At present, organizations develop in political, economic and social environments and scenarios that are highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous \u2014 \u201cVUCA\u201d environments \u2014 and they must adapt to them continually. Understanding learning and the management of people is therefore key to adapting to those settings as well as possible.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the labour market has become ever more demanding and competitive, and to meet it people must be ever more competent. To be competent means developing a set of observable behaviours associated with good or excellent performance in a particular job and a particular organization. These behaviours are what we call competencies<\/strong>. But organizations need to make changes to their structures, to their technologies and to the way they manage their people if they are to adapt to these environments \u2014 and that adaptation, without doubt, involves learning<\/strong>.<\/p>\n For Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline<\/em> (1990), the organizations that learn are those in which the people who make them up \u201ccontinually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together\u201d \u2014 and to manage what they know. Organizations that learn, then, do so through individuals who learn, on the understanding that people are not resources<\/em>: they are the organization<\/strong>.<\/p>\n That last idea implies a more radical change in how we manage human capital. Some companies, fortunately, have begun that transformation by maximising the value their professionals create \u2014 developing their talent, managing their expectations and making the fullest use of their capabilities.<\/p>\nOrganizations that learn<\/strong><\/h4>\n