Ten Steps to a Learning Organizaiton/ Steps 1-5 Summary/J. Colannino

In an earlier blog, I overviewed Kline and Saunders Ten Steps to a Learning Organization. In this blog entry, I continue with Steps 2 through 5.

Step 2, Promote the Positive

According to Saunders and Kline, once an organization has made a sincere effort to assess its learning culture (Step 1) it must begin to reframe its negativity, because gold is in the mud, if only we care to look. That is, every organization has shortcomings, handicaps and impediments; but focusing on them does not lead to constructive behavior. A positive outlook recognizes the reality that we – that is all of us – have the power to do the right thing at all times within our organization.

Accordingly, one or more members of my scholastic workgroup are now working to create and enhance their learning organization. In due time, we will reassess our learning culture to see if our grade has improved. By the way, the highest average score[1] on Kline and Saunders assessment was a C- (the highest grade of any organization for the Tulsa KM 5263 student group). Their particular company is highly profitable. Those companies that scored lower were less profitable. One can only imagine the profitability that would inure as any organization that behaved more as a learning organization.

Step 3, Make the Workplace Safe for Thinking

In Step 3, “Making the Workplace Safe for Thinking,” Kline and Saunders[2] discuss the “Great Universal Walking School:”

“[Children] when they’re ready… just get up and walk as best they can while a circle of admiring relatives cheers them on. The child who falls is given loving reassurance and encouraged to try again.” “Thinking, like walking, is best developed through practice, and… best practiced in a supporting environment.” “[Non-thinking results] if we don’t ask probing and unconventional questions.” “One way organizations stifle there most creative thinkers is by simply not listening to them.”

This sounds reasonable. So why isn’t it safe to think in most organizations?

“Because so many managers have hidden agendas, they are unaware that their resistance hamstrings the creativity and productivity of their subordinates. Often, when performance in the workplace deteriorates,… they wonder why their employees act brain damaged in a crisis.” [Quoting Linda Honold]: “to encourage people to think for themselves… learn to ask them what they think should be done. It’s truly amazing what can happen when you allow people to answer their own questions.” “Management must develop a strategy for increasing each individual’s employability. The goal should be to assist employees to develop work skills that will make them more valuable to their present company and to anyone who hires them.”

This last point strikes at the heart of the hidden agenda. If employees are made more employable, won’t they leave the company? This is not an empty question. Some research has shown that making employees more marketable (e.g., reimbursing educational expenses) leads to loss of employees. For example, according to Finance and Development, an official publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) non-western countries that provide education to their population still seem to lose professionals to western countries because professionals prefer to work where the quality of living is higher. On the other hand, western countries having the highest educational standards suffer little brain drain. The analogy for corporations: if a company is a frustrating place to work then making employees more marketable will result in their flight; on the other hand, when the workplace is rewarding, enhancing marketability is seen as yet another perk anchoring employees to their organization.

In other words, managements that deny their employees marketability are testifying to their own incompetence[3]. It is as if they are saying “we don’t want people that work here to have marketable skills because if they did, they would leave.” The comedy of this attitude is even enshrined in a Frank and Ernest cartoon. But creative employees will always find a way to market their services and creative ideas are the ones most desperately needed, as Kline and Saunders note.

“Most truly creative ideas have… much trouble getting accepted…. [P]romotions in large companies may be far more influenced by territorial politics than by an intelligent drive to get the right person in the right job.” “Failure to respond to the full potential of creative projects could be the most costly form of mismanagement in industry today.” “[O]ne can hardly imagine a more valuable resource in industry today than a team that can think creatively as well as defend and promote its ideas.”

Step 4, Reward Risk Taking

In Step 4, Kline and Saunders talk about permanent whitewater. Permanent whitewater is the uncertainty that underlies all of our activities. We can be certain that future activities contain uncertainty. It seems sensible, therefore, to perform a risk analysis on any activity we seek to undertake. Here Kline and Saunders advocate “scientific risk taking.” That is, one should operate on the boundary between certainty and uncertainty. If we operate in complete certainty, we do not undertake the risks we should that could have a big payoff. If we operate in complete uncertainty, we are merely gambling with our companies fortune.

In classroom discussions we spoke about a physical analogy where all the interesting chemistry happens at the boundary between liquid and gas or solid and liquid. For example, in the combustion of fuel oil, the oil droplet never burns. Instead heat from the combustion zone vaporizes the fuel. It is the vapor which actually ignites and provides the heat to vaporize other fuel oil droplets. Analogously, the real payoff comes when we operate at the boundary between certainty and uncertainty. If we have a better than even bet that the risk will pay off, we should proceed. On the other hand, if we have less than 20-40% chance of a return on our investment, we should avoid it. We are merely gambling, not taking scientific risks. Although these estimates are necessarily subjective, they form a good rule of thumb. Finally, if we are certain the risk will pay off, by definition, we are not taking a risk. Obviously, if the idea is a good one, complete certainty is a good thing – but more than likely, complete certainty only results when we contemplate the commonplace and pedestrian. Such ideas often do not have much upside potential and actually waste resources. This is the concept of opportunity cost: tying up resources when they could be used to pursue much higher value-added work.

We must trust our own brilliance and intuition, have a good support team, and overcome the fear of mistakes which can be crippling. If we are open minded and trust and develop our intuition we will win more bets than we lose and our company’s will prosper. Kline and Saunders also advocate setting realistic goals and to visualize them. This kind of out-of-the-box thinking can only occur when people are not afraid to take risks – that is, when the workplace is safe for thinking.

Step 5, Help People Become Resources for Each Other

Step 5 is all about creating an organization where people synergistically interact. When children play, they often self-organize into various roles. Other examples of self-organization are people in crisis. For example, during the 911 disaster in New York City, many people in ordinary walks of life self-organized. Volunteers after the disaster provided food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and all manner of relief. It appears that self-organization is a deeply human trait. So why are so many workplaces so dysfunctional?

Many times the very thing that allows infant companies to leapfrog their competition is the self-organized resource sharing that takes place out of competitive necessity. Years later, however, one is often hard pressed to find any remaining vestige of this in the mature organization. The result of this, in many cases, is that the organization dies. For example, the railway industry was in a perfect place in time and history to transition its expertise into a brand new industry: the new but fledgling airline industry. The railroad industry had the infrastructure to organize men and materiel, scheduling and resource allocation expertise, and the best and brightest in the industry working for it. Alas, the railroad industry never capitalized on their near-monopoly position in transportation. Instead, their wealth and power lead to complacency. Ultimately, they could only helplessly stand by and watch their share of the transportation market evaporate to near insignificance.

One of the keys in becoming an agile and learning organization is to let go of the command-and-control structure in favor of a more self-directed team operating from a principle of enlightened self interest. In order to create this kind of team, people must make the most of their diverse experiences and become resources for one another. This kind of IQ addition allows the team to achieve super-human things. But to do that, we must see each other as more than mere job descriptions.

In our class discussion, one team member related how his or her organization applied authority in a role-based way. A sales engineer had authority to book an order, but not to engineer it. A design engineer could specify the equipment but not speak to the customer. A test engineer could test the equipment but not design it. Instead of looking at whether or not an individual had the expertise to do any of these jobs, people were identified with their job description. The absurdity is all the more highlighted when s/he revealed that all three engineers were the same person! While the employee was a sales engineer, he was only allowed to sell. When he transferred to the design group he was only permitted to design. When he became a test engineer he could only test; this, despite the fact that the employee was highly qualified to do all three jobs. This was amply demonstrated by his job performance in all three categories over his 13-year tenure. In fact, engineers from all three disciplines sought his expertise whenever they had a problem. Apparently other employees recognized what the company could not – the engineer was not merely his job description.

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[1] The Kline and Saunders assessment is found on pp 66 and 67 of their book, Ten Steps to a Learning Organization. It grades learning culture on a Likert scale from 1 to 5. By subtracting 1 from this score, one may convert it to a grade point average (0 – 4, which may be converted to letter grades from F to A using the conversion method in use by most U.S. schools).

[2] Ten Steps to a Learning Organization, Chapter 3, pp 91-111.

[3] One group member encountered that very sentiment in his or her own organization when biographies of employees were removed from marketing materials for the express purpose of impeding their employability elsewhere.