As I sat down to begin writing this article about understanding organizations, I received a very timely inquiry by way of e-mail. It was from an engineer in India who works for 1 of the world’s largest energy firms. He had been charged with turning his unit into a studying organization and had been studying various books and journals. He read my articles about understanding organizations on my website and was wondering if I may well be in a position to shed a lot more light on the subject. Wow! Was that a tall order, not only for me but also for him! Exactly where to start? That’s a question each organization requirements to ask.

The idea of a understanding organization is nonetheless in its infancy. Some would even argue that it is an unattainable ideal. Maybe that is a fair statement at the moment, but statements like that have fallen by the wayside more than and more than once again all through history: people would never ever be in a position to fly, no one would ever break the four-minute mile, humankind would by no means set foot on the moon – the list could go on and on.

One of the core characteristics of studying organizations is to challenge