Posts Tagged ‘organizational learning’
Self Managed Action Learning (SMAL)
Henry Senko
In the latest issue of the Action Learning Research and Practice journal, I read an article about action learning in which teams are self-managed and do not use a set advisor. The term used in the article was Self Managed Action Learning (SMAL). I immediately thought of the action learning process we had developed a number of years ago, and how our work now has a name. I remember the first time we attended an action learning seminar in England in 1996 and met Reg Revans. He had mentioned that the role of a facilitator was to “…hang coats and get coffee, getting out of the way of learning…”. Our search over the next few years was to try and understand and develop a process to help achieve what he meant by this statement. At the time, we were fortunate to have a number of people from various professions and walks of life who were willing to meet once a month with us to experiment with the process of action learning and develop a process that did not require a set advisor. After a number of years we were successful, and accompanied our clients, presented our findings at the Action Learning Conference in England, on the success of action learning and the use of this process.
We designed the action learning process to be completely self-managed by the action learning group. Over a number of years in testing the process, participants provided valuable feedback on the process, and what was required to make the self-management possible. The way in which our action learning process is structured:
- Provides the framework required for a group to conduct the process without any assistance from an external facilitator, consultant, or set advisor.
- Increases psychological safety because all of the instructions are written, and everyone can read and interpret them.
- Makes sure that thinking and acting are aligned with how people learn, rather than based on each person’s specific way of learning.
- Gives each member a chance to voice his or her perspective, while protecting the interests of the situation owner.
- Keeps members focused on the action learning process, and lowers the effect of distractions that may occur.
- Creates the conditions for the emergence of communal respect, trust, helpfulness, and effective communication.
When groups are first learning the action learning process, the structure provides ways in which members can feel psychologically safe while feeling incompetent at the same time. Even when no one in the group has ever participated in this form of action learning, the instructions put everyone on a level playing field. Everyone knows nothing about the process. The struggle of learning the process is minimized by the desire to solve a group member’s issue or problem. As a result, most group members willingly struggle through learning the process, and willingly self-manage the group.
Learning Styles and Meetings
Henry Senko
I am often asked how to apply the concepts and processes that people learn in the Leadership through Learning (LTL) program. Here’s a question from Donna Smith, an LTL practitioner from Edmonton, Alberta:
Donna’s Question:
Could you send me a summary of how your learning preference influences the triggers you might have around participating in meetings? For example, I get impatient when people start talking about details, details, details and just want to move on.
My Response:
I think that if all your participants know their learning style preference, the activity at the end of this blog might be the best way for them to individualize their reasoning for engagement and disengagement during a meeting. I believe the activity would take about 5-10 minutes. Depending on the size of the group, you would have to allow another 5 -10 minutes for a quick debrief.
Your impatience with details can be attributed to an action preference in learning style, but it is also a good example of how someone’s thinking style is having an impact on you, as seen in the thinking styles profile called the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). A focus on details comes from Quadrant B, and irritates people who come from the other three quadrants, but especially Quadrant D, which is likely where your irritation is coming from.
Overview of Learning Styles Engagement:
- For people who have an action orientation (activist and pragmatist): The meeting must be time efficient (pragmatist), and must have something to do with planning (pragmatist) that leads to action (activist) or implementation (activist).
- For people who have a reflection orientation (reflector and theorist): The meeting must have an opportunity to gather new information (reflector), and must have a strong purpose (theorist).
Quick Overview of Disengagement:
- People who have an action orientation (activist and pragmatist) are irritated if the meeting is not time efficient (pragmatist), and has nothing to do with planning (pragmatist) that leads to any type of action (activist).
- People who have a reflection orientation (reflector and theorist) are irritated if there is no opportunity to gather ideas (reflector) and the meeting has no clear purpose (theorist).
Applying the Learning Cycle during a meeting:
- Start with telling the purpose for the meeting:
- Move to gathering data about the purpose (e.g., different perspectives, etc.)
- Draw conclusions from the information gathered
- Plan on how to move forward
- Assign actions and accountability (to whom and with timeframes)
- Note: If you have several purposes to cover in the meeting, do steps 1-5 for each purpose, starting with the most urgent and important purpose first.
Activities for Participants to Determine How Meetings and Learning Styles Connect
- During or at the end of the meeting, use the Capitalizing on Your Learning Style booklet found at the back of the Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ) Interpretation Guide or Revving Up Thinking and Learning: Course Design Guide.
- Ask participants to go to page 8 in the Capitalizing on Your Learning Style booklet. And find the page that refers to their strongest preferences.
- Ask participants to review the bullets under the statement If you … you will learn best from activities where, and highlight what phrases resonate for them. This forms the basis of their preferences. Ask participants to consider when they were engaged and why they might have been engaged based on what they highlighted.
- Ask participants to review the bullets under the statement As an _____ you will learn least from …, and highlight what phrases resonate for them. This forms a basis for what irritates them. Ask participants to consider when they were disengaged and why they might have been disengaged based on what they highlighted.
Corporate Culture, Organizational Change: Strategic Practice
In the last three decades of increasing change and uncertainty, leaders in organizations have been engaging in a myriad of change efforts, some of which have only marginally succeeded, and most of which have failed outright. The unfortunate result of these change efforts is a wasteland of demoralized, exhausted, and jaded employees and leaders.
The reason that most change efforts fail has less to do with what the organization and its people are doing, and more to do with the dynamic of its corporate culture. Like countries, organizations have cultures — corporate cultures — consisting of visible artifacts such as language, structures, history, and ways of working and getting things done. But a critical aspect of a corporate culture is not visible — its ability and capacity to learn. Corporate culture dictates what an organization and its people are allowed to learn, and how they are allowed to learn it. Like an ocean, a corporate culture has strong flows and dynamics that shift and move people, decisions, learning, and actions in certain ways.
Many people simply go with the flow, learning by following others. Others try to initiate change efforts, often going against the flow, challenging and questioning the way things are done around here.
Surfing the Waves of Change: Systemic Storytelling
As individuals, people are complex ¾ a mixture of genetic personality traits, influenced by an environment full of experiences. Put several people together in a group, and complexity increases. Put several groups together into a community, such as an organization, and complexity increases even more dramatically. In fact, every time you add another person to a group, another group to a community, complexity increases substantially.
Add to this equation ferocious competition, globalization, technology, and speed, and suddenly you have complexity beyond anything that people can comprehend. Because complexity is also unpredictable, we can only guess at what is happening, thus increasing uncertainty. This can leave us feeling overwhelmed and hopeless, grasping at anything that might help to ease the situation. To deal with this increase in complexity, we often run even faster, trying to compress time, until we have no time at all!
Who believes they have the time to slow down to think about a complex situation, to gather data, analyze the data, and understand what the data tells us? Even when we know we should take the time to think things through, we do not believe we have enough time. And yet, we have enough time to make mistakes over and over again. We have enough time to be overwhelmed, to be frustrated, and to feel out of control. We even have enough time to put up with mediocre performance, and to settle for less. We are caught in the tidal wave of complexity and change, and we so often act as if we have to run faster and faster before it sweeps us under.
We’re a leading-edge research and development company that focuses on building your organization’s capacity to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. We work with you to produce measurable results, so that you can learn at the speed of change. We research, field-test, and evaluate a variety of thinking and learning processes to identify which ones produce high performance.