Organizations as Communities - Part 1

Today, the very definition of organizations has changed. The impact of digitization is going far beyond a few collaboration tools and platforms. Today’s organizations are no longer defined by fixed workplaces, nine-to-five working hours or even a set of homogeneous employees. Organizations have become boundary-less and often, location agnostic and virtual. Operational and business models have been turned on their heads with the advent of enterprises like Uber, Airbnb, Etsy and Amazon. And no industry is immune to this disruption — from education to retail, from healthcare to hospitality — the old business models are being rapidly upended by new ones.

We have entered the Black Swan era with un-directed and unpredictable events regularly cropping up. These complexities are continuing to exponentially increase as we enter a hyper-digital era with AI, Robotics, 3D printing, Wearables, Alternate Reality and VR, and much more looming over the horizon. Some of the key shifts were identified by Dr. Lynda Gratton in her book, The Shift, and are depicted in the diagram below:

The Paradigm Shifts

These paradigm shifts are causing wide-scale disruption in our personal and professional lives, and reflect an urgent need to rethink and re-imagine the organization in order to embrace the potentials and affordances offered by the digital era. This is not merely about implementing a few collaboration tools or putting in place an Enterprise Social Network (ESN) with the diktat to “collaborate”. It requires a complete re-imagining of how business gets done.

Organizations have to integrate the power of design thinking and emergent technology to create spaces where everyone can bring in their fullest potential and authentic selves. Going ahead, organizations of the future will possibly function as Transformative Communities connecting diverse, distributed and multi-talented individuals who will come together to move toward an Evolutionary Purpose. 

The need for organizations to function as communities of passionate and purpose-driven individuals is becoming even more critical in the face of unprecedented upheaval being faced at local, global and planetary levels. Top down, hierarchical, command and control organizations just do not have the agility or the resilience to meet the needs of today. As the world becomes increasingly connected and networked, it calls for organizations that are equally connected, decentralized and self-organizing.

An organization’s communities today cannot be restricted to its internal employees but would extend to include contractual and contingent workers, partners, vendors and suppliers, and also customers and competitors — the extended enterprise. I would also add the Planet and all sentient beings since every decision taken has a ripple effect with the capacity to impact millions far away from the origin of the organization. For example, the massive expansion of palm oil plantations in Borneo and Sumatra are directly threatening the survival of orangutan population in the wild. We are all well versed with the Butterfly Effect.

Hence, this “extended enterprise” is as critical to the sustainability — nay, the Thrivability — of the business as any direct employee/shareholder. It’s no longer enough to build an organizing that survives or is even just sustainable. The former implies a closed view/self-focus and the latter implies an organization that is just maintaining itself. A thrivable organization is anti-fragile, holds space for emergence and creates opportunities for the thriving of others, and flows with the change. 

Perhaps it is time for organizations to pause and ask:

“How can an organization be designed such that it becomes a space that nurtures, supports and enables conditions of thriving?”

The diagram below created by Jean Russell highlights the differences...

Ref: http://thrivable.net/philosophy/what-is-thrivability/

A lack of Systems Thinking and understanding of Complex Adaptive Systems coupled with the desire/pressure for limitless growth have led organizations toward the kind of tunnel vision which has collectively led us to a place no one wanted to reach.

I am emphasizing on organizations becoming communities because communities allow us to tap into Collective Intelligence from a diverse pool of people without the constraint of hierarchy, permission and rigidity. To be an evolutionary and purpose-driven organization and to engage in situations we do not have a roadmap for, it is important to seek/curate collective intelligence.

However, the underlying business processes, managerial strategies, and workplace protocols still adhere to mechanistic, Industrial Era paradigms with performance, speed and bottom line being the drivers. These lead to short term thinking, repeating of past patterns, loss of innovation, frustration and burnout, and a joyless work environment. Viewing an organization through the lens of a machine and people as cogs worked when the world was predictable, change happened very slowly, lessons of yesterday became best practices of today, and assembly line production ruled the day.

Gone is that era. The 90’s brought the term VUCA into our consciousness. And the last decade has seen a veritable tsunami of change. Technology is taking us to a world that is science-fiction-like in its possibilities. But everything will come to naught if the patterns, mindsets and underlying consciousness guiding us continue to remain static. Our organizations today are still using old maps while the landscape has dramatically shifted. Unless we are cautious, we will run the risk of using technology to amplify and empower old systems and processes (faster production, greater efficiency, higher bottom line) while the organization gradually becomes less human, and we come face-to-face with our own Frankenstein.

As we lose our humanity to the glitzy appeal of speed and technology, so will we lose our interconnectedness with each other and all sentient beings.

The power of technology is immense. The choice is ours — whether we use it to amplify our humanity and connectedness to each other and the planet or we use it to further short-term profits at the cost of humanity and all sentient beings.

In the next post of this series, I have explored some of the core competencies required to hold space and thrive in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Personal Learning Networks: Learning in a Connected World

I have recently joined the open section of #MSLOC 430 - a graduate course in the Master's Program in Learning and Organizational Change at Northwestern University. This is the first week and I am absolutely looking forward to exploring the topics, learning from the other participants and participating in exciting conversations. The four topics we are planning to deep dive into in the first two weeks are: a) Networked learning, b) Personal Learning Networks, c) MOOCs, and d) Communities of Inquiry.

These are all areas of interest for me, and my hope and plan is to find (make) sufficient time to explore each of these in depth. Given that I have been writing about PLNs and MOOCs for some time now, I thought I would delve a bit deeper into the importance of building PLNs in this post. I have written about the impact of various shifts and trends like globalization, work fragmentation, ubiquitous network and access to the mobile web, social media, and the economy of individuals on the way we work and learn in the following posts: Re-imagining Work and Learning in a Networked World, Working out Loud and Serendipity and The Changing Face of Work and Workplace Learning. Here's a list of related posts on learning in a networked world. 

The world of work, and life in general, is transforming due to profound shifts in various areas.

These shifts have far-reaching implications on all aspects of our life. The focus of this post is to highlight how they impact work and careers, and why is it more important than ever before to intentionally build a PLN. 

In today’s model of a global organization, teams are often scattered, employees work onsite or from home, road warriors are always “on the road”—in short, the concept of teams working shoulder to shoulder every day, literally and metaphorically standing by each other, talking over problems and challenges at their desks are slowly being replaced by virtual teams who interact via social tools and platforms, use Webex for meetings, get into teleconferences to talk over issues and update each other via enterprise social networks, emails and WhatsApp. Add to this, the rise of the individual worker (employees on contract, working from home, holding a second job, project-based workers, etc.) working from anywhere - home, cafeteria, library, where you will...and we can see the need for the individual to take ownership of their professional development. The rise of the economy of individuals and on-demand economy is here...

Work is becoming location agnostic. It is no longer necessary to come to office. Ubiquitous connectivity, mobile devices and social platforms ensure that work can happen from anywhere. Distributed and dispersed teams are coming together for projects, and disbanding once the task is accomplished. While the need for permanent employees and a dedicated workforce will still continue, the shift is evident. Some of the critical impact of the shift are highlighted below:

One of the outcomes of this impact is a need for employees to take charge of their own professional development. Those with cutting edge skills in their core areas of expertise will continue to see demand for their work while others waiting for orgs to re-skill them might just run the risk of becoming irrelevant. One of the ways to keep on top of our game, and remain on the cutting edge of relevant skills and knowledge is to be a part of communities of practices and to focus on building and maintaining our PLNs with a deliberate intention to learn, share and collaborate. The ubiquitously connected world and the phenomenal rise of mobile devices are going to impact and disrupt how we drive our professional development. The diagram illustrates some of the possible approaches to creating our PLN within an organization.

Why is building a PLN so critical, especially today?

Learning networks are based on the theory of Connectivism, or learning from diverse social webs. Connectivism, the theory underpinning how we learn and interact in the networked era, implies that learning relies on communicating ideas and having meaningful interactions. A PLN is an enabler of such learning. A PLN can be seen as one's gateway to continuous learning, exchange of thoughts and ideas, validation of one's thoughts and insights on challenges encountered, and an involvement in the process of continuous inquiry and exploration on topics that matter. In today's context of rapid change, unexpected challenges, and complex scenarios, it is not possible for an organization to provide training for every conceivable skill that may be required in the future. Moreover, since a large part of the skills and knowledge required to handle tasks and problems today are emergent, the possibility of training gets ruled out. Training is essentially past focused preparing workers for known skills and bridging known knowledge gaps to meet known and defined goals. What happens when the knowns become unknowns? What happens when speed and innovation are the keys to success? 

There are quite a few models and frameworks for how we can go about building our PLNs. I have referenced some of the ones I use here:

+Harold Jarche 's Seek - Sense - Share model

An elaboration of the above model by +Jane Hart showing the tools and platforms used during each stage of the process:

Here are some tips from Howard Rheingold on building PLNs:

And one more with examples of social platforms and tools from Joyce Seitzinger:

An analysis of the diagrams above reveal that there are primarily 5 steps in the entire PLN building process - Explore, Collect, Review, Re-create, Share. I would also like to emphasize that PLN is intricately linked to one's personal knowledge management (PKM) capabilities. The former wouldn't make sense without the latter. 

With complexity, chaos and flux taking over and becoming the norm, we can expect codified knowledge stocks to have very short shelf-lives. A constant state of flux is giving rise to ambiguity, uncertainties and volatility — the characteristics of a VUCA world. We have moved from an age of best practices to emerging practices and no one can be intelligent on their own any more. In this kind of a scenario, learning and sense-making happen through reflection, dialogue and direct application to test hypothesis. 

Trying to make sense of a complex situation alone is the equivalent of six blind men trying to comprehend the characteristics of an elephant. This is where an individual's PLN becomes important, and the more diverse it is the better. Diverse here implies cognitive diversity -- arising from different world-views, cultural perspectives, varied educational background, and possessing different problem-solving frameworks and heuristics. A PLN of diverse individuals not only helps to hold up widely different viewpoints on the same challenge but also broadens and deepens one's learning. Diversity of thoughts and ideas are the best precursors to innovative and creative solutions. PLNs typically consist of strong and weak ties. Exchanging of deep and tacit knowledge, i.e., knowledge which is not codified and where learning happens through the process of dialogue and reciprocity typically work with strong ties. Weak ties bring in the much needed variety of thoughts and opinions. One's PLN should ideally consist of a mix of strong and weak ties to maintain a balance. 

Creating and maintaining a learning network has huge possibilities with mobile and social becoming a way of life in a highly networked and ubiquitously connected world. We no longer need to wait for that conference or that special workshop to meet like-minded folks. We can find them and connect with them on Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Pinterest... Each platform has its unique strengths and can be used accordingly. It requires some hands-on exploration to understand the platforms. We need a new set of skills. 

Building one's PLN in the online world requires skills like networking, participating in communities of practices, collaborating online, and curation and aggregation to process the information. While developing the skills do take some effort and persistence, the benefits are tremendous and provide the necessary motivation. The diagram below illustrates how one can go about building one's PLN on Twitter. However, the most important point to remember is that social learning and collaboration is a mindset, an attitude and not just a set of tools. The tools and platforms are facilitators and knowing how to use them is important. But it is out attitude that makes interacting with our PLNs fruitful and satisfying.

While it seems to be a series of steps, it does require engagement, reflection and effort. It is also a state of mind. IMHO, people with a growth mindset are likely to invest time and effort in building and maintaining a PLN because they believe that there is always an opportunity to learn more, to improve and explore. Thus, they will very likely reach out to their network with queries, go to reference links and read what people are sharing, and then apply the learning back to their work. 

Characteristics of a PLN

Everyone's network looks different. Everyone connects with those they can learn from, trust and respect. A PLN is a location and time agnostic community for exchange of thoughts and ideas in a safe environment. A PLN is accessible all the time. We can post a question on twitter or any other social networking tools, and be assured of a response. In this collaborative economy, sharing is a much valued trait and one of the pillars in building a PLN. One cannot hope to receive without giving first. Networks have a profound impact on how we learn. Establishing credibility with one's network is essential. Credibility arises out of constancy in sharing useful content, interacting respectfully, valuing and expressing gratitude for help received, reaching out and helping others pro-actively, and not being afraid to be vulnerable. It's absolutely OK to say, "I don't know! Can someone help me with this?" But remember to pass along the help. In a PLN, everyone is a contributor, learner as well as a teacher. By connecting with diverse individuals, we can build a broad and deep support system of colleagues, mentors and coaches. PLN is a two-way street, and collaboration and cooperation drive its spirit. As Maya Angelou said:

"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back."

Re-thinking Workplace Learning and Performance

Yesterday, I wrote a post on Learning vs. Performance – the Dichotomy. It was more of a theoretical exposition on why learning doesn’t necessarily translate into performance, and delved into some of the psychological and behavioral aspects of the same. A friend rightly pointed out that while theories and hypothesis are all good, how does one actually deal with the challenge in practice? Why is it that learning and training don’t translate into performance? Where are all the training rupees, euros, dinars and dollars going? Why are employees still not performing as expected? Why are businesses failing? What should L&D do about it?

In today’s post, I have tried to analyze the learning – performance dichotomy from a more practical standpoint. For a business leader / CEO or anyone else responsible for the bottom line and for sanctioning the training money, learning doesn’t really matter. It’s the business continuity and profit that are the yardsticks of successful performance. Yet L&D squirms at the question of ROI. ROI remains as elusive and mysterious as ever, a veritable unicorn of the L&D world. I won’t say I have debunked the myth of the ROI here. I have just tried to explore various reasons as to why even well-designed programs fail to achieve the desired business results.

We tend to forget that training is just one of the means to achieve business outcome (at least that is the hidden hope in the hearts of a business person). HR might take the “number of hours of training provided to employees” attitude in the interest of employee engagement and Gallup polls. These number of hours typically show up as statistics in the annual HR report and is of very little interest to either the CXOs or the employees. If anything, ironically these statistics further confirm the inefficacy of training. What does matter – critically – is performance and the impact on business. The outcome of the training programs. Today’s employees cringe at the thought of having to attend training programs when they know that they can figure out how to get the work done more quickly and effectively – either by asking their network or by going to Google.

From this standpoint, there are multiple reasons why learning and training – no matter how well designed – don’t necessarily lead to performance. The premise of training is very different from that of performance. Training looks at the knowledge and skill gaps that exist in the employees. Performance looks for the gaps in business. The approach to both are dramatically different.

It’s common knowledge that L&D typically begins by taking a TNA a.k.a. Training Needs Analysis approach; the assumption that training is required having already been made. Instead, imagine a situation where one begins by analyzing gaps in business goals and objectives, i.e., which goals and objectives have not been met and why. A thorough Root-Cause Analysis may reveal various reasons behind the failures to achieve business goals. Some of these could be: 

1. A lack of skilled individuals or wrong people in the wrong role 
2. Ineffective recruitment process leading to gaps in core skills (I have often encountered this situation) 
3. A churn in teams such that employees don’t get the time to acquire the skills required 
4. Lack of experienced individuals to lead effectively 
5. Past experiences holding people back with the “this is how we've always done it” attitude 
6. A fear of failure leading to lack of experimentation and innovative thinking 
7. Inability to keep up with the rapid churn in technology and use it optimally 
8. Hierarchical organizational structure causing silos in orgs blocking knowledge sharing 
9. Managers or supervisors are unable to coach and mentor their team 
10. Organizational culture causing dissatisfaction or loss of motivation

Now, no amount of training will lead to improved performance except in the case of point #1 because none of the other problems are related to training or skills gaps. Hence, treating training as a panacea for all ills is highly unlikely to work. And business is left asking the question, “What happened to the money we spent on that training program?”

Training only works where there is a skill gap to fill. And that too, only when the gap is well-defined and known. Even then, to see a behavioral change large enough to have an impact on business goals, it is essential to provide other means of support through coaching, mentoring, on-the-job feedback, opportunity to observe and shadow experienced peers, providing stretch assignments, access to performance support tools, and so on. I wrote about this in my post here. Ensuring performance and business focused outcome calls for a different approach.

An understanding of the crucial business goals and vision become the first step in a performance-focused approach. L&D – as a partner to business – not only has to understand the challenges of business but also needs to be able to analyze and define the root cause of the gaps. While some of the solutions may be beyond the purview of traditional L&D role, it is important to don the mantle of OD (organizational development) specialists also with businesses and the environment becoming increasingly complex and interconnected. 

This approach should help both L&D and business recognize where training can play an important role and show visible business benefits, and where other interventions (beyond training) are required. Most often, the perfect solution lies in a combination of interventions. Organizational challenges today are multi-pronged and taking a single approach doesn’t work. It is entirely possible that while training may be a requirement, other concerns also need to be simultaneously addressed, like the removing of organizational silos, enabling managers to become coaches, ensuring that the right person is in the right role, and so on. 

L&D cringes at the mention of ROI because we know that training is not the only solution and employed in isolation is not likely to show visible benefits. However, most L&D folks are not confident enough to venture into realms beyond that of training and learning design, and thus don’t bring up other organizational factors. But the pitfall of not doing so are many. L&D gets a bad name and business doesn’t really consider us as partners. OD, HR and L&D must come together to enable organizations to realize their potential. 

In summary, not all problems can be solved with training. There are challenges beyond skill gaps. Putting the onus of professional development in the hands of employees by providing them with the appropriate infrastructure in the form of enterprise collaboration platform might work to some extent but not always. Challenges mentioned above require different interventions and approaches. Only through a holistic mingling of methods and by taking a systems thinking approach is it possible to see a visible impact on performance and business outcomes.   

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Learned vs. Learners

I have been deviating from the key themes of this blog, i.e., learning, performance, training and collaboration, for some time now. However, the deviations have been topics that moved me deeply, and I did not want to write about them in a separate blog. They are as much a part of me as all things learning. In the future too, I see this blog being intermittently peppered with posts unrelated to organizational learning but delineating experiences that are of personal import.

With today’s post, I am back on the theme of learning and its impact on performance—personal and organizational.

In times of change, learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. -- Eric Hoffer

This classic quotation summarizes in a sentence what takes scholars and academicians reams of paper to theorize and prove. And this is the trigger for today’s post. The difference between the terms “learners” and “learned” is crucial in today’s environment of constant change, and this is my topic for today.

I have recently been reading Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement at a colleague’s recommendation. This is one of those must read books for trainers/learning and development professionals/anyone interested in the phenomenon called learning.

Building Expertise deals with learning and training as it needs to be. However, before I ramble on, I want to clarify that this post is not a book review. I want to highlight a few concepts from the book that impact how we think of learning, training and performance.

It is now common knowledge that an organization’s ability to innovate is its competitive edge in today’s economy. Innovation itself is a term that requires some unpacking. For example, it could be used to mean blue ocean thinking or innovation by combining the already existing in an entirely novel, unforeseen manner. But I digress.

In this post, I want to examine a few aspects of expertise and what that means for the workers of the 21^st Century.

According to Wikipedia (2007) “…an expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a particular area of study.” ~ Building Expertise, Ruth Clark

Today, we need experts and in more diverse areas than we even know. However, building expertise is becoming a challenge—an almost insurmountable one on occasions. In the earlier days, expertise came from experience. Often, years of it; 10,000 hours of it. This experience was then codified into best practices and the next generation of workers was trained to follow the best practices and get the desired results. Predictable, measurable, trainable! This worked wonderfully (when the world was stable and work was routine) till it didn’t anymore. We all know that we have reached a point where codified best practices have almost ceased to exist. Almost, because there are some routine tasks that still need to be done, but do human agents need to do those? More importantly, are those the kind of work that will provide us with the indispensable competitive edge? Maybe not. With everything changing at a pace never experienced before, there is no time to undergo the same experience repeatedly for the building of expertise around it. I am talking about knowledge work here. Not about playing the guitar or becoming a champion chess player. Those kinds of expertise will still need 10,000 hours of practice.

Ruth Clark, in the book, describes 7 lessons learned about experts:

1.       Expertise requires extensive practice

2.       Expertise is domain specific

3.       Expertise requires deliberate practice

4.       Experts see with different eyes

5.       Experts CAN get stuck

6.       Expertise grows from TWO intelligences

7.       Challenging problems require diverse expertise (this ties in with what Scott Page says in The Difference but that is for another post)

What most interested me are the last two. My Aha! moment happened when I read about the concept of two intelligences. While I have read about adaptability, understand its impact and importance in a world that is in a constant state of beta, I was not sure I could explain it to someone else with conviction and theoretical support.

She talks about routine expertise vs. adaptive expertise and crystallized vs. fluid intelligences. 

Quoting from the book below:

Routine experts are very effective at solving problems that are representative of problems in their domains. They are adept at “seeing” and solving the problem based on their domain-specific mental models.

In contrast, adaptive experts evolve their core competencies by venturing into areas that require them to function as “intelligent” novices.

Fluid intelligence is the basis for reasoning on novel tasks or within unfamiliar contexts; in other words, it gives rise to adaptive expertise. In contrast, crystallized intelligence is predicated on learned skills…and is the basis for routine expertise. 

Routine experts are the learned ones who have deep domain-specific knowledge; however, often this deep knowledge becomes a hindrance in viewing the world through fresh eyes. They tend to see everything through the lenses of their domain. Adaptive experts, on the other hand, are able to take on the role of inquiring novices when required and are thus able to view a problem from different perspectives. They are the learners.

However, it is also important to note that adaptive expertise is based on routine expertise. One cannot adapt to new situations and events unless one has deep domain-specific knowledge.