Empowering Team Learning

Citation

(1999), "Empowering Team Learning", Education + Training, Vol. 41 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.1999.00441aad.002

Empowering Team Learning

Books

Empowering Team Learning

Michael Pearn et al.Institute of Personnel and Development1998ISBN 0852927347£18.95

Keywords Empowerment, Learning, Organizational culture, Teamwork

Firms are always looking for a way to differentiate themselves from the competition, but the old ways of doing that are having less and less impact. In an age when personal computers are sold through the pages of the Sunday newspapers, technology has become a commodity and is no longer the big business issue.

Companies now recognize that they need to build on the expertise they have within their workforce, and to release the potential of all their employees.

At a time when Microsoft shares traded at around $70, the book value of the company ­ its tangible assets ­ was only $7 a share. The rest was made up of people, knowledge and expertise.

Managers are beginning to recognize that the hard assets are easy to manage, but more needs to be done to track and improve a company's intangible assets.

The authors of Empowering Team Learning claim that most employees operate in a state of "learned apathy," where they willingly "subordinate their intelligence and creativity to others". But as soon as they are given the chance "to overcome fear, lack of confidence and a presumed lack of competence," workers start "to achieve things normally expected of those in expert or superior roles," helping to "bring about embedded and sustainable change ­ change that is led from the ground up".

The book describes a series of practical steps to promote a culture of team learning. These range from brainstorming and formulating keys to understanding, through to a series of five workshops designed to explore issues, plan information-gathering, make sense of findings, develop a solution and implement it. The book also incorporates physical learning exercises designed to maintain the momentum and provide light relief.

The authors contend that being disempowered is often "compounded by the constraints of organizational structures, policies and culture". The book seeks to provide pointers on how to break through these barriers.

Several examples are given of how the various recommendations work out in practice. They include:

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  A team of heavy-goods-vehicle drivers at a large British oil company who designed and carried out their own attitude survey and presented a range of recommendations about working practices, many of which were implemented by management.

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  The local employment service in Limerick, Ireland, which enabled a team of unemployed people to assess the needs of the area's employers and prepare a skills register of what was available among the unemployed.

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  A consortium of small businesses which set up a network of owner-managers, which helped them to overcome their isolation and take responsibility for personal and collective learning.

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  Shopfloor workers at a European alumina-extraction plant who carried out a project which transformed their behaviour and attitudes towards safety without the involvement of any safety experts.

Teamwork, empowerment and knowledge management will be more than simply buzzwords in the successful company of the new millennium. This book helps instructors and managers to come to terms with what these terms really mean in practice.