1. Local line leaders, who can undertake meaningful organizational experiments to test whether new learning capabilities lead to improved business results.

2. Executive leaders, who support line leaders, develop learning infrastructures, and lead by example in the gradual process of evolving the norms and behaviors of a learning culture.

3. Internal networkers, or community builders, the Aseed carriers@ of the new culture, who can move freely about the organization to find those who are predisposed to bringing about change, assist in experiments, and aid in the diffusion of new learnings.

Here I'll sketch what we are learning about these three types of leaders.

In effect, they create subcultures that may differ significantly from the mainstream culture. To be useful in creating experimental laboratories, they must also confront issue and business challenges that are seen as both important and recurring. For example, a unique cross-functional task force may be important but less useful for a learning experiment than a team that manages a process that is ongoing, generic, and vital for future competitiveness, such as a product development team, a sales team, or a business division.

The key role played by local line leaders is to sanction significant practical experiments. Without serious practical experiments aimed at connecting new learning capabilities to business results, there is no way to assess whether enhancing learning capabilities is just an appealing idea or really makes a difference.

We have seen no examples where significant progress has been made without leadership from local line managers, and many examples where sincerely committed CEOs have failed to generate any significant momentum.

Working in concert with internal networkers, executives can help in connecting innovative local line leaders with other like-minded people. They also play a mentoring roleChelping the local line leaders to mature, to understand complex political crosscurrents, and to communicate their ideas to those who have not been involved.

Part of the problem in appreciating effective executive leadership in learning is that we are so used to the Acaptain of the ship@ image of traditional hierarchical leaders. We think of top managers as the key decision makers, the most visible and powerful people. Although undoubtedly some key decisions will always have to be made at the top, cultures are not changed through singular decisions, and decision-making power does not produce new learning capabilities.

When executives lead as teachers, stewards, and designers, they fill roles that are more subtle, contextual, and long term than the traditional model of the power-wielding hierarchical leader suggests.

Effective executive leaders build an environment for learning in three ways:

• The first is through articulating guiding ideas. Guiding ideas are different from slogans or the latest buzzwords. They are arrived at gradually, over many years, through reflection on an organization=s history and traditions and on its long-term growth and opportunities.

  The power of guiding ideas derives from the energy released when imagination and aspiration come together. Understanding this power has always been a hallmark of great leaders. The promise of learning organizations is the promise that this power will become deeply and widely embedded in a way that rarely, if ever, happens in traditional authoritarian organizations.

• A second way to build operating environments for learning is through attention to learning infrastructure. Executives will increasingly come to realize that, in a world of rapid change and increasing interdependence, learning is too important to be left to chance. "We have plenty of infrastructure for decision making within AT&T," says Chairman Bob Allen. "What we lack is infrastructure for learning."

  I have met many CEOs in recent years who have lamented that "we can't learn from ourselves," that significant innovations simply don't spread, or that "we are better at learning from competitors than from our own people." Yet those very same executives rarely recognize that they may be describing their own future job description. When we stop to think, certain questions arise: Why should successful new practices spread in organizations? Who studies these innovations to document why they worked? Where are the learning processes whereby others might follow in the footsteps of successful innovators? Who is responsible for these learning processes?

• A third way to build operating environments for business is the executives= own "domain for taking action",namely, the executive team itself. What is important, first, is that executives see that they, too, must change, and that many of the skills that have made them successful in the past can actively inhibit learning. They are forceful, articulate advocates, but they usually are not very good at inquiring into their own thinking or exposing the areas where their thinking is weak.

  How radical are ideas like these about executive leadership? I think they will eventually lead to a very different mind-set and, ultimately, skill-set among executives. "Gradually, I have come to see a whole new model for my role as CEO," says Shell Oil's Phil Carroll. "My real job is to be the ecologist for the organization, to see the company as a living system and to see it as a system within the context of the larger systems of which it is a part. Only then will our vision reliably include return for our shareholders, a productive environment for our employees, and a social vision for the company as a whole."

  Achieving such shifts in thinking, values, and behavior among executives is not easy. "The name of the game is giving up power," says Carroll. "Even among 'enlightened' executives, giving up power is difficult. Being the commander in chief is kind of fun."

Internal Networkers

Precisely because they have no positional authority, internal networkers are free to move about a large organization relatively unnoticed. When the CEO visits someone, everyone knows. When the CEO says, "We need to become a learning organization," everyone nods. But when someone with little or no positional authority begins identifying people who are genuinely interested in changing the way they and their teams work, the only ones likely to respond are those who are genuinely interested. And if the internal networker finds one person who is interested and asks, AWho else really cares about these things?@ he or she is likely to receive an honest response.

The only authority possessed by internal networkers comes from the strength of their convictions and the clarity of their ideas. This, we find time and again, is the only legitimate authority when deep changes are required, regardless of one=s position. The internal networkers have the paradoxical advantage that this is their only source of authority.

It is very difficult to identify the internal networkers because they can be people from many different positions. They might be internal consultants, trainers, or staff in organization development or human resources. They might be front-line workers, engineers, sales representatives, or shop stewards. They might be in senior staff positions.

What is important is that they move freely, with high accessibility. They understand the informal networks, whereby information and stories flow and innovative practices naturally diffuse.

The first vital function played by internal networkers is to identify local line managers who have the power to take action and who are predisposed to developing new learning capabilities. Much time and energy can be wasted working with the wrong people, especially in the early stages of a change process.

As practical knowledge is built, internal networkers continue to serve as "seed carriers," connecting people of like minds in diverse settings to each other=s learning efforts. Gradually they may help in developing the formal coordination and steering mechanisms needed to leverage from local experiments to organization-wide learning.

The limitations of internal networkers likewise are not difficult to identify. Because they do not have a great deal of formal authority, they can do little to directly counter hierarchical authority. If a local line leader becomes a threat to peers or superiors, they may be powerless to help her or him. Internal networkers have no authority to institute changes in structures or processes.

The leadership challenges in building learning organizations represent a microcosm of the leadership issue of our times: how communities, be they multinational corporations or societies, productively confront complex, systemic issues where hierarchical authority is inadequate for change. None of today=s most pressing issues will be resolved through hierarchical authority.

In all these issues, there are no simple causes, no simple Afixes.@ There is no one villain to blame. There will be no magic pill. Significant change will require imagination, perseverance, dialogue, deep caring, and a willingness to change on the part of millions of people.

The challenges of systemic change where hierarchy is inadequate will, I believe, push us to new views of leadership based on new principles. These challenges cannot be met by isolated heroic leaders. They will require a unique mix of different people, in different positions, who lead in different ways. Changes will be required in our traditional leadership models.