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1. Organisational Learning Process

An organisation can be said to be learning if individuals are learning to act in more effective ways whilst collaborating with one another to ensure that their actions are aligned for the good of the whole organisation. This learning is a process. It involves a number of linked activities which are repeated as suggested in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 - The Organisational Learning Cycle, from N Dixon [1]

The stages of the cycle have been used to structure this paper which describes the mapping and modelling strategies one company used to work collaboratively during information gathering, framing local/specific information to put it in the total organisation context, interpreting this information, and clarifying effective actions.

2. Introduction to the Company

Company Q is a traditional UK food-processing business which has been struggling to retain its share of a declining market. Over the past 5 years the structure has become less hierarchical, the smaller workforce more flexible, functional divides more easily breached, and challenges more likely to be tackled by teams than by individuals working alone. These changes have all contributed to Q’s hard-won achievement of enhanced profitability.

At the same time - in an increasingly competitive environment where customers’ buying power is growing - people in the organisation are still affected by insecurity, uncertainty and fear of failure; and old rivalries can still interfere with co-operation between sites and functions. Also, although the top team have a shared understanding of the challenges faced, they have not presented a common vision to give direction to the organisation’s response.

Readers will therefore deduce that Q is relatively normal and that the strategies, processes, tools and techniques described here are transferable to other environments!

3. Prior Activity in the Company

Distinctive characteristics of Q immediately prior to the events described here relate to the approaches used to foster effective teamwork:

· the organisation had made some use of external facilitators (of whom I was one);

· facilitation training[2] had been introduced to the in-house management development programme and taken up by a small number (10-20) of self-selected middle managers from a range of backgrounds;

· the style of facilitation adopted placed emphasis on thinking visually and the trained facilitators had used hexagon mapping (as developed by Tony Hodgson[3]) extensively. On a more limited scale, the CK Modeller software[4] was used to record the process and content of some facilitated meetings.

These initiatives had reinforced the extent to which the organisation had adopted a team-based approach to problem solving. Ad hoc teams tackling specific projects had become commonplace and had formed around a range of challenges. Those adopting a facilitated, collaborative approach included site-based process improvement, exploration of opportunities for enhanced co-operation between sales and operations, rationalisation of warehouse location and capacity, understanding the costs of production, and process control. Note that, although widely spread, these projects did not provide comprehensive coverage of the Q’s business.

Teams followed different structured processes according to their purpose but a substantial proportion of the projects covered had included an initial group exploration of the issues they faced. Here, the groups had used hexagon - facilitated by a trained manager or by an external facilitator. Where these sessions had been recorded on computer, the initial contributions of participants with very different perspectives provided a rich source of qualitative data in ‘raw’ form.

4. Preparation - Generating Information

In Spring 1995 an informally constituted group of middle managers (subsequently referred to here as ‘the change activists’[5]) set about identifying and assembling the computer files (scattered over several sites and not previously indexed in any way) which held the records of various past group conversations. Their purpose was to explore common themes use them to focus, stimulate or reinforce effective collaboration across the business.

Figure 4.1 - Extract from a site-based process improvement team’s consideration of issues arising in the achievement of delivery in full.

Figure 4.1 illustrates the format of information assembled within Q. Note that the initial ideas (the individual hexagons) were accessed in preference to any of the conclusions drawn in recorded earlier discussions.

The availability of stored ‘raw’ ideas was an accidental consequence of past practice, rather than a designed intent, but it proved helpful in Q where the ‘raw’ data proved both readily accessible and stimulating to each group subsequently introduced to it. Other organisations following a similar strategy, but with a different history, may be in a position to generate an equivalent information base of raw ideas through a large scale conference[6].

5. Integrating Information into the Organisational Context

In Q, the initial review of all the assembled information required that the small group of change activists should first define the framework or organising principle which would enable the information to be referenced according to its relevance in the context of the organisation as a whole. There was broad agreement on the desirability of using key business processes as a high level framework for this thinking about the organisation, but rather more work had to be done to articulate what these processes were!

The group explored the processes defined for other major businesses as well as checking their thinking against Stafford Beer’s viable system model[7]. (This last reinforced the need to include product development and strategic marketing processes - even though, in Q’s relatively slow-moving business, few resources are deployed to these activities.) The framework adopted is illustrated in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1 - Key Business Processes

Using this framework, information which was stored from separate local group meetings in the past could be reviewed and the primary relevance of each idea within the wider organisational context identified. Ideas which were unclear when taken out of context were expanded. Ideas which had become obsolete, or which were not relevant in the organisation context, were reframed if possible to make a more pertinent point. The work involved in organising the information base was not insignificant, but was reduced by sharing it out. Projects for which ideas were recorded were divided between group members working in pairs who organised the information through a series of ‘cut & paste’ operations (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2 - The organising task: sorting information according to its relevance to key business process

The quantity of information available was such that further classification was needed to achieve manageable sub-sets of contributed ideas. Sub-processes were therefore defined by the group and a further sorting operation carried out. Not surprisingly, the number and detail in the contributed ideas varied widely between sub-processes.

Although the key business process framework (always presented diagrammatically) had initially been put forward by the author, by the end of this activity the group had established clear ownership of it. They had worked together through the clarification of how it mapped onto recorded ideas and sub-process definitions were their own. The work made files of information for each sub-process readily accessible to CK Modeller users through gateways from a master screen. This collection of organised files came to be known as the ‘Change Library’ and each member of the group reported that they had found their involvement in the library’s creation rewarding for the business overview it provided.

6. Collective Interpretation of Information

The change activists took the lead from this point on. Their understanding of key challenges for the business, their awareness of organisational politics, and their familiarity with the pool of ideas in the Change Library, influenced the priority given to focused work on issues arising in each business process area. Initial meetings focused on those processes where one or more of the change activists had line responsibility and could readily assemble stakeholders for a meeting. The appropriate additional people were drawn into collaboration with their group for review and interpretation of the information relevant to a chosen business process. The change activists defined each meeting’s objective: the author as facilitator designed and managed group processes to achieve it.

The first session considered material relating to Develop the Business. Following a brief overview of the information assembled (projected onto a large screen from a PC), during which group members were able to delve into details in areas of special interest to them, the group looked at the ideas relating to each of the Develop the Business sub-processes in turn. Each set of hexagons were displayed, individual meanings clarified through discussion if necessary, and then clustered so that points with interesting implications were placed together (through the medium of the CK Modeller software). The clusters were labelled to indicate messages for the organisation. This opportunity to work with, and add to, the ideas in the library proved to be an engaging process during which the extended group assumed ownership of the task. Consequently, there was lively debate around some of the groupings and their implications but, once consensus on messages for the organisation had been reached, for most of the sub-processes the group then indicated that they were ready to move on.

However, when considering ‘making strategy’, a sub-process for which a substantial number of ideas had been assembled, the clustering process generated a relatively large number of factors or activities which the group considered important. This map of thinking still lacked clarity and the facilitator suggested that the group should explore connections between the factors. To this end, the group shifted its focus, from a projection of the computer-based map, to a white-board where participants moved and linked shapes representing each factor until they were satisfied with the diagram thus created.

The white-board activity was also followed on the computer so that an ‘untangled’ diagram could be drawn and used to support further discussion. As participants repositioned the shapes on the white-board the group evolved an improved understanding of the interactions needed for parts of the organisation to co-create strategy.

Figure 6.1 - Interpreting ideas relating to Strategy Making

The original factors from the cluster map were not allowed to constrain the group, but were modified to encompass their fresh thinking. The resulting model included a new perception of links between work focusing on the external marketplace and the internal resource allocation which matches tactics to capabilities. The model’s format is indicated in outline form in Figure 6.1.

Subsequent sessions employed a similar range of processes - introduced by the facilitator to meet needs evidenced by the group. The change activists managed the context within which meetings took place: managers[8] being newly introduced to the change library were simply invited to a meeting to review information from past projects and apparently relevant to their area. They were asked to advise the change activists on whether the assembled information was, in fact, useful. At each meeting some new insights arose and each session endorsed the value of the approach. In each case the content and process of the meeting was recorded in new additions to the change library.

Feedback on the value and energy from these sessions has been very positive:

“Lotus Notes is a good mechanism for passing on ideas, sharing information, but CK Modeller has the ability to help us explore ideas. It gave us access to insight.”

“We weren’t being taught, our views evolved on the basis of the evidence. People gained insights for themselves. We’ve gone through exercises where we’ve shared best practice before - but the consultant has had a view as to what the outcome should be and we felt as if we were being led. This way, the group owned the outcomes, it was very powerful.”

7. Moving into Action

In Q, an organisation with lean resources and little ‘spare’ capacity, people invited to a session were wary about any participation which might add to their workload, but comfortable about their involvement when it was set in the context of “tapping into supporting activities elsewhere in the organisation”. The spread of participants ensured that each group had considerable scope to act (individually or in concert) upon their interpretation of the information available. The shared activity of interpreting the material relating to a business process in which they were stakeholders ensured the coherence of any individual responses made after their meeting. The common framework used for all the meetings further ensured that individual and group actions were aligned to the goals of the organisation as a whole. And energy levels were high in each meeting so there was enthusiasm for following through with that action which was within their area of responsibility and clearly perceived to be necessary.

In some cases, therefore, action easily followed the previous stage (one participant has subsequently commented that very many constructive initiatives have followed these sessions but that, as these did not require external support, the author would not be aware of them). In other cases, the appropriate follow-up action was less clear but the energy generated ensured that difficult challenges were recognised and explored through further collaborative work.

For example, one group session highlighted an internal conflict or key dilemma for the business around the need to control costs whilst enhancing customer service. This led to further meetings for a sub-group who, using an approach based on soft systems methodology, discussed and mapped out the process needed to align the efforts of sales and production in providing a high standard of tailored service profitably. The group has subsequently identified specific customer experiences which might inform the reinforcement of this process. The action taken at this stage has both ensured that the management of certain customer accounts is more comprehensively resourced through contributions from the wider team, and also identified additional information (hard evidence) which must be encompassed by the learning cycle subsequently.

In another case a manager, who participated in many of the above sessions, realised that his own performance is crucially dependent upon the effectiveness of others’ actions. He also became aware that complex inter-relationships within his area could lead individuals to make decisions which were not in the best interest of the organisation as a whole. The follow-up action for this manager has been to develop influence diagrams and a simple computer-based model (in ithink) of the dynamic interactions affecting business performance. He is now considering further workshop sessions where stakeholders can model their own understanding and explore together how their actions interact.

8. Reflections

A simple evaluation of the success of the project based on the degree of participation or ownership in the group, and the extent to which the group’s own objectives were achieved, would note the degree of real teamwork, enthusiasm, creativity and understanding generated by a combination of carefully selected participants, a flexible structured process, competent facilitation and helpful tools and software, making the project an outstanding success. However, in this wider context of organisation development and learning, there is a less clear outcome:

· So far this initiative has been driven by an informal group of pro-active middle managers each dedicated to finding better ways of fulfilling their current and future responsibilities within the wider organisation context. The high-level support needed for further work and wider participation is not yet forthcoming.

· Any pulling together of a group of individuals and forging them into a ‘team’ creates another group who are ‘non-team’. There’s a degree of ambivalence within Q to individuals now identified with an unusual meeting style; the original change activists are both distrusted as a group, and simultaneously perceived to be valuable individuals who have a useful broad understanding of what’s happening across the business.