Every learning project or initiative launched in the modern organization quickly devolves to one fundamental question: How can we create the culture that will support the transformation we need? Anyone who has ever taken up the challenge knows that, for all the leverage of technology, programs, or innovative new processes, the fulcrum is always the culture of the organization. Where does the culture of a learning organization come from? What does it look and feel like in the best possible example? How does the culture relate to all the other pieces that seem to be required for a true “learning organization”? This chapter proposes an answer quite outside the current boundaries of discussion, using an unusual case example drawn from the early history of Western civilization. It is not intended as a handbook but as a thought experiment – to visit a way of working and learning that is largely foreign to what we expect today and has everything to teach us about the future.

Dancing elephants

Before beginning that experiment, we need to paint some picture of the “current boundaries of discussion.” Let us start with a recent business bestseller. At the end of 2002, Lou Gerstner, the retired CEO of IBM, published his story of the successful turnaround of that computer conglomerate, which he led through the 1990s, and the book soon joined the ranks of must-read management tomes.