UNLEARNING is related to the conscious, deliberate and selective forgetting of any organisation's learning that may no longer be relevant in a changed context — what many management gurus call "excess baggage". This can be a system, one or several procedures, software, a communication process, a performance appraisal practice or even some administrative process that has outlived its utility.

Unlearning becomes all the more relevant in this jet age where there is an increasing amount of collaboration between organisations operating in different parts of the world, and in varied products and services. How does an organisation unlearn? Most modern organisations are at their best when they renew their strategies.

The services of Organisational Development (OD) consultants dissect the organisation's strengths and weaknesses and extrapolate them to take advantage of emerging opportunities. It does not stop here. The analysis would also cover the organisation's threats — what is called SWOT analysis — but the OD consultant would take the analysis to its logical conclusion and get the top management to re-work from the most basic aspect of the organisation. It is exactly here that maximum unlearning happens, when top managers understand the sheer wastage of time and resources associated with non-value-crating activities, or outdated methods of working in the name of `culture'.

Effective unlearning happens when the culture of the organisation facilitates learning anything and everything new. Interactive Web sites areoften made available by many organisations. Brainstorming sessions are also held frequently to understand organisational imperatives in a changed context. Many organisations have out-bound training for managers to learn to work in teams and emerge as successful leaders. All this training helps managers unlearn their unconscious assumptions, fears, anxieties and even prejudices. It makes them do a re-think on what they really know and what they think they know.

The art of unlearning is challenging. An organisation has to take a conscious decision to break with the past. This is the era of global competition and every organisation needs to work on strategies that will take it forward. Unlearning is central to this process and an urgent imperative.

A. B. Sivakumar

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