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.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
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.
Friday, 5 October 2012
Post industrial scarcity and Natural Capitalism
I've been reading a Harvard Business Review article on Natural Capitalism (Lovins et al 1999), and just discovered this is also a book
. The article highlights numerous ideas for a greener business environment - re-glazing that pays back cost and energy output inside two years, penny-pinching on wiring that drives up lifetime costs and energy output and innovative services/leases that can change the economic question from initial investment appraisal to total cost of ownership savings.
But the really interesting comment that struck me towards the end was "most businesses are behaving as if people were scarce and nature abundant - the conditions that fueled the first Industrial Revolution". But today's conditions are reversed - people are abundant and natural resources are becoming scarce. That's quite a philosophical challenge to the accepted business strategy norms. How does off-shoring continue to make sense with this philosophy - given the abundance of people here and the increased energy requirements of moving manufacturing overseas (and transporting finished goods back).
The (current) normal business response to a financial challenge/crisis is to cut costs - normally headcount costs and particularly in the "support functions". But if this reduces the amount of maintenance (see BP's record or New York city's bridge maintenance deferral problem), the ultimate cost (in both natural resources and financial capital) can exceed the initial savings. Lovins et al called for a broader measure of business performance - measuring and effectively using human and natural capital as well as financial capital. At least one company has taken this forward seriously - Novo Nordisk in reporting on their triple bottom line.
However, even this triple bottom line reporting is missing the intangible nature of novel ideas. It is said that "creativity, knowledge, innovation and learning now add value far more than land, labour or capital" (OU, p15). Perhaps a quadruple bottom line is needed for the learning organisation.
. The article highlights numerous ideas for a greener business environment - re-glazing that pays back cost and energy output inside two years, penny-pinching on wiring that drives up lifetime costs and energy output and innovative services/leases that can change the economic question from initial investment appraisal to total cost of ownership savings. But the really interesting comment that struck me towards the end was "most businesses are behaving as if people were scarce and nature abundant - the conditions that fueled the first Industrial Revolution". But today's conditions are reversed - people are abundant and natural resources are becoming scarce. That's quite a philosophical challenge to the accepted business strategy norms. How does off-shoring continue to make sense with this philosophy - given the abundance of people here and the increased energy requirements of moving manufacturing overseas (and transporting finished goods back).
The (current) normal business response to a financial challenge/crisis is to cut costs - normally headcount costs and particularly in the "support functions". But if this reduces the amount of maintenance (see BP's record or New York city's bridge maintenance deferral problem), the ultimate cost (in both natural resources and financial capital) can exceed the initial savings. Lovins et al called for a broader measure of business performance - measuring and effectively using human and natural capital as well as financial capital. At least one company has taken this forward seriously - Novo Nordisk in reporting on their triple bottom line.
However, even this triple bottom line reporting is missing the intangible nature of novel ideas. It is said that "creativity, knowledge, innovation and learning now add value far more than land, labour or capital" (OU, p15). Perhaps a quadruple bottom line is needed for the learning organisation.
Thursday, 3 May 2012
Change Management: toolkits for change or Viral Change
The standard model for change management seems to be (1) decide on the change, engaging a few people if you have to, (2) create the project/programme plan, (3) set out the vision and communicate it, (4) tell people what you want them to do differently and (5) run the project ... reinforcing the message in the hope that people will change. There are numerous change toolkits available on the web to support this methodology. But, with continuing reports of 70% failure rate of change initiatives, isn't it time for a change in managing change?
Viral Change: the alternative to slow, painful and unsuccessful change
I've recently been reading Viral Change (by Leandro Herrero). This puts the case for easing change into an organisation by:
2012 update We recently persuaded Leandro Herrero to come and present to the Henley Management group Leadership of Organisational Change. Focussing more on his new book Homo Imitans, he highlighted the problems of traditional change programmes (formal leadership, communication channels and push ... leading to limited success) and compared with his proposed "world II" change which focusses on behaviours, social copying, informal networks stories and leaders staying backstage. A challenge to the normal organisational hierarchy, but with the continuing massive failure rate of change programmes, something different is needed ...
Viral Change: the alternative to slow, painful and unsuccessful change
I've recently been reading Viral Change (by Leandro Herrero). This puts the case for easing change into an organisation by:
- Framing the change in an appropriate language
- Identifying (and rewarding) a non-negotiable set of new behaviours
- A Change Champion network, who are given the principles of the change and the new behaviours, and then set free to influence ... supported by management rather than reporting to management, and supporting each other through a simple communications channel
- When changes in behaviour are apparent in some areas, broadcast (and reward) this change
2012 update We recently persuaded Leandro Herrero to come and present to the Henley Management group Leadership of Organisational Change. Focussing more on his new book Homo Imitans, he highlighted the problems of traditional change programmes (formal leadership, communication channels and push ... leading to limited success) and compared with his proposed "world II" change which focusses on behaviours, social copying, informal networks stories and leaders staying backstage. A challenge to the normal organisational hierarchy, but with the continuing massive failure rate of change programmes, something different is needed ...
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