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Posts tagged ‘Organization Development’

Jan 9

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Scrambling cognitive eggs

The Learning Organization has been a buzz word in companies since MIT’s Senge published The Fifth Discipline in 1990.  Yet organizational learning can happen only when individuals in the system learn. And, in most organizations, the individuals in the system are adults.

In my last post I talked about the ways that our brains continue to grow and change throughout our adult lives. There are implications for adult learning environments. Adults work primarily with concepts and patterns, not facts. If we want adults to learn facts, it’s best to introduce the information in small amounts followed by a question, “How does this fit or not fit with what you already know?” Followed by more questions for reflection:

How does this change your view of the way things work?
What do you agree with?
What do you disagree with?
What new patterns do you see when you consider the new information?
Does this make you think of a story or something you’ve experienced?

Those who already practice critical thinking may recognize some of these questions. Critical thinking and reflection are what allow adults to learn, to grow new neurons, to lay down new neural pathways and reinforce old ones. Shaking up our cognitive pathways allows us to continue to learn and grow . . . allowing our organizations to be learning organizations. Let’s make sure our learning opportunities are appropriately scrambled and not all in one basket.

Jan 8

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Cracking the cognitive egg

Researchers continue to describe new findings on the human brain. Long-held beliefs are changing as we learn that our brains continue to form new neurons and connections throughout our lives. I can see applications in organizations for the information being uncovered. From education and training to relationship building and communication, our brains impact how we function and learn.

One of the areas that intrigues me is how I can stimulate my brain to grow and change, to create new neurons and new memory pathways. Dr. Kathleen Taylor suggests that as adults we should focus less on adding to our storehouse of facts. While information is important, a brain tune-up requires that we move out of our comfort zone. Talk to people we normally bypass. Go to lunch with someone who sees things differently. Drive a different route to work. Read a book from a less frequented section of the library or bookstore.

The good news is that as we age, our brains are more likely to see patterns and integrate what we learn into the neural system. The challenge is to take action to continue building our individual system so that we can effectively contribute to the bigger systems to which we belong. So, here’s to scrambled neural pathways and cognitive development …!

Jan 7

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Getting outside of the box

How often have you heard the request, “We need to think outside of the box.”? At the start of the new year, we traditionally pause to reflect and set new goals. But how many of the goals from last year do we even remember?

As I considered this dilemma, I was challenged to get “outside the box” and do a thought experiment by Ron Ashkenas, a blogger at HBR. He suggested firing myself and reapplying for my job. Here are his questions that I asked myself along with a couple of my own:

What are your qualifications?
What would you say in an interview about the changes you would make and the improvements you would engineer?
What unique “stamp” would you put on this new job?
How do you feel about the business strategy and the quality of the leadership team?
What would you change?
What are your strengths? What will you do this year to grow and increase your strengths?

While this is not at the level of the thought experiment that allowed Einstein to come up with e=MC2, the experiment allows me to challenge myself and survey the organizational landscape around me in a different way.

Dec 19

Getting more of what we want

Anticipation

 At our house, against all efforts to re-focus on giving rather than receiving, I still hear the line, “I want _______ (you fill in the blank).” In organizations, this often comes out as people say, “If only _______ (you fill in the blank).”

But is that who we want to be? Is that who I want to be? … someone who asks others to meet my wants? … someone who lives in a world of “if only”?

My Dad has always said, “If you want to meet the right people, you must first be the right person.”  Or we might turn to Peter Drucker, “The successful person places more attention on doing the right thing rather than doing things right.”

As I anticipate the gifts of the holiday season, tangible and intangible, given and received, I seek to be the right person, to want what I have, and to engage in the present moment with hope and anticipation. When I’m focusing in the right direction, my dreams and possibilities have a chance of becoming reality.

Dec 18

Quiet desperation

Whatever your faith tradition, the U.S. culture this time of year is filled with celebrations and parties. The year is winding down while colorful lights push back the winter darkness. We are waiting, waiting for the shortest day of the year to be past, waiting for a new year with its possibilities.

Winter Lights

Yet, in this season of waiting and hoping for new possibilities, I still hear voices of resignation. People voice resignation to events around us that are out of our control, in our organizations, families, and the world. In Walden, Henry David Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

And yet, we get to choose. A colleague reminded me that only 10% of our organization life comes to us through formal channels. The rest comes through informal interaction. In those information interactions, we get to take responsibility for ourselves, our behavior, our relationships, our development, our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.

I ask myself and challenge you to do the same, “What am I doing to develop my capacity to be authentic and present? Am I willing to interrupt my routine to reflect and then be proactive in my life? Am I willing to take responsibility for my actions, thoughts, and physical environment?”

As individuals, we can choose to contribute – appreciate – give freely, or we can choose to hoard – criticize – take. We can act to begin ending the cycle of resignation and desperation. We can act to take a walk, read an article or book, and offer a word of encouragement to those around us. We can be the light that helps to push back the darkness. We can be the change we wish to see in the world.

Nov 24

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Walking in the woods and Organization Development

What does walking in the woods have to do with Organization Development? Stress is necessary for life and work.  To-do lists keep us organized, Blackberries and iPhones keep us in communication, and performance goals keep us focused on the big picture. It’s when we become distressed that our work and organizaiton performance decreases as our bodies react as though there were a tiger just behind the wall. Whether we are overwhelmed gradually or suddenly by the circumstances around us, each person needs to find ways of regaining equilibrium – recharging their batteries.

We’ve all heard the experts talk about how to manage stress and distress successfully: exercise, eat a healthy diet, spend 10 minutes in meditation or prayer, get enough sleep, and spend time with people you care about and who care about you. Yet, too often I find myself making excuses, putting off the necessary action. I hear others doing the same.

Outdoors it is the fall season. The light comes late and fades early. Brilliant red leaves cover the ground under dormant trees. Green wheat covers the ground like a fuzzy blanket, waiting for the gift of snow and spring warmth. Fall – Spring. Light – Dark. Life – Death. Stress – Distress. As Parker Palmer says, “We want light without darkness, the glories of spring and summer without the demands of autumn and winter, and the Faustian bargains we make fail to sustain our lives.”

The challenge for each of us is to take action, to find a way to live the paradox that is stress and distress. Take a walk; each lunch with a friend; read a good book; enjoy a movie; spend some time sitting quietly and connecting with the world around you; sleep well. When we intentionally act to care for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, our organizations and communities can thrive as we engage productively with the energy and innovation that come from well-being.

Action precedes transformation – for individuals and organizations. It is not enough to know what to do; we must do it. “You must be the change you with to see in the world.”

Oct 15

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Just tell me what to do!

“I’m committed to this organization, but I don’t understand what they want anymore. I wish they would just tell me what to do!”

The manager overhearing this conversation on the other side of a cubicle shrugs with frustration and thinks, “I’ve told them. They just don’t get it!”

What is the mystery that underlies this exchange? Managers spend time communicating goals, listening to concerns, and seeking to move the organization toward a shared vision and mission. Employees try to meet expectations and be a part of the team. But there is an unspoken agenda in many workplaces that can undermine the best intentions of managers and employees.

Hours are committed to writing accurate job descriptions. Some employers even develop replicable hiring criteria. Research shows that employees are so stressed by annual performance reviews that productivity suffers for weeks before and after the review. Yet few consider what is the most wished for workplace attribute: that people take on personal responsibility for their work and the organization — that people act as if they are self-employed at work.

Here are some of the unwritten attributes that define the self-employed at work phenomenon:

  • Be creative and inventive – see your work as owned by yourself, not by your employer or supervisor.
  • Be self-initiating and self-evaluating – identify problems and issues and evaluate what is working and what isn’t, suggest and initiate potential solutions. Don’t wait for others to do it for you.
  • Take responsibility – see yourself as an actor that participates in creating the internal and external work environment, you are as responsible for what happens in the organization as the next person, including your supervisor.
  • Be professional – master and author your work role and career. Don’t be an apprentice forever, continually imitate others, or only mimic the company line.
  • See the system as a whole – look beyond your own role and part to see the whole, your relationship to the whole, and how the parts work together.

While most of us were hired for a specific position and may not actually be self-employed, I would invite consideration of the idea that employers biggest, unwritten wish is that people take ownership of their job, that they become self-employed at work. Robert Kegan and his team continue to do research on this issue as well as on the idea of immunity to change. I recommend his book, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, which looks at the question of what is really being demanded of us not only in the workplace, but in life.

Oct 2

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Rushing ahead for more of the same

I’ve been thinking about change and transformation. It seems to me that most things that are “new” are often just the same things we’ve always had, perhaps with an incremental change here or there. A new computer has a slightly faster chip or a screen that’s an inch larger on the diagonal. Even the questions we asked are often worded in such a way as to create the context or framework for the answer.

The current buzz word flying through the air is innovation. For me the challenge with innovation is not to design a process that creates an opportunity for brainstorming or mind mapping that leads to the slightly different. And I will concede that any process or method has built-in biases for outcomes.  The challenge is to create an environment or an experience that pushes us to go beyond our assumptions and self-imposed boundaries.

Perhaps the key is to live the questions, to hold the opposing demands together: experimenting with reproducibility, spontaneity with stability, and surprising serendipity with effective efficiency. This is easier said than done. The beginning is to move to the level of systems thinking where we not only seek to understand and be understood, but to integrate the pieces into a whole.

Creating an environment that fosters space for innovation will require strategic planning and storytelling, mission statements and poetry, and schematic drawings and publicly visible art. My hope is to discover a road less traveled rather than rushing along the interstate of life, rushing ahead for more of the same.

Sep 6

Sailing with Dragons

I’ve been thinking about the tsunami of information that seems overwhelming and at the same time, necessary. The number of words written on WordPress can exceed 43 million per day, which doesn’t count traditional print media or any of the other popular social networking and blogging sites. There are organization strategies known as knowledge management systems that attempt to make sense of the tide of information. There are individual strategies for organizing e-mail and schedules.

And yet, we need to implement effective strategies to contain and manage the knowledge necessary for the linear processes in our work and life. And additionally, we need to have flexible strategies designed to help us, and the organizations we are a part of, make sense of the knowledge and information. When we have effective management processes and time to tell the stories that make sense of what is happening, our organizations will begin to thrive.

Having an effective process map and the narrative stories to give direction are not the only helpful things for organizations. It can also be helpful to go sailing with dragons. A few weeks ago I wrote about our maps and talked about the dragons that live beyond the edge of the known world. A willingness to live the full adventure, to accept the contradictions and paradoxes encountered, to not have all the answers, . . . these are keys to innovation and discovery.

The College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the study of Cartography, succeeding generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. 
    Jorge Luis Borges in Of Exactitude in Science

Jul 23

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Our Maps of the World

The human brain is an amazing organ. The wiring is now known to be flexible and adaptable throughout life. That wiring is what gives each person a unique view of the world, their own . . . , individual . . . , World Map.

In times of change and transition, we are disoriented. Our brains start by searching through our maps for familiar terrain, places, and paths — the ones that have helped us successfully navigate our experience.  If we fail to find a map that can serve us, we may reach a point where we agree with the old map makers, who when reaching the end of the known world, wrote, “Beyond here there be dragons.”

In our organizations and relationships, all of us act and react based on our maps. This works well until we are confronted with the extraordinary. The extraordinary can take many forms, an organization shake-up, a stock market collapse, a trip to another country, a death. When we encounter the extraordinary, we are invited to choose: turn back to the familiar and safety of our known map or confront and befriend the dragons of the unknown, creating a new map.

We were talking of dragons, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire Bar. The big workman
Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe
All evening, from his empty mug
With gleaming eye glanced toward us:
“I seen ’em myself!” he said fiercely.
                 C.S. Lewis in The Alliterative Metre

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