Base ~ How to do business in the 21st century ~ 16-17 March 2010
ProLogis
Building sustainability into organisational learning
Session time slot
  • Session TU2 | Tuesday 16 March | 11:45-12:30
Synopsis
As a small organisational development consultancy with a passion for organisational learning we don’t work in the same way as some of the larger consultancies who can impose solutions so complex they’re unworkable by anyone except the consultants!

Instead we apply the principles of sustainability to organisational learning. From our experience in both public and private sector organisations the problems organisations face can be solved by people in the organisations, given the right tools. When people have a learning mindset – open, enquiring, excited – and know how to learn they almost always want to learn more. Employees can become a source of unlimited energy and innovation when they have the learning bug.

The sustainable learning approach requires two things: the development of a learning mindset, and the embedding of learning activities - review, reflection, feedback, challenge, coaching, mentoring, action learning, celebration - at every level in an organisation, from (especially?) board level downwards. But we know that doing this means you can:
- reduce absenteeism and staff turnover as people feel valued, engaged and supported
- reuse knowledge through the sharing of information and best practice and through collective working
- recycle – using cycles of learning and feedback to problem solve, increase efficiency and encourage innovation

We tend to use simple tools – for example rather than teaching double loop learning we think in terms of the ‘What? So what? Now what?’ model of review - because it’s something that can be applied on the job to every activity, at every level, by every employee, in any organisation.

Who you see is who you get, so find out more about us, come to our roundtable discussion.
Themes
  • Other
Ms Sara Lodge
Director
Beehive Management Development Ltd
Biography
This roundtable discussion will be moderated by both the directors of the company, Sara Lodge and Mark Sykes.

Mark Sykes is a director of Beehive Management Development Ltd and has over 20 years of experience in coaching and facilitating leadership and organisational development in a wide range of businesses, both private and public sector.

At the centre of all the work that Mark does is a firm belief that organisations can sustain themselves by growing and developing their most valuable resource – people. As Henry Ford once observed, ‘whenever you employ a pair of hands you get a free brain thrown in to the bargain’.

Sara Lodge is director of Beehive Management Development Ltd. Apart from a couple of breaks, one working in marketing and one on the Leadership Fast Track of the West Yorkshire Police, she has been in the field of learning and development since 1985, working in places as diverse as Japan, Africa, Canada, Austria and France. She is passionate about organisational learning and the importance of learning to leadership, and sees action learning, coaching and mentoring as two of the most important elements of developing both.

Working with leaders and teams from board level to supervisory managers, in organisations as diverse as multi nationals such as Siemens, GSK, Conoco (UK)Ltd and Serco to local authorities SME’s, Mark and Sara find that the same issues occur at all levels and in all types and sizes of organisation - how do you get the best from that free brain and how do you nurture it to feel wanted, needed, respected and valued? It's one of the toughest things for managers and leaders to accomplish.

Mark and Sara beleive passionately that the principles of sustainable education - where people are taught to solve their own problems and through that develop the motivation to learn, are the key to a thriving, responsible and accountable organisation.
Company activities
  • All
Company size
  • All
Job functions
  • Chairman/CEO/MD/Owner
  • Director/Partner
  • Executive
  • Manager