John was sitting on a weekly departmental “all hands” phone call when the question was asked by the general manager, “How valuable did you find the 2-hour web training session that was conducted yesterday by the IT department?” After some brief hesitation by all the participants, someone eventually pipes up to say that he thought the training was quite well done and very valuable for all of the participants. You smile to yourself because you know that the training was horrible: the trainer failed to present the material cogently and succinctly; the trainer offered no context for the material being presented; and, the material seemed to be presented disjointedly, in random order, without observations about the relative importance of different elements, and with little explanation as to its use cases. What do you do now? Should you say something?
Well, what you do depends largely on the culture of your organization. If it’s permissible to be honest and open about how you felt, diplomatically of course, you voice your concerns over what you think was missing from the training and make suggestions on how to improve it. You also acknowledge your appreciation for the effort made, but suggest concrete ways in which it could have provided greater benefit to you.
If it’s not permissible to be open and honestly critical of the effort made by another employee, then you simply parrot the same positive refrain issued by the first commenter and let it go at that. In fact, to do otherwise might be viewed as openly challenging or confrontational by the first commenter, who might therefore be offended by your “flagrant” contradiction. So, you refrain from saying what you think; you try to figure out what to say and how to say it so as not to offend the original speaker or the trainer. Or maybe you just waffle and slur some comments in ways that make them largely indecipherable.
Many companies take great pride in what they consider to be their open and honest work environments. But underneath management’s affirmations of these core values and beliefs--honesty and openness--often lies much withholding of sincere dialogue, innovative ideas, suggestions for process improvements, and valid criticisms of current process and policies. People ultimately disengage from the company meetings and supervisor dialogues for three primary reasons: (1) they know that their comments and suggestions will largely be ignored; (2) they realize that their ideas and contributions will be dismissed without explanation or exploration, because that’s what has always happened, or (3) they come to resent management’s “air” of indifference and condescension for anything that challenges the norm. Without the ability to make open and sincere contributions to the company’s body of knowledge and to influence how things are done, people will eventually withdraw from making such offerings. Once this happens, the company loses not only the immediate opportunities for individual and collective performance improvements, but it begins to stifle the development of its employees’ potential through their disengagement from improving the organization and any real long-term organizational learning.
In all honesty, ask yourself the following questions: How often does you manager solicit ideas and feedback from you and others about what's happening inside the organization? In what ways specifically do your supervisor and senior managers work to create a climate of openness, honesty, and trust with respect to the feedback they solicit? Do they then comment directly on the observations, criticisms and recommendations you make; give them due consideration and provide you with their perceptions and conclusions in return; or simply listen and then ignore everything you’ve said, with no explanation? What kinds of dialogues are held around your offerings? How are people rewarded and recognized for such contributions? How does your supervisor react when people’s recommendations or comments appear to contradict the mainstream thinking? Depending on your answer to these questions, your organization may be learning a lot or nothing at all.
Showing posts with label organizational learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organizational learning. Show all posts
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Friday, January 19, 2007
The Context for Providing These Myths
In rereading the postings so far, we can see that it might be easy for readers to simply think this is just another management bashing venue, painting a more serious and somewhat pedantic face over the types of vignettes and behaviors characterized in the very mocking “Dilbert” cartoons. But that is not our intention at all. We need to take a moment to set straight the context for our site’s entries.
Our intention is to expose some very deep-seated beliefs that appear to be both commonplace among senior managers and somehow so deeply ingrained into their subconscious that they remain invisible and, therefore, unchallengeable and unexamined. It’s almost a truism that the beliefs people hold very much define and fix their attitudes, decisions, and actions, and this is no different for managers. (Beliefs affect even people’s perceptions, i. e., their interpretation of direct inputs to their sensory devices: eyes and ears). Look behind what managers do and you can begin to discern what they actually believe, not necessarily what they say they believe. But, in what contexts are those beliefs ever actually examined or challenged in the workplace?
If people want to change how they perceive, speak and act, they have to change what they believe. Unfortunately, what senior managers actually believe is not always clearly discernible, and even when most employees correctly infer what their managers consciously or subconsciously believe, it is almost never discussable. Listen to Peter Senge discussing the idea of “mental models”:
“. . . new insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models—surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works—promises to be a major breakthrough for building learning organizations.”
Our intention is to make visible the kinds of deep-seated beliefs that very often operate in the business world, particularly high in the executive councils, because those beliefs and the corresponding attitudes they engender tremendously affect people’s perception of the company, their attitudes about both the workplace and their bosses, and the degree to which they choose to participate in and work to improve organizational functioning. If managers want to begin to harness the tremendous intellectual and emotional energy that resides in their employees, they need to examine how their current beliefs or “mental models” de-power employees and limit the employees’ opportunities and desire to contribute. Conversely, seriously examining their uncovered beliefs in light of the myths we offer here may shed additional light on real opportunities to unleash the full potential of their employees and improve their workplaces.
Our intention is to expose some very deep-seated beliefs that appear to be both commonplace among senior managers and somehow so deeply ingrained into their subconscious that they remain invisible and, therefore, unchallengeable and unexamined. It’s almost a truism that the beliefs people hold very much define and fix their attitudes, decisions, and actions, and this is no different for managers. (Beliefs affect even people’s perceptions, i. e., their interpretation of direct inputs to their sensory devices: eyes and ears). Look behind what managers do and you can begin to discern what they actually believe, not necessarily what they say they believe. But, in what contexts are those beliefs ever actually examined or challenged in the workplace?
If people want to change how they perceive, speak and act, they have to change what they believe. Unfortunately, what senior managers actually believe is not always clearly discernible, and even when most employees correctly infer what their managers consciously or subconsciously believe, it is almost never discussable. Listen to Peter Senge discussing the idea of “mental models”:
“. . . new insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models—surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works—promises to be a major breakthrough for building learning organizations.”
Our intention is to make visible the kinds of deep-seated beliefs that very often operate in the business world, particularly high in the executive councils, because those beliefs and the corresponding attitudes they engender tremendously affect people’s perception of the company, their attitudes about both the workplace and their bosses, and the degree to which they choose to participate in and work to improve organizational functioning. If managers want to begin to harness the tremendous intellectual and emotional energy that resides in their employees, they need to examine how their current beliefs or “mental models” de-power employees and limit the employees’ opportunities and desire to contribute. Conversely, seriously examining their uncovered beliefs in light of the myths we offer here may shed additional light on real opportunities to unleash the full potential of their employees and improve their workplaces.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
The Myth of the Management “Team”
A corollary to the myth that people are endowed with specific attributes, knowledge, skills and experience simply by virtue of the position or title they hold is another myth, the myth of the management “team,” described quite well in Peter Senge’s 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline.
Mr. Senge talks about this august group of senior executives who battle collectively to define the organization’s pathway, knock down internal and external obstacles, and provide the wherewithal for the organization to compete and survive in the marketplace. But in describing how this “team” functions in reality, he makes the point that the way they function tends to minimize any chance for collective or individual learning. Listen to what he has to say:
“All too often, teams in business tend to spend time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, and pretending that everyone is behind the team’s collective strategy—maintaining the appearance of a cohesive team. To keep up the image, they seek to squelch disagreement; people with serious reservations avoid stating them publicly; and joint decisions are watered-down compromises reflecting what everyone can live with, or else reflecting one person’s view foisted on the group. If there is disagreement, it’s usually expressed in a manner that lays blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal the underlying differences in assumptions and experience in a way that the team as a whole could learn.”
Senge continues by referencing Chris Argyris’s book, Overcoming Organizational Defenses, about the fact that, while executive team’s can function quite well in managing more mundane issues, their cohesiveness and performance break down under encounters with real problems or crises:
“Argyris argues that most managers find collective inquiry inherently threatening. School trains us never to admit that we do not know the answer, and most corporations reinforce that lesson by rewarding the people we excel in advocating their views, not inquiring into complex issues. (When was the last time someone was rewarded in your organization for raising difficult questions about the company’s current policies rather than solving urgent problems?)"
Senge continues:
“Even if we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process blocks out any new understandings which might threaten us. The consequence is what Argyris calls ‘skilled incompetence’—teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning.”
Perhaps we should focus more time and energy on examining the quality of the questions being asked inside our organizations rather than just focusing on the quality of the “answers.” When was the last time your management asked you to focus on the nature of the questions being asked inside your organization?
Mr. Senge talks about this august group of senior executives who battle collectively to define the organization’s pathway, knock down internal and external obstacles, and provide the wherewithal for the organization to compete and survive in the marketplace. But in describing how this “team” functions in reality, he makes the point that the way they function tends to minimize any chance for collective or individual learning. Listen to what he has to say:
“All too often, teams in business tend to spend time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, and pretending that everyone is behind the team’s collective strategy—maintaining the appearance of a cohesive team. To keep up the image, they seek to squelch disagreement; people with serious reservations avoid stating them publicly; and joint decisions are watered-down compromises reflecting what everyone can live with, or else reflecting one person’s view foisted on the group. If there is disagreement, it’s usually expressed in a manner that lays blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal the underlying differences in assumptions and experience in a way that the team as a whole could learn.”
Senge continues by referencing Chris Argyris’s book, Overcoming Organizational Defenses, about the fact that, while executive team’s can function quite well in managing more mundane issues, their cohesiveness and performance break down under encounters with real problems or crises:
“Argyris argues that most managers find collective inquiry inherently threatening. School trains us never to admit that we do not know the answer, and most corporations reinforce that lesson by rewarding the people we excel in advocating their views, not inquiring into complex issues. (When was the last time someone was rewarded in your organization for raising difficult questions about the company’s current policies rather than solving urgent problems?)"
Senge continues:
“Even if we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process blocks out any new understandings which might threaten us. The consequence is what Argyris calls ‘skilled incompetence’—teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning.”
Perhaps we should focus more time and energy on examining the quality of the questions being asked inside our organizations rather than just focusing on the quality of the “answers.” When was the last time your management asked you to focus on the nature of the questions being asked inside your organization?
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