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Ask someone at your organization about the way decisions are taken and most probably you will hear ?’I don’t really know.’ But then, when you are in a meeting and someone enters the discussion with a creative new idea, you all of a sudden know what will happen with this proposition : ‘no way, this will not make it!’ And how did you know?

According to Maslov?s theory of learning there are four learning stages through which a person passes in the process of learning. These stages are about the level of consciousness of knowing and the competence level of the skill that you are learning.

The worst of these is the phase where you are both unconscious and incompetent. In the best phase you are still unconscious, yet competent.
If you want to know more, you might want to read this article: www.ezinearticles.com/?Meet-an-American-Genius—Dr.-Maslow&id=201470

The theory of Maslov is also applicable for the organizational learning process. You will then encounter the same theory but in a different form; this was attributed to Nonaka and Takeuchi. They mention the importance of implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Some knowledge is implicit, available but not shareable and open for others. Taking your organization to a next level, you should make some (implicit) knowledge explicit.

Implicit is when you are not really aware about your own knowledge. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that you can share because you have made it public. Or — to relate this to Maslov Learning stages — conscious.

If we go back to the meeting and the person who was not aware of the way decisions are taken in the organization, you should present the management a model that shows this way of taking decisions. Of course it is a model, a simplified version, but it could be a first step in the organizational learning process.

? 2006 Hans Bool