of any system; systemic perspectives are needed todefine what “health” or effective performance means at a systemic level and how culture
forms and evolves; and interactive perspectives are needed to understand the dynamic interactions that occur between different components and levels of any system.
The never-ending dilemma of the individual vs. the group, organization or society, whether leaders create organizations and cultures or whether culture and social forces create leaders, how organizations influence their members and, at the same time, how members change
the organization cannot be understood without seeing the interplay between the system andthe individual.
I have been fortunate in my 50 plus years of involvement both with individuals and withorganizations to be able to observe and experience social phenomena from these various
levels and perspectives. In this drama I hope to share some of the main lessons learned fromthese experiences.

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Feature n Schein Prologue
As I look back on my life, I see more clearly than I used to how early influences shaped myconcepts and skills (1993b). I was born in 1928 in Zurich, Switzerland where my father was
finishing his Ph.D. in Physics. He was a Hungarian who had grown up in Czechoslovakia andwas, therefore, a Czech citizen. In Zurich, he met my mother who was a German from a small
resort town on the Elbe near Dresden. In 1934 the Swiss made it difficult for my father toretain his Assistant Professorship so he emigrated to Odessa where the Russians offered him
a big job in order to build their science establishment.
We moved to Odessa where we lived in a large apartment complex. I did not go to a
Russian school but did learn the language from friends my age in the playground. Our life in
Russia included many trips to the Caucasus and Moscow and was generally very pleasant,but by 1936 Stalin’s purges were beginning to affect foreigners so my father decided to move.
We ended up in Prague where I went to a very strict German school for one year. My father
had established a link with the University of Chicago and planned to go there as soon as possible since Hitler was beginning to be a threatening force in Europe. My mother and I moved
to Zurich for half a year to get out of Czechoslovakia and emigrated to Chicago in 1938. My
father had secured a professorship at Chicago where he spent the rest of his career.
These events are relevant in that I had, by age 10, to learn Russian, Czech, and thenEnglish, and had made four cultural transitions. I particularly remember the difficulty ofdeciphering American playground norms in the Chicago public grammar school. Later concerns with being careful when encountering new cultures, with not making too many premature assumptions, and with shaping diagnostic skills in the here-and-now situation all derived
from these early experiences. I also learned how to adapt quickly to new situations, a skill, Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

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which I now realize, was essential to doing effective consulting with organizations. This
adaptive capacity shaped my career in many ways, as will be seen.
A Hutchins-style General Education. Public high school at Hyde Park High led directly
to entering the University of Chicago that was operating by the general education systemthat granted a bachelor’s degree after two years. I did not really know what I wanted (I tried
physics and failed badly at it), so I stayed an additional year without a major. During thatyear I learned in the General Biology Course about Carl Rogers and his theory of therapy
based on reflecting back to patients their own constructions rather than giving expert interpretations. My fellow students and I thought this was really funny and would go aroundcampus “mirroring each other.” Psychology did intrigue me, however, so I sought out a place
to major in it.
Stanford Bachelors and Masters. Stanford with its four-quarter system proved to be theideal place to concentrate into one academic year an entire major, and, in that process, todiscover that what I really liked was social psychology and the experiments on social influence, which were being done by Sherif, Asch and others. I decided to stay another year andget a Masters Degree which involved doing an experiment under the guidance of Harry
Helson. His theory of Adaptation Level was being applied to social situations so I did anexperiment to see how weight judgments were influenced by hearing others make those judgments in a rigged experimental situation.
Harvard Social Relations. By the spring of 1949 I had taken every relevant psychology
course that Stanford had to offer, so the decision to get a Ph.D. also required relocation. I
wanted a Social Psychology program so the choice was Michigan or Harvard’s Department
of Social Relations that combined Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology into a single
program. Within that framework one could major in Clinical or Social Psychology. The major
attraction that drew me to Harvard was the active presence of Gordon Allport, Henry
Murray, Jerry Bruner, Talcott Parsons, Sam Stouffer, Clyde and Florence Kluckhohn, David
McClelland, and a host of younger faculty and graduate students in all of the fields.
In 1950 the military draft was still operating so I chose to enter the Army ClinicalPsychology Program that provided financial support at the level of Second Lieutenant inexchange for a three-year stint in the regular army Medical Service Corps as a psychologist
after obtaining the Ph.D. Harvard required a one-year internship as part of the Ph.D. program, and the Army provided the opportunity for spending a year at Walter Reed Hospital
as a Clinical Psychologist doing primarily diagnostic work for the resident psychiatrists.
For my dissertation experiment I chose to work with Richard Solomon and Gordon
Allport to determine whether human subjects would learn to imitate someone else whose
judgments seemed more accurate than their own, and whether they would continue to imitateon other tasks that varied in similarity to the original one. I was able to use Army inductees
for my experiment. The experiment was a success so I was able to finish my dissertation by
the end of 1952 (Schein, 1954).

ChorusThe decision to go to Harvard was fateful in providing the exposure, mostly through fellow
graduate students and some courses, to an interdisciplinary way of thinking. While experimentation was clearly the way to do psychology, learning about diagnostics from testing with
Rorschach and TAT tests, learning that anthropology was done in the field by living withmembers of other tribes and observing them closely, and learning that large scale surveys

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Feature ■ Schein could reveal social patterns not visible without statistics broadened the whole base of what
constitutes scientific inquiry.
It was apparent that “science” comes in several forms and it was essential to learn that
there was no one method superior to all of the others. In fact, later in my career I learned thatscience was a culture in its own right, and that there were many sacred cows in each field,
and even within sub-fields. Gordon Allport was a special influence on me in his insistence on
good historical understanding of one’s own field and good writing. He was a merciless criticof the writing in the dissertation.
Adaptive ability had to be learned repeatedly. The choice to join the Army to insure thecontinued use of psychology, the use of the military connection to get subjects for the dissertation experiment, the clinical internship at Walter Reed were all opportunities to create abroad base for later work.
Though I did not realize it at the time, the exposure to other disciplines and to the realworld of Walter Reed Hospital was critical in forming my later thinking about organizations.
As long as I was focused on narrow experiments on imitation, there was no need to worry
about how sociology and anthropology influenced these phenomena, but as I was to discover later, once one tries to conceptualize human systems on a broader scale, it cannot bedone without an interdisciplinary point of view (as we will see).
The implications for graduate training are tremendous. Should all graduate students berequired to do a year of “real work” in organizations as part of their graduate training?

Act I. Brainwashing or Coercive Persuasion—The Powerof the System (Culture, Indoctrination, Socialization)
Scene 1: The Military and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
The decision to join the Army was validated by their assigning me to the Walter Reed Army
Institute of Research where I joined an exciting interdisciplinary group under the leadershipof the brilliant Sullivanian psychiatrist David Rioch. If Gordon Allport was my first important mentor, David Rioch was clearly the second one. He encouraged me to develop my own
research program focusing on influence and leadership. I was well on the way to designingsome new experiments in this domain when fate intervened.

Scene 2: Korea and the Study of Repatriates
One morning in 1953 a telegram arrived from Army HQ’s ordering me to appear at Travis
Air Force Base in 72 hours, no further explanation offered. However, several of my colleagues
at Walter Reed who were also in the Army received the same telegram so we knew something
big was up. When we were all gathered we were told that we would fly to Japan for further
briefing, then on to Inchon, Korea where we would meet with a group of repatriates being
exchanged for U.S. held prisoners as part of “Big Switch” and the armistice that had beensigned with the North Koreans and Chinese. A previous exchange of sick and wounded prisoners some months earlier had revealed that some U.S. prisoners had “collaborated with theenemy” and had been indoctrinated to an unknown degree. Repatriates were therefore to be
put on ships for the 16-day voyage to San Francisco. A psychiatric team would join each ship
to assess the mental state of the repatriates and provide whatever therapy they might need
before being returned home.

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When I got to Inchon I was told thatmy ship would be delayed for three
weeks and that I should just wait in therepatriation center where truckloads ofrepatriates were coming in every day.
Since I was very interested in social influence I decided to pull repatriates randomly off the line and interview them
about their prison camp experiences. I
asked each repatriate just to tell me hisstory from the moment of his capture.
These stories fell into clear patterns that
resulted in my being able to define ingeneral terms what the Chinese indoctrination program consisted of, why it
worked on a few people, and why mostof the captives did not succumb to any collaborative behavior (Schein, et al, 1961).
But “brainwashing” based on Edward
Hunter’s 1951 book that freely translated the Chinese concept of “cleansing themind of middle class values” took holdas a concept, in part because some of thewestern civilian businessmen, students
and priests captured on the mainland didcome out of prison admitting that they
were criminals and spies (which was not true), that they were treated leniently in being
allowed out of prison after just a few years, and that the U.S. and the West clearly did notunderstand the validity of the Communist point of view.
Further study of what happened under Chinese captivity became a central concern of interest and displaced forever my commitment to experimentation as the central way of gathering
data. I began a several year study that led to the 1961 book entitled “Coercive Persuasion.”
I realized that the indoctrination methods used were quite similar whether one was talking
about religious training, or any other form of indoctrination. The message might be different
but the process was essentially the same.

Chorus
While at Walter Reed the exposure to interdisciplinary work was again critical. The group
had an endocrinologist, several Skinnerian behaviorists, an ecologists studying crowding in
rat colonies, a statistician, and a number of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. Most
important, however, was that David Rioch had hired several consultants who came on aquarterly basis to share their views with the group. One of these was Erving Goffman whose
influence was deep and lasting. Rarely has one person’s writing so completely taken hold as“truth.” To this day, people do not take Goffman’s work seriously enough.
Many important lessons derived from this early work:

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Feature ■ Schein • Group/Organizational forces are stronger than individual forces, but under coercive
conditions some individuals are more active than others with mixed results. In other words,
collaborators and intense resisters were similar in many personality aspects, particularly thetemperamental bias toward action.
• Change must be distinguished from “new learning” in that it implies some unlearningwhich is intrinsically difficult and usually painful.
• Change begins with “disconfirmation,” some upsetting of the “quasistationary equilibrium.”
Change must be• Motivation to change does not arise until the change target feels secure
distinguished fromenough to accept the disconfirming data because the new things to be learned“new learning” inbegin be feasible. The change target feels “psychologically safe” if he or shethat it implies some can accept a new attitude or value without complete loss of self.
• Once the individual feels psychologically safe, he or she can accept new
unlearning which is information either through identification with others or scanning the environintrinsically difficult ment for new solutions.
• Change then occurs by “cognitive redefinition” through: 1) Semantic
and usually painful. change in old concepts, i.e. the Chinese communist definition of crime andspying was “any behavior that could be harmful to the state” hence innocent
postcards could be viewed as spying by passing on potentially harmful information to apotential or actual enemy. 2) Change in “adaptation level” or judgment standards as to how
a given behavior or perceived object is to be judged, i.e. seemingly trivial types of information
by U.S. standards were viewed as important intelligence information by the communists. 3)
Introduction of new concepts and meanings, i.e. the abstraction of the “communist state”
which could be harmed in the future and, therefore, justified seemingly excessive protection.
• The more ambiguous the situation, the more the individual will rely on the perceptions
and judgments of others, i.e. the prisoner finally learned these new meanings and standards
from fellow prisoners more advanced in their “thought reform.”• New concepts and standards will not survive unless they are socially and personallyreinforced, confirmed, i.e. once the repatriate retuned to the U.S. they relearned our own definitions and standards, except in one case of a husband and wife who were imprisoned
together and continued to maintain their newly learned views after returning to the U.S.
These cognitive and social dynamics proved to be a good model for organizational change
projects I became involved with later. Often it is what we learn early in life that is the mostvalid and profound (Schein, et al, 1961).

Act II. Career Anchors – The Power of the Individual(Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Personal Integrity)
Scene 1: The Decision to join a Management School
After five years at Walter Reed I decided to pursue my academic career which boiled down
to a decision between an assistant professorship in the Cornell Psychology Department or in
the MIT School of Industrial Management. Though I was unsure about going to a professional school, the invitation from Douglas McGregor and my previous exposure to MIT via
a seminar taught by Alex Bavelas biased me toward MIT and a career that involved more

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applied than experimental work. I joined the Sloan
School in 1956 and spent the rest of my career
there.
After finishing the work on coercive persuasion
I decided to study how corporations indoctrinate
their employees and launched a panel study involving detailed career analysis of MIT Masters alumni.
The evidence for indoctrination was mixed, but a
13-year follow up of the panel revealed a brandnew concept –“Career Anchors.” As people matured
they formed a self-image around their motivations,competences and values that served to guide andconstrain career decisions. The concept and theinterview methodology used to determine careeranchors has proven to be an important contribution to career theory and an important tool incareer counseling and coaching (Schein, 1971, 1975,
1978, 1985).

Chorus• The degree to which change can be imposed
depends on the degree to which the change target
can “leave the field;” if the target can be coerced
into staying in the field, change will inevitably occur, in part through “self-socialization” or“acculturation.”• If the change target seeks the change, he or she will voluntarily enter the relevant field
and become “self-socialized.”• If the individual does not wish to change, he or she will seek “fields” in which there is
no change pressure.
• In the end, the degree to which the individual is subject to outside influences is then afunction of his or her freedom to move, which, in the case of career influences depends verymuch on the state of the labor market.
In the study of coercive persuasion I learned how powerful the group can be. But in an
open society, I later learned that individuals are equally powerful, if they can choose theirown settings.

Act III. Process Consultation (Interaction of the Change
Agent and the Change Target – Client)
Scene 1: Exposure to and involvement with the National Training
Labs and “T-groups”
In the summer of 1957 I attended my first leadership and group dynamics workshop in
Bethel, Maine where I was exposed to the whole concept of studying groups by analyzing ourown group process. I found this to be a crucial experience in differentiating what I knew fromreflections.solonline.org

Feature ■ Schein my academic training from what I learned through direct experience. I also found that traditional teaching and learning was a very weak experience compared to the immediate hereand-now feedback that occurred when groups analyzed their own process and members gave
each other face-to-face feedback. Experiential learning became central to my own sense of
how one learns in the human interaction domain (Schein & Bennis, 1965; Schein, 1993a).

Scene 2: Learning to consult in organizational contexts 			and the evolution of Process Consultation
The role of the “trainer” in the T-groups opened another area of insight—the role of theprocess observer and intervener. I learned within the group and in subsequent consulting
encounters that the most effective intervention was not expert advice but 1)
The solution
facilitating the client’s own understanding of his or her own problem and 2)
teaming up with the client to jointly develop a solution. This brought me backto problems havefull circle to Carl Rogers and his theory of how to conduct therapy. I learned
to come fromthat most consultants attempted to recommend expert solutions and most of
those solutions were not implemented because they ignored critical factors in
the participants
the clients situation. I had learned in the T-group that one does not reallyof they are to beunderstand a situation until the participants have explored it themselves, andthat the solution to problems have to come from the participants if they are to
implemented.
be implemented. Based on these experiences, especially the frustration of seeing how being an expert did not lead to any meaningful change in human systems, I developed a different model and called it “process consultation” (Schein, 1969, 1987, 1999).

Chorus• Working with groups and organizations revealed the need to take problem centered viewin that most of the group activities were geared to improving the present situation in some
way or another. The connection to “therapy” became obvious, but in group and organizational contexts it was group and family therapy that provided the most help not individual
therapy. The models used by family therapists were the most useful because they were dealing
with entire family systems not just individual patients. Such systemic thinking also revealed
that the change target in a complex system is not necessarily the person that the therapist
would work with. Redefining member roles and working with parts of the system that weremore ready to change prove to be powerful change levers.
• The conceptual link between consulting to organizations and therapy led to explorationsof family therapy and systemic therapy concepts (Bateson, 1972; Watzlawick, et al, 1974).
The publication in 1965 of “Organizational Psychology” was one of the first efforts to define
the systemic nature of organizations as contrasted with the mechanical models of “Industrial
Psychology” that were extant at that time (Schein, 1965, 1970, 1980).
• The emphasis on “process” was missing in most organization theories, yet process
reveals structure and is the dynamic that drives the system, hence better analyses of process
such as those we were doing in the T-groups became an essential characteristic of how to
study and work with organizations.
There is a kind of irony in the fact that I was working all of this time in many countries andwas exposed to both national and organizational cultures, but was so focused on “process”
that I never looked carefully at the content of what was being transmitted, i.e. culture.

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Act IV. Culture—Dynamics of Complex Social Systems
Scene 1: Long range consulting with Ciba-Geigy andDigital Equipment Corporation.
I was, of course, familiar with the concept of culture from my graduate student days, but it
was the contrast between the two companies that were for many years my client that reallybrought home to me how much difference culture makes to how an organization works.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was entrepreneurial, academic, electrical engineering
driven and was developing the entirely new technology of interactive computing. It was basedin New England and reflected very much the U.S. culture. Ciba-Geigy (CG) was an old chemical company in Basel, run by the “Basel Mafia” of lawyers, chemists, and chemical engineers,reflecting age, chemistry, and Swiss-German culture.
The culture model of “Artifacts,” “Espoused Values,” and “Tacit Taken-for-Granted Assumptions” grew out of the dramatic contrasts that these companies provided at every level. I
learned that people used the concept of culture at every level, so it was critical to identify
what one should think of as the essence of culture – the shared tacit assumptions.
I began writing about culture in the early 1980’s partly because of my own observations
and partly because the impact of the “Japanese style of management” was being felt everywhere. The notion that there are different ways to manage which create different organizational cultures became very evident (Schein, 1981, 1985, 1990, 1992, 1999, 2004).

Scene 2: The Evolution of the Clinical Perspective
When I decided to write about organizational culture, I found that my research data wereprimarily the observations I had made during my actual consulting visits. I found, once again,that the most relevant data come not from surveys or experiments, but from direct observation and direct personal experience. I evolved further what I came to call the “clinical perspective” in emphasizing data that surfaced not by passive observation as would be the casein ethnography, but by responding to requests for help in various ways and observing thereaction and impacts of different kinds of interventions (Schein, 1987, 1995, 2001b).
These experiences strongly confirmed the Kurt Lewin observation that “you do not really
understand an organization (system) until you try to change it.” I also noticed that the longitudinal study of groups and organizations makes clear how all systems need stable selfimages just as much as individuals do, and vary as much as individuals do in terms of theirown learning histories. In organizations one could observe what the anthropologist could
rarely observe – how cultures begin and evolve.
I became more aware of the cyclical nature of life. Individuals create organizations thatdevelop cultures and organizations acculturate individuals; the balance between individualand organizational autonomy is a perpetual struggle forever modulated by dynamic “psychological contracts” between employer and employed. Leadership in starting an organization is
a completely different process from leadership in a mature organization that is trying tochange some elements of its culture. Leaders create cultures through imposing their personalvalues and assumptions on their colleagues and employees, but as the organization develops
a shared view, i.e. “culture,” it imprints itself on its members who may then create yet otherorganizations on this same model (Higgins, 2005).

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Feature ■ Schein Scene 3: Organizational systems dynamics—the discovery of
the power of subgroups and subcultures (the DEC story) to influence
the destiny of social systems
Perhaps the biggest insight from years of consulting with DEC was the discovery that withsuccess and growth, subsystems develop and these, in turn, develop cultures of their own.
What is even more dramatic is the discovery that these sub-cultures may conflict with eachother, making the managerial process inside organizations comparable to what it might belike to managing in the United Nations. When one sees the wars that develop between subsystems, one realizes why “hierarchy” as a control mechanism is so important in complex
human systems (1996b, 2003).

Scene 4: Taking culture seriously and becoming culturally humble
As my written works circulated in Europe and Asia, I received more invitations to teach invarious countries and learned how the same kind of material and teaching approach goesover very differently in China, Japan, Brazil, France, Mexico, Germany, Singapore, Denmark,the UK, Italy, and Chile. I also discovered that when doing process consultation in anotherculture it is essential to work with someone from that culture to avoid mistakes that might
hurt the client (Schein, 1996a).

Chorus• Once people make sense of their world collectively, creating norms and developing tacit
assumptions, those norms and assumptions define reality, the individual’s identity and groupmembership. Individual change at this level can only be accomplished by group level interventions in that one cannot change shared assumptions or norms by changing one individual
unless that person is the leader and imposes a new set coercively. And then things will change
only if the behavior deriving from the new norms work better.
•	Assumptions that work, i.e. enable the group to survive in its environment and to integrate internally, become more stable and unchangeable.
• The organization’s culture can be destroyed by destroying the organization as a cultural
entity (by removing key people who are culture carriers), but the assumptions will live on in
the individuals as parts of their identity.
• With growth and success organizations evolve sub-groups which evolve sub-cultures; ifthose sub-cultures are not aligned, if they begin to conflict with each other, such conflicts are
the greatest source of systems pathology.

Act V. Interaction, Change, and Therapy
Scene 1: The realization that health can only be defined
as an interactive coping process in a social and cultural field.
The more I examined process consultation and observed my own behavior as a consultant,the more I realized that what consultants do is very akin to therapy, but this formulation is
not acceptable to most managerial clients. Organizational pathologies of all sorts are very
evident whenever one gets into client situations, and the clinical perspective is always themost useful and relevant, but in working with organizational cultures one must learn to use
the metaphors and linguistic categories that make sense to them and enable them to save face

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and avoid defensiveness. I realized that the best kind of “therapy” draws on personal andcultural strengths even though the process is triggered by pathology, weakness or problems.
The consultant/therapist must learn to draw out the strengths in the culture and show how
they can be used to solve the problems facing the organization.

Scene 2: Ambivalence about Organization Development (OD)and Organizational Learning (OL)In my last 15 years or so at MIT a proliferation of “techniques” purporting to improve organizations sprang up under various labels and under the broad umbrella of organizational
development (OD) and organizational learning (OL). My discomfort with both of these fields
and communities of practice grew out of the recognition that they were highly normative
without an underlying model or theory of health and pathology. The clinical perspective isnormative, but the norms one strives for are based on an underlying model or theory that fitsa wider reality.
In much of OD and OL practitioners sought to make organizations more humane and/or
more efficient and/or more socially responsible without examining how those organizations
themselves fit into a larger social system and what was possible to do, given their functionsin the system. The process consultation model argued for locating the client’s reality before
imposing the consultant’s norms.
I found myself quite involved in the teaching of process consultation as an important setof principles underlying OD, and I worked for many years with Peter Senge and the Society
for Organizational Learning, helping to found and edit their journal Reflections. This was aneffort to improve communications between scholars, consultants, and organizational clients
but was only a partial success because the professional and occupational sub-cultures of thesegroups were too strong and too self-referential. My focus in these last years of full time work
continued to be on the use of the clinical perspective to understand better the dynamics ofsocial systems without getting prematurely into prescriptions of how they ought to function
or what values they should hold.

Chorus• With age there comes a sense of history and a sense of how very little is really new in life,
and a sense of perspective about the complexity of the world out there• With the growth of technology and globalization have come many more organizational
dilemmas that highlight the degree to which we do not yet really understand organizationaland managerial dynamics well enough to be prescriptive about them.

Epilogue
Concepts that we publish lead us into new areas, sometimes in surprising ways. My work on
culture has been picked by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna leading
to a request to give a talk on “Safety Culture” in 2002. That, in turn has led the Institute for
Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) to invite me to join their Advisory Board, again to workon safety culture. As one of my friends pointed out, isn’t it strange that I grew up in the
shadow of the creation of atomic energy when I was in Chicago at the University, rejected
physics as a field, but have ended up applying what I did learn to one of the outcomes of thatvery field. I have also been asked to consult on cultural matters with New York’s Con Edisonreflections.solonline.org

Feature ■ Schein 11

company to help them become more effective in the environmental, health and safety areas.
Most recently this has led to being recruited to work on “safety” in the health care industry
I am left at this point (age 77) with more of a sense of realism about self, individuals,
groups, organizations, societies, and health itself. The unfinished business is to figure out howteaching, consulting, therapy and other modes of influence draw on the same basic change
model, but do so differently and with different goals and results. Naturalists, magicians,
priests, shamans and mystics all can teach and influence behavior, but they do so in such different ways as to make us realize how contextual our knowledge
must be if we are to be useful.
Deep down I think   I find that the most stimulating way to proceed is to stay openorganization studies
and humble, get in touch with my own biases and filters so that I can
see and hear what is really out there. Deep down I think organizationis still in a prestudies is still in a pre-Darwinian state of development. We do not yet
Darwinian state ofknow what the key categories of variables are around which to build
development.
our field, but the search for them is great fun.
  As I look back I also realize that I have been as much a practitioner as a scholar, or, rather, I found the most productive research to be an active practice oftrying to help organizations. In reflecting on practice, I realize how much of it is artistry(1993b, 2001a). I have often found myself saying to practitioners in workshops that theyneed three things:
1)	They need to learn to think like an anthropologist, accepting culture for what it is,suspending judgment until they see it from the “native point of view” and using the strengthsof the culture to change those elements that have become dysfunctional;
2)	They need to develop the skills of a family therapist, accepting the fact that humansystems are complex and difficult to change; and
3)	They need to trust their own artistic impulse in deciding what kind of intervention
to make in a human system. There will always be more data than they can absorb, there
will always be surprises, and there will never be enough predictability to determine a “correct” course of action. Just as the artist interacts with his or her blank canvas, so the practitioner must interact with his or her client system and rely on artistic instinct to decide how
to proceed.
The artistic impulse provides several final perspectives. Much of what we learn from experience remains tacit and can only be expressed artistically. It is no accident that when a colleague has said or done something that really strikes us, we say “that was beautiful.” We
underestimate the power of aesthetics to communicate the essential. Second, Don Schonreminded us years ago in his brilliant book The Reflective Practitioner that we cannot learn
if we do not reflect. I have found that the best way to reflect is to face the empty canvas andthink about what to put on it. Finally, artistic license gives us a chance to take some intellectual chances. Maybe what we produce is not right, but maybe it is, and maybe it will
stimulate someone else more in the context of artistic expression than in the context of formal
scholarship. In any case, it was great fun to write this little play.

12 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

reflections.solonline.org

References
Bateson, G., (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, N.Y.: Ballantine.
Higgins, M. (2005) Career imprints. San Francisco, CA.: Jossey-Bass.
Hunter, E. (1951) Brainwashing in Red China. N.Y.: Vanguard.
Schein, E.H. (1954) The Effect of Reward on Adult Imitative Behavior. Journal of Abnormal and Social
Pyschology, 49, 389-395
Schein, E.H. Schneier, I., & Barker, C.H. (1961) Coercive persuasion. New York: W.W. Norton.
Schein, E.H., & Bennis, W.G. (1965) Personal and organizational change through group methods:
The laboratory approach. New York: Wiley.
Schein, E.H. (1965) Organizational Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall (2nd Ed., 1970;
3rd Ed., 1980).
Schein, E.H. (1969) Process consultation: Its role in organization development. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Schein, E.H. (1971) The Individual, the Organization, and the Career: A Conceptual Scheme. Journalof Applied Behavioral Science, 7, 401-426.
Schein, E.H. (1975) How Career Anchors Hold Executives to Their Career Paths. Personnel, 52, 11-24.
Schein, E.H. (1978) Career Dynamics: Matching Individual and Organizational Needs. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Schein, E.H. (1981) Does Japanese Management Style Have a Message for American Managers?
Sloan Management Review, 23, 55-68
Schein, E.H. (1985), Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (2d Ed,
1992, 3d Ed. 2004)
Schein, E.H. (1985) Career Anchors: Discovering Your Real Values. San Diego: University Associates.
Schein, E.H. (1987) Process Consultation, Vol. 2: Lessons for Managers and Consultants. Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley.
Schein, (1987) E.H. The Clinical Perspective in Field Work. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Schein, E.H. (1990) Organizational Culture. American Psychologist, 45, pp. 109-119.
Schein, E.H. (1993a) On Dialogue, Culture, and Organizational Learning. Organizational Dynamics,
Autumn, 22, 40-51.
Schein, E.H. (1993b) “The academic as artist: Personal and professional roots.” In Bedeian, A. (Ed.)
Management Laureates: Vol. 3, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Schein, E.H. (1995) Process Consultation, Action Research and Clinical Inquiry: Are They the Same?
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 10, No. 6, 14-19.
Schein, E.H. (1996a) Strategic Pragmatism: The Culture of Singapore’s Economic Development Board.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schein, E.H. (1996b) Three Cultures of Management: The Key to Organizational Learning. Sloan
Management Review, 38, 1, 9-20.
Schein, E.H. (1999) Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley-Longman.
Schein, E.H. (1999) The Corporate Culture Survival Guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Schein, E. H. (2001a) The role of art and the artist. Reflections, Summer, 2, pp. 81-83.
Schein, E. H. (2001b) “Clinical Inquiry/Research” in Reason, P. & Bradbury, H. (eds.) Handbook of
Action Research, Sage Press, 2001. Pp. 228-237.

reflections.solonline.org

Feature ■ Schein 13

Schein, E. H. (2003) DEC is Dead; Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment
Corporation. Berrett/Kohler, 2003.
Schoen, D. A. (1983) The reflective practitioner. N.Y.: Basic Books.
Watzlavik, P., Weakland, J. H. & Fisch, R. (1974) Change. N. Y.: Norton.

A bo u t th e A u thor

Edgar Schein is Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, where
he has taught for nearly 40 years, and recent recipient of the first Hughes Award, the premier awardof the Careers Division of the Academy of Management. An experienced consultant, he is the authorof numerous books, including the well-loved volumes, Process Consultation (1987 and 1988). He
earned his BA and MA from Stanford University, a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D.
in Social Psychology from Harvard University.
scheine@mit.edu

14
14 Reflections
Reflections■■Volume
Volume6,6,Numbers
Numbers88–10–10reflections.solonline.org

Organizational Learning in China:
Inroads and Implications for the
Awakening Dragon
By Darl G. Kolb and Tianjian Jiang

China is becoming a major
force within the global ecology
of markets, cultures, and complex connectivity. In order todeal with this complexity,
a growing number of educators, consultants and managers have been attracted toDarl G. Kolb
the notion of building learning organizations. Over the
past 10 years, more and more
Chinese consultants and training agencies have endeavoredto facilitate the building oflearning organizations, and anincreasing number of Chineseorganizations in different inTianjian Jiang
dustries are working towards
becoming learning organizations. This article provides a brief history of how the learning organization
movement was introduced in China, how it is encouraged and supported by the Society for Organizational Learning, and how it is being adopted andadapted in one Chinese company.

Learning: East Meets West
Eric Tsang (1997) has argued that “we need to know
more about how organizations in various cultures
actually learn . . . cross-cultural studies making comparisons and highlighting contrasts are also useful.”
So far, Japan is the most often documented non-reflections.solonline.org

Western country portrayed as advocating learning
on both organizational and national levels. Japanese
authors and Japanese organizations have been citedin Western literature (Marquardt, 1996; Senge,
1990; Westney, 1992). Besides Japanese organizations,a few other Asian organizations, such as Singapore
Airlines and Samsung, have been referred to as earlyand successful pioneers of organizational learning(Marquardt, 1996). Unfortunately, most non-Westernorganization cases cited in the literature are superficial (Easterby-Smith, 1997; Tsang, 1997). While theopening of markets in China and Eastern Europe toinvestment from Western countries has led to someresearch into learning within joint ventures (EasterbySmith, 1997), exploring how organizational learning
is being adapted in China may offer glimpses into
Chinese organizations of the future.
Learning is one of the unique attributes that distinguishes human beings from other species (Schwandt& Marquardt, 2000). Moreover, humans seem tohave a drive to learn (Dixon, 1999). If learning isuniversal among humans, is it not also relative to thespecific cultural context in which the learner is situated?
Consider the cultural relativity of “learning from experience” – one of the fundamental principles andimplications of organizational learning. Philosophersfrom Eastern and Western civilizations have longpondered the nature of learning, in particular therole of experience in education. Aristotle and Socrates
differed in their views of the roles of experience(Kraft, 1980). Aristotle believed that the mind was
the dwelling place of wisdom and that the mind

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 15

could solve all of life’s intellectual problems, whereas
Socrates felt that experience could teach us a thing or
two and that encountering real life was “in no way
inferior” to thinking alone as a means to achieve
wisdom. A century ago John Dewey (1900; Dewey,
1938; Hunt, 1995) explored the relationship between
experience and learning, distinguishing between different but interconnected aspects of all experience.
Dewey’s views on education have inspired generations of scholars interested in how humans translate
and integrate past experiences into future insights.
For example, Kolb’s (1984) model of experiential
learning features a cycle through which individual
learning progresses (generally) in this order: concrete
experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation.
Of course, not all Western philosophers and scholars
see reflection on experience as the essence of education and learning. Rote learning is the basis of muchof the curriculum in both private (including “parochial”
faith-based) and public school systems. Underpinningour understanding of rewards for memorization,
behaviorists demonstrated how humans (and animals to a lesser, but significant, degree) “learn” frompositive and negative reinforcement. Human resource
management and remuneration systems knowingly
or unwittingly apply reinforcement theory in many
contemporary organizations. In organizations, we usually “get what we count,” that is to say, results follow
rewards, and vice versa.
By contrast, Peter Senge (1990) presented the concept of organizational learning as being “more consistent with human nature,” enabling people to balance“the desire for continuity with the desire to be creative.” Consistent with Western philosophy, Senge’s
model integrates theory with practice, e.g., “conceptualizing the big picture and testing ideas in practice.”
Within the learning organization framework, dynamic
social forces, i.e., creative tension, theory, and practice, are natural components of the “whole” organization, and this holism is important to understanding
both “learning” and “organization.” Organizational
learning is described by Schwandt and Marquardt as“a very complex interrelationship between people,

16 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

actions, symbols, and process within the organization” (2000).
Looking to Eastern views on learning, it is clearthat Chinese civilization has, like the West, advocated learning and education throughout its long
history. The ancient Chinese developed the conceptof learning from their daily work and practice, represented by the two characters, “学” and “习”. These
two words were used separately because they represented different steps in the process of learning(Sang, 2000). “The first word means ‘to study.’ It is
composed of two parts: a symbol that means ‘toaccumulate knowledge’ above a symbol for a child ina doorway of a school. The second character means‘to practice constantly,’ and it shows a bird developing the ability to leave the nest. The upper symbol
represents flying and the low symbol refers to youth”(Senge, et al., 1994).
Confucius first studied the relationship between 学
and 习 in China. He stated in The Analects (1998),“to learn and in due time to repeat (practice) what
one has learned, is that not after all a pleasure?” To
Confucius, “study” is the foundation and prerequisite of “practice,” and “practice” enhances and deepens
one’s knowledge (Sang, 2000). In the traditional Chinese
culture, learning has been understood to have two
ongoing important aspects: “study” and “practiceconstantly” together. Resonant with the Western
appreciation of learning from experience throughreflection, the ancient Chinese also understood theprocess of learning as a cycle involving: acquiringknowledge, reflecting, practicing and taking action,
but in their eyes, practice was the most importantelement of the learning cycle.
Traditionally, education has been highly regardedin Chinese society. Confucianism stresses the importance of education to all people in society, without
discrimination, to facilitate economic development
and growth. Such growth stems from the acquisitionof skills, diligence, patience, moderation, and perseverance (Bloom & Solotko, 2003). Confucianism also
values learning and the ideals of social mobility,
which are achieved by intellectual progression anddevelopment. Therefore, education and intellectualreflections.solonline.org

life has been at the heart of the social and organizational infrastructure of China for many hundreds, if
not thousands, of years (Turner & Acker, 2002).
In summary, both Eastern and Western cultural
traditions value learning and education as fundamental to society. And, both value learning in various forms, including rote or memorized learning offacts, content, and some delivered “truths.” In bothtraditions the importance of learning from experience has been emphasized. The idea of an organization “learning” is no more a metaphoric leap for the
East than it is for the West. How this plays out incontemporary Chinese organizations and society is
the focus of this study, but first, some additional
context may be useful.

Cultural Context
To conduct research in the Chinese context, it is necessary to understand the background of Chinese
culture. There is a wide agreement that “Confucianism

reflections.solonline.org

is most clearly defined as the foundation of China’s
great cultural tradition, and Confucian values still
provide the basis for the norms of Chinese interpersonal behavior” (Shenkar & Ronen, 1978). The
Confucian tradition holds four key characteristics:
1) people-oriented and stressing love, 2) values-oriented,
emphasizing the development of personal values,3) practice-oriented and valuing people’s potential to
become enlightened and to achieve, and 4) wholeoriented and emphasizing natural, neutral harmony.
Under Confucian principles the individual is an integral
part of relationship networks (Zhou, Yin, & Cai, 1997).
Another mainstream of Chinese tradition is Taoism,
which, like Confucianism, has deeply influenced
Chinese politics, science, culture, and arts (Zhou et al.,1997). The source of Taoism was Lao-tzu, and theessence of Taoism is fundamentally dialectic. Taoism
can be characterized by three core aspects: 1) mastering the principles of nature, 2) understanding thateverything has two sides, and 3) seeing truth as relative (Zhou et al., 1997).

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 17

Economics and politics have been inextricably linked with the development of education throughout Chinese history (Zhaowu
1998). To a greater extent than in manyother social contexts, education has been
explicitly linked to the accession of politicalpower, influence, and social mobility in China(Zhaowu 1998). Notwithstanding its respect
for learning, traditional Chinese culture
also held as one of its fundamental conceptsof Confucianism “hierarchical relationships”(Hofstede & Bond, 1988), which play animportant role in maintaining a person’s position in the social hierarchy (Child, 1994).
This led to a negative influence on Chinese
learning and educational development.
Respect for age and hierarchical position,for instance, can inhibit the acceptance ofideas and input (feedback) from younger
and lower-position people.
People who were younger or lower in thesocial status were often restrained from challenging those at a higher level in the hierarchy. The cumulative effect was that people’s
desires and abilities for creative learning became highly
constrained until learning began to refer solely tolearning from the direction of elders and authorities.
The concept of learning lost its emphasis on “study”
and “practice” and rather became synonymous withcopying and following. As one observer summarized
it, “China developed and maintained a highly centralized indigenous educational tradition that carried
with it heavy prescriptions for pedagogy and practice”(Hayhoe 1996).
Prior to recent and ongoing economic reforms,
China was dominated by a planned economy. “Keycomponents of the system were a highly centralized
mode of command planning, a hierarchical enterprise management system, and elaborate structure ofindividual material incentives in industry” (Riskin,1987). High-level centralization and control filteredthrough every aspect of society, including resource
allocation, pricing, and distribution. The consequencesof this high-level centralization were serious, includ-

18 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

ing increasingly centralized governmental power on
the one hand, and a widespread belief in egalitarianismon the other (Child, 1994).
Centralized planning and control had two main
negative consequences for learning. First, people’s creativity and learning capabilities were constrained, muchas they had been in prior feudal societies. Second, the“three old irons,” i.e. “iron rice bowl” (lifetime
employment), “iron wages” (centrally administeredwages), and “iron chair” (state-controlled appointment
and promotion of managerial staff) – the products
and processes of centralization and egalitarianism –reduced people’s focus on generative learning because
they felt comfortable and safe under the “three oldirons” system (Ding & Warner, 2001). This situation
could be said to resemble Senge’s (1990) parable of“the boiled frog.”
High levels of state control had also led to an absence of intellectual freedom. Policy aims for education were targeted at teaching style and program content

reflections.solonline.org

(Turner & Acker, 2002). “The purpose of the education process in this compounded environment then is
to develop individuals who are models of certain kindsof behavior or who develop professional or intellectual knowledge with specific uses in society” (Turner& Acker, 2002). The subsequent impact on teaching
and learning was that learning became interpreted asfinding the “right” answer and developing one’s self
into the “right” kind of person along clear and definable lines. The process of skills development, where
critical thought and opportunities to develop acrossa self-determined and independently articulated path,
were largely absent in Chinese educational traditions.
Curricula focused on a narrow range of highly conforming and unified expectations of teachers andlearners (Li 1994; State Education Commission 1996).
After Mao’s death in 1976, the intention to undertake economic structural reform was announced at
the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee
meeting of the Communist Party of China, held in
December 1978. It was both an immediate reaction
to the shortcomings of the Cultural Revolution anda desire to transcend the limitations of the centralized
system (Child, 1994). This program of reform, interacting with inherited structural, behavioral, and cultural characteristics, has since shaped the present
pattern of enterprise management in China. It was
acknowledged in the Plenum that the heavily centralized administrative approach confused the functionsof government and enterprise by imposing undue
uniformity, and by suppressing initiative, thereby
failing to adapt to market demand. Moreover, theopening of economic relations to the outside world(the so-called “open-door policy”) was seen as a further necessary change to promote the same objective(Huang, 1985). The essence of the economical reform
has been a restructured relationship between government, especially at the central level, and economic
units that have been transformed from factories into
enterprises. These enterprises must now cope withina global economy.
The economic reformers were aware that changes
to China’s system of industrial governance were notenough to ensure successful cultural change. Anotherreflections.solonline.org

significant reform was the “emancipation of minds”
rally cry, which was often accompanied by the slogan,“seeking truth from facts” (Xinhuanews, 1998). The
goal of emancipating the minds of the Chinese people
was intended to accelerate economic and culturaldevelopment. Emancipating the mind and seeking thetruth from facts set a milestone in Chinese people’s
lives that revived their age-old interest in and respect
for learning.
In 1998, Jiang Zemin, then President of China,
pointed out that over the previous two decades ofreform people had made tremendous achievements
through emancipating their minds and seeking truth
from facts, and hence were attracting worldwide
attention. More recently, in the report of the 16th
Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which
was held in November 2002, Jiang stated, “We must
be good at both reviewing our useful experience andlearning lessons from our mistakes….A learning society
in which all the people will learn or even pursue
lifelong education will emerge to boost their all-rounddevelopment” (Z. Jiang, 2002). Additionally, “constructing the systems of country-wide and lifelong
education, and building the learning society,” was also
proposed in the Third Plenum of the 16th Central
Committee meeting by Hu Jintao, General Secretaryof the CPC Central Committee (Peopledaily, 2003).
These indicate that the Chinese are ready to embrace
all-around learning – at personal, organizational,
and societal levels. Learning is once again viewed as
involving “study” and “practice,” but in new forms,
many of which are embedded in and associated withthe phenomenon of the learning organization.

The “Learning Organization” 		
comes to China
The concept of the learning organization was introduced in China early in the current economic reforms.
In 1980, Tongyi Yang, a professor at Fudan University
and alumnus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), heard about the development of systems
dynamics by J. Forrester at his 50th MIT classreunion. Anticipating that these theories could be
useful for Chinese management in the process of

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 19

economic reform, he introduced systems theory andother related ideas in China by creating two “Forrester– Yang, Tongyi” reading rooms at Shanghai Transportation University and Fudan University. Tongyi
Yang also gave lectures in Taiwan to introduce these
theories.
A decade later, in October 1992, the “Shanghai
International Adult Education Seminar” featured international scholars sharing the development of learning organization theories from around the world,
providing fresh perspectives to Chinese scholars andorganizations (Zhou et al., 1997). However, the concept of the learning organization did not become
widespread in China until a Chinese version of Peter
Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline, was published in
1994. Since then, more and more Chinese people
have been attracted to the study and practice of thelearning organization principles. Table 1 shows somekey learning organization events in China since thetranslation of The Fifth Discipline.
By the time Senge first visited in 2002, the conceptof building learning organizations had been spreading throughout China for eight years. The Chinese
had accumulated a lot of ideas and experience, as
well as some confusion, which needed to be sharedand discussed with international experts. The Management Learning and Research Centre of Renmin
University, one of the core participants in The FirstInternational Forum on Learning Organization(China), invited Senge and other experts from SoL to
China to share their experiences in person (Ren,
2003). Meanwhile, Dr. Senge had an interest in
China, having studied Chinese culture for more than
20 years. Indeed, some of the basic thinking in his
books is deeply influenced by Eastern culture. Ren(2003) recalled the experience of inviting Peter Senge
to China in 2001: “Senge accepted our invitation andhe told us that he has observed China for quite awhile to see whether it is a good soil for the seed oflearning organization. He is attracted by China’s
increasing development. He wishes to contribute to
China’s development and to learn from Chinese
people as well.” (2003)
In 2002, Dr. Senge and five other SoL members

20 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

came to China to give presentations at The 1st International Forum on Learning Organizations (China).
More than one thousand people participated in thisforum. The Chinese people were inspired by not only
their outstanding speeches but also their modesty
and passionate beliefs. This forum provided an opportunity for both Chinese and their visitors to learn
from each other. Participating Chinese people gained
a deeper understanding of Senge’s notion of the learning organization, and the Western visitors found thata number of Chinese consultants and organizations
had already accumulated a lot of experience thatthey could share. The purpose of this forum – tofacilitate the communication between China andother countries and accelerate the building of learning organizations – was achieved (Ren, 2003).
The rapid and rising interest in the learning organization has spawned numerous articles and bookson the topic. The literature can be predominantly
categorized into two groups: one contains articles
and books translated from the West, and the otherfeatures articles and books written by Chinese people
to explain or build on Western theories. A few studies feature the characteristics of organizational learning in Mainland China and Hong Kong. For example,
Qiu’s (1988) Master’s degree thesis, Going Towards
the Learning Organization, analyzes the barriers toand architecture of building a learning organizationand is one of the leading early studies on organizational learning in China. Qiu’s key conceptual device
is an “organizational learning fish model,” (seeFigure 1) which is an adaptation of Senge et al.’sarchitecture of the learning organization, the famous
Buddhist Master Nan Hui Jin’s power of Buddha
model (observing, correcting, acting) and Marquardt’s(1996) Organization Learning System.
According to Qiu (1998), creating a learning organization is a systems project. It needs “Guiding Ideas,”“Mechanisms of Organizational Learning,” “Factorsthat facilitate and enable OL,” and “Actions.” These
are based on the factors in Senge’s (1994) architectureof learning organizations and other experts’ wisdom.
But Qiu puts these components into a living organism,
namely a fish. Moreover, he reminds us that creatingreflections.solonline.org

Table 1: Key Learning Organization Events in China
Date

Event

1990

Mr. Yang Tongyi introduced and promoted the Systems Dynamic theory in China

1992

Mr. Yang Shuoying promoted Organisational Learning by establishing a Systems Thinking and Organisational Learning
Lab in Zhong Shan University in Taiwan

1993

The Fifth Discipline was published in traditional Chinese version in Taiwan

1994

The Fifth Discipline was published in simplified Chinese version in China

Sept. 1995

The first “learning organization” seminar conducted by TaijiHonda Management and Training Co., Ltd. in Beijing

Oct. 1995

Professor Yang (from Taiwan) interviewed in Science Daily: “Having found the way, don’t be scared of how far it is.”April–Aug. 1996

Taiji Honda Management and Training Co., Ltd. published 17 articles in Science Daily introducing Peter Senge’s
learning organization theory and five disciplines

June 1996

The learning organization Study Group begins in Shanghai

1997

The vision statement of “Building Shanghai to be a learning city to adapt the new era” is first proposed

1997“The Learning Organization” column was created in the journal of Modern Organizational Education

Jan. 1998

First Shanghai Learning organization Academic Workshop

April 1998

The Learning Company Workshop conducted by the Consulting Centre of State Economy and Trade Committee of China

1998

China Society of Learning Organization, a not-for-profit Internet-based institute established by Mr. Qiu

Sept. 1999

Newspaper aimed at diffusing learning organization theory started by the Central School of Chinese Communist Party.

Oct. 2000

The 1st Forum of the China learning organization in the 21st Century held in Hangzhou

May 2001

Jiang, Zemin presented on “instructing the lifelong education system and creating the learning society” at the APC
Human Resource Conference

Oct. 2001

The 1st Conference on learning organization was held in Beijing

Nov. 2001

Chinese version of The Dance of Change (Senge et al., 1999) was published in China

May 2002

The 2nd Conference on learning organization held in Beijing

June 2002

The Workshop on Creating Learning Cities held in DalianFeb. 2002

Chinese Society of Organizational Learning (SoL) website www.solchina.org created by Dr. Wu

Sept. 2002

The 1st International Forum on learning organization (China) was held in Beijing, with Peter Senge
and other experts in SoL

Sept. 2002

Chinese version of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (Senge et al, 1994) publishedJan. 2003

Vision Century, an institute composed of consultants and scholars interested in facilitating learningorganizations in China, founded

June 2003

Dr. Wu represents China at the 1st Global Organizational Learning Conference in FinlandNov. 2003

The 2nd International Forum on learning organization (China) held in Kunming, with Dr. Senge
and other SoL experts returning

Nov. 2003

Executive Champion Workshop facilitated by Dr. Senge, as part of 1st International Forum on learning organization(China) held, with Dr. Senge and others from Society for Organizational Learning (SoL)

Sept. 2004

400 participants from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore met in the 8th LO forum in Singapore

Oct. 2004

The 13th Government, Business and Scholar Talkfest was held in Beijing. Mr. Senge joined

Nov. 2004

Mr. Qiu pointed LO conformity system in the 1st LO Advanced Theory and Trend Conference in Beijing

Sept. 2005

More than 20 participants from China and Taiwan participated in the 2nd Global Forum of SoL

Nov. 2005

The 3rd ECW was held in Hefei, China. It was organised by JAC and Mr. Senge facilitated it. Then Mr. Senge went toBeijing, Shanghai and other cities in China to promote Sustainable Development with Chinese Universities

Source: Adapted from Liu (2003) in The Path to Building Learning organization, p.178; Qiu (2005) Opportunities and Challenges of Building Sustainable Organisational
Learning Communities and Networks in China: A Systemic Socio-Eco-nomic Development Approach towards Comprehensive Harmony, working paper for SoL 2nd Global
Forum, Sep. 13–16, 2005, Vienna

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EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 21

a learning organization requires interacting with theenvironment, like the fish and the water surrounding it.
In Qiu’s opinion, to accomplish the task of building
the learning organization, all parts of the fish must
work together.
First, the guiding ideas root in the head of thefish, starting with the vision, value, and purposeof the organization. They are what the membersin the organization seek to create.
Second, the body of the fish is the mechanismof organizational learning, composed of theorganizational learning theory, methods, andtools. In the mechanism there are three levels oflearning: personal, team, and organizational.
Third, the fins of the fish are factors that facilitate and enable organizational learning, involving
some sub-systems, such as organization, knowledge, personnel, and technology. They are themeans through which an organization supports
people in their work.
Fourth, the tail of the fish initiates the action tocreate a learning organization. Creating a learning organization is a long process which needs
strong desire, a proper starting point, and firm
actions.
Finally, like the fish unable to live without water,
the learning organization needs to interact withthe business environment as well. A learningorganization is just like this fish, every part is

Figure 1: The Organizational Learning Fish
Mechanism of Organizational Learning

Guiding
Ideas

Factors that facilitate and enable Organizational Learning
Source: Adapted from Qiu (1998), p.62

22 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

important and should join forces with otherparts.
As Qiu’s work suggests, adopting the learningorganization model may require new metaphors andillustrations to make it meaningful to new audiences.
Since “learning” and “organizations” are socially constructed (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1976; Giddens,
1984), their reconstruction should be expected andwelcomed in new social contexts.
Any organizational or management innovation isoften a combination of old principles and new thinking. Many such innovations are highly portable fromone culture to another on both grounds; they arebased on universal principles and novelty – i.e.,learning is a common feature of most societies, anda “new” idea can be attractive just because it is new
and different. In coming to China, the learning organization found resonance in a culture that has always
valued learning and a holistic perspective on theworld. The “new” thinking about the importance oflearning within organizational, as opposed to school,
settings caught on quickly in China, as organizations
faced the most radically accelerated growth andinnovation environment they had ever experienced.

Our Research
Given the escalating interest in the topic and its Westto-East migration, we were curious to understand how
Chinese managers, trainers, consultants, and organizations translated into practice the principles of thelearning organization in the Chinese context.
Data was gathered by a native Chinese
researcher conducting field research for a
Master’s degree at the University of Auckland
Business School in New Zealand. Study participants were selected to include a) both nonChinese and Chinese individuals, and b) bothinternal and external change agents (Merriam& Clark, 1991). The main case was a Chinese
Actions
organization that had committed itself tobuilding a learning organization. For moredetails on the research methods used and thereflections.solonline.org

field study, see Jiang (2004). The original case study
has been recently updated by one of the authors,
who has returned to work in China.

Spreading the Word
Chinese institutes and educators have applied several
approaches to disseminating information and facilitating the development of learning organizations.
The main methods include publishing books andarticles, conducting seminars, workshops, and, conferences, and providing consulting services.
Study participants universally regarded books as ameans to enlighten people about the general idea ofwhat the learning organization is. Since the first appearance of a Chinese translation of Peter Senge’s The
Fifth Discipline in 1994, approximately one hundred
other books related to the learning organization havebeen published in China. These include, in addition
to the Chinese versions of Senge and his colleagues’
learning organization series, other translated books
as well as many books written by Chinese authors.
Chinese institutes and consultants have made great
efforts to organize seminars, workshops, and conferences to introduce learning organization theories andshare experiences of the learning organization in practice. Some noteworthy examples of ongoing seminars
include those sponsored by the Beijing TaijiHongda
Management and Training Company, which has held
monthly “advanced investigation” seminars since December 1996. By the end of 2003, several thousandpeople, including consultants, trainers, and organizational managers had attended these seminars. The sameorganization also visits organizations throughout China
to give field training courses to managers and employees. Another example is the Shanghai Mingde
Learning Organization Institute, which since 1996
has organized over 2,100 seminars across 20 provinces
in China in cooperation with the Shanghai Education
Community, including Shanghai Tongji University,
sharing the learning organization theory with over
160,000 people and more than 1,000 enterprises.
Executive Champion Workshops (ECWs), organized and offered by SoL, are also having an impact

reflections.solonline.org

in China. The first ECW, facilitated by Peter Senge,
was conducted in December 2003 in Kuming. Senge
shared his experiences of creating learning organizations around the world and discussed the key issues
people might encounter when attempting to create
learning organizations in China. Twenty-six organizational executives and managers from celebrated
Chinese companies and several government officials
participated in this event. Like their Western counterparts, interested members of Chinese organizations
often suggest that while the notion of organizational
learning is attractive and inspirational, most struggle
with how to start the journey. Some participants
hope to get the “right answers” from Dr. Senge andother foreign experts regarded as having absoluteknowledge and truth on the subject.
Another concern shared by many workshop participants is that after more than two decades of reform,
the influence of China’s highly centralized government still remains. Building learning organizations in
China depends on establishing democratic and harmonious organizational cultures in which individuals
can air their views and foster dialogue, but these values
are still difficult to enact in organizations with a history of constrained independence. Conference attendees
and interviewees also suggested that reviewing therole of leadership is vital when creating learningorganizations anywhere, but especially in China.
Issues concerning further government reform areoften mentioned as obstacles to further developmentof organizational learning. Participants, both enterprise managers and government officials, agree thatbuilding the “learning government” is a critical theme
for developing contemporary China. It is generally
felt that the government should be more accessible,
open-minded, and embrace innovation more if it wants
to set an example of learning for Chinese society.
The power of these learning organization events is
not simply that participants gain a better understanding about the concepts and philosophy of organizational learning, but that participants also act as diffusersof learning organization theories. Some act to a certain degree as preachers of the “gospel” of learning,feeling a passionate responsibility to help all Chinese

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 23

organizations become learning organizations. Indeed,
for some interviewees, spreading the word about thisnew form of organization was seen as a new lifelong
career. The rewards for this vocation are seeing organizations succeed in dealing with conflicts, building
shared visions, and understanding more clearly thecomplex systems necessary for growth and development for the future.

Case Study: Creating a 		Learning Organization in JAC
Anhui Jianghuai Automotive Group Company, Ltd.
(JAC), located in Hefei in Anhui Province, came into
existence in 1999 and currently employs 3,700 people.
Its predecessor was Hefei Automotive Factory, established in 1964. By 1990, its annual yield was fewer
than 1,000 motor vehicles. In the last 10 years, JAC hasturned the table from deficit to surplus. JAC develops, manufactures, and sells automobiles, producing
120,000 motor vehicles in 2003. Besides the Chinese
market, JAC has moved into exporting to Argentina,
Turkey, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and southeast Asia
countries. Prior to the learning organization initiative, the company won a variety of industry awards
for excellence and growth.
Learning events seem commonplace at JAC. These
include activities like a labor competition to see which
team’s skill and competence was superior, managers’
group discussions, and a “blue plate” lunch meeting
where a diverse range of organizational members
gather to discuss ideas and issues. The name comesfrom the fact that, at lunchtime, twelve blue plates
are randomly inserted among the normal stainlesssteal plates. The employees who take the blue plates
then have the opportunity to sit at a special tablewith one or two senior JAC managers. They havelunch with the randomly selected employees andhear the employees’ opinions.
During the labor competition it became clear thatworkers have a serious and dedicated attitude in
developing their competencies. A harmonious atmosphere and relationship exists between managers andworkers, which seems based on high levels of careand trust. Other management meetings observed are

24 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

part of JAC’s feedback system, which provides opportunities for managers in different plants and departments to communicate, exchange feedback, and shareopinions. These meetings are called “wall-breaking
meetings,” which means that the communications
between plants and departments are breaking downboundaries. Sometimes these meetings are used to
conduct seminars on special topics. In recent years,
many experts, from within and outside China, havebeen invited to give presentations or conduct seminars in these meetings. At JAC, good questions are
more important than good answers. Good answers
sometimes restrict further thinking, whereas goodquestions encourage thinking and reflecting.
The development of JAC has been termed the “JAC
Phenomenon” in the Chinese automotive industry.
Our interviewees attributed the success of JAC toongoing innovations in technology, management, anda learning environment. The increasingly volatile business environment inside and outside of China meantthat JAC had to think about how to sustain thecompany’s viability. But this process takes time.
In 1996 managers of JAC were introduced to Senge’s
work, which seemed a suitable remedy for their situation. They had already been doing something similar
to the suggestions in his book, but they did not know
the term “learning organization.” The Fifth Discipline
expanded their thinking on the possibilities for organizational reform. They came to view systems thinking
and team learning as core concepts of their organizational culture, introduced to every employee joining
the company. Mr. Zuo summed it up by saying, “If
we are said to have a recipe for developing well, it isthat we are constantly building JAC into a learningorganization.”
At an individual level, JAC policies encourage every
employee to learn. They provide full-scale training
programs, and more importantly, an environment
allowing employees to communicate. The leaders of
JAC endeavor to invest in training and learning in
the company. Their training center has become “JAC
University.” The facilities and equipment in the
training center are some of the most advanced in thecompany. In JAC there is a common understandingreflections.solonline.org

of the learning organization in these terms: “Onedefinition, two characteristics, and three systems.”
The one definition that JAC gives to the learningorganization is: “An organization that keeps onlearning to create its own future. In this organization,
everyone perceives the meaning of life from their daily
work.” The two key characteristics of a learning organization are “the spirit of constant self-criticism” and“a clear common value.” The three systems underpinning this are reflection, feedback, and sharing systems.
Almost every JAC plant has a “learning corner,”
separated from work areas by several whiteboards,
on which learning logs and diagrams are pasted.
These learning logs are written by the workers toshare their learning experiences. Introductions to
new books are also pasted on the board. Learning
corners were created to enable the workers to have
conversations at break times. Besides the learning
corners in the plants, there is a large common read-reflections.solonline.org

ing room in JAC. The Reader Committee holds
regular events, such as reader report meetings andspeech competitions.
While JAC’s reflection and feedback systems
seemed quite similar to Western models, its sharing
system included several novel approaches, such as
creating reader committees, and sharing experienceswith other companies. Storytelling was regarded as asimple but effective way for JAC people to shareopinions and ultimately to build shared values, as
stories are easily understood and accepted, but also
can express values well (Snowden, 2000, 2001; Kolb,
2002, 2003). There were several popular stories used
to illustrate key values. For instance, the “boiledfrog” story from The Fifth Discipline is used to teachpeople that serious challenges may be hidden behind
an apparent calm state. Everyone in JAC is apparently familiar with this and other stories, making
them increasingly a part of the organization’s culture.

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 25

The first step toward building a learning organization is often considered to be developing a sharedvision. The vision of JAC is “providing better products for a better tomorrow.” These words are written
in gold plate on a big stone board in the lobby of themain JAC building. It also appears to have beenengraved in JAC people’s minds. In the group discussion one manager presented his feelings: “We areinspired by the vision because we feel that the meaning of our work is not only work for life, but also
work for creating the future.” Developing a sharedvision in JAC was a bi-directional process. As one of
the Organizational Development specialists described
it, “Firstly, the team visions were created by combining everyone’s personal visions, then the teams’
visions were pooled to create the vision of departments, and then the company’s vision was formed by
abstracting the departments’ visions. Secondly, when
the initial vision of the company emerged, there wasa top-down discussion with departments and teams
to check whether the meaning had been captured correctly. Consequently, JAC’s vision illustrates what wewant and it is the common desire of all employees.”
Achieving employees’ personal vision contributes toachieving JAC’s shared vision.
To build a learning organization, JAC went
through three stages. The first stage (1996–1998)
involved setting up a learning organization projectteam, which linked Learning Organization theories
to the core values of the company, including new
perspectives on human resources and new conceptualizations of learning itself. In the second stage(1998–2002), they started the “40+4” program,which means that besides the 40 hours of working
time per week, everyone in JAC was encouraged tocommit an extra four hours to training every Sunday
morning. This program led to a learning environment where everyone is involved. It also helped
develop a training system for employees at different
levels. At this stage, JAC introduced training in
moral character development and built systems forreflection, feedback, and sharing. Based on the belief
that learning is a necessary lifelong activity, learningand training were viewed as investments rather than

26 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

costs. JAC people believed learning should stemfrom the heart, and that “the more you want, themore you will learn.” Therefore, JAC trained employees “to do work by heart rather than by hand.” The
third stage (2002-present) is related to employees’
career development, creating a learning organization
network and transforming the quality control team
into a learning team. Six learning labs have been
built to resolve problems arising in daily work.
Overall, quality improvement is now ‘owned’ by staff,
instead of being ‘managed’ by control systems.
Based on systems thinking, JAC is creating ecological links with its providers, distributors, andcustomers. In order to provide high quality products
to customers, the responsibility for quality cannot
rest solely with the manufacturer. High-quality materials from providers and high-quality sales and service delivered by the distributors to customers allplay an important role in the success of JAC and its
business ecology partners. Previously, distributors in
different provinces competed with each other on
price. Now they see the connections between supplier, manufacturer, distributor, and customer.
Organizational learning at JAC can be broken
into four types: 1) learning from practice, 2) learningby pooling the wisdom and efforts of every employee, 3) learning by improvement, and 4) benchmarking with others. JAC benchmarks itself against its
role models in the automobile industry all aroundthe world. At the same time, JAC shares its ideas andsystems for developing and sustaining a learningorganization with other organizations. This helps
develop a framework for organizational learning in
China and supports the economic and social development of China. JAC’s rapid development has
attracted attention from government, in particular
the ministry of education. The government of Hefei
Province and surrounding provinces send representatives to visit JAC to learn how to create a better
learning environment in the their society, in particular building links between formal education andlifelong learning. In 2005, Vice General Manager of
JAC, Ms. Kong introduced JAC’s experience at the
SoL annual conference in Vienna.

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When asked about the successes and failures increating a learning organization, Mr. Zuo said that it
was still too early to say. They are on the way. Thereis a saying in China when describing economic
reform, which is “fishing for the road.” It is likewise
for building learning organizations in China; time
will be the judge. Although, more and more positive
feedback comes out, we need to pay attention to thephenomena that some organizations merely use “Learning Organization” as a slogan, or decorate all theiractivities with “Organizational Learning” but missthe true learning in their organizations. When employees in JAC were asked what is learning organization, they replied, “It is what we are doing every day.”Discussion
Having described how the learning organization concept made its way to China, how the concept is beingtranslated and promoted in workshops and seminars, and how it is being implemented within one
Chinese organization, we might consider the themes
inherent in the learning organization movement in
China, and how these messages fit traditional andcontemporary socio-cultural contexts. These themes
include: learning as imperative, the learning organization as template for strategic success, learning as
consistent with Chinese philosophy, the connection
between learning and leading, and learning as pathway for socio-economic sustainability.

Learning as Imperative
China is now moving at full steam towards a market
economy. The economic reform arising in China is apioneering work without parallel in history. Criticalissues include enterprise reorganization, restructuring, and reengineering for success, and increased skill
shortages. Solving these problems requires unprecedented innovation and a mind shift for Chineseorganizations toward embracing continual learningand practice. These developments lead to the demandfor knowledge and practical theories for managing
organizations in China. Organizations in China must
learn faster and adapt to the rapid change in thereflections.solonline.org

global environment. “Learning inside the organizationmust be equal to or greater than change outside theorganization or the organization will not survive. . . .
Within the next 10 years only learning organizations
will survive” (Schwandt & Marquardt, 2000). To becompetitive in the world, China needs to learn atleast as quickly, if not faster than, other countries.
When asked, most participants started their interpretations of the “learning organization” by describing
the term “learning” as imperative for organizational
success. Most comments fell into the common themesof Senge and other Western authors’ works, regarding the capacity to learn as the hallmark of effective
organizations of the future. One aspect of learning
agreed to by all participants was Senge’s notion offields of practice. This is the idea that although humanbeings learn from trial and error, our learning ability
is often restricted by our fear of making mistakes. In
organizations, the cost of mistakes can be huge, but
mistakes cannot be avoided, and can in fact becomea rich source of collective learning.
One organizational vision of JAC is to see itself asa “school.” This is intended to be a provocative metaphor, since traditionally the Chinese tend to think oflearning and work separately. You learn when you
are young. After graduating with a certain degree,
you go to work and your learning life is finished.
However, as JAC illustrates, learning and work can
be integrated. The comprehensive training system in
JAC attempts to redefine the notion of learning
within a work environment with the aim of providing training to a wide range of employees at every
level in the company. There has been a transition
from the traditional, one-way indoctrination to open,
interactive learning. The trainers’ role is more like acoach or host than a teacher. Their job is facilitating
two-way learning through discussion and dialogue,
bringing new energy to the learning process.
The management method in the industrial economy – control – is no longer the most effective method
in knowledge and innovation-based economies.
Instead, respecting humanity and supporting humaninquiry is becoming more appropriate, if not necessary, for organizational survival. This shift is the first

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 27

step in becoming a learning organization. The acceptance of the notion of learning organizations in
China is not accidental, and may be considered inevitable for those concerned with economic survival
and prosperity.

Organizational Learning as a Templatefor Strategic SuccessParticipants at learning events frequently referred to
becoming a learning organization as a template ofstrategic success for organizations in general (Larson,
1991; Senge, 1990), and this strategic formula could
be applied to Chinese organizations. This could be
especially important for organizations whose massive upheavals in the rapidly changing environment
produce high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity.
With many landmarks of the competitive environment disappearing or changing, the learning organization can serve as a flexible, yet structured, genericstrategy or “map” for firms facing highly uncertain
terrain (Weick, 1995, 1996). The learning disciplines
and systems thinking provide organizations with sufficient structure and tools to pursue the dreams ofcompetitiveness and long life. To become a learningorganization can be equated with being on the way
to the future. Some of those interviewed, for example, Mr. Liu, was adamant that “being a learningorganization is not a trend but a way people think
about learning, relate to each other and connect totheir organization.”
Most economic indicators suggest that China willcontinue to be a major competitive force in thetwenty-first century (Li, Tsui, & Weldon, 2000).
While China’s development in the last 20 years has
contributed to a significant surge of reforms andmodernization, the country still faces a number of
economic challenges, both internal and external.
With its acceptance into the World Trade Organization, China has entered a new stage in its opening
up by going out onto the world business platform.
China faces numerous challenges from outside as
well. These include competition in the global market, the force of international business rules, and theinfluence of the foreign culture and ideology. To

28 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

address these challenges, focusing only on re-engineering or re-invention is not enough. Propelled by
the competitive pressures for speed, global responsiveness, and innovation, learning may become theonly viable alternative to organizational extinction.
Notable progress has been made in improving
democracy in China. Compared with the planned
economy period, Chinese culture has become increasingly rich and colorful, and Chinese people’s minds
are more open; they are keen to learn more than everbefore. To obtain and sustain competitive advantage
in the new environment, Chinese organizations should
learn better and faster from their success and failures. They need to continuously transform themselves in order to reach a point where groups andindividuals reliably engage in new processes. Becauseof China’s unique socio-economic-political context,
organizational learning seems to be more necessary
in China than in other countries.

Organizational Learning as Consistent
with Chinese Philosophy
One of the reasons China welcomes learning organizations is that their characteristics have much incommon with Chinese traditional culture. Both emphasize that people are the center of the world. Traditional Chinese culture is chiefly characterized by apeople orientation that is also the essence of learningorganizations. A second commonality of the learningorganization and traditional culture, as describedabove, is the emphasis on learning and practice.
Learning is the core theme in the learning organization, and it is also the essence of traditional Chinese
culture. There is a humane versus instrumental ideal
in traditional Chinese culture, insisting on developing people rather than utilizing them like tools. The
learning organization and traditional Chinese culture, of course, share this view. The fourth commonality is insisting on cooperation. The learning organization values team learning and suggests that thekey to improving an organization’s competitivenessis effective team learning (Senge, 1990). Traditional
Chinese culture incorporates a similar concept. Individuals are viewed as the components of the group,reflections.solonline.org

to which they should contribute their intelligenceand capabilities, with a strong emphasis on collectivism as opposed to individualism. Finally, traditional
Chinese culture and the concept of the learning organization merge at the common point of respecting
nature and embracing the whole system. Learningorganization scholars often criticize the industrial
revolution for separating the world into fragments,
which subsequently produced the division of work,
which eventually manifests itself in a fragmented
worldview. In Eastern thought, people are an integral part of the natural world (Senge, 2002). The
traditional Chinese culture sees the individual as anintegral part of nature. Reliance on others is necessary because individuals are already part of the same
whole.
Most participants in our study indicated that they
perceived something in Senge’s work that was resonant with their own personal belief systems. Theysaw the learning organization as a self-motivatedorganization that is continually self-molding. Development within the learning organization is not forcedby others, but rather is primarily self-initiated, though
it may also be united by shared vision. Individuals
within organizations must be self-motivated andopen to changing themselves, rather than being organized or changed by others. This, of course, is challenging for any organization, but particularly fortraditional Chinese organizations, which along withenlightened views, also embody a centralized hierarchy and large numbers of passive followers.
Training to develop good moral character is avital element of the training programs like those in
JAC. Moral character is regarded as the most important characteristic for Chinese people. According to
one interviewee, good moral character is central fora human being, and even more important for a teammember in the organization. What JAC requires
from employees is “learning to be a human being
before learning to work.” When walking around theplants and departments in JAC, slogans on good
moral character were evident, hanging on walls andpinned to notice boards. But these were not just“decorations.” When asked how they felt about thereflections.solonline.org

statement of “moral character first,” those workers
almost all gave the same answer, namely that they
believe good moral character generates trust between
people, which is the foundation for collaboration.
Good collaboration leads to high-quality teamwork,
which further results in good products and benefits,
and success.
Chinese philosophy and traditional culture, however, may not be so distant from the West. Close
inspection reveals that the two ways of thinking areperhaps more closely related than they were once
believed to be. Those from both Eastern and Westerncultural traditions seem attracted to Senge’s championship of human values in the workplace, to his
views that individual learning is the basis of organizational learning, and to his insistence that leadership is something that occurs at many levels in an
organization, not just in the executive suite.

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 29

Learning Fosters Creative Leadership
According to many participants in our study, theleadership fostered in the learning organization must
be creative and sensitive to change and innovation.
These characteristics are significant for Chineseorganizations, as some leaders and managers in
Chinese state-owned organizations were appointed
by the government and often lack the courage ortraining to face organizational changes.
Employees must be given the opportunities toknow what is going on, to think constructively, andto be allowed to explore new ways to solve problems. Ultimately, if successful, Chinese organizations
might obtain a goal of leadership espoused by Lao
Tzu (1998), whereby “through the action-less activity all things are duly regulated” and where the bestleader is the one whose followers say, “we did thisourselves.”

Learning for Sustainability
Learning organization approaches raise awarenessthat the industrial system is not separate fromnature. This awareness has also caused grief forhuman beings and other living things. Building
learning organizations is the call from the knowledge
economy. According to Senge, “the evolution ofindustrial society led to material wealth for the
majority, increasingly shifting people’s orientation
toward work” (1990). People yearn to build organizations “that are more consistent with their higher
aspirations, beyond food, shelter and belonging.”
Some participants articulated that as a template of
future successful organizations in China, learningorganizations must pay attention to sustainable
development. In an increasingly profit-oriented business world, costs can be the destruction of the environment and a widening gap between the rich andpoor. The rapid changes in China’s economy havemeant that, unfortunately, much of this development
is not sustainable in the long run. This issue is often
cited in the international press, but those inside
China also recognize it as a key issue. In 2002, the16th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party

30 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

stated that China must give special prominence tosustainable development and stick to the basic policies of family planning, environment protection, andresource preservation. The concept of sustainable
development was proposed more recently at the SoL
annual conference. Given that sustainable development
requires the concept of “development” to be creatively redefined, those developing learning organizations
are well placed to address social and environmental
concerns, since learning organizations foster careabout others’ benefit as well as their own profitability and wealth. Learning organizations, which pay
attention to sustainable development, can play animportant role by setting examples for other Chineseorganizations. If more Chinese organizations took
steps toward sustainable development, the future of
China would be considerably more promising.
Mr. Zuo explained how he sees JAC’s vision fitting into the broader social context. He believes thatthe development of society was a consequence ofeveryone’s contributions and that the basic purposeof an organization should be to provide values forthe society. The development of an organization was
based on the support of society and concerns from
customers. Therefore, organizations should respondto society and take responsibility for flourishing in
the world. These were his interpretations of JAC’s
shared vision to provide the better products for abetter future for society.
JAC employees have begun to enact socially
responsible aspects of their corporate vision. Besides
their provision of a series of high quality products tocustomers, they also contribute to society throughother activities, such as donating money to protect
forests and endowments to the “Hope Primary
Schools.” During its recent development and expansion, JAC merged several poorly performing companies. In the process of merging, JAC revived not only
the companies but also the prospects of the employees within those companies. JAC’s development has
also provided employment opportunities to the people in surrounding areas. These were important
contributions to society, especially in the current
situation of increasing unemployment in China.

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JAC has also made contributions to environment
protection. In 1998 JAC started to remove excess
packaging from their products. They deliver theirproducts with recycled industrial material instead ofusing one-off plastic and wooden boxes. Seven years
on, JAC has saved resources and contributed to environment protection. These activities won JAC theadmiration and respect of the people, not only in
Hefei but also in the surrounding Anhui province.

Challenges Facing Learning
Organizations in China
If the learning organization is, as it is often characterized,a streamlined, flat, boundary-less structurethat maximizes contact, information flow, local responsibility, and collaboration within and outside theorganization, and, if the centralized and hierarchicalstructure still exists as the dominant paradigm inChinese organizations, then the learning organization as an ideal has a long way to go before becoming a reality. The state of human resource management in China is far from ideal. At present, mostmanagers and employees are not well prepared forthe demands of the modern competitive economy.
The notion of empowering employees as learners tolearn, to plan for their future competencies, to takeaction and risks, and to solve problems has not been
extensively embedded in managers’ minds. Knowledge
systems, which support the acquisition, creation,
storage, transfer, and utilization of knowledge, also
have great room for improvement. The resources for
managing knowledge are neither sufficiently pervasive nor systematic to promote knowledge sharing.
And in relation to knowledge and information, most
Chinese organizations still hold to conservative
rather than creative values.
One consultant interviewed in this study, Mr.
Zhang, reported the following problems and challenges in facilitating and practicing learning organizations in China:
Some people have a misunderstanding about“learning.” They regard learning as readingbooks only.

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Some organizations regard creating the learning organization as against their core business.
Personal learning is emphasised more than collective learning in many organizations.
Creating the learning organization is seen as a
training function and thereby separated from
improving management philosophy, structures,and practices.
Some organizations only strive to reform theirstructures and policies rather than shift theirmental models.
Some organizations know that they need tolearn but they have no idea how to learn or
where to start.
Learning is regarded as something extra to
daily work. The development of work capabilities is neglected.
Qiu found that the phenomenon of learning organizations is becoming too widely applied (what hecalls “inundated”) and that too many variations leadto confusion (2003). Furthermore, he claims thatmany scholars and practitioners falsely suggest what
the learning organization is and/or whether or nottheir organizations have achieved such a state. Bothof these conditions are obviously challenges for creating “true” learning organizations in China:“Inundation” at the theoretical level means thatthe concept of the learning organization is
being expanded too broadly to “knowledge
management,” “organizational behavior,” “human resource management,” “social psychology,”and “information technology,” and is becoming even more extensive. Although, these subjects may enrich the learning organization theory
system, the concept of the learning organization may lose its identity. At the practical level,some organizations labelled all organizational
activities as “organizational learning.”

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 31

Furthermore, the “falseness” is also reviewed atboth theoretical and practical levels. At the theoretical level, it indicates that the research on learningorganizations is superficial and even plagiarises others. At the practical level, some learning organizations have more rhetoric than realities.
By considering the problems and challenges in theprocess of creating learning organizations in China,
a common belief of the participants in this research
was that the paths towards the learning organizations are not smooth, but the future is fascinating.
Most were nonetheless optimistic, believing that many
if not every organization can become a learningorganization. Most were committed to doing theirbest to help their fellow human beings and organizations to achieve the visions they really want.

Chinese Learning Organizations
from Foreign Perspectives
The ECW and international forum afforded us a rareopportunity to collect opinions from Peter Senge,
Goran Carstedt, and Dennis Sandow, all leaders in
the field of the learning organization and key members of SoL. In their interviews, they were asked
about their impressions of their visits to China andtheir views on Chinese learning organizations.
These foreign experts all showed their respect forancient Chinese wisdom. They believe China has agood background for fostering learning organizations. China has more than five thousand years ofhistory, which address natural science and social science, including Confucius’s The Analects, Lao Tzu’s
Tao Te Ching, and “Tai Chi.” These thoughts
revealed the nature of knowledge and the nature oflearning, which indicated that Chinese people have
had a deep understanding of learning for a long time,
and that this should be a strong basis for Chinese
people to foster learning organizations. Anotheradvantage for China in creating effective learningorganizations is that China is less negatively influenced by the Industrial Age.
Recalling his two trips to China, Dr. Senge said, “Ifeel that Chinese people are very eager to learn and

32 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

they have done a lot in practicing learning organizations.” Dr. Sandow had visited China twice to conduct a case study of the Ancai Group. Doing research
at Ancai gave him an opportunity to learn. He challenged other organizations to join Ancai in expanding a global economy based on social, biological,
and financial well-being. He insists that China has
good practice and examples in building learningorganizations. Similarly, Dr. Carstedt, a key proponent of the Executive Champion Workshop, sees
massive scope for learning organizations in China:
What an overwhelming experience. China, acountry of 1.3 billion, has committed itself
from top to bottom to move toward a learning
society – to transform the country into a learning nation, the party into a learning party,
learning cities, and learning organizations.
Such a commitment is more than loose talk – itwill start an avalanche of initiatives and projects. It is an evolving network, which will
engage many more organizations and activities
in China and the world. Good luck to “Panda
SoL.” (The introduction of Executive Champion
Workshop online)
When asked to compare building learning organizations in China with other countries, Dr. Carstedt
replied firmly, “Building learning organizations in
China can only be done by the Chinese.” “OnlyChinese people know how to build learning organizations in China” was a common point in the interviews with SoL experts. At the end of the ECW in
Kunming, Dr. Senge stated his expectation of China:“I believe that the methods of China’s development
will influence the world.”

Conclusion
China is at a vital stage of a massive reform. The
shift from a planned economy to a market economy
represents an unprecedented change in China’s economic, political, and cultural systems. The future
prosperity and pride of the country is at stake, andreflections.solonline.org

for many this provides a source of seemingly endlessmotivation. Reforms are opening up markets andmodernizing practices, which are inevitably affecting
the way things are being done in and around organizations throughout the country.
The speed and urgency of such sweeping organizational changes require organizational members toadapt to this brave new world by revising theirworldviews, by understanding how one system affects
another, and by sharing their individual insights andunderstanding with others – in short, they must learn
quickly, collectively, and comprehensively, in orderto keep up with the changes going on around them.
This need for a collective ability to deal with complexity and the ability to adapt to rapid and ongoingsocio-economic changes has made the learning organization concept a compelling form of organizational
development within China over the past decade.
Though radically different from the traditional
emphasis on hierarchy, conformity, and control, thelearning organization concept nonetheless fits closelywith other traditional facets of Chinese society andreflections.solonline.org

culture. These include a deep respect for educationand learning, which is often characterized (and has,in recent history, been dominated) by an emphasis on
rote learning. This unfortunately masks the fact thata fundamental element in the definition and traditional emphasis of “learning” was placed on “practice,” as opposed to abstract learning, separated
from day-to-day life. Chinese people also relate tovisions of a better future and aspire for their organizations to go beyond commercial success to serve thecommunity and the world as part of a whole, interrelated and dynamic system. Given this background,
it is easy to see the connection between China’s traditional past and its contemporary interest and commitment to learning in organizational contexts, andtherefore to the “learning organization” as a body ofbest practices, which can help organizations not justsurvive, but thrive in chaotic times.
The concepts of “organizational learning” andthe “learning organization” have been developed byWesterners over several decades. In China, the fieldis relatively new, only about ten years old. During

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 33

that time, many academics, consultants, trainers,
and managers have grasped the concept zealously,
promoting it far and wide. Several major Chineseorganizations have embarked on the road to becoming a learning organization. This article chronicles theintroduction of the learning organization to China
and provides an overview of the approaches to“spreading the word.” It also portrays how Chinese
consultants, trainers, and managers have interpreted
and translated the learning organization phenome-

non into their practice and their organizations.
Those participating in the learning organization
movement in China see it offering the prospect oforganizations that are both human and effective,that are locally cooperative, yet globally competitive,
and that promote and develop the best of Chinese
culture. The road to becoming a learning organization may be a difficult one to travel, but if the way is
known, the destination is never far.

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Bloom, R., & Solotko, J. (2003). The foundation of Confucianism in Chinese and Japanese accounting. Accounting,Business & Financial History, 13(1), 27-40.
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Confucius. (1998). The Analects (A. Waley, Trans.). Beijing: Foreign languages Teaching and Study Press.
Dewey, J. (1900). The School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 18(3), 315.
Dixon, N. M. (1999). The Organizational Learning Cycle: How we can learn collectively (2nd ed.). England: Gower.
Easterby-Smith, M. (1997). Disciplines of Organizational Learning: Contributions and critiques. Human Relations, 50(9),1086-1113.
Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Oxford: Polity Press.
Harris, J. (2001). The Learning Paradox: Gaining success & security in a world of change. Oxford: Capstone.
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The Introduction of Executive Champion Workshop on line. Retrieved 10th March, 2004, from http://www.solonline.org/
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Jiang, T. (2004). The Awakening Dragon: Learning Organizations in China. Unpublished Masters Degree Thesis, Universityof Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
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Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs NJ:
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Liu, D. (2003). Key Learning Organization Events in China. The Path for Building Learning Organizations, 178.
Marquardt, M. J. (1996). Building the learning organization. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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from http:// www.englishpeopledaily.com.cn
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Qiu. Z. (2005). Opportunities and Challenges of Building Sustainable Organisational Learning Communities and Networks
in China: A Systemic Socio-Eco-nomic Development Approach towards Comprehensive Harmony, working paper for
SoL 2nd Global Forum, Sep. 13-16, 2005, Vienna
Ren, Z. (2003). Exploring the theories from the starting point. The Path for Building Learning Organisations, p.28-29.
Sang, X. (2000). Learning theories and practices with the advance of the information age. Beijing: Central Broadcast andTV University Press.
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New York: St. Lucie Press.
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Shanghai: Sanlian Publications.
Senge, P., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R., Roth, G., & Smith, B. (1999). The Dance of Change: The challenges of sustaining momentum on learning organizations. New York: Doubleday.
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for building a learning organization. New York: Doubleday.
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Snell, R. S., & Hui, S. S. K. (2000). Towards the Hong Kong learning organisation: an exploratory case. Journal of Applied
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Company.
Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Weick, K. (1996). Prepare Your Organization to Fight Fires. Harvard Business Review, May-June, 143-148.
Westney, D. E. (1992). Knowledge creation: Japan vs. the West. Harvard Business Review, 70(1), 156-157.
Xinhuanews. (1998). Chinese leaders gather to mark 20 years of reform. Retrieved 28th May, 2004, from http://www.
phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/oasien/china
Zhou, D., Yin, J., & Cai, G. (1997). Xuexixing Zuzhi (The Learning Organisation). Shanghai: Shanghai Finance andEconomics University Press.

reflections.solonline.org

EKF ■ Kolb & Jiang 35

A bo u t th e A u thors

Darl Kolb is Deputy Head of Department and Group Leader of Organisational Change and Innovation at
the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he teaches an award-winning course using on-line businesssimulations. His research interest for the past 5 years has been global connectivity and managing distanceand isolation. He received his MA from the University of Solorado, and his PhD from Cornell University.
Darl also serves as Senior Editor of the University of Auckland Business Review.
d.kolb@auckland.ac.nz
Tianjian Jiang is the HR manager in SKF China. She graduated from the University of Auckland in 		
New Zealand with a honor Masters Degree of Commerce. She has studied learning organization concepts
and been involved in learning activities in China for several years, including SoL’s ECW in Qunming, 		China in 2003.
tina.jiang@skf.com

36 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

reflections.solonline.org

commentary

Commentary
By C. Will Zhang
Coordinator, SoL China Project
The Chinese dragon has powerful jaws andWestern intervention, which must now beclaws on a soft, invisibly winged body, and big

combined with native natural remedies, tradi-bright eyes that shine through the clouds oftional tonics, tai-chi exercises, and eventhe skies: it symbolizes masculine strength

reflective contemplations.

with feminine flexibility, and warm-hearted
determination with clear-minded broad visionand high aspiration. By nature of its merit as
C. Will Zhang

an angel warrior protecting the harmony andspiritual connectivity of human- and heavenlybeings, the dragon should always be alert
and never fall asleep.

Last November, during the first joint SoL-Pekingand-Tsinghua Reflective Dialogue Seminar withPeter Senge at these top two – often rival –universities, C.S. Kiang, Dean of the College
of Environmental Sciences at Peking University,
talked about the need for organizational learning or, rather, “organized learning” – a commu-

Somewhere around the 10th century AD,

nity learning that produces synergy among dif-

however, the majority Han Chinese started toferent organizations. China needs organizedlose their spiritual balance of the dragon: theirlearning that transcends and integrates themind started to be manifestly weak and bodyboundaries of organizations, academic andfragmentarily heavy and, by 1840, rigid andotherwise, which are mostly modeled after

self-constrained in a closed courtyard of theindustrial-age inventions that tend to encounter

Far East. The subsequent bloody psychophysi-

failure when attempting systemic innovations

cal insults from Western gunboats and Japan-

needed for resolving the current unsustainable

ese tanks and war planes electrified the numband disharmonious reality with increasingly

nerves deep inside the sleeping giant’s bodyglobally interdependent complexities.

and, with imported and often toxic antidotes
for a longtime “sleeping disorder” that is stillin effect to some degree, China has managed
to come back to consciousness and, as
Napoleon reportedly rightly prophesized, thewhole world is being shaken.

The half-awakened dragon needs organized andmetanoic learning: a mind shift to its full awareness – of its bodily and spiritual conditions andpotentials and its rising duties and responsibilities in the world. This shift has started to happen – and we, as inside outsiders and outside

The Kolb-Jiang theme emerges in such a his-

insiders, are privileged to be part of the flow

toric-cultural context. Organizational learningfacilitating this historical transformation. In 2004,

may thus be seen as the first, and perhaps

the prevailing attitude of Chinese companies,

also the last, major imported antidote that isincluding JAC, was to get rich (or out of poverty)

surprisingly non-toxic and even congenial to

first, with existing technologies, before they canthe essence of China’s past glory. Before recov-

care for the environment and invest in sustain-

ering to its full strength and originality in perhaps

able innovations. In 2005, when I visited JAC inthree to five decades, China today still needs

August and then in November with the SoL ECW

reflections.solonline.org

Commentary ■ Zhang 37

team, I saw a dramatic shift of mind. They are

profound and fast, fostering reflections on the

now thinking of building a circular economy (inmeaning of leadership: the habitual command-

which all waste is recycled) and, in particular,

and-control for survival seems outdated, thedeveloping sustainable mobility, starting with

Chinese must now “take a step forward” toward

their recently-bought bus manufacturing facility

a new and better world. The instrumental men-called Ankai, already a top brand coach intality of the Industrial Age must be replaced by

China. In conversation, Wang Jiang-An, chair-a humane purpose: collective human develop-

man of the Ankai Co., told me that they wanted

ment toward a holistic human-nature empathy,

to work with multinational and Chinese part-interconnectedness and harmony, which is, as

ners and together strive to develop cleaner

Kolb and Jiang point out, central to the classic

urban transportation systems.1 Wang asked for

Chinese tradition and perhaps also, I would

help with synergy through organized learn-ing

add, essential to a global sustainable future.

across boundaries, amongst potential part-In this sense, the future of China, and indeed

ners, including the BP-Tsinghua Clean Energyof the world, awaits a grand metanoia of spirit

Center and the Chinese Government’s Clean

and mind/heart, a great cultural renaissance ofAutomobile Action Group.

the East, and a growing awakening of a global

From government to business to academia,

humanistic culture.

the Chinese are finally seriously reviewing their

C. Will Zhangrole as potential leaders in building a sustain-

cwzhang@mit.edu

able and harmonious world. The changeis

Endnote1 A new report by Xiong, Liang-Ping (Dec. 2005, “Clean-Energy Urban Transportation Project,”Hefei: Technology Center, Anhui Ankai Automobile Co. Ltd.) reveals that hundreds of Ankai
natural gas – both CNG and LPG – buses are already running in cities including Beijing,
Guangzhou and Chengdu; a few dozen electric and gas-electric hybrid buses are running in
Beijing and Zhuzhou; and a new hydrogen/super-capacitor hybrid model is expected to comeon-line early next spring.

© 2005, Society for Organizational Learning. All Rights Reserved.

38 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

reflections.solonline.org

commentary

Commentary
By Zhaoliang Qiu, with Stephen Meng and Glenn Lauder

Zhaoliang Qiu

We hope “Organizational Learning in China” will

upside-down; (3) the Economic Reform and thebe the first of many articles in Reflections that

Open-Door Policy from 1976, a response to thecan give the SoL global learning communities

unintended consequences of the Culture Revo-a glimpse of the emerging sustainable organiza-

lution, and most recently, (4) the transformation

tional learning movement that has been gaining

to a market economy and globalization in the

momentum and building critical mass over thelast five years. We see the Chinese society is inpast ten years in Mainland China.

a deep transformation, with huge gaps emerg-

In their article, Kolb and Jiang first discussed
the differences between Eastern and Westerncultures and their influence on the organizational learning (OL) movement. After setting
the context, they described in brief the statusof the organizational learning movement in
China, and uncovered some meta-themes ining among different regions, industries, andfirms. Some are still influenced by the central
controlled economy and governance, some are
already completely operating in a global andmarket economy. Kolb and Jiang’s case study
tends to highlight conditions characteristic of
the centrally planned economy.

the learning organization movement in China.

Two useful opportunities for reflection on Orga-

In one Chinese case study, they usefully

nizational Learning in China have been at theillustrate how some of these themes are

World Café held in the 8th Learning Organiza-

illustrated in practice.

tion in Action Conference at September, 2004,

We have observed and sensed that just as
global capitalism is at a cross-roads, the futureof sustainable organizational learning in China
faces “six forks” in its road ahead. The current
status of China is too complex to define a clear
mainstream. Its foundation is traditional easternthought in which Confucianism’s influence isdeep and far reaching along with Taoism, andBuddhism. Communism has been a dominantsocial ideology since the PRC (or “New China”)
was founded in 1949. In the last 56 years, PRC
has experienced many transitions and turbulences. The first of four phases we distinguish

Singapore and the SoL 2nd Global Sustainability
Forum in Vienna in September, 2005. Participants
explored the Organizational Learning movementin China as a complex informal network comprisedof five driving forces including government, enterprises, consulting firms, media and publishing,
and universities and institutes. This framework(inspired by Lan Li, Stephen Meng, Jack Liu andothers, and since presented by the authors at
SoL’s Global Forum in Vienna) points towards
the places we could be watching for emerging
evidence and examples of sustainable learningorganizational practice:

are: (1) the centrally controlled planning econ-• Government: In January 2004, a nation-

omy from 1949 to 1966, during which Com-wide campaign named “Creating Learning Organi-munism was introduced and became dominant;zations, Being knowledge workers” (“Chuang(2) the Culture Revolution from 1966 to 1976

Zheng” movement in abbreviated) laws aunched.

which turned Chinese traditional culture

Sponsored by nine central government depart-reflections.solonline.org■ Zhang■ Qiu 39
Commentary
Commentaryments and Unions and social groups, events

ideas, including Prof. Tongyi Yang (mentioned byincluded a May 2004 contest in which more

Kolb and Jiang), and Dr. Shuoying Yang, a prof-

than 11 million workers participated.

essor of Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. Shuoying• Enterprises: Pioneer enterprises exploringan organizational learning approach over the lasteight years include as well as JAC, the Laiwu
Steel Group, Haier Group, Yanzhou Coal Group,and the Lunan Cement Company. There are likely

Yang established the Systems Thinking andOrganisational Learning Lab (STOLL), promoted
the publishing of a Chinese version of The Fifth
Discipline, and influenced many people now
actively part of the LO movement.

to be rich lessons from these and other exam-

The second phase of organizational learning 		ples, and also a huge challenge in generating thein China we date from 2001, and it has been

depth of organizational awareness that would

growing fast. There are two milestones for thisenable the firms and their communities andphase: former Chairman Ze-Min Jiang proposal

environment to flourish.

to build “a life-long education system, becoming• Consulting firms: Consulting firms can befacilitators of the Organizational Learning move-a Learning Society,” the launch of the Chuang
Zheng movement.

ment in China. We are not as confident as Kolb

As observers, we have a keen interest in seeing

and Jiang that there are many emerging local

a sustainable organizational learning movement

practitioners in China, and can see many oppor-

in China deepen and flourish in China. In thetunities for growing and deepen local capacity.

spirit of comprehensive harmony, we see sustained• Mass Media: Mass media and publishingefforts in the following areas might be important:houses also play a key role at the development• Development of innovative practical toolsof the OL movement in China. Books published inand methods for deepening the process of build-recent years in Mainland China on organizational

ing learning organizations. An example is thelearning amount to more than 70, which is quite

emerging social technology of “presencing,” using

small compared to the size of the potential

the Theory of “U” discussed by Senge et al inlearning community.

Presence.

• Universities: Universities and institutes are• Improve the integration and coordination

often the incubators of new ideas. Although thereamong the communities in order to facilitate theis not a specialized branch in the universities orknowledge diffusion, sharing and innovation.

institutes all around China currently, many individuals within them have had a huge influence tothe development of the OL movement in China.

• Foster the exploratory research for the
localization of OL theory in order to make it morepracticable for Chinese enterprises. The research

We divide the OL movement in China into two

will require resources and experiences throughmajor phases. The first phase ran from theinternational collaboration and integration of real

middle of the 1990s to 2001. When the notion

experiences and knowledge gained by local firms.

of learning organizations was imported into China
in the middle of the 1990s, only a few researchers and individuals understood and promoted the

40 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

The future development trajectory of China hashuge relevance to the entire world. China faces
not only a social, environmental and businessreflections.solonline.org

challenge; but a cultural challenge as well. A

integrate global imperative with Chinese character

future in which China will flourish will be one

and traditions. We honour Kolb and Jiang’s con-which draws deeply on ancient wisdom as well

tribution, and the forum that SOL can provide 		as a new global wisdom. We see the emerging

to an essential emerging dialogue.

thought around sustainable organisational
learning, including the ideas at the heart of“Presence,” as being an approach that can 		reflections.solonline.org

Zhaoliang Qiu
qiuzl@cko.com.cn■ Zhang■ Qiu 41
Commentary
Commentary41

Hindustan Petroleum’s Structural
Analysis of Current Reality
by Ashis Sen

Hindustan Petroleum’s Direct Sales Regional Office(DSRO) at Kolkata, locatedin the state of West Bengal,
caters to customers in West
Bengal, six states in thenortheastern part of India,
and Nepal. Area-wise, theAshis Senstate of West Bengal alone
is larger than Austria, which means that team members are separated by great distances. The officecaters to direct consumers of petroleum products,
which are primarily industries and government
accounts.
A year ago, we conducted a workshop to help theteam build a vision, and then work towards manifesting it. Their analysis of current reality produced
a number of structural challenges, which were causally mapped. High leverage areas were identified
which would enable the team to progress towards
their vision. The causal maps and the team’s analysis
are detailed below

Current Reality• Sales officers reported that customers wereincreasingly demanding higher discounts. It appears,
they said, that price is the primary competitive edgein the market. To retain our target business volumes,
we have been forced for the last few years to match
the prices offered by our competitors. If we don’t dothat, we can’t retain even our long-standing customers. Additionally, when the production of a particular product is higher than the immediate demand, we

42 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Numbers 8 –10

have to empty refinery tanks quickly, which puts
pressure on the sales officers to get orders from new
or existing customers quickly. At those times, weneed to offer even heavier discounts to new customers. Obviously, our existing customers then demand
the same level of discounts as was offered to the newcustomers.
•	However, when sales reached the target/desired
levels and there was no pressure from the refinery toevacuate tanks, there was pressure to reduce the discount levels, since discounts adversely affect our bottom-line. This was mapped as follows (Figure 1):
Figure 1
Discounts

Sales Target

B1
Fire Fighting

Gap between
Sales and Targets• The problem with discounts is that customers
become addicted to them over time, and begin toconsider the discounted price as the real price.
Further, since in moments of urgency or at times
when there is a slump in sales discounts have always
come to our rescue, fundamental solutions like providing value added service – offering sound engineer-reflections.solonline.org

ing advice to customers on product selection,
carrying out detailed study of their plants to provide customized solutions, or initiatives to improveor develop new products – are often relegated tothe back-burner. Due to this, customers continue
to demand discounts and a serious addiction loop
follows, reducing our ability to implement fundamental solutions (Figure 2).
• The figure above shows that a case of “shifting the burden” was operating: our sense of urgency forced us to be myopic and unaware of how
are actions were contributing to our long-term
irreversible problems.
• The “tyranny of the urgent” also prevented
teams from interacting with one another, so that
supply locations, the finance functions, and thesales officers were working in separate “silos.”This resulted in customers facing irregular supply
problems, and unreconciled statements of accounts.
As a consequence, we face customer alienation,
which in turn leads to a need for higher discounts
to keep customers happy, which also leads to increased firefighting work, and blame trading
within the team (Figure 3).

Figure 2

Discounts

B1
Fire Fighting

Sales Target

Efforts forLong Term
CompetenceGap between
Sales andTargets

B2
Competence Building

Customized Solutions,
Value added services

Figure 3

High Leverage Areas
Dialogue on the above issues led to the team identifying the following high leverage areas:• One of the high leverage areas they discovered was to have brainstorming sessions between
the team members, without blame trading. This
could ultimately help members to serve the organization better, and enable them to focus on true
customer delight. It was also decided to work
together with the customer to find out how we
could improve our services.
• The team decided that while implementing
the short-term measures, they still needed to focus
on the long term, and would need to do away withshort-term measures early.
•	The direct sales team also discovered that
their continuous efforts to get new customers diverted focus from existing customers, and due toreflections.solonline.org

Qualityof Customer
Service

R2
Alignment Loop

SharedUnderstanding ofCustomer needs

Customer
Satisfaction

Sales Target
Qualityof interactions
between teamMembers
Blame
Trading

EKF& ■Jiang
Sen 43
EKF ■ Kolb

limited availability of product (resulting from limited
infrastructure in the area of operations), adding customers was in fact at times a surefire way of increasing customers’ dissatisfaction. In fact, limited
availability or product was a limiting factor, which
did not figure in their calculations, resulting in counter-productive actions of always being on the lookout for new customers. The team decided that theywould henceforth focus on existing customers until
they could increase the necessary infrastructure
required to add new volume demand. However, evento keep the existing customers delighted they would
need to focus on building infrastructure. The causal
map below describes the structure in operation(Figure 4).
The regional office decided on the following
approach:•	Have regular team interactions and brainstorm
on long-term actions. The vision they created forthemselves is reproduced below.
•	Focus on long-term infrastructure building anduntil that time to focus on delighting existing customers.
•	Look for methods to shift away from discounts
and other short term measures.

Action Taken
Based on this approach, the following actions weretaken and significant results have already been
noted, such as:
1.	The team members talked to our competitor oilcompanies and that coordination has resulted in the re-Figure 4

Customer
Satisfaction

R3

Sales

B3

Customer
Satisfaction

Infrastructure
Availability

gional office managing with substantially lower discounts. This interaction between oil companies has
managed to break the escalation archetype andavoid price wars, which will ultimately benefit everyone.
2. Kolkata DSRO has had regular team interactions, which have built collaboration and teamwork.
In fact, the finance officer has worked with the sales
officers to produce good presentations for customers, and every member has been involved in interactions which benefit the whole.
3.	Large customers like Tata Chemicals were given
value-added services and products which enabled us
to sell products at better margins than our competitors. The realization that customers look at the final
cost and not the price alone has opened up new possibilities to the team.
4. Dialogues have become a continuous source oflearning and sharing and the team is learning tolearn together.
The vision created by them is summarized in theaccompanying sidebar (page 45).

Kolkata DSRO Vision
Kolkata DSRO
• Shall uphold its commitment to conduct all business in an ethical and transparent manner• Always promotes integrity in action, competitiveness, honesty and sincerity as its most cherished objective• Is committed to growth with our business associates and fulfilling social objectives• Delights customers with quality products, innovative marketing techniques and value added services anywhere and anytime• Is No. 1 in profitability and market share with highest growth rate.
• Team DSRO promotes learning and encourages initiatives to achieve excellence

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The creation of a vision, and conducting an analysis of their current reality without defensiveness,has enabled the team in an engaging manner. Since
the vision is rooted in their personal visions, working
together for a common vision has become a sourceof continual joy and happiness.
Workplaces need to give us room to discuss
together, decide together and work together for goals
which are meaningful to those involved. When thisoccurs, business results are a consequence of our actions, and a source of personal and team happiness.

A bo u t th e A u thor

Ashis Sen is an Internal Coach at Hindustan Petroleum
Corporation Limited, one of the major oil companies inIndia. He received a degree in mechanical engineeringfrom Visvesvaraya Regional Engineering College, the leading engineering school in the country. He joined Hindustan
Petroleum in 1984 and has been involved in some of the
major cross country pipeline projects. He is currently
devoted to enhancing team capabilities in the organization, by offering coaching on learning organization
concepts.
ashissen@hpcl.co.inreflections.solonline.org

EKF&■Jiang
Sen 45
EKF ■ Kolb
45

Sri Lanka: A Story of Hopeby Karen Ayas

O
Karen Ayasn December 26, 2004 the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean were hit hard by the terrible Boxing Day tsunami, called the greatest natural disaster in modern history. Tensof thousands of people were killed in a dozen countries throughout Southeast Asia.
Along Sri Lanka’s 1,300 kilometer coastline, more than 40,000 died and a half million wereleft homeless.
Two and one-half months later, at six in the morning, I found myself in a darkened meeting room at the Galadari Hotel in Sri Lanka’s capital city of Colombo with 208 leaders of
Unilever’s Asian Foods (UFA) businesses, brought to this island country for a week with twobriefs. The first: to assist in the relief efforts in two small southern coastal communities. To
that end, they would spend two days working on clean-up and rebuilding projects. The second was to continue the so called “Journey to Greatness” – an ambitious leadership development and community-building program that aspires to bringing greatness into every aspectof an organization and its leaders (“Journey to Greatness,” Reflections Vol. 5, No. 10) – ina two-day program following their work in communities.
While slogging in the unbearable heat and humidity, clearing rubble out of houses, building new community centers, school buildings, volleyball and badminton courts, kitchens,
toilets, and shops, the leaders began to connect with local people. When the leaders started
working, most residents were bystanders, watching without any spark in their eyes and without the energy to lend a helping hand to their own recovery. As the UFA leaders witnessed
the unimaginable physical devastation, they heard horrific personal stories of lost loved ones
and lost livelihoods. But as they consoled the families that had been ravished by the tsunami
and sang songs and danced with the children in the communities where they had worked,
they came to realize how powerful the human spirit is. As one UFA leader put it: “We becameaware of our resilience. Even facing the highest level of adversity, we can bounce back andre-build ourselves.”
A year earlier in India, work with twenty-some different communities had led the UFA
leaders to realize the importance of “mission” and to appreciate the power of belonging to acommunity. This in turn led them to invest in building their own leadership community andredefining their mission. Sri Lanka was about bringing this mission to life; it meant reconnecting to one another and affirming that as leaders they were both business beings andhuman beings.
“We came to Sri Lanka because I decided never to close my eyes to misery in this world,”
explained Tex Gunning, then president of Unilever Foods Asia. “People get lost, organizations get lost, and leaders get lost: we need to be reminded of the power of the spirit within
us and rekindle the spirit in others to find our way.”

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Coming face to face with destruction
Just after dawn on the morning of March 7, 2005, the UFA leaders boarded nine busses totravel to the southern coast of Sri Lanka, where the devastation from the tsunami had been
the greatest. As we milled about waiting for the busses to arrive, I wondered like many others
what we would encounter the next few days. Although I had worked on the design of thejourney, I was full of apprehension.
What would people feel as we cameface to face with the survivors of sucha disaster?
Heading south through Colombo
along the Galle Road, evidence of Sri
Lanka’s rich heritage was all around.
To untrained eyes there was little evidence yet of widespread destruction.
Crossing the bridge at Kosgoda signaled the passage from the western tothe southern region of the country,
where ever-increasing signs of the tsunami’s destruction came into view: more
and more wood shacks surrounded bypiles of lumber and bricks, and soon a large tent city constructed to shelter survivors in
Balapitiya. At “the train site,” just south of the little tourist town of Ambalangoda, wedebarked at the railroad crossing where the tsunami derailed the Colombo–Galle train andmore than 1,500 passengers. There the UFA leaders began to witness firsthand the horror ofso many lost lives, and the complete destruction of a village and its small fishing boats. As
one leader described it, “The place was pregnant with disaster and it was racing towards us
in all its ferocity. The community had lost its will to survive, let alone live. What was thecontribution we were going to make? These thoughts screamed through our brains.”
Half of the group worked for the next few days in the vicinity of Galle, some forty-fiveminutes down the road from the train site, while the rest continued on for four hours to
Hambantota, a dusty little village some 240 kilometers southeast of Colombo, on the border
between Sri Lanka’s wet and dry zones. Both groups worked in shops, and schools, and residences to help families and villages to rebuild their lives, not just with bricks and mortar, but
through rekindling the community’s spirit.

Photo: Gerald Gay

Hambantota
More than 4,500 people in the Hambantota district were killed by the giant tidal wave, 1,000
or more of them residents of the village. The surge was so powerful that some houses morethan one kilometer away from the shore were pulverized. At the school where one of the UFA
teams worked, eighty children, four teachers, and the principal were killed, their bodies collected in the bare yard in front of the school and buried in a mass grave. The destruction was
so massive that the Pakistani Army was invited in to bulldoze huge portions of the town. In
the process, more corpses were found in the lagoon behind one of the neighbourhood worksites; those bodies were shovelled into another mass grave.

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Other UFA teams worked on demolishing unsafe houses, restoring salvageable structures,and clearing the ubiquitous mounds of debris. The work was daunting enough physically. For
many, the emotional work of understanding the depth of the families’ losses and engaging
them in the process of rebuilding their lives was even more difficult.
One UFA leader spoke of feeling overwhelmed by the tragedy related byWorking andthe nineteen family members living in the small house he was assigned to:organizing are one
and the same, andare creative andsocial, framed byconversations.

On the twenty-sixth of December they were going about their lives, somewatching a cricket match on television others going about their morning
work. Then suddenly they heard a very strong hissing sound, a very
unusual sound that they had never heard before. And then the electricity
was cut off and the telephone lines went dead. . . . Before they could
understand what was happening, a huge wave, as high as the roof almost,came into the house. The mothers ran to get hold of the children. The
husbands ran out to protect the property. They lost their nine-year-old boy, Apeh, who
had gone out to play. It all happened in one minute and fifty-two seconds. The housethey had built themselves was completely wiped out. The only thing remaining was theclock on the wall which had stopped at nine-twenty a.m., showing the time the wave
had struck the house.

Hearing stories like this paralyzed many of the UFA leaders at first. Some seriously questioned how much solace and support they could really offer, and then slowly they began torealize that simply listening, being there, could be enough. “I felt bad thinking I had no wayof helping these families,” said one. “Later I realized that many of them wanted to pour out
their hearts. They just wanted a person to listen to their experiences, the trials they went
through during those terrible minutes and how they were coming out of the shock.”At the end of the day, the UFA leaders sat with eachother around a fire pit. They sharedstories of their experiences, speaking with raw emotion and genuine caring about the village
people they worked with. Many had been profoundly touched by their encounters, as one
UFA leader described:
In Hambantota we worked with a family where the wife was a teacher and the husband
had salt fields and a factory. The wave had destroyed their house and their factory.
Luckily the family members escaped with minor injuries. While the wife seemed OK,
the man looked dazed, lost, and totally out. When we started the conversation hedeclared that he had lost his memory and everything that he had worked for over the
past 20 years. He did not know what to do. We kept talking and I started asking him
simple questions related to his business, the factory, the market. Then he saw a few of
his inventory log books from under the rubble wheeled away. He picked them up fromunder a huge load of debris and started sharing the records from 1990. He started todescribe how the packing line worked, how his packages were of consistent and goodquality. His experience and pride started to show. Feeling something was progressing
right I carried on with the conversation. It seemed that the salt fields could be recovered
with some work. And he suggested that banks could offer him a loan to rebuild his factory based on his past track record. Here he was getting plugged-in again!
Had UFA’s work here really made such a difference? Many felt that it had. “I felt that I
had helped to inject some life, hope, and a little bit of happiness into the lives of the family

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we were working with,” said one of the team summing up his work in Hambantota. “I would even go
as far as saying that I almost felt like I had become
part of that family.” The belief that they had made ameaningful contribution to so many people’s lives
had taken root. Some thirty-six hours after theirarrival in Hambantota, they saw tangible evidence ofthe difference they made at the brief closing ceremony at St. Mary’s College. They realized they had
experienced and learned so much here, but how
would it fit into their Journey to Greatness?

Serving a higher purpose
From Galle and Hambantota, the groups moved
inland, into the hill country. They spent the next twodays at a camp in Ella, making sense of their experiences working alongside the amazing people of Sri
Lanka, drawing out the lessons about great leadership and exploring how to bring heart and soul toeverything they do in their own businesses. Throughdialogue, meditation, reading, solitary excursions
into nature, and facilitated learning they asked: Do
we want to be great leaders? Do we understand what it means to be a great leader? And theygrappled with existential questions. Who are we: as individuals, as leaders, as a community?
In their last day in Ella, they homed in on one last question: How do we become a great business? How will we bring mission to life? One facilitator’s remarks as he prepared to departwere encouraging:“What I have seen here the past two days took my words away. This is the sort of thingthat should be happening in all organizations. A great business is nothing but a set of
great human beings. It is the unification of the personal with the corporate mission thatgives birth to a real human world. Work no more becomes separate from one’s personal life; it only becomes another medium by which the personal mission is accomplished.
Consider the nobility of this proposition: If every business evolves itself from being apredator to one that is committed to uplift humanity, our orientation shifts from marketing products to rendering services – tangible or intangible – and changing people’s
lives. A company that embraces the need to genuinely uplift humanity will nurture thisspirit in its own organization. It would allow people’s sense of conscience and spirituality to grow, further reforming and aligning the business to the welfare of human beings.
So, the whole world is waiting for you to do what you have to do.
In the dialogue that followed, Tex underscored the socio-economic role businesses must
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How do you evaluate how great a business is? Business results like turnover, profit, andreturn on investment are all external evaluations of a company. But they alone don’t
determine greatness. I believe spirit is the key. It determines the way the company interacts with the local community, the customers, and the consumers.
As leaders, we need a whole new level of consciousness about the functioning of organizations, deeply recognizing that it is a living and therefore continuously changing
organism, adjusting itself to its new circumstances and to the human players that makeit up. You cannot force human beings to adjust themselves to the tyranny of organizational logics in a sustainable manner; you can only let the organization adjust itself tothe universal needs of all human beings. They want to live meaningful lives; they wantto live in service and care for others; they want the freedom and space to be creative;
they want to grow and they want to be part of an organization that helps them to contribute to something that is far bigger than they could ever on their own. When you
have a purpose that’s higher than yourself you’ll find cooperation where you neverimagined.
We must therefore somehow become socially and economically coherent. Of course as
businesses we need to make money to sustain what we’re doing. But we have to have asocial meaning that resonates with people like you who volunteer to work here, andwith the people we serve. The business needs to be grounded in deep human values andyou need to have integrity in your actions.
There were plenty who embraced this approach. “I feel very grateful that I work in an
organization that understands the value of caring for the society it operates in,” acclaimed
one of the UFA leaders. “I now understand that there is work and life in Unilever beyond the
pay-check. I believe that Unilever can make this world a better place.”“Neither I nor my team members find any contradiction in our Journey to Greatness andour ambition to build a large and profitable business,” said Ashok, head of the foods business
in Vietnam. “We shall grow the business, however, with sensitivity, compassion, and with agenuine desire to serve the community around us.”Service learning
In large-group sharing and smaller country sessions, the UFA leaders explored what makes agreat business and the path to get there. The shared experiences in the previous retreats, serving communities in India or working alongside villagers in China – and their own initiatives
since – pointed to one path: service learning, growing the people and company through community service and learning from that service.
“We have to think about community service,” Tex concluded in one of the discussions,“because this is an interconnected world. And we have to see ourselves as one world.”
As they discussed how they could bring such “greatness” into their own environment, themajority of teams developed the determination to engage in some form of community service,here in Sri Lanka or in their own countries. Said one, “The bonding here was unbelievable.
We will continue with the community work as we firmly believe that even a little act canmake such a huge difference.” Added another, “My team unanimously agreed to channel

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some funds to relief work for the Hambantota housing project. The entire office plans to go down to Hambantota andget involved with the project and the community on the 8th
and 9th April.”
As for how to ensure similar results in all community service efforts, everyone had plenty to say. “If people are reallycommitted to do community service, don’t worry about athing, it will come,” said one UFA leader. “Don’t take a kindof typical business approach to tackle these kinds of things. I
personally would never force people into doing it, because
you have to have a heart in doing this kind of thing.”

Bringing mission to life
Service. Care. Commitment. Laudable intentions requiring
great strength to translate to action. “We know, more or less,”
Tex challenged the UFA leaders, “what it is to be a great business, but how do you do it? How do you keep yourself honeston that agenda?” He started to answer his own questions:Defining our business in the social-economic sense means that we truly say we are goingto take care of the nutritional needs of families. But when we start to talk about positioning, the charter brands, the purpose brands, etcetera, there is still a lot of confusion,and I truly believe that we haven’t cracked that nut.
All the country teams took this question seriously – make sure everyone understands,
absorbs, and internalizes the mission – and agreed to start taking some action for bringing
their mission to life. “We talked about how we can engage, have communities, and be true
to the overall mission,” shares one leader from Australia, “and we actually looked at what
we need to boost our personal journeys. We will work together as a group to keep ourselvesenergized and to remind ourselves and each other of how we felt here.” The Pakistani teamdiscussed how they could start a collective effort – first just with the fifteen of them who cameto Sri Lanka – to do something back home as they did here for tsunami victims. “We cannot
just try to push it onto everyone. We’ll start doing something and then take it from there andmake it a bigger project,” said Rizwan, their leader.
“Community service is only one part of the Journey,” another leader reminded the group.
“Perhaps the more important part of the Journey is becoming a better leaders, better humanbeings, and also better teams. So you have a business with a human face. The process doesn’ttake away the skills, the acumen. But it does bring up the Conscience thing: Am I asking
consumers to pay for too much packaging? How can I make products available to low
income people?”

Putting Spirit into practice
But the real question that all wrestled with is “How?” How would they put into practicewhat they came to know on their Journey? How could they be their spiritual selves back on
the job?

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The spirit displayed by the UFA teams as they worked with the Sri Lankans made many
wonder why they couldn’t do this with their own teams. As one of them summed it up:
In my group there were people from Unilever from different countries, races, and work
levels. People I had never met before. Yet we got together as a team quickly and went
about completing our work with amazing speed and focus. No one ordered anyone.
Suggestions were given andaccepted on the quality ofthe suggestion alone, and it
did not matter whom it camefrom. No one stopped to see
if someone was doing lesswork. Those who finished
immediately went over tohelp someone who was struggling. I asked myself, why
we don’t see the same behavior at work? And why do I
behave differently at work?
As they continued to reflectand share, there was also commitment to plenty of action at
the personal level. “I resolved
to build happy, meaningful, andrich relationships with people whose lives I touch and am responsible for. And through theseinterdependencies I will enrich my contribution to everything I do each day,” affirmed yet
another.
Those who made similar vows in past Journeys held the mirror up while they renewed
their commitments. “In reflecting about where to next, while the experience was different, I
have realized my takeaways and actions are exactly the same as after the Indian outbreak ayear ago,” said one veteran. “What is frustrating is that if I honestly look back I have notdone as much as I would have liked. While I think I have become a better husband, father,and leader to some degree, there is still a lot of work to do.”Under the Prayer Tree
Late on the final afternoon of the Sri Lankan journey, the group sat one last time under the
Prayer Tree as clouds rolled in and thunder growled in the distance. It had rained not long
before, and the huge tree released an occasional sprinkle from its canopy.
“When we started talking about greatness two years ago,” Tex reminded the group,“many said that that is for the gods or the Nelson Mandelas of this world, but not for people
like us. We have seen yet again that greatness has hardly anything to do with the role thatyou have in business but has everything to do with who you truly are.” He continued:
At a very deep level, we are wise. We know that, but we forget that we know. We’reso much caught up with what’s going on around us, it’s like we’re living outside of

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Anura’s Reflection
I was on the beach in Bentota with my wife and my child. When the first wave came, I thought it was a freak wave. I
went to see what was happening. I took my son along. Two minutes later the second wave was coming, and I was in a
jeep trying to race back to my wife. It took two or three minutes to get back to where my wife was. It seemed like forever.
We talk of tragedies, we see them on TV, we read novels, but only when you go through something like this do you know
how fragile everything around you is.
Within minutes, six of my colleagues called me. I never thought that people cared that much for me. That night andthe following morning, people were calling and asking what are we going to do now? At first we thought only a hundred
people had died . . . then five hundred . . . and on Monday morning at eight o’clock when we met at work the number
was one thousand. One thousand people had died. We had to do something about it. We said, let the company dowhatever, but we’ll put in our day’s wage; by midday we said, let’s put two day’s wages. We bought lunch packets, cooked
rice, and found a plane. There was no plan. Everyone knew what to do. They just had it in their hearts. That evening wewrote to the government and many others and we received incredible support. But the first light was lit by people notknowing who was going to support them. We all know how to talk about problems, we all know how to theorize, how toanalyze, how to argue. However, this was all about knowing what your heart tells you to do and doing it.
We learned that there was a camp in Ampar on the East coast . . . six thousand people in one camp without a single
tent, under polythene sheets . . . six hundred pregnant women and not a single toilet.... Something had to be done, so
together with two other companies we decided to go out there to build tents. Suddenly the government told us they had
twenty thousand tents they didn’t know what to do with. All we had to do was bring the tents there and show a couple ofpeople how to build them. Six hundred tents built in one day. Toilets, same story again. We said, let’s do what we can. Sixty
toilets came in two days; pits were dug by the tsunami-affected people. They only needed the spark and a little ray ofhope and they were ready to get up and do it. Three days later, one of our guys said, how about a nursery? And we
found enough ladies in that camp who knew how to look after small children.
We told the government we are committing one hundred million rupees, that’s big money for a small company like ours.
But that led to a wave of donations from other people. Our company gave us plenty of room; for weeks no one asked
about the targets. All they asked was, what you are doing about the tsunami, is there anything we can do to help?
So just listen to your hearts and do what is right. You don’t get transformed by experience . . . but by the ability toexperience. You need to live it through, to feel it in your hearts. You know, you can be so detached, so factual, typical
Unilever executive and you can go through, walk through all that without being moved. But you guys are moved and you’revery special people. First couple of days when you were here out in the field . . . I heard that story after story. It doesn’t
matter how many people you helped or how many houses or schools. What matters are the stories of the tailor, the storyof that family, those eight children . . . these are the things that matter and you’ve done that.
Yesterday we all asked a question, who am I? You asked me the same question. I don’t have an answer as I don’t think
there will ever be words. The only thing I can say is, if we take the first step and the second step, then we walk, andthen we sprint, but at the end, we fly!
At the end, we fly.
Thank you for bringing hope to Unilever Sri Lanka and to Sri Lanka. It will never be forgotten.

ourselves. We’re living in other people’s minds; we’re interacting in ways that are notvery wise most of the time. To come to grips with who you are, who you want to be, isa long journey. And you will see that the older you get, and the wiser you get, the easier
it becomes. And even then you make mistakes.
I’m not asking you to become a spiritual guru tomorrow, and I will never be one. What
I’m saying is you have to pull people into your lives if you want to learn, if you wantto grow. You can’t do it on your own. I can’t do it on my own. And there is no recipe.

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But it is a gift to you. Grab it if you want. This is your Journey. And this is our Jour-ney
to become who we really are.
After a few minutes of silence, as everyone retraced the five-day journey silently with apartner, Tex invited everyone to share whatever they felt still remained to be said.
“These last few days we have been talking about spirituality, searching for the soul andtrying to touch souls,” observed one of the leaders. It is only when we find our own soul, or
get back in touch with our own soul, that we can look at other souls. What was the mostdifficult exercise we did here? For me it was the silent communication that we had under thattree. Two people sitting in front of each other, not talking but looking into each other’s eyes,trying to look into the soul of the other without speaking. . . . When I was trying to look into
the soul of my friend here, there was embarrassment, there was nervous laughter. We would
move our eyes away. Did any of us keep eye contact for five minutes? I doubt it very much.
And if we didn’t, that tells us where we are as far as the soul is concerned.”“I learned more here about the value of caring in practice than I could have from any bookor lecture,” said another. “I learned about the fundamental value of being human and ofreaching out again and again. Not only did I reach out to my Sri Lankan friends but to mycolleagues. We opened up and shared many things beyond work and we really bonded.”“Leadership is all about helping others, caring for others, creating space for them to learn
and grow, and providing them the fertilizer so that they can grow even further,” reflected oneof the leaders, “but the only way that you can do that well is by knowing yourself well.”Another put it this way: “To discover greatness you have to embrace humanity and encounter
humbleness. As we become more ourselves we are treading on the path to greatness.”
The reflections the leaders shared were laced with thoughts of community, humanity, love,kindness, compassion. “I have more courage now and I see that when I go back home, I justneed that consciousness. It’s not the scale of what I do that matters, it’s my intent.” said one.
“The journey made me realize that I had more to give,” another added. “And the more you
give the happier you are in life. Amazing grace is what I feel at this moment.”
The group’s experiences here – and in China and India on previous journeys – did notchange who they fundamentally are, but profoundly enhanced them, sometimes in ineffableways. Reconnecting with their inner selves and giving of themselves to one another invigorated their thoughts, opened their hearts, let their spirits fly, and confirmed their humanity.
As their final sharing continued, they heard many heartfelt and stirring reflections – butnone more touching than the words of Anura, the HR director of Unilever Sri Lanka on that
fateful day (see sidebar).
They gave him a tearful standing ovation. “At the end we fly . . .” There was nothing elseto say.
A bo u t th e A u thor

Karen Ayas is a founding partner of the Ripples Group, a management consulting practicespecializing in growth strategies and change management. She is on the faculty of Rotterdam Schoolof Management, Erasmus University, and adjunct faculty at Babson College. The author of several
books, she is also coeditor-in-chief of Reflections.
Karen@ripplesgroup.com

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FEATURE

Stories from an
African Learning Village
By Marianne KnuthK

ufunda is a learning village (a learning center) which seeks to support people andcommunities in discovering and recovering practices and social systems that actually work for them. What ‘that actually work for them’ means is part of what thisarticle is about.
Our overriding question is the following: What does it take to support people in reclaiming their sense of wealth and possibility, and in that beginning to forge their own learning
paths towards a more nourishing and sustaining way of life?

Marianne Knuth

From a letter to my friends, Harare, Zimbabwe, June 19, 2001
I have a dream . . .
We have a small farm of 327 acres, 23 km south of Harare, which we bought in 1984,
when our family moved to Zimbabwe (my mother returning after over 15 years
abroad). On it we grow maize and groundnuts, cabbages and seedlings for sale, andmilk for ourselves and the people in the surrounding area. My mother, sister and I holda vision of something more – for this to be a place where we do things with and for thepeople of Zimbabwe. Our dreams intertwine, and I hope to see them co-exist on thefarm. For now I have decided to get started. While I do not come with solutions or theway forward for sustainable community, I do come with the belief that together we canfigure it out. The answers that people need are in their midst, and if we come together
we can discover them.
I hope the centre will bring together community organizers from across Zimbabwe
regularly to learn from each other; to deepen their understanding of their situation; tobecome more conscious of unconscious assumptions that may hold them back (bothinherited and cultural); and how they can work with those. It will be a learning community of those people who are working with and for the most disadvantaged
Zimbabwean people. The centre will also be space to support young disadvantaged
people who have not managed to finalise their formal education. It will be a place tohelp them grow more fully into themselves, and who they are; help them figure out
what they want from life, and how to get there. And the farm will become their homewhile they were there.
My desire is to challenge their inherited notion of success (from colonialism and thewest) and develop, and work with them to recover knowledge and insight from theirreflections.solonline.org

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own culture. I am inspired by Gandhi, who said that absence of the British does notconstitute independence (which officially Zimbabwe gained in 1980), rather independence, or freedom, is the recovery of the self and of the civilisation in Zimbabwe.
I picture a life of simplicity, self-sustainability, and being in tune with nature, a place where,
as Tagore said, “education necessarily becomes the preparation for a complete life ofman, which can only be possible by living that life, through knowledge and service,enjoyment and creative work.” I speak here not only of education, but of creating alearning community in which we live that life which we believe to be possible: we createa microcosm of another way of being and doing together.

Kufunda Village TodayThree and a half years later, Kufunda Village has become a reality, and much of the above isbeing lived out and experimented with. Some of the ideas have changed form and shape, but
the core remains the same. The vision and intent are focused on creating healthy and vibrant communities through supporting people as they unfold in their own way in their communities.
Our starting point is that all the communities we work with are unique and special. We
recognize this and work off their current wealth, however limited it may seem. Thus, we startfrom a place of wealth, and “enoughness,” instead of from a place of poverty and scarcity.
Recognizing that most of the people we work with are deeply connected to their villages andcommunities, we focus on helping each community expand its sense of what is possible in its
context.
We aim for holistic community development working with a cross sector of the community. This means that we don’t come into a community to fix a problem. We empower andsupport people to develop their leadership and capacity to solve their own problems in theirown ways. Through our work with a community we have typically focused on:• broad based learning related to sustainable community;• re-imagining their community together and• developing basic action plans and projects to move towards their new vision for 		
the future.
Throughout this, although the community is central to our work, we recognize that we areworking with individuals. We take the time for storytelling, to know each other more deeply,
to listen to – and integrate – the fears and concerns, and dreams and hopes of individuals, asa way to move towards something that is collective, but which builds on the people themselves.
It has been our experience, that the specifics of the projects that communities choose toengage in together are almost irrelevant, though not quite. Where I am sensing deeper change
is in the process of people actually learning to work together successfully, collectively. The
realization of what is possible when we come together brings momentum that can go beyond
any initial project, be it on sanitation, agriculture or reforestation.

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Examples of the visible landscape
The group from the Mhondoro community of Rwizi (an area comprising 14 villages and approximately 7500 people)
returned home in late February, 2004, with a few simple but ambitious goals:   To plant one million trees   To each family one compost toilet   To support each family and homestead to shift to organic farming and gardening.
Less than a month later lots had already happened: Two model compost toilets had been built at the Kwari AIDS
orphanage, in addition to several of the participants having built their own at home; a model permaculture garden at
the orphanage; and 250 leukina trees that have been planted collectively, plus those planted by each individual in theirhomestead. Additionally new income generating co-operatives have been formed by people who returned from Kufunda.
They seek to involve and educate the community to be able to join them in the work, and through their example to realize
the power of working as a team. “I don’t know how to express how precious this learning is. Everyone is saying ‘Come to
my place. Show me how to make the arborloo [compost toilet].’ I am willing to work hard for my community, forsomething which makes our community brighter.” — Juliet, Rwizii
The group in Zvimba has put a special emphasis on coming together around a collective compost toilet project. They haveso far built 44 toilets in the community, involving the local headmen, chief and primary and secondary schools. They arerunning a community garden project together, as a model for what is possible without using expensive chemical fertilisersand pesticides. They have started a pre-school for children in the community. Several small projects have been started
providing for needs in the community as well as generating income (school uniform projects, knitting projects, making
fuel efficient clay stoves).
In Rusape two pre-schools have been started. A small knitting school has been started for widows in particular, a nursery
project has over 5000 trees, a mix between exotic fruit trees for sale, and indigenous trees for reforestation. They are
exploring the possibility of starting a community currency for their area.
In each of these communities, in addition to the practical outcomes, the importance of working together is expressed
time and time again.
“I have learned that we need to share the little that we have and that working in a team that we can have a better
tomorrow.” — Community organizer from Zvimba“I used to be selfish. I only wanted to work for myself. Now I am experiencing the benefit of working together.”— Aquiline Makorovodo

What does it take to reclaim our sense of wealthand possibility?
Telling our story
Initially it was a surprise to me that the story is more important than whatever training
people take part in. But when the stories go deep, the learning occurs.
Anna first came to Kufunda in February 2003, for our first community organizers programme.
The change that has occurred in Anna’s life since then is remarkable. I remember Anna wellfrom the very beginning. She is a beautiful woman, quiet and modest, small and graceful. She
works incredibly hard. When she came back to Kufunda for the second time, she and her
fellow women community organizers from Rusape surprised us all by how much they had
done at home with the inspiration and ideas that they had acquired from Kufunda.

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According to her, before Kufunda, she used to sit and wait for change to come to her. That
is now a thing of the past. She can’t give enough credit to Kufunda for what she, and thewomen she works with, have accomplished, and yet they have done it by themselves. It seems
that it began with a shift in perspective. A shift and realization, more importantly, in theirview of themselves. Anna says, “I thought that because I was one of the poorest people in mycommunity I had no role to play. At Kufunda, I learned that each one of us has something
special to give. I used to think that because I had no cell phone . . . I could not mix with thosemore wealthy.”
Anna said that when she began to value all of herself, she found the courage to spearhead
initiatives which before she felt unable to do as a simple poor woman. And she is very clearthat it was her first two week experience at Kufunda that was the beginning of the shift,though it was affirmed and accentuated by the response she received in her community when
she began to show initiative and leadership.
Anna places great emphasis on the power and importance of meeting through our stories
and of getting to know each other and taking the time to hear and see each other – withrespect. “I felt like I was someone when I was at Kufunda. What I said and what I thought
was taken seriously. I was helped to see myself as a person first. Not as a poor person.”
The community organizers programme that Anna was a part of spent the first two dayson an exercise we call “the tree of life.” Using the metaphor of a tree, people spend two fulldays telling their story. From the roots (ancestors and grandparents who have influenced theirlives), to the trunk (their life story, often one full of hardship), to the fruits (the gifts andtalents they have) and the leaves (their dreams for themselves and their family).
Those two days are always magic. The journey from the roots to the fruits is always oneof hardship and suffering. Parents dying early, children passing away from AIDS, not being
able to finish school, getting stuck in the middle of the political drama unfolding in the country at this time – whatever the story, almost everyone has a hard tale to tell. If we stopped
there, we would know that we were not alone in our suffering, but that would be about it.
The move further up the tree to the gifts shows how people have mostly somehow managed
to take their suffering and turned it into something rich. The women’s ability to listen to andcounsel others; the youth’s ability to write poetry describing her life; the talent of nursing andcaring for the sick; the ethic of hard work . . . and on and on. Often those things that people
take for granted – that they do not look upon as gifts or anything special, are small diamonds
that have grown out of a life of hardship. They are diamonds and they do need to be recognised and appreciated. And so we spend two days before going into what some may see as
the real work, simply in meeting and seeing each other. There is space to speak the pain, butthere is a commitment to looking for the beauty too.

Appreciating what is . . .
I have often seen people shift enormously in those few days of storytelling, visibly straightening up in their posture as they tell and retell their story from different angles and perspectives.
From being a poor person, laden with problems, you begin to pay attention to and appreciate
the gifts and qualities you are also carrying in you. Silas spoke very clearly to it in our conversation: “Realizing who you are. . . . Being poor means you want to be someone, but then
you’re not looking at what’s here; who you are.”						Focusing on ‘what is not’ will only cause us to increase our sense of inadequacy. As we
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thing that works, that is what we choose to focus on – we are inviting them to expand theirsense of wealth and possibility. Silas continues “The poor can be materially poor and spiritually rich. We all have something to share. I no longer see myself as poor. If I can give a listening ear to Dumi, then I have offered something. I am not poor.”In this lies a realization of our own wealth. After having focused so single-mindedly on
what we don’t have, it can be difficult to acknowledge what we do have, or discount it forbeing worth little or nothing. As Dumi reflected: “I used to think that I don’t have anything
to give. Marianne is the only one who can give. Why doesn’t she give something?” In this
there lies an expectation that those who have more should support those who have less. It
would be wonderful if the world worked that way, but unfortunately it doesn’t. If those whohave less are focused on what they feel they deserve, waiting – as Anna was – for something
to change, for someone to help, it can easily turn into what we know in this country as victim
consciousness. It is not a very generative or resourceful place to be stuck in. Instead it is a
giving up of our power and self to the other.
But Dumi continues, “I am realizing however that giving is always done in many ways. In
the form of money, sharing ideas, natural resources. In fact we used to think that our natural
resources were not good enough to share. If I gave mangai (a traditional food) that would
not be good enough. I did not know that Mangai is actually better than the white bread andjam we choose to serve visitors instead. We did not know that our traditional foods have all
the nutrients. Now we’re realizing that we should go back to our roots. Not just with food.”
I asked where this conviction that their own food was inferior might come from. The answer

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Assumptions of Appreciate Inquiry• In every community something works.
• What we focus on becomes our reality.
• Reality is created in the moment – there are more than one reality.
• The act of asking questions influences the community in some way.
• People have more confidence and comfort to journey to the future when they carry forward partsof the past.
• If we carry forward parts of the past, they should be what is best.

was that those with money don’t choose them, and so that which can be bought must invariably be better than what is grown at home. Sikhethiwe said that to her “our own type of foodis an example of our poverty. Poor people usually eat traditional food. The rich can buy theprocessed foods.To show that we have something, and to show respect to our visitors, wethen have to buy the expensive, though often less nutritious, foods.”
It is not only about food, but it is a good example of the loss of self that has occurred. The
shift in the people who we work with, who have reclaimed their pride in their mangai, theirlocal herbs, their community, and their culture, may have come partly through the questions– following the very simple but potent appreciative approach – guiding them to uncover specifically the wealth, treasures and wisdom that they do have as individuals and communities.

. . . Being truthful about what isn’t
Appreciating the good is central, then. And yet it is not an excuse to cover up that which is
not working. For Anna having the space to speak the pain was just as valuable as the practiceof looking at what she had to offer the world: “You may teach many things, but if people arefull of problems they are not able to learn.”						It has been my experience that people keep their pain, problems and sorrows to themselves. They do not wish to burden others with them. It is a collective and communal culture,but it is much easier to share the joy and laughter here, than that which is not so beautiful
and light. I remember a circle at Kufunda. It was a small group, mainly women, mainly widows. Through the conversations of the days before it had become clear that people were
under more financial stress than normal after the government had more than tripled school
fees in an attempt to keep up with inflation. I forget the exact question I asked. It was along
the lines of: “What is your situation and what are your concerns?”
It turned into a circle of grief, and tears. It was a long hard witnessing of what people were
suffering under. What struck me most was how afterwards people expressed deep surprisethat they were not alone in their suffering. I would have thought it so obvious in today’s
Zimbabwe that everyone is struggling, and yet the experience of sharing openly the pain andconcern was apparently so novel and so comforting to people. It was perhaps a unique circle
in the way it opened up the field of collective grief and sharing thereof, but the on-going practice of sharing what is on our heart and mind, seems to be an important release for many people.
The conversation was generative in that it spurred us to set up an educational fund to support the widows and orphans. I believe that even if we had not moved into problem solving

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mode from the conversation, the process of sharing in itself brought a significant level of
release and thus healing.

Removing money from the pedestal upon which we have placed it
In our questions to people about their learning paths, and their relationship to Kufunda,
another aspect emerges very strongly: The realization that money and the material are not infact the most important aspects to life. This seems to strike young people particularly strongly through their relationship with Kufunda.
Looking back at her young life, Sikhethiwe shares how money was a central part of herconcerns from early on: “When I was at school it was a wonderful life. But when you growup you have to work and make money. Things are hard these days, in terms of the politicalsituation. Even I don’t have enough for myself. I worry about my baby’s life. If things continue to be hard, am I going to be able to send him to school?” But though things are hard,
Sikhethiwe has changed fundamentally in her relationship to money. “Yes we need money but
it is not as important as yourself. You have to love yourself and the way you are first, not justrush for how you can get money.”
Sikhethiwe goes on to speak to the same sentiments that many others have shared with us.
That the experience of fun, love, community, doing what we love, being engaged in meaningful pursuit, that these bring an experience of happiness. In the midst of the same poverty that
was always there, an experience of happiness is a strong reminder to what really matters, andmoney is not the only factor in bringing on joy and meaning. Tracing the source of the realization takes us to being together with others; being in relationship – whether that be throughcircle, in projects, in exercise, in work or play. As we lose our intense focus and worry aboutmoney, we can work with it in more detached, and perhaps healthier ways.
Aquiline used to worry about money intensely. She no longer does so, and everything haschanged. Her business is picking up, she is doing better than before, and she believes that
relaxing around the issue was a key factor: “The worry used to stop me. If it was really bad,I could just sit at home, too worried to do anything. Now I just focus on my work.”
Dumisani speaks to the same thing, though a little differently: “I used to think that money
was the only thing that could solve things. Now I am doing things without money. Organic
gardening, sewing. I didn’t have the idea that I can have a garden and get some money fromit to start my own projects. Now the garden is beginning to do well. I sell my produce at the
local market. In our culture there is an assumption that if you are not married you cannot
earn a living. But I am learning that I can do things on my own.” Dumi left her husband in
mid-1990 after he had taken a second wife, because Dumi had not borne him a son.
What I hear in these and other stories is the gradual realization that you can be happy, andthat you can do something, without money. This allows us to disentangle ourselves somewhat
from the grip that money holds on us, which is when we find the space to do more, even withlittle. Dumi continues: “Before Kufunda I just wanted something that would benefit me in
my own life. Now I feel like I am a part of the community. You yourself are responsible for
improving your community. I used to think that if we got some donors we could improve.
Not us by ourselves. But we actually can. I see that now.” The community coming together,
realizing the wealth in experience that is available to it, appears to release the energy to nolonger view itself as entirely unable. It is like when Silas said that “Being poor means you
want to be someone, but you’re not looking at what’s here; who you are.” When we do lookat what’s here, we find there is more than we were aware of.

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Sometimes we’re afraid to look though. We’re afraid we won’t measure up to others. Our
insecurities keep us hiding our heads in the sand. Fidelis’ learning from his years at Kufunda
seems to be to stop comparing himself to others, to learn to trust himself. Even if he has lessthan others: “People judge you based on what they see. Sometimes because you don’t havemoney they don’t recognize you. I have learned that the greatest contribution is to give themlove. And to be an example, to show people that I believe in myself, even if I might not look
like much of anything.” He smiles. “In our group there were lots of people who were educated. In the start I was feeling very insecure. After working together for a month I realizedthat we might be different, but that was not the same as some being better. Some were goodat music, some at carpentry, some at farming . . . different than, not better than.”Paying attention to the needs of others
An important part of that shift is also beginning to see that others are suffering as much, if
not more than ourselves. From that point, we of course do have something to offer, and thefocus shifts on how we can help, which is a much more generous and generative place tooperate from.
Sikhethiwe spoke to how the deeper sharing that happens in the circle at Kufunda was areal eye opener for her in terms of how others had greater needs than her. “When you’re withother people sharing stories, you realize that some people have problems harder than yours.
You can learn something from others.” Dumi speaks to the exact same aspect: “Being withothers brings comfort, but it also brings a realization that others are suffering more than me.”
And Ticha says, “In life I know there’s never enough for everyone, but now I feel like we needto share.”“But now I feel like we need to share.” From a place of scarcity to a realization that you
are needed. Others need you. Your community needs you. I don’t think we can underestimate
enough the power that can be accessed in this shift. Others need me. People are finding thatthey do have enough to share. In traditional development approaches, all the poor are seen
as poor, those to be helped. We choose to see what they have to give, and in the process thatmeans connecting more deeply as human beings, and discovering that they have more thanthey were aware of.
I remember a session where we were reading a poem, which invoked that there is a futurethat is wanting to happen, and it is waiting for us to play our role in co-creating a better,stronger future. Fidelis literally laughed out loud, his eyes were sparkling, “What if the futureis waiting for me?” he asked. His life took on a different meaning when he held that possibility.
I don’t want to pretend that I understand this aspect entirely, or that I have it all figuredout. Absolutely not. People are still struggling; they are still concerned about lack of material access, and yet there is a shift happening here, which is releasing energy, possibility, andremoving the focus on what is not. I return to Silas and Anna, repeating their earlier
remarks,

Striving for village self-reliance
One of the exciting trends I see, spurred by what is going on in Zimbabwe, is people realizingthat they need to become self-reliant, and that the migration to the cities might no longer betheir best option (unemployment is supposedly at 70%). Dumi speaks to this,“I am seeingsome of the children out there finish their O levels without a job. The only way they cansurvive is to return to their rural area and start their own projects, working with their hands.

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Kufunda is reminding us that it is not bad to work with our hands. It teaches us to rely on
what we have.” Not that it is always easy. There is still the mental framework around workthat is looked favourably upon, and that which is not. The simple projects that we support
people in getting underway with are not always looked upon with excitement. But they aresimple and they allow a community to go a little further in caring for itself. Instead of having
to buy synthetic jam and white bread, they can produce more local produce that is bothcheaper and healthier.

Taking time to still the mind
Meditation, as we practice it at Kufunda, is simply the act of observing your incoming andoutgoing breath, and your bodily sensations, often changing in response to the stream ofthoughts that come and go. We learn to watch ourselves with equanimity, and over time begin
to realize experientially that change is the only constant. Being attached to one sensation overanother becomes a futile exercise, as it too will also change.
Aquiline is a widow of 49. She was married to a policeman who died suddenly in 1984
after a few days of serious illness. She was not at all prepared for widowhood. In living withthe stress of having suddenly to look after herself and their 3 children, she developed ulcers
in 1986, which she has lived with until very recently.
When we spoke, Aquiline was very clear about where her improvement came from.
“Meditation has cooled my heart. I always thought too much. Thoughts were always flowing. Worried thoughts. I was an unhappy person. Now I feel a little more like a free person,
meditation clears my mind. I have learned how to see reality as it is. And then to simply facethings. The first time I came to Kufunda my eyes got opened. I used to cry much. Thinking
about the past, my husband, my life. Now I am much better. I don’t worry so much about
the future. I work with what I have now.” Aquiline stopped taking her ulcer medicines one
month ago, and she believes this was possible through the opening that has occurred in her
mind through the meditation practice.
Others speak similarly to the subtle power of the on-going practice of meditation. In a
culture that does not have much space for time alone, the way which meditation appeals
deeply to many of the people we work with, especially the older women, initially surprisedme. Now it makes sense. What has come up a lot through the conversations on meditation is
how strongly it has released the worries and concerns people used to carry. It seems to linkto the other emergent theme of not focusing so intently on that which is not working.
Meditation simply observes and pays attention to what is – regardless whether it is good orbad. In holding it all lightly in the mind through meditation, its hold on us is weakened. In
paying attention to what is, we become more able to respond more freely both to opportunity and to conflict. Perhaps this is why Aquiline feels that her business is better now, thoughnothing has really changed, except that she no longer worries so much. I feel this area needs
more research. Suffice it to say that it is a key component of our work, and of what we are
discovering about what it takes to build healthy community.

Cultivating the ground of community
Every time we ask the question of what has made our community work; what has madepeople’s experience at Kufunda special, or what has been a key learning, the circle comes up.
And the circle is indeed a key part of the ground of Kufunda. People seem to connect to fully
with it, perhaps because it is a part of the traditional culture.

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The Circle
Four Agreements for Circle:• Listen without judgement (slow down and listen)• Whatever is said in circle remains in circle• Offer what you can and ask for what you need• Silence is also part of the conversation
Three principles serve as a foundation for the governance of the circle. These principles are:• Leadership rotates among all circle members.
• Responsibility is shared for the quality of experience.
• People place ultimate reliance on inspiration (or spirit), rather than on any personal agenda.

At Kufunda, this is not simply the practice of sitting and meeting in circle. A core set ofintentions at Kufunda are related to hosting the space and conversation where everyone feels
included, where each voice is treasured, where there is deep respect for each person and eachcontribution, and where we actively seek to nurture our ability to listen more fully and lessjudgementally. I have found the circle to be a place that can hold and nurture these intentions
among a group of people who are in community together. However it is important not to lose
sight of these intentions when we place our attention on the circle. The circle can hold them,but the circle alone without them might not be as powerful or nourishing as we have foundit to be.
I remember the first time I called a circle at Kufunda. It was the very first programme weran, and I was sitting with a group of 15 young Zimbabweans. I had arranged the chairs incircle, and prepared myself to introduce the talking piece. Butterflies were swarming in mystomach. Would they think me mad?
It worked like a dream.
A circle is not an event. It is a process. During our programmes, we meet in circle eachmorning for a check in. During our everyday life at Kufunda, we meet in circle once a week.
The circle brings us many things. I have made a clumsy attempt at a distinction:
1. the circle as container – the way a glass surrounds and protects the flame of a lamp,
allowing it to burn more brightly – holding the collective intention of a group or community.
As such it is where we can bring our problems, ideas and whatever else it feels necessary tobring to the group.
2. presence – there is the quality of presence that the circle brings to us in the moment,
when we are seated together in circle.
The results, so far, have been wonderful and refreshing – we have heard men express
intense surprise at how much they have been able to learn in honest conversation withwomen (in the Shona system men and women often confer separately), and of elders being
surprised at how much they have been able to learn with and from youth in the circle. Our
circles here may differ from how things would be done if they were done in the traditionalway, and yet we open the space for the community to co-create their agreements for how theywish to be together and for where they wish to place the emphasis of their collective learning.
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equality, respect and support for each other, almost always get brought forward as importantto the group. And then the practice begins.
Conflicts do occur; storms are inevitable in any group. The circle can be seen as a safety
net. It does not prevent us from falling, but it gives us somewhere to land.1 I recall several
incidents where the strength of our container was challenged and as we lived our way throughit, it strengthened the group. It is like the old saying, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

What are we learning?
It is clear to me that there is much at work in our methods of working with people. And yet
it seems to me that there is a more fundamental level, at which our beliefs and the way weconnect with people (influenced by our beliefs) touch people. Touched, they are more open
to the learning and the co-creation that we seek to engage together. What follows is a briefsummary of what the journey has taught me, which speaks in part to this also.
In the beginning is the meeting.
How we meet people determines all else. It appears to be so obvious that I hesitate to speak
it for fear of being condescending. Do we meet people assuming the best we can about them?
Do we meet each person curious about the miracle of a human being that we are about toconnect with? Or do we meet a poor person that we are about to help? When we meet themiracle, the unique woman, the mystery of the youth, or the depth of the elder, however poormaterially, then those aspects of people respond to us. I can truthfully, and with great joy, say
today that I am deeply inspired by each of the people we are working with, because it is theirbeauty and power and potential that is opening up to us. That is not to say that they are allsuper human beings, or that they are not fragile and with problems of their own. It is simply

Aquiline’s Story
Aquiline was facing the chaos of picking up her life and continuing after the death of her husband. Her mothersuggested using his pension to buy a sewing machine, so that she could sew and make a living through that way. She
has been sewing ever since. When I tried to understand what has then shifted with her learning and work at and with
Kufunda, she responds: “Before Kufunda I was not really serious about what I was doing. Ithought I was, but now I see
I was not. I tried to do budgeting and accounts, but not well enough. I was a little bit stuck. I also simply waited for thecustomers to come to me. In 2000 I was doing this alone. The local school asked me to make the traditional outfits forthe traditional dance group. I then started working with my mother and a third woman.
When I came back from Kufunda I came back with the idea that working together with others is good. I started hunting
for those women who have a sewing machine. Then I realized I could even work with, and teach those who don’t. We
are now 15 women working together. Some of them only do the tuckings and gatherings, and myself and a few others
do the sewing itself. First I was thinking of myself only. I was not thinking of others. Just thinking of money. I was theone who landed the contract, so I did not want to share. I realized that it was not actually fair. Those doing tuckingsand gatherings were also contributing. So I suggested that we took an equal share. They were all surprised. From thenI became more serious about teaching them. We are one. We are still starting so we don’t have so much yet, but I amchanged. I have been trained many times before [Red Cross, Sisters of Mercy, adult literacy] but I have never been
touched so deeply by those who trained me as has been my experience at Kufunda. Those other experiences did notchange me. But this has.
Most importantly I have cooled down. I have learned to take everything as it is, to be myself. I don’t cry anymore. 		
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to say there is so much more to most people than we often allow ourselves to experience.
I met Anna Marunda again yesterday. We had a conversation about the wonders she had
discovered about herself in the past year. Here is some of what she had to say“I have learned that I have been an my example in my community for being a widowed
woman who overcame severe hardship I have learned that I am a strong woman. I havelearned that I can find peace of mind within myself. I have learned that I am healthy – thesickness was in my mind [Anna had an HIV negative result recently]. I have learned that I
am a good listener, and I am trustworthy and so people are coming to me, inviting me to joindifferent community organizations.”
I don’t wish to take the credit for Anna’s learning, or for her gifts. Who Anna is, is who
she is. I do want to emphasise that we met her in her wisdom. We met her in her wisdom.
Not in her poverty. Through this she has started seeing her gifts.
We need to acknowledge what is – both good and bad – and then choose consciously
what we move forward with.
When we started Kufunda, the desire to bring Appreciative Inquiry to life here was strong.
Reality is very different depending on which angles we look at it from. We have seen firsthand the power in becoming more conscious of which story about ourselves we choose to
carry with us.
However sometimes Appreciative Inquiry can focus so entirely on the good, to the detriment of a full view of a situation. What has become clear to us is that when we bring in an
appreciative approach it needs to go hand in hand with releasing that which has been painful,or that which feels limiting. Working appreciatively is not about closing our eyes to thatwhich we do not wish to see. In the tree of life we follow the tree from the roots, up the trunk
and the branches. We allow for all the pain and hardship that has been to be expressed. Infact we invite the full story, because often people are not used to sharing these sides. And then
we invite them to move beyond. We invite them to now pay attention to the gifts they have
harvested through their journey. And it is always invariable a rich harvest.
In our experience, the two have to go together- to acknowledge and express the pain (disappointment, anger, worry), and to embrace and own the beauty. In this we can choose what
no longer serves us, which we wish to let go of, and what we wish to step into more fully andmove forward with. Only being allowed to speak of the good, can leave us with a gnawing
feeling of not being fully truthful about what is.
A friend and trustee of the village has spoken of the idea of Authentic Inquiry as opposed
to simply Appreciative Inquiry, making space for the whole – shadow or light.
Great energy is released when we stop focusing on what we don’t have; when we stop
operating from a place of fearful scarcity.
It has struck me the most just how much seems to be released when people stop focusing
in fearful and contracting ways on the fact that they were short on money, or whatever theirfocus of lack is. When people stop focusing on what they don’t have, they seem to be released
into being able to do more with the little which they have. It connects with the above point.
It is not about ignoring the hardship or the very real lack that may be. By all means, let us
express, let us bring it out into the open. But then let us move on. Let us look at what we dohave, and what opportunity for movement is available to us with that. We always have choice
and we always have something to give.

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In fact, the greatest shift seems to occur when people see themselves as being needed byothers – the orphans, those poorer than themselves, those who don’t know about what is
possible with organic fertiliser, and so on. Then new reservoirs are discovered. And then as
we begin to give generously from what we do have – be it in the form of knowledge or inkind – our sense of self shifts until we are no longer ‘a poor person.’ We are no longer a
victim, but an agent – and often a positive force – in our own life and in the lives of thosearound us.
Great energy is released when we stop focusing on what we don’t have, nad begin to pay
attention to what we do have – which others also need for us to share and give.
There is happiness – and support – available to us in community.
There is pain and stress in poverty, and in not knowing where the money for next terms
school fees is going to come from. Increasingly the reaction, in a monetary economy, has been
towards contraction, hoarding, looking out for oneself first, dropping out of Nhimbe (community work), and so on. What I feel we are relearning here, together, is the relief, strengthand happiness that are available to us when we come back to more traditional ways of working together. Mushandira Pamwe: together we can do more. One is not alone. And in our
togetherness we can find the happiness that is most readily available in community and in
relationships – working together in the fields, celebrations when we harvest the fruits of ourwork, shared worship, preparing food . . . these, in community, can bring us a simple but
deep reaching sense of belonging and joy. I have seen it, and I have experienced it. What if
we could acknowledge it as a more central aspect of so-called “development”: The richness
that community can offer? I am convinced that there is so much wealth and value in learning
to harness the creativity and spirit of the collective, that we have yet to truly discover.
We need basic structures and principles to hold the container of our togetherness.
I still recall Sikhethiwe’s surprise at her ability to live in community with people… It is not
something that we simply do. It takes work, and in our experience it requires the presence ofa strong container in the form of a clear and shared intention or purpose; shared agreementsthat are alive; and a process through which we continue refining these, and improving ourway of working for and with them.
As I have seen the Kufunda community grow, this is my strongest and deepest learning. As
we have had to protect and nurture our togetherness, our team – together – we have grown.
Each person has grown in that. When it was just me imposing my idea of collective leadership, and what a learning community was meant to be, there was something that wasn’t quite
right. Now as we work at it together, it is a lot more messy, and quite unpredictable. But it
is also more alive and vibrant.
There is a model of the chaordic path put forward by Dee Hock which I increasingly see
as an important part of this work. The word chaordic is created by the marriage between
chaos and order, and the idea is that there is a field on the edge of chaos with just enoughorder. Not too much order, which is on the side of control, and not with too much chaos,
which can simply lead to despair. In this field creativity, and innovation can occur. It is where
we can invite in collective intelligence. But to go there we need to be willing to relinquish ourcontrol of a set outcome, or a set way, and also be willing to being surprised.
It is a path that I feel we are learning to walk. Sometimes I do slip back into a place of too
much control, as do some of the community organizers that we are working with. Howeverreflections.solonline.org

FeatureFeature■■Schein
Knuth 67

we are in the journey of learning what the basic structures and principles are that create therequired level of order, which is neither limiting, nor too little, but rather generative. Justenough to be that glass around the flame, allowing it to burn a little brighter.

A bo u t th e A u thor

Marianne Knuth was born in Kenya to a Danish father and a Zimbabwean mother. She grew
up in Denmark. Her family moved to Zimbabwe when she was 12, and although she returned toDenmark soon thereafter – at 16 – to continue her education, Zimbabwe has been home sincethose early teen years. She was a co-founder of the global youth leadership group Pioneers
for Change. She returned to Zimbabwe in September 2001 to start what has today become
Kufunda.

Marianne@kufunda.org
www.kufunda.org
Endnote1 Metaphor from Christina Baldwin, Calling the Circle.

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Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change
Volume 6, Numbers 8–10

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