Team and Organizational Learning

Organizational Learning and Team Learning fascinate me.  I sometimes think I should have done my degree more in the business area than in education.  However, I truly believe the basis for growth in organizational/team learning lies in the learning and growth of the people themselves.    Helping people learn and grow should be an asset to any organization in many ways.    And I do think technology can help organizations promote learning and change -- and not just with what they directly identify as benefitial to the organization --but each individual person may choose to learn to help themselves grow.   In that I do think self-directed learning is critical in life and for the workplace.  

So many times organizations spend money creating online training for employees.  This training may even have financial incentives to do.  What actually happens -- when it isnt something the employee is interested in -- is that the person flies through to do the minimum to get it done.  It's not approached with what can the person gain from it.  While there may be more, two factors that immediately come to mind as an inhibitor of online learning (or any learning for that matter) is lack of time, and lack of interest.   So when learning becomes important to the organization, they must provide time and motivate interest.  

The flip side to prescribed learning is provide the time but allow the employee to choose their own learning.  

I'm sort of rambling here today and may even come back and delete this post.  But it also respresents my mind being muddled by this topic.