On the 45th anniversary of the report No Limits to Learning, we are exploring the transformative power of learning. We talked to Tom Cummings, member of The Club of Rome and advisor, entrepreneur and executive board member of numerous companies and organisations. He shares how No Limits to Learning and its concepts influenced his approach to organisational learning.  

How did you become involved with No Limits to Learning? 

I read The Limits to Growth during a class in university and became interested in the questions asked by The Club of Rome. I became a founding member of Forum Humanum Boston, a youth group affiliated with The Club of Rome together with James Botkin, one of the authors of No Limits to Learning. I ended up supporting James in disseminating the report and eventually co-designing a school in New Jersey based on this learning framework. The lead researchers of the report designed and ran the school, inviting 100 pre-college students for a summer program. The students focused on tackling global challenges and their relevance to community and personal development. Essentially, we were working on strengthening the social fabric between people and helping them think about the future in new ways. 

How has the book impacted your career? 

The impact the book had on my life is profound. Every design of every learning intervention I created for almost my entire career was based on some of its concepts, focusing on developing leaders who are committed to working on the wider challenges of humanity. This includes programmes I designed for the top 200 leaders of companies like Unilever, Danone, Triodos, and BUPA, as well as many B Corps and organisations in a variety of fields. I would say that it has been my North Star for nearly 40 years. 

Are there any messages from the report you would like to highlight? 

What stands out from the book is that it is one of the first studies of global educational models to signal an important shift from ‘learning to know’ towards continuous learning for humanity to evolve to survive on a finite Earth. The essence of the learning framework of the report comes down to four words: anticipation, participation, autonomy and integration. Understanding the challenges that humanity faces requires us to anticipate the future, while enacting real change needs participation—doing the work in our society, community, or company. Autonomy and integration are also essential; as any other living species on Earth, humans need to be unique and have agency while also being part of a community and working collectively. 

Did the book have any wider impacts on society and the learning landscape? 

No Limits to Learning was a catalyst for many educational experiments and the founding the Forum Humanum, the first programme to attract young leaders to our work from around the world. Many of the early thinkers about systems dynamics who were working on The Limits to Growth and No Limits to Learning later went on to influence learning in large companies, and civic organisations, by implicitly or explicitly working to build more capacity to anticipate the future and act on scenario implications. There were also several schools created around the world following the example of our Public Issues school in New Jersey, focusing on citizen education and putting concepts like participation and integration into practice. They invited kids from the inner city as well as more fortunate families, allowing them to encounter people from different backgrounds and helping them find each other through their common humanity and their unique differences. 

How do you apply this approach to learning in organisations? 

Organisation learning has at its heart the need to develop the capacities for people to collectively work toward a common cause starting from a systemic perspective. In companies, the challenge is to have people see money and resources as a scarce means rather than as an end goal. When a leader asks for help to restructure a company when it is not generating the desired results, my approach is to step back and reflect on their mission and purpose from a wider-angle lens. Often their idea of growth is not regenerative and lacks an understanding of wider system impacts. We have learned that unbridled growth will not achieve both economic and societal ends. Growth in human development and flourishing is a way to attain healthy growth, within limits. This starts by redesigning and re-prioritising what we do – including work, lifestyles and mindsets. Setting up the learning container for this type of evolution starts with a vision, changing assumptions and new organising principles. No Limits to Learning was an early lighthouse guiding many of us to this different path, unfortunately, it was often the road not taken. 

This interview series is part of a collaboration between The Fifth Element initiative by The Club of Rome and the World Environmental Education Congress focusing on the regenerative power of learning. The report No Limits to Learning published in 1979 explores new forms of learning that are essential for addressing global issues and bridging the gap between the complexity of our world and our capacity to cope with it.