Just come across an old article by Jay Cross and Clark Quinn on the TrainingZone website, challenging L&D practitioners to check whether their organisation is really learning, or just has a fixation on training. Taking an "out-of-frame" viewpoint, they encourage looking across the whole organisation to search for learning and growth rather than focusing on the training department as the starting point - trying to look at the whole organisational system from the outside.
Where does real learning happen in the organisation ... in the training room or in the workplace - you probably know the real answer to that. And how does the organisation facilitate this learning - where are the encouragements to network outside the department, where are the means to quickly find corporate knowledge, where are the systems to record and re-use learnings? There are web 2.0 solutions for this, that the article seems to recommend, but there are older means of encouraging learning without focusing on the technology. The culture of the organisation is the key to inspiring (or disabling) learning ... does your organisation have a learning disability (as Senge described the problem) or does it truly empower individuals to experiment, challenge norms, fail, learn from the failures and grow from the successes?
The challenge to L&D now seems to go beyond training, into helping your workers learn how to learn. Teach them to fish instead of spoon-feeding them fish ... to generate the new learning organisation.
Wednesday 17 December 2014
Thursday 28 February 2013
Henley KM conference day 2 (afternoon)
Afternoon workshop using the Henley faculty model for learning relationships - how to improve learning in particular relationship situations? This followed on from yesterday's introduction to the subject. Proposed behaviours that might be useful in each situation were:
- leader-follower 1-way learning - focusing on a coaching style, building confidence, creating the environment of openness, role modelling
- leader-follower - 2-way learning - focusing on building trust
- peer-peer - 1-way learning- creating comfort in the situation, bringing clarity of purpose and benefit (to both), expanding the network to include others who could benefit
- peer-peer - 2-way learning - making the time for important tasks (knowledge sharing and learning when constantly under pressure from the urgent), cross-selling their ideas, documenting the learnings, the process and sharing, recognising that competitiveness exists and dealing with this, encouraging learning once delivery/project has completed
Helen Gordon presented a case for collaboration, using the Royal Pharmaceutical Society as a case study. The context of the NHS (change programmes and complexity) set the constraints, and identifying the required (useful) behaviours scoped the opportunity. Taking a people-centred view of knowledge management, Helen focused on building a knowledge exchange through making connections, linking up specialist groups, encouraging knowledge sharing (where this was possible in a competitive environment) and focusing on what's possible.
- leader-follower 1-way learning - focusing on a coaching style, building confidence, creating the environment of openness, role modelling
- leader-follower - 2-way learning - focusing on building trust
- peer-peer - 1-way learning- creating comfort in the situation, bringing clarity of purpose and benefit (to both), expanding the network to include others who could benefit
- peer-peer - 2-way learning - making the time for important tasks (knowledge sharing and learning when constantly under pressure from the urgent), cross-selling their ideas, documenting the learnings, the process and sharing, recognising that competitiveness exists and dealing with this, encouraging learning once delivery/project has completed
Helen Gordon presented a case for collaboration, using the Royal Pharmaceutical Society as a case study. The context of the NHS (change programmes and complexity) set the constraints, and identifying the required (useful) behaviours scoped the opportunity. Taking a people-centred view of knowledge management, Helen focused on building a knowledge exchange through making connections, linking up specialist groups, encouraging knowledge sharing (where this was possible in a competitive environment) and focusing on what's possible.
Henley KM conference day 2 (morning)
Mike Young on leading learning in people, teams, nations ... and self by taking the theoretical (know-that) into the practical (know-how). Described the vicious organisational drama triangle (where the leader takes responsibility for problem solving) vs the virtuous triangle that can be developed (leader coaches the problem owner to develop capability in problem solving). This approach is developmental (bringing forth rather than push) linked to coaching competence, and presented the idea that McGreror's theory X is the soft version - the way we teach (tell) children rather than the hard task of leading adults through learning. Also showed how Soft Systems techniques help embed the learning and change - focusing on the person in the situation rather than on the consultant/change manager.
John Borgoyne poured into the spiritual side of leadership - the search for meaning and spiro-culture as the (current) ultimate step in the progression from agrarian to manufacturing to knowledge to ... some future economy. On the way he questioned the current focus on leadership, and asked if we are moving back to management science ... a focus on the numbers to re-balance the previous decade's loss of control with guiding missions and visions lacking direct control.
Lee Griffin described knowledge leadership during change - introducing a culture of knowledge management during a big challenging change process - a merger of conflicting cultures. The process included an honest self-assessment of capability and putting in place the basics for knowledge sharing - wikis, IM and collaboration tools supported by a drive to share existing knowledge and capture knowledge about what the business does well.
John Borgoyne poured into the spiritual side of leadership - the search for meaning and spiro-culture as the (current) ultimate step in the progression from agrarian to manufacturing to knowledge to ... some future economy. On the way he questioned the current focus on leadership, and asked if we are moving back to management science ... a focus on the numbers to re-balance the previous decade's loss of control with guiding missions and visions lacking direct control.
Lee Griffin described knowledge leadership during change - introducing a culture of knowledge management during a big challenging change process - a merger of conflicting cultures. The process included an honest self-assessment of capability and putting in place the basics for knowledge sharing - wikis, IM and collaboration tools supported by a drive to share existing knowledge and capture knowledge about what the business does well.
Wednesday 27 February 2013
Day 1 (afternoon) at Henley KM conference
Chris Collison (@chris_collison) led a session on engaging leaders in KM - capturing knowledge through stories using anecdote circles. Four stories of KM development were delivered and key points highlighted by individuals, with these summarised by the group into the key learning points - a shareable knowledge product. See my mind map on Chris's twitter feed ...
Members of the Henley Business School Leadership faculty (Jane McKenzie, Bernd Vogel and Claire Collins) presented research findings on accelerating organisational learning. This work proposed a 2x2 grid to map relationships in informal learning situations, based on two axes - one-way knowledge sharing (push) vs two-way knowledge co-creation and peer-to-peer learning vs a relationship with a separation in formal authority. The research (perhaps unsurprisingly) highlighted that learning in these situations is generally focused down the organisation - where there is a difference in formal authority, learning tends to be focused solely on the subordinate (unless the subordinate is highly specialised or the pair have had a long term relationship). The research proposed methods to break this barrier and accelerate organisational learning (in both directions):
- the leader generating trust more quickly
- making the leader more available and
- encouraging (supporting) the subordinate to challenge upwards.
These behaviours can move the organisation from first order learning (problem solving) to second order (challenging the current thinking, questioning the rules, living with the discomfort of uncertainty).
David Archer finished the day talking about collaborative leadership - delivering results across boundaries. Humans seem to have evolved the skills to collaborate (inside the tribe/organisation) but compete (outside). The increasingly interconnected world now requires the skill to collaborate outside the organisation,, and negotiate the boundaries of "inside" and "outside", paying particular attention to the risk at boundaries. With examples from rail, oil and gas, he highlighted the need to manage the culture and behaviours within the relationships ... not just the policies and contracts. A model of collaborative leadership was based on the pillars of governance (least), operations and behaviours (most).
Members of the Henley Business School Leadership faculty (Jane McKenzie, Bernd Vogel and Claire Collins) presented research findings on accelerating organisational learning. This work proposed a 2x2 grid to map relationships in informal learning situations, based on two axes - one-way knowledge sharing (push) vs two-way knowledge co-creation and peer-to-peer learning vs a relationship with a separation in formal authority. The research (perhaps unsurprisingly) highlighted that learning in these situations is generally focused down the organisation - where there is a difference in formal authority, learning tends to be focused solely on the subordinate (unless the subordinate is highly specialised or the pair have had a long term relationship). The research proposed methods to break this barrier and accelerate organisational learning (in both directions):
- the leader generating trust more quickly
- making the leader more available and
- encouraging (supporting) the subordinate to challenge upwards.
These behaviours can move the organisation from first order learning (problem solving) to second order (challenging the current thinking, questioning the rules, living with the discomfort of uncertainty).
David Archer finished the day talking about collaborative leadership - delivering results across boundaries. Humans seem to have evolved the skills to collaborate (inside the tribe/organisation) but compete (outside). The increasingly interconnected world now requires the skill to collaborate outside the organisation,, and negotiate the boundaries of "inside" and "outside", paying particular attention to the risk at boundaries. With examples from rail, oil and gas, he highlighted the need to manage the culture and behaviours within the relationships ... not just the policies and contracts. A model of collaborative leadership was based on the pillars of governance (least), operations and behaviours (most).
Day 1 (morning) at Henley KM conference
Very interesting set of talks on the first day of the Henley Knowledge Management conference - the first time I have attended this event.
Jacqueline Gallinetti (Plan International) described creating a knowledge sharing culture in a federated global NGO. Very much a practitioner's guide, she described attempts to start small and pilot, which created ripples of change but were not successful until there was support from the top. THe culture change started with a new business goal and commitment to KM linked to this goal. They introduced research initiatives into KM and local initiatives, and put in place a programme structure to grow these. This developed a strategy, pilots and helped elaborate the full requirements for their organisation.
Moving from strategy to reality (making it real) involved formal/structural parts (document sharing processes, an IM strategy, knowledge & information architecture, an academy, intranet upgrade) and importantly the infromal parts (recognising what already existed, rewarding & modelling behaviours, supporting local initiatives, learning circles). The support from the top was demonstrated by making KM a management issue, including performance management competences, reporting on KM metrics and putting resources into the knwoledge architecture. An inspiring story to start, with much work still to do.
Arthur Shelley (@Metaphorage) disucssed "knowledge flow" - moving beyond knowing what to do ... into action to do it. He emphasized starting with the value of KM (and describing the behaviours but without mentioning the terminology of KM) ... then the people, process and finally the tools (the opposite way to how it's normally considered, maybe). Starting from the value, working with the business goals ... the knowledge flow can generate the superior performance required by executives ... a virtuous circle. But making the change requires coaching leaders in new behaviours, developing a style of letting go ... KM and control don't play well together!
Karl-Erik Sveiby challenged the ubiquity of the innovation paradigm ... highlighting how radical innovation can lead to temporary incompetence across markets. Using the example of the banking crisis, and the financial failures from 1987-2007, his research showed a period of "temporary" incompetence that lasted several decades as the financial sector came to terms with the consequences of technology developed in the 70's. The dominant belief systems within the domain/system drive sets of behaviours that deny the existence of data that doesn't support the accepted model ... leading to eventual failure. There was subsequent discussion about the unintended consequences of the Internet revolution ... what long term impacts will we feel, and what temporary incompetence are we/markets experiencing during the current experiment.
Jacqueline Gallinetti (Plan International) described creating a knowledge sharing culture in a federated global NGO. Very much a practitioner's guide, she described attempts to start small and pilot, which created ripples of change but were not successful until there was support from the top. THe culture change started with a new business goal and commitment to KM linked to this goal. They introduced research initiatives into KM and local initiatives, and put in place a programme structure to grow these. This developed a strategy, pilots and helped elaborate the full requirements for their organisation.
Moving from strategy to reality (making it real) involved formal/structural parts (document sharing processes, an IM strategy, knowledge & information architecture, an academy, intranet upgrade) and importantly the infromal parts (recognising what already existed, rewarding & modelling behaviours, supporting local initiatives, learning circles). The support from the top was demonstrated by making KM a management issue, including performance management competences, reporting on KM metrics and putting resources into the knwoledge architecture. An inspiring story to start, with much work still to do.
Arthur Shelley (@Metaphorage) disucssed "knowledge flow" - moving beyond knowing what to do ... into action to do it. He emphasized starting with the value of KM (and describing the behaviours but without mentioning the terminology of KM) ... then the people, process and finally the tools (the opposite way to how it's normally considered, maybe). Starting from the value, working with the business goals ... the knowledge flow can generate the superior performance required by executives ... a virtuous circle. But making the change requires coaching leaders in new behaviours, developing a style of letting go ... KM and control don't play well together!
Karl-Erik Sveiby challenged the ubiquity of the innovation paradigm ... highlighting how radical innovation can lead to temporary incompetence across markets. Using the example of the banking crisis, and the financial failures from 1987-2007, his research showed a period of "temporary" incompetence that lasted several decades as the financial sector came to terms with the consequences of technology developed in the 70's. The dominant belief systems within the domain/system drive sets of behaviours that deny the existence of data that doesn't support the accepted model ... leading to eventual failure. There was subsequent discussion about the unintended consequences of the Internet revolution ... what long term impacts will we feel, and what temporary incompetence are we/markets experiencing during the current experiment.
Monday 26 November 2012
Systemic AND Systematic change - working together
Looking at systems views of managing change today, I strayed into a discussion on systemic vs systematic change which links strongly to my previous observations on Leandro Herrero’s work. I had struggled with the contrasting of systemic and systematic as opposite ends of the spectrum, perhaps as a non-overlapping dichotomy, particularly when authors (like Ison [1]) decry the systematic, project-based view of managing change. Although this has its limitations, particularly when driven by targets, it can deliver successful change in well-defined situations. We use projects to successfully design and build aeroplanes that do not fall from the sky (at least not often), despite the thousands of components that need to operate together.
Helen Wilding asked whether there could be a theory of systemic change (based on learning) versus systematic change (based on optimising). However, she highlighted one of Checkland’s papers [2] that gave a different view on this. Contrasting hard (systematic) and soft (systemic) systems approaches, he made the assertion that the hard systems approach is a subset of soft systems. When systems are (relatively) simple, the soft systems approach can be condensed to a simpler target-driven hard systems approach, which can be successfully achieved with a systematic project.
So am I suggesting that building a plane is simple! Not really, but I am suggesting that it is complicated rather than complex. The complexity occurs when a system has emergent behaviour, that could not have been predicted from its component parts. And emergence particularly arises from including people within the system.
Checkland and Herrero both seem to support the idea that systemic and systematic is not an either/or question for managing complex change situations – both are required as a combination of soft and hard systems approaches.
[1] Ison, R., 2010, Systems Practice: how to act in a climate-change world, Springer Publications, London, 224-229.
[2] Checkland, P., 1985, "From Optimizing to Learning: A Development of Systems Thinking for the 1990s.", The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 36(9), 757–767.
Helen Wilding asked whether there could be a theory of systemic change (based on learning) versus systematic change (based on optimising). However, she highlighted one of Checkland’s papers [2] that gave a different view on this. Contrasting hard (systematic) and soft (systemic) systems approaches, he made the assertion that the hard systems approach is a subset of soft systems. When systems are (relatively) simple, the soft systems approach can be condensed to a simpler target-driven hard systems approach, which can be successfully achieved with a systematic project.
So am I suggesting that building a plane is simple! Not really, but I am suggesting that it is complicated rather than complex. The complexity occurs when a system has emergent behaviour, that could not have been predicted from its component parts. And emergence particularly arises from including people within the system.
Checkland and Herrero both seem to support the idea that systemic and systematic is not an either/or question for managing complex change situations – both are required as a combination of soft and hard systems approaches.
[1] Ison, R., 2010, Systems Practice: how to act in a climate-change world, Springer Publications, London, 224-229.
[2] Checkland, P., 1985, "From Optimizing to Learning: A Development of Systems Thinking for the 1990s.", The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 36(9), 757–767.
Saturday 6 October 2012
Organisations and the laws of thermodynamics
In Surfing the Edge of Chaos, Pascale starts to describe organisations as complex adaptive systems, rather than using the more traditional functional forms. It's interesting that complext adaptive systems have four properties:
Enter Pascale and the era of complex adaptive systems. The organisation and the market cannot be controlled or predicted purely by considering energy - if we invest more in X, we can defeat competitive spending in Y. The equation becomes more complex, with the evolution of unexpected outomes and the time-based nature of the second law - the impact of energy recedes over time as entropy increases.
I wonder if there is some future business analogy to the 3rd law?
Or perhaps we have already seen it - complex adaptive systems are at risk when in equilibrium - a precursor to death. Perhaps the regular death of major companies is an exhibition of equilibrium at absolute zero - energy exhange with the environment has declined to zero as the processes ossify and the ability to change is reduced to zero.
- composed of many agents acting in parallel
- continuously shuffling the building blocks
- subject to the second law of thermodynamics, exhibiting entropy and winding down
- has the capacity for pattern recognition
Enter Pascale and the era of complex adaptive systems. The organisation and the market cannot be controlled or predicted purely by considering energy - if we invest more in X, we can defeat competitive spending in Y. The equation becomes more complex, with the evolution of unexpected outomes and the time-based nature of the second law - the impact of energy recedes over time as entropy increases.
I wonder if there is some future business analogy to the 3rd law?
Or perhaps we have already seen it - complex adaptive systems are at risk when in equilibrium - a precursor to death. Perhaps the regular death of major companies is an exhibition of equilibrium at absolute zero - energy exhange with the environment has declined to zero as the processes ossify and the ability to change is reduced to zero.
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