Organizational Thinking

I recently attended a talk by a leader in the Workplace Learning field and was struck by his endorsement of centralized training and learning management systems. This approach seems to me at first blush to be off track with what really happens in organizations that needs to be talked about in terms of learning. However, I do see a couple of aspects of this that make sense. There are two things to consider here. First I think it makes total sense to centralize data about training. But this is an interesting notion. I think what we can do with data now is centralize it anywhere. In other words I can look at data about the whole from any point in the network (node). If I have access to some sort of 'aggregator' application and it is pointed to the information I need then I can get it. So, in a sense this makes the idea of a 'centralized data repository' kind of obsolete.

The second issue is about the functions in a company or organization that need to be 'learned'. In my view there are at least two fundamental levels of reality in any organization. I have begun to call these the 'site' reality and the 'culture' reality (these ideas are growing out of my work in ambulatory medical clinics and so the term site and culture are born of that. The word 'reality' is meant to capture the 'phenomenology' specific to that space. For example, managers and to some extent supervisors, are more attuned to what I will call 'site' issues than line workers or contractors. The 'reality' for a manager is different than the 'reality' for a line worker. Of course this argument is full of assumptions and other implications that need careful explication.).

The site reality involves the infrastructure and policies that transcend local activity to help knit together disparate people, locations, or practices. We could think about the site reality as being information about standards and more formal classification structures. I like using the word 'site' for this idea because it preserves the necessarily local flavor of how people see and interact with management and supervisory responsibilities. The 'site' links the local with the global in terms of an organization's structure. So an LA site and a Boston site are both aspects of the corporation that is headquartered in New York. The issues that are important to New York about LA and Boston are system issues and communications that are based on the notion of being able to scale standards, policies, and classifications.

Training for site realities lends itself to a 'centralized' kind of model. However, I think the term 'centralized' is misleading. A better term might be a 'standard' model. This standard model would be copied everywhere in the system (throughout the sites).

[A brief aside here on memes - memes are thought of by some as replicators on a par with genes. When we 'replicate' or copy a training throughout a system we are making an effort to direct the spread of memes through a system. To the extent that we can map a meme (I think of them as persisting units of language) to system infrastructure we are going to 'probably' see some gains. The examples that I heard in this recent talk I mentioned above bear this out. In one example there was a direct effort at 'training' dealers about a certain product and the sales strategy around the product. Because this 'site' training was around a product and around a process for selling the product the memes used stuck pretty well to the infrastructure that was on the ground (so to speak) and the central office saw some gains. Another example would be IT training for an ERP or CRM application. Because the applications are on the desktop of workers and this is what they are (forced) to work with there will be some obvious changes in behavior associated with the training experience. What's really interesting about these IT issues is the way that the culture (see below) interacts with the site mandates or standard models.]

Anyway, the site reality lends itself to standardized training and the roll up of data around that training made available via the web to either central office or site is a great thing. People can see and measure progress about the standard model. We can then connect the standard model to the business model where ever it makes sense. The fellow that I heard speak was clear about the need for workplace learning people to make sure that we somehow affect the bottom line (increase revenue, reduce costs, improve cycle times). This makes total sense.

However, there is another reality that is not much touched by the standard model propagated through the sites (by the way - you can conceive of multiple sites in one organization in one place - say a distribution organizaiton that has no satellites and no sales force - just the people in the facility. It is still full of 'sites' using my logic.) This is the zone of culture. Now, I don' t want to get into protracted definitional polemics about the word culture so suffice it to say what I mean is the very strange intersubjective reality of real people in real relationships talking, thinking, feeling, and breathing together. I am serious. We are so often in our metaphors and models about how the world should be, was, or is we forget that we are all in an ongoing kind of acid trip of 'experience'. This experience is what I mean by culture. It is us - in a Petri dish if you will, doing our thing. This is were the standard model breaks down. People subvert, diss, twist, ignore, misuse, and otherwise abuse all sorts of 'site' related messages and memes from management or central office. The amazing thing about this is that the culture reality also pervades the masters of the sites! Anyway, what is the workplace learning professional to do about this reality?

That is my question.

The first thing that I think we need to do in organizations in terms of information technology is let it rip! By that I mean the flowering of kludgy applications, work-arounds, emails, web-surfing adventures, macros, spreadsheets, powerpoints, etc. need to be encouraged and supported. This is the stuff of culture expressed at the level that stuff happens. This is where, if we really want to develop good standard models, we will get our best information. So, I say let 1000 flowers bloom. This touches on the link/node and emergent classification structures that have so much become a part of our web oriented lives (see Clay Shirky’s recent excellent little essay at:

http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html

His use of the word ‘ontology’ maps to my general notion of ‘site realities’. But that is another story. Anyway the thing to do is listen. The second thing to do is ‘pay attention’. Paying attention means that we listen without letting our assumptions cloud our understanding. This is a harder thing to do than most of us realize. I am doing a lot of work with and thinking about dialogue and it is becoming very clear that to do good dialogue we have to be able to work on a much deeper level psychologically than many of us are used to. So what I am saying is to let the local sites thicken with local information and then listen and pay attention to what you are hearing and seeing.

Then we can begin to both collect data about whether the more subtle goals of the standard model have been met and gather information about how we can develop better strategies that may or may not lend themselves to propagation via the standard model(s) that exist throughout the sites. blah blah blah.

So what I am trying to say is that ‘training’ does not work at the culture level. Learning happens and a good friend, co-worker, mentor, customer, friend, boss, or whatever can help the process through simply showing up and hanging around.

This learning professional that I listened to mentioned ‘Communities of Practice’ in response to a question I asked that was kind of around this whole topic. He mentioned the activity around this notion and I really appreciated that. However, I am skeptical. I have read the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger and am really taken with the participatory and embodied notions that the concepts imply. But, these ideas don’t lend themselves to scaling via standard models.

They are complex and emergent phenomena and require a different set of tools. More on that later no doubt. I am currently working on getting lots of data on trust into a framework that is suggesting to me that we may be able to map behaviors as attractors in what I am increasingly calling the mother (phase) space of trust. Needless to say - I really enjoyed this person's presentation.

It is very interesting to be alive in these times. The paradox of our various affiliations is palpable. We (the collective we of humankind) seem to hunger deeply for connection and meaning yet our practices continue to keep us separate and alone! Using standard forms or practices (conferences, speeches, workshops, rally's, etc.) don’t seem to make a difference. Most of our jobs systematically deny our need for rich complex interactions.

My question is: What practice does make a difference? It occurs to me that like Gandhi, Mandela, & King the first step is to change ourselves. After that I think the circle radiates out in local and meaningful ways. After that maybe a revolution - but probably not. I think what I so appreciated about teaching at GU this past spring was the opportunity for a sustained conversation - but it does not escape me that the conversation was not completely voluntary - there is 'coin' involved.... the struggle we all make to survive and get the tickets (degrees) or money to meet our goals.

So how do we get around this? I think that our individual commitments is a good place to start. To meet and talk and maybe write a bit. To begin slowly to organize around a core idea (what is the idea?) and then let things happen. Community is important.

One idea I am having is about complexity - I am increasingly interested in working with complexity models to help make sense of collective phenomena. I have been working with some relatively large groups (n = 500 & n = 150) and doing qualitative analyses of a Trust construct. I am then doing frequency counts of coded data (16 coded behaviors) and then displaying the data in a color coded frequency chart. Very simple stuff but very interesting from the perspective of complex systems.

I am seeing the Trust construct as a 16 dimension phase space. The frequency counts suggest a possible interpretation as attractor basins within the space. This means (to me) that there is a tendency in the organization in question for people to behave in particular ways in reference to trust that are consistent with the attractors (big assumption here - BAH). These attractors tend to 'pull' people along their gradients in ways that are mostly unconscious (also BAH). When we can 'see' the basins (in my imagery these are whirlpools of similar memes, behaviors, and thoughts) we can then design both strategies and interventions that may help move or perturb the attractors into more or less significance.

The meta-pattern revealed by the frequency data is compelling. The salience of individual behavior frequencies was preserved across polarizing questions (the narrative data on Trust that was initially coded). So the behavior (for example ‘Tells the Truth’ was consistent across questions but particularly salient for one question (e.g., What is breaking trust?). The next step is to triangulate this frequency data with other available survey data (Likert data).

This next paragraph is pure BAH. From an individual psychological perspective I think that increased consciousness and awareness bring an acute sensitivity to these complex social topographies. I think our hearts and minds are able to recognize when we are being 'pulled' or directed toward a way of being that is either consistent or inconsistent with our intentions (intention is the other half of this equation). Have you ever started a new job and felt that strange sense of ‘wrongness’ when asked to participate in a standard organizational rite? I think this sense indicates a sojourn into an attractor basin (if not the whole phase space) that is inimical to some core tacit value. Of course it is important to remember that values are not absolute and are, in fact, learned and ‘picked up’ in the contexts we inhabit. So, that’s why after a few weeks in the new job it is hard to remember you even felt weird. Let alone why.

So, the analysis of the relevant 'phase spaces' of an organization or a culture can help surface into collective awareness the patterns that are driving our behavior. What is important, in my view, about Trust is that it is one of our very basic background, tacit, and ubiquitous contexts - it is one of the 'mother spaces' that we inhabit. Again, my imagery sees us living in a multidimensional world of nested contexts - each with its own flavor and gradient.

In terms of Follett and participatory democracy I think it is interesting to note that the boundary crossing that seems to be necessary for participatory democracy in the large sense is made difficult by the strength of the attractors of individual experiences. Which is interesting in light of the wide spread recognition of the reduction in 'meta-narratives' or narratives that create meaningful practices (attractors) across wide populations.

So, one of the questions that I have is: do we need to create new meta-narratives (or are they being created as we sit?)? Is a meta-narrative the post-hoc, or after the fact conception of the shape of a lot of years of individual moiling around in states of relative chaos, incoherence, and separation? Is our job now in the creating of narratives? Or watching and becoming aware of their collective creation and then speaking them? Or both?