Learning covers all our efforts to absorb, understand and respond to the world around us. Learning is social. Learning happens on the job every day. Learning is the essential process in expanding the capabilities of people and organisations … Learning is not just about knowledge. It is about skills, insights, beliefs, values, attitudes, habits, feelings, wisdom, shared understandings and self awareness.1 Learning is a developmental process that integrates thinking and doing. It provides a link between the past and the future, requiring us to look for meaning in our actions and giving purpose to our thoughts. Learning enriches what we do as individuals and collectively, and is central to organisational effectiveness, to developing the quality of our work and to organisational adaptability, innovation and sustainability. No-one would deny the importance of learning to our development as individuals and yet we often find it difficult to apply our understanding of learning to our work together in NGOs. In some ways the importance of learning to NGOs seems obvious and yet we are surrounded by evidence of how organisations find it difficult to translate understanding into practical action. This Praxis Paper provides a summary of current thinking on organisational learning and knowledge management drawing on examples gathered from interviews – mainly with Northern NGO staff – and from an extensive review of the literature. In the Paper we examine the different contexts within which NGOs work and explore why learning is important for NGO effectiveness and organisational health. We explore why it seems that many organisations consider ‘learning as a crime rather than a behaviour we are trying to encourage’2 and, in continuing this analogy, examine the importance of providing the motive, means and opportunity for organisational learning. This is supported with practical examples of how Northern NGOs are putting organisational learning into practice. Using a model for understanding strategy development, we examine the importance of combining a planned approach to organisational learning with creating the conditions necessary for ‘emergent’ learning. The paper concludes with an indication of the challenges that need to be addressed if organisational learning is to be put into practice effectively in the NGO sector across different cultures and contexts.
