Everyone a Rainmaker
Perceptions of The Learning Organisation
A series of
public workshops has provided insights to the way organisational learning is
perceived by practising managers from a wide range of organisations. Their
combined perceptions are presented here in a composite model of a learning
system. This article describes each of the sub-processes which contribute to
learning in their model and then raises questions for management science in
this context.
The last decade has seen a growing body of management
research and popular texts relating to organisational learning and the building
of superior performance capabilities for future success. Against this
background, between late 1992 and early 1994 more than 70 people joined in a
series of one-day workshops on organisational change: "Transforming the Organisation's Mind". They came from
major multi-nationals, medium sized companies, and public sector agencies. They
spanned industries from financial services to manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals
to education. These were "well-informed" practising managers - people
accustomed to sifting relevant and practical ideas from the hype of management
best-sellers. Many were champions for a learning orientation in their
organisations. All were attracted by the advertised opportunity to work with
like-minded others on an interesting topic, whilst getting hands-on experience
of some of the problem structuring tools and approaches available to help them.
Each workshop approached the "organisation's mind"
metaphor from a different angle. For example: How can organisations manage
increasing risk and uncertainty? What changes in structure and management style
are required for effectiveness in increasingly complex environments? At each
event informal topical presentations were dovetailed with group discussions
where participants, supported by facilitators, joined in building maps or
models which illustrated their shared understanding. The wide spread and
variety of participant experience combined with these changes in emphasis of
approach to ensure that no two workshops were the same. Using magnetic notes
(hexagons and other shapes) and whiteboards to capture, display and develop
ideas, and with computer support (using the CK Modeller software) to record details
of discussions, each workshop was lively, productive and distinctive in its
outputs. These comprised maps of the factors critical to successful
organisation learning, an influence diagram or model of a system which builds
superior performance capability, or a creative summary of the essence of such
an organisation.
After the final workshop, I
generated a multi-dimensional picture of organisational change by bringing
together the different maps and models. By highlighting common themes and
influences, a comprehensive representation was assembled and inter-linked. I
simplified the composite model where possible so that the primary relationships
and factors stood out. The detailed computer record from each workshop provided
a check on original meanings and intents and was used to ensure that essential
points were not lost in this consolidation. The model of the system which
emerged identifies various processes which work in combination to produce and
sustain superior performance.
This simple composite model of organisational
learning, encompassing the work of all participants and derived directly from
the workshop outputs, is given in Figure A.
Figure A
The organisation as a learning system
In essence
Figure A shows the organisation as a capability-building system, stimulated by
signals that change is necessary and using this information to fuel learning
and build competencies so that it achieves and sustains a capability to win in
its environment.
The model provides an
insight to the emerging consensus amongst practising managers interested in
organisational learning. It describes the ideal these managers aspire to - and
is based on both practical experience and background reading/study. The
practical processes through which they perceive that an organisation can learn
how to achieve and sustain superior performance are important and relevant both
to other interested line managers and to management scientists. Each of the
processes of learning or innovation is described below - making reference to
the original workshop discussions for amplification as appropriate. I have then
used these learning processes as a stimulus to a number of my own observations
about how the structured approaches of management science/OR can enhance or
accelerate the learning which takes place.
1 - Signals that change is necessary stimulate
awareness
Workshop participants identified a number of signals
which can highlight a need for change. These provide early warning of a future
in which "do nothing" or "business as usual" is not a
viable option. Signals identified during the workshops included
signals from
the labour market evidenced by employees who demand new skills and greater
involvement,
signs of
social change affecting tastes and buying habits,
new
technologies which offer potential for process innovation and open up new
markets to the opportunistic organisation, and
changes in
the rate of change itself - which requires a structural adaptation in affected
organisations.
It is apparent that these signals for change can come
from within the organisation, from its immediate operating environment
(suppliers, customers, competitors), or from the wider socio-economic context.
The signals may be clear and unambiguous (for example a regulatory change), or
the result of a more gradual shift (such as demographic changes). Workshop
participants suggested that an organisation with a learning orientation would
deliberately scan its environment to detect relevant signals, and network
widely beyond its own industry to pick up on early indications of changes to
come. In their ideal, "aware" organisation, all individuals would be
open to change and alert to the signals that change is appropriate, however, in
practice, some people cling to the certainty of the past and are blinkered to
the signs of change. Workshop participants suggested that most organisations
include people of both types.
Our workshop participants were aware of the
well-documented cases of major companies that have lost competitive ground
through a failure to spot relevant environmental changes: eg. the US motor
industry which didn't recognise the emerging potential market for small cars
until significant market share had gone to Japanese manufacturers, and IBM's
failure to appreciate the characteristics of end-users which would fuel the
growth of the PC market. Cognitive science has shown that human beings (including
senior managers!) avoid information overload through unconscious mental filters
which discount irrelevant information. Thus workshop participants have
highlighted that learning organisations manage to dispel overconfidence and
complacency, and extend the range of what is perceived as relevant across the
organisation.
2 - Strategic and environmental awareness informs
performance review
All organisations monitor their performance in some
way. However, the definition of appropriate performance measures isn't
straightforward (for example, current debates on the assessment of school or
hospital performance). The parameters used may - or may not - provide an
unbiased indication of actual achievement in key areas appropriate to the
organisation's purpose or mission. As the organisation becomes more aware it
can target its monitoring more effectively - providing more useful indicators
of both internal and external factors. Workshop participants summarised this as
the "responsive control of change" through control systems
"harmonised with the nature of the business". They referred to:
questioning
assumptions,
knowing the
critical success factors,
establishing
visible milestones and measures, and
benchmarking
where the organisation is and how it's progressing.
The capability to set up feedback mechanisms and make
objective performance assessments was perceived as essential to a learning
organisation - providing it with a capability to "differentiate between
its espoused theory and theory in use".
Workshop participants suggested that many
organisations don't have this capability. One reason put forward was the
identification of specific senior individuals with particular policies -
contributing to interpersonal difficulties and tension at Board level when any
policy reassessment was needed. Some workshops highlighted organisations' needs
for a "trigger for action" which can overcome compromise and inertia
- but, in the worst case, this trigger might be a crisis which is recognised
only when it's too late.
The challenge overcome by learning organisations was
perceived as the achievement of objective cooperation in the top team. A
participative, open style of performance review process was seen to be needed.
Representative quotes from the workshops suggest:
there must be
mutual trust and respect, lack of trust prohibits learning together,
individuals
need freedom to speak their mind,
listening
skills are critical,
the
organisation must beware of "groupthink" and needs to take account of
different mental models at the same time as seeking consensus.
3 - Strategic review modifies vision & performance
goals
The workshop groups agreed that an organisation
committed to learning uses its performance reviews to inform the formulation of
new strategic objectives. Importance was attached to processes for sharing
information and ideas across boundaries, ensuring wide participation in
strategy development, and stimulating creative and innovative strategies.
Workshop participants suggested that only an objective performance review can
lead to a fundamental rethink about the organisation's purposes. This might
lead to identification of changed research priorities, a decision to tackle
barriers to change within the organisation, or moves to look for partners or
allies. Recognition of strategic uncertainties should lead to the development
of "flexible plans with options". A willingness to think afresh might
stimulate a radical shift in the organisation's market positioning or a re-engineering
of internal processes. Workshop participants suggested that an organisation is
better able to take such bold and innovative steps if it has used a
decision-making process which aligns the top team behind them. Thus a united
top team can provide protection for a risky new venture, or decide together to
discontinue an established area of operations (as when Shell pulled out of
tankers - then a major part of their business).
4 - Shared vision and performance goals channel
leadership
Successful implementation of the strategy depends on
senior managers - individually and collectively. In the workshops
"providing leadership from the top" encompassed:
demonstrating
a real commitment to change
visualising
the change
negotiating
resistance to change
tackling any
difficulties without ambiguity
initiating
pilot projects to test a strategy and build commitment
setting good
examples - "senior people must walk the talk".
Workshop participants suggested that, where individual
managers have joined in the strategic decision-making process, have ownership
of the change objectives in their area, and are confident that they have the
top team fully behind them, then they are more likely to achieve their
potential as change leaders.
5 - Leaders champion empowering change programmes
A performance improvement initiative can be radically
accelerated by a strong leader who champions the programme of change. Workshop
participants suggested that good leaders in a learning environment would adopt
a facilitative, empowering approach. They emphasised a number of qualities of
this leadership style:
demonstrating
willingness to "let go" in a new open, more informal and less
hierarchical style of management
allocating
time to get wide recognition and acceptance of the need for change: one group
specified "the organisation must remove barriers inside people",
another summarised this as "get people out of their boxes"
encouraging
risk taking by ensuring that it is legitimate to challenge the organisation and
mistakes are not penalised if there is learning - "don't jump all over
mistakes"
dispensing
with authority and suspending the hierarchy so that learning can take place
supporting
building new thinking skills so that people can work creatively, strategically
and systemically
providing
necessary feedback, and getting some quick wins to build the momentum looked
for
creating an
environment for teamwork, backed up by supportive reward systems.
6 - Empowering change programmes encourage new
behaviours
Workshop participants emphasised the role of learning
individuals at all levels in the organisation and identified a number of
obstacles to be overcome. They suggested that middle and senior managers,
rather than front-line staff, would be the ones most likely to resist change -
because these people's success has rewarded their "old habits". One
group of participants were critical of the UK education system and suggested
that many people would need to be supported in learning to learn. Change
leaders fostering a learning culture "need to know what the limiting
factors are", "remove the inhibiting factors", and create a
"non-threatening environment". One participant commented, "a
lack of confidence stifles flexibility and flexibility is a necessary condition
for creating innovation and learning".
With appropriate leadership, workshop participants
suggested that most people would respond positively to a shift to a learning
orientation across the organisation. They anticipated a "sense of
ownership and fun", "feeling good", "honesty inside and
outside the company", "enthusiasm - feeling alive with energy",
"valuing youth for fresh input and inexperience", "a lot of
informal communication", "creating an environment where creativity
can live". One workshop group summarised the desired culture as one where
"everyone's a rainmaker",
(see Figure B).
Learning individuals are hungry for information -
particularly where it can provide feedback on performance. Workshop
participants suggested that information technology/systems can play a part in
broadening the range of information accessible to these individuals, and also
provide a means for learners to share information.
Figure B
Part of a workshop output
7a - Learning individuals focus learning teams
Some of our workshops explored the
"organisation's mind" metaphor by discussing the analogies between
thinking, memory and learning in a human brain, and communication, teamwork and
learning in an organisation. One group explored "knowledge-bearing
relationships" in some detail - and reached consensus that organisational
learning was much more than a disparate group of individuals learning together.
However, workshop participants agreed that learning individuals were an
essential prerequisite for organisational learning to take place. As more
individuals adopt a learning orientation, the nature of working relationships
between individuals can change so that "learning teams" form. By
enabling individual learners to network together, information systems have
extended the achievable scope of teamwork across the organisation and externally.
"In order to develop a learning organisation we
need a climate for making and re-making teams, one in which we create a shared
future through shared tools." Workshop participants highlighted the need
for aspiring learning organisations to emphasise "cross-functional
teamwork", to "accommodate paradox and ambiguity", and to foster
an "enthusiastic continuous improvement culture". Learning teams
bridging functional specialisms have the capability to understand the full
scope of business processes and activities, they can share understanding of
customer needs and the meaning of customer service, and they can monitor
experiments which continually extend their understanding.
7b - Learning individuals extend organisational
sensitivity
Learning individuals seek information from both inside
and outside the organisation to inform their innovation and improvement
approach. Their curiosity enhances the sensitivity of the organisation and
their cooperative approach leads them to share what they know with others who
are interested.
8. - Learning teams align strategic review
Many workshop participants expressed some cynicism
about their own organisations and suggested that problems seen clearly by
people working at the interface with customers were not acknowledged higher up
the organisation. Their perception of a learning organisation implies that,
with inhibitors to communication removed, information will be shared freely. As
the number of learners and willing communicators (2-way!) increases at all
levels, the organisation as a whole will lose its complacency.
At the heart of the organisation this brings both
information and objectivity to strategic reviews of performance. If the
organisation has thoroughly assimilated the learning approach then upward flows
of information are taken into the strategy process, enabling the strategy to be
brought in line with market changes. New strategies can then be formulated in
response to the freshly perceived opportunities. As the strategy process is reinforced
with ever more pertinent information, it leads to increasingly effective
strategies and successful outcomes.
9 - Repeated learning cycles build capability for
superior performance
The model describes the cycle of processes whereby a
learning organisation senses opportunities or needs for change, adjusts its
strategic goals, formulates the necessary structural or operational changes,
implements pilots, checks feedback, builds on successes & learns from
failures, and monitors its performance and its environment. Continuous
stretching of awareness, flexibility and responsiveness are central tenets of
the organisation's style. Workshop participants would agree with the statement
made by Arie de Geus (1988):
"...the only competitive advantage the
company of the future will have is its managers' ability to learn faster than
their competitors."
Challenges highlighted by this model - for the
aspiring learning organisation and for the management scientist
Strategic, managerial and operational challenges are
highlighted by the model of learning provided above. I've summarised challenges
at each of these three levels below, and added some comments and questions from
my own perspective as a management scientist for each one.
1. At the strategic level, the model suggests
that executives in the learning organisation must
dispel
overconfidence, recognise uncertainty and be tuned in to relevant shifts in the
external environment
contribute
their functionally-based expertise and insights to a consensus-seeking group
strategy process
be
creative and innovative in generating new strategic options for the
organisation.
The tools
we management scientists might use here will depend on the role of our client
in the top team - in fact getting the right client (client-team?) might be our
first challenge! The context defined by the model is one where raising the
right question is more important than finding answers. Problem structuring
techniques will help the whole team to work with the challenge. Cognitive
mapping, soft systems modelling, scenario building, strategic choice,
robustness analysis...all these can be used to tackle the challenge "on-line"
in ways which encourage the teamwork and consensus building which workshop
participants emphasised as important. A cybernetics perspective is also
relevant here - the comments made by workshop participants implied that
future-management (system four in Beer's viable system model) is weak in many
organisations. Influence diagrams and simple computer models (perhaps systems
dynamics models) might be used as catalysts accelerating the building of shared
understanding across the group - or might be used to help an individual client
to clarify their thinking so that they can make a more powerful contribution to
the group. More traditional OR might come in as strategic options are
identified and assessed. There is obviously a lot that management science
offers here - but there's clearly a
high premium on process skills for the management scientist and I wonder if
it's in this area that the greatest challenge for us arises?
2. Managers who are change leaders in the
learning organisation must
disseminate
and exemplify the vision
ensure
that structures and systems (eg reward systems) support the desired change
legitimise
risk-taking and experimentation
provide
feedback.
Management
scientists might support our change manager-client with analyses and models
which illustrate and animate the change objectives. We might also develop
"what-if" models which help our client to determine suitable
ambitious but achievable goals for their team(s). However, it seems that the
picture painted by workshop participants puts the emphasis here on the personal
and leadership skills of the change manager. What are the important concepts
which our discipline offers to managers and which we might like to see
emphasised in general management development programmes? My own recent
executive management programme offered little between training in the
interpersonal skills which support effective teamwork, and introductions to
basic spreadsheeting, decision analysis, statistics and information systems
which were covered under the umbrella of a "decision science" course.
Experience, and the comments of workshop participants, suggest that there is a
wider need for knowledge of structured and creative approaches to problem
situations and decision-making.
3. Operators in the learning organisation must
work
cooperatively in focused teams
make
observations, analyse performance, formulate and test improvement ideas, and
implement successful enhancements in a cycle of continuous improvement
be
curious, and share information and learning across the organisation.
Whether
we ourselves become members of a multi-disciplinary team, or we have a client
who is part of a change- or project-team, this is the context for a lot of our
work. At this level we have a clear goal, but it's often still helpful to
structure the challenge or problem, so any of the full spectrum of management
science/operational research approaches may be appropriate. Again, our
interpersonal and process skills will be important. I think the organisational
climate described by workshop participants highlights a client relationship
issue for our work at this level (- an issue which will be familiar to the
Heads of OR group). Just as the workshop participants emphasised the need for
top-team backing for successful change, we need high level sponsorship for
these projects with clients at an operational level. Only within this context
can we follow through the systemic implications of our work - good practice on
any project, but how often do we fall short?
Rachel Bodle, December 1994
Acknowledgements
This model has been compiled from the insights of all
those who participated so enthusiastically in a series of workshops offered by
Idon Associates Ltd and their contributions are gratefully acknowledged.
Responsibility for this consolidation of these contributions rests with the
author alone. Thanks are due to Tony Hodgson and Robin Wood who, as well as
being co-presenters and facilitators of the workshops, have provided useful
comments on earlier drafts of this article.
For the interested reader
Beer S (1972) Brain
of the Firm and (1979) Heart of
Enterprise. Wiley, London
De Geus AP (1988) Planning
as Learning, Harvard Business Review, March-April pp70-74
Hampden-Turner C (1990) Charting the Corporate Mind: from dilemma to strategy, Blackwell,
Oxford
Hodgson AM (1992) Hexagons
for Systems Thinking, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol 59, No
1, pp220-230
Rosenhead J (ed.) (1989) Rational Analysis for a Problematic World: problem structuring methods
for complexity, uncertainty and conflict, Wiley, Chichester
Russo JE & Schoemaker PJH (1989) Confident Decision Making, Piatkus,
London
Schwarz P (1991) The
Art of the Long View, Century Business, London