Organizations: keep an eye on your high speed learners

A participant during my master class on learning of the future shares: "I was learning a lot through the online world and would be at the cutting-edge in my field, this learning was logical part of my work as recruiter. Now I have a new job and it is not a logical part of my function. I don't have the time anymore to be active online. I see that I am no longer aware of all the new developments in my field". You will not get better proof of the power of online, informal learning. And at the same time it shows what the biggest bottleneck is: organizations do not have an eye for self-learning professionals and do not facilitate this type of learning either. The focus is still on courses.

The masterclass started with my definition of the knowmad: "someone who learns continuously and thereby makes smart use of the online world"

The first part of the masterclass I focussed on skills for knowmads, including developing (online) identity, networking, smart use of tools and technology and application in practice: translating the online world and applying learnings. The second part I discussed the organization as a learning environment for the knowmad. Although I do know that many organizations do not actively facilitate informal learning, it was quite shocking (but interesting of course!) to hear stories from the participants.

Two important things struck me:

The big challenge for professionals is to deal with information overload: people indicated that they continuous flow of all information and via various channels (emails, apps, Linked) makes them feel bad. The consequence of this is that they withdraw from the flows and start to avoid information, get rid of Twitter and only follow what is needed (emails). This is a logical response if you start to feel bad because of the flows of information, right? The entire group felt that they had no control over the many information flows. No participant worked in an organization that supports employees to take back control over the information flows.

Organizations do not have a keen eye for inquisitive employees, the high speed learners: that is why professionals often do informal learning in the evenings. This means, for example, that someone who works in a high-tech environment and constantly keeps up to date via podcasts and youtube videos may look for the new job after a few years. To what extent has the organization benefited from this knowledge development? As long as the employee works in the organization, he or she will apply this knowledge. However, it remains personal knowledge but does not become organizational knowledge unless there is a conscious focus on collaborative learning and sharing this knowledge.

An interesting question from a participant: innovation seems to be a keyword for knowmads who learn continuously, but not everyone needs to focus on innovation? I think it's a good question and I am not sure about the answer. There is definitely a difference between functions in their focus on innovation. A high tech environment for instance will have an inherent need to innovate. Personally, I think that actually there is no single function in which innovation is not necessary.  Contexts and technology are changing. The customer also wants something 'new'. What do you think?

The slides of this master class:
 

Knowmadisch werken: het leren van de toekomst from Joitske Hulsebosch

Yammer for internal knowledge sharing for health care and policy making

What is Yammer? 
Yammer is booming, especially in the Nederland within Europe. Many companies have started their Yammer groups for rapid internal exchange. If you don't know Yammer:  Yammer is kind of Twitter (micro-blogging) service which can be used within organisation, so it is not public like on Twitter. The messages can be slightly longer than on Twitter and it is easier to reply (looks a lot like Facebook). Someone from KLM told me for instance he was looking for someone who could explain their wiki system to him. He put out a message on Yammer and found someone who could sit with him and explain it, the very next day. Without Yammer it would have been difficult to find this person.
  Yammer on tour started with great online ramp up
Last thursday Yammer organised the Yamtour. It was very well facilitated beforehand using a -you can predict - a Yammer network. People were invited to introduce themselves, everybody got a nice reply or welcome. People were asked to come forward with topics for the unconference part, and had to think of people they would certainly like to meet. For me it worked in order to meet Emile (whom I interviewed, see the video below). There was a bit of a 'selling' atmosphere in the first presentations like focussing on the ROI van Yammer and other figures to convince people of the value of Yammer. 38% of our time we spend looking for information and Yammer can reduce that time span. I thought it was a missed chance not to link and refer more to the real question that came up through the Yammer group beforehand. But nice to see the examples of various uses of Yammer and how it has opened up knowledge in organisations and made it accessible, through the use of a social approach.

Social online learning = not facilitated? 
Most people I met had the idea that you deploy Yammer, invite people and the rest should be a spontaneous proces. I talked to a member of an IT - company where it had actually worked like this.Someone spontaneously took the initiative to start a Yammer group (a free account). He invited employees from the company and within a few months 80% of the employees was on Yammer. This person explained that it is an IT company and that employees are relatively young. I also meet many organizations where it is set up spontaneously by someone and then it remains a small group of employees who sign up, or people sign up, but very little sharing is going on. I believe in supporting and facilitating the process of adoption. I'm also convinced from a knowledge management/organisational learning prespective you can influence the direction of the conversations that you would like to see on Yammer. Many people I spoke to are worried that facilitation means you are taking the spontaneity away but you can also facilitate and stimulate without imposing conversation topics and rules.


Examples of using Yammer for closing the gap between senior management and the workfloor
I enjoyed the examples of Rijkswaterstaat, Capgemini and Mobile BI. Tim de Waard of Rijkswaterstaat said that they regularly organize Yamjam brainstorming sessions on specific topics. The board of directors was coached to participate during a hands-on laptop session. After the Yamjam, they also wanted Yammer on their Blackberries, because it had given them a good insight into the various complaints and grudges within the company and it gave them the ability to respond to employees. Tim told us he himself currently has a better understanding what the board of directors is doing, before the Yamjams he really had no idea. At Rijkswaterstaat there is a community manager. He ensures that new people join a group called 'new to Yammer' and helps them develop their personalized feeds and filters. He also welcomes new members and organizes Yamjams.  

Capgemini has used Yammer in an interesting way for organizational change. Each year the senior management gets together for a three-days retreat, this time the retreat was planned in Barcelona. They used Yammer to engage a large group of people in the conversations. During the 3 days of the retreat 8000 people have joined Yammer. Presentations were shared in real time, and feedback was collected. This gave senior management a much better understanding of:

•      who the thought leaders are
•      major concerns of employees
•      what excites people

Showing the value of internal knowledge sharing
Finally they spoke about the way to demonstrate actual value created. They recommend to collect cases, every discussion, every question on Yammer may be a case. One tip is to choose a hashtag (# benefit) for conversations that helped people. In one organisation over 1500 cases were collected in this way, that show the variety of ways in which Yammer has helped employees do their jobs. Unfortunately there was no discussion of the advantage of use Yammer above for instance open social media like Twitter.

Practical example of Yammer in healthcare: replacing the client logfile
Afterwards I interviewed Emile de Roy van Zuydewijn from Thuiszorg Emile, about their use of Yammer to replace the client logbook in healthcare. In the Dutch video he explains how they are using Yammer to communicate about clients, using the clients' names as hashtags. There are also clients and other healthcare professionals who can join them in an external network. The advantage is that you can easily communicate with various involved parties. Furthermore, when the client is part of it, it is very transparent.  Emile was the one who thought of it, set it up and introduced it. It wasn't hard to get the students to use it. It might be slightly more difficult though with older groups. He has chosen for Yammer because of the security (closed system), the ease of use and the fact that you can use it on many devices (like via apps).

What strikes me in this case is that there is a pioneer with a clear vision on what a tool can do for a group. You might call that the technology steward role.

Read Dutch?  here's a blogpost by Eric van Oevelen from Avans Hogeschool who was there too. And here's the blogpost by Paul Voors from the NS.

Book review: the new social learning

I read 'the New Social Learning' by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner. There was actually less new information than I had hoped for, I missed a deeper layer of understanding how social media changes learning processes. How do social media change individual, team and organisational learning processes? And how to facilitate that change process? Maybe I'm looking for something that doesn't exist :).

Nevertheless it is a comprehensive overview of what is possible with sociale media in organisations. So if you plan to work with social media to support learning and knowledge management in an organisation it is a practical book with lots of examples. Information is organised neatly per chapter around online communities, multimedia (stories), microsharing/microblogging, collective intelligence, virtual environments and the use of social media to support events. The chapters have the same subheadings. My favorite is 'respond to critics'. I fully recognize the questions that critics ask and the book helps you deal with the questions.

A new term I picked up is 'ambient awareness'. It is similar too, but not the same as 'distant closeness' which is more about intimate contact without the need to have one on one contact. The new ways of communication ask for new concepts. Ambient awareness refers to continuous online contact. Because of this continuous contact it is like you are together and can read each other's mood. Every small message is relatively unimportant but you have to see the relationships through the lens of the stream of messages.

It is an important new term to me. The critics often wonder why I follow people on Twitter who tweet about 'what they have for breakfast'. Next time somebody asks me about Twitter I will not explain that there are also people who don't tweet (only) about breakfast but focus on helping them see that the value is in the full stream of small messages. And the relationships built through that stream.

If you are interested in the book, you can follow news about the book on twitter through @newsociallearn or go to the website.

Extra tip I got through the book: Oneforty is a great site for information about social media tools, for instance the page about twitter tools.

Stimulating informal learning in organisations

It is estimated that professionals learning informally for 80% or even 94%. Personally I'm convinced of this principle though semi-formal events or workshops can play a crucial role in directing learning. As Harry Vos states in his dutch blog "more formal or workshop learning supports informal learning and not the other way around". At the one hand, it is surprising how we focus on formal events, on the other hand it is tempting, also for myself, because they are so much more visible. Informal learning on the other hand seems invisible and a natural process that doesn't need a helping hand, after all people group around the coffee machine automatically. However, you can stimulate informal learning, bringing you as a facilitator in the grey area in between formal and informal learning.


So far I've focused on learning in communities of practice and networks, but there is more to it and I would like to explore the other forms more (including social media ofcourse!!). Together with Sibrenne I've facilitated a learning network for two years. After the two years nobody wanted to continue facilitating it. Interestingly, I have the feeling the informal netwerking and exchange is still going strong. Many of the people I'm still meeting and exchanging with, though not as structured and there are no meeting any longer. It is 'underground learning' and not as accessible to everyone. So facilitating a community of practice or learning network is a great example of the way you can stimulate individual learning to become collective learning- and at the same time, it catalyzes individual learning by the participants (in a dynamic network ofcourse).

But what else can you do to stimulate informal learning processes in organisations? The European PILIP project has created a website about informal learning. It has a quickscan to map informal learning processes which allows you to zoom in on factors that stimulate or hinder informal learning. You might work on those, to catalyze more rapid and effective informal learning processes. You can find a toolbox with tools like intervision, best practice storytelling, etc. I haven't used it yet, but I'm planning to go through it for an upcoming session with a development organisation.

A nice example: I experienced one that a worker was very active in formulating her learing questions, mobilizing relevant colleagues and inviting them for a lunch about the topic. A stimulating factor and positive example! What you can do is name this (literally, give it a name like peer-assist-lunch and stimulate others to copy this practice, for instance by creating a budget to cover for the lunch costs.

Flexibility, fluidity and chaos in organisations

I have a relaxed week- wonderful for catching up with articles and blogs. I read "organizing for fluidity" which had been on my pile for sometime. And I'm reading 'organisational dynamics' by Thijs Homan- in dutch. Both talk about change dynamics in organisations.

Let me start by a story from Kenya when I was studying a smallholder irrigation system. The engineers were surprised that farmers took so long to plough the fields. As soon as the water was on the fields, they would want the farmers to plough within a week or two, but what they would notice is that ploughing activities would continue for 6-8 weeks. When I lived there as researcher I discovered within no time that the polygamous households had a system whereby the husband or the sons plough all the fields. They would plough the husband's fields first, followed by the first, second, third wives' fields. With the same pair of oxen. So that makes it very logical. What surprised me is that the engineer were so caught up in their own way of thinking that they couldn't see the logic of the farmers. Which would have improved their work: the design of irrigation systems. See the need for feedback.

The article by Georg Shreyögg and Jörg Sydow brings across a few important points:

• With rapidly changing environments organisational flexibility is a key pressing issue for organisations, in order to create new combinations of resources fitting the new context. This is often stated and recognised.
  
• One common answer is towards fluidity in organisations and networked organisations, organisations in constant flux or 'chronically unfrozen', but this is ignoring the basics or organisational routines which allow for efficiency. This underestimates what is means to be organised.
  
• Organisations can never fully understand their complex environment and therefore have to model uncertainty and complexity on a template on which members can act. Complexity reducing maps and routines. Organisations cannot escape their history (Schein explains this process very well in organisational cultures and leadership).
• Organisational patterns are reproduced by agents who can and do introduce changes. However, the fluid, flexible organisation, always in flux, would have a high opportunity cost in terms of lost experience, low specialization, low economies of scale. Capabilities become fixed to those constellations that have proven to be succesful. And that allows for efficiency and specialization.
  

It is hence a dilemma for all organisations to balance fluidity and stability. Two solutions are described: organisational ambidexterity (designing subunits to be either efficient or innovative) and balancing countervailing processes. The latter consists of monitoring its stabilization mechanisms. If you want to know more about that, you may read the article, though it doesn't become very practical. I'm translating it by organising sufficient relevant feedback on how you are doing (like the engineers asking the farmers).

Thijs Homan describes change in organisations and distinguished 'planned change' from organic changes. In planned change situations management are often the eyes and ears for the organisation. But the questions is whether in a rapidly changing environment you don't need the eyes and ears of all people in the organisation? He describes different change patterns and local communities. Play is the situation whereby new sense-making is taking place, Game is when this is stabilized. A flexible organisation is in continuous state of Play and chaotic, it moves with every change in the environment. An organisation always in Game is stable.

Very interesting if we look at this from the perspective of a learning organisation. The chaotic organisation might be called a learning organisation because it is continously changing. However, you may not desire this as it is in-efficient.

So in a way both are saying that an organisation should be changing and responding to its environment but not all the time and not in all direction. Find the right balance. So that makes me think the concept of learning organisation is not very useful (and I don't hear it that often anymore anyhow)... Not sure what the practical implications are of this view, but I like it a lot.

Netsquared thinktank: My best blogpost of 2009

I really enjoy Netsquared's thinktank blogging questions sent out to several bloggers each month.. it forces you to think about a topic and you read the other contributions with more interest (I don't read them beforehand). But when I look at my starred mails, there are four invitation of Amy Sample Ward that I didn't respond too. This month it's an easy one she said: What was your favorite, most read, most tweeted, or most commented on blog post from this year? This is your chance to bring it back into the spotlight!

I realized I didn't have a way to find our which blogpost was most often read, though I notice my 10 online icebreakers are often linked too. Through the communities and networks connection site, which aggregates several blogs including mine, I was able to click on my own name and see the best of. My best of are written in 2006 and 2008... But there is one surfacing from 2009:

Can you shift your organisational culture by introducing social media? It's a question by which I'm still intrigued. So here we go:

image through ericmackonline.com

This post may be a little chaotic as I'm using it to get a grip on some of my ideas about social media for organisations. Tomorrow I'm going to write with Sibrenne Wagenaar; we are writing a booklet on social media for learning and collaboration. We start with social media for professionals (individuals), then teams, then organisations. It's the organisational chapter that needs much more thinking. I once asked on twitter whether the exchange on twitter is not similar to the chats with your co-located workers. Someone replied that is it not, that on twitter people are far more open to sharing and helping each other. This started me thinking about the fact that introducing an internal twitter system would NOT make people share. The term enterprise2.0 is often used. But is that an open, creative organisation or is it an organisation with web2.0 tools? In my opinion, an organisation with less web2.0 tools could be more 'enterprise2.0' in terms of culture than an organisation that has a lot of web2.0 tools but lacks the culture.

One confusion is brought by the fact that organisations can embrace social media from so many different angles. I see a higher emphasis on social media from a marketing perspectives than from a learning perspective. If you jump on it for marketing purposes, you will have a different focus and process than when you want to explore how social media can stimulate learning and knowledge sharing processes. But probably in both cases, it has to match your organisational culture too.


Tools and culture: is your organisational culture ready for social media or do you want to shift the culture by introducing social media?. I'm re-reading Schein: organisational culture and leadership. Schein explains very well how cultures are created and reproduced. And that it's possible to influence cultures in organisations. At times I hear that an organisation is using wikis. Or uses Sharepoint internally with the blog function. An organisation seems enterprise2.0 enough because it has tools like blogs, wikis and social bookmarking. However, the juice of social media is far more in the culture of openly sharing knowledge, collaboration, and engaging in co-creation. Having the tools does not mean you have improved the collaboration between your professionals. So what is the actual change that you are envisioning? Can social media play a role in this? But what are the other interventions that are needed to help change the organisational culture? I see a lot of potential for change management professionals to help organisations with this process. On the other hand, there may be organisations that are already having an open culture in which social media fit neatly. But probably these organisations do not need any accompanying change process or at least a different process? So you'd have to start with assessing the culture of the organisation and see whether there is a match or a mismatch with social media cultures.


Another dilemma is how to balance individual preferences and creativity versus uniformity in tools. Back to the original question: what organisational processes do you feel can really be supported by social media? What is the organisational change that you envisage? I don't think there is any organisation that is completely enterprise1.0. I'm sure there are employees engaging in social media individually and that most do use wikipedia for instance. But a real enterprise2.0 is an open, collaborative, creative organisation that leverages the tools to the advantage of the functioning of the organisation. In this organisation: do professionals choose their own tools and are proficient in using them or do they work with the preferential toolset of the organisation?

By the way a nice guide of where to start with social media can be found here on the technotheory blog. However, this is also written from the assumption that you use social media to promote your organisation or products, not to stimulate internal learning processes.

Learning from masters and across disciplines

Image by daskar via Flickr

It is much easier to learn from practitioners who are doing similar things and are working in similar ways as you do. But maybe are slightly ahead of you in some ways.

Weggeman in his book 'Leiding geven aan Professionals? Niet doen!' about managing professionals recounts the story of a famous violist. The story illustrates at the one hand that there may be masters who may find it hard to explicitate their knowledge in words. On the other hand, it show that it is hard to learn from someone who is not a practitioner with a similar knowledge base. Here's the story:

A journalist asked him what the secret was of his success. He thought for a while and then said: "I think it is the way I use my bow, look, this is the way I do it. And this is the way a lot of my colleagues do it." The journalist didn't understand it and couldn't turn it into any sensible information. There was a masterclass pupil of the violinist who had heard the interview and was busy for about half an hour to try and explain to the journalist what the famous violinist had meant.

The journalist did not have the same basic knowledge about playing the violin as the masterclass pupil had. As a result the journalist could not understand the explanation. the pupil was able to understand it and make sense of it.

This bites the idea that you can learn and innovate by working across disciplines. The potential to learn from other disciplines may be high- but the risk that you never understand a thing is very high too.. It may explain for instance the sometimes apparent closedness of the development sector. You hear complaints that the sector is not open to learning from other sectors. It probably needs brokers like the masterclass pupil to make sure that learning is possible at all.

Learning that Sinterklaas doesn't exist = double loop learning

Image via Wikipedia

Sinterklaas time again in the Netherlands! Even though my children are getting bigger and we don't go to the intocht by boat, I enjoy this period quite a lot.

My youngest daughter is eight years old. At this age, you are not supposed to believe in Sinterklaas, hundreds of years old, coming by boat from Spain and bringing all the presents. At school, the children are not invited to the Sinterklaas celebration, but have a new type of celebration where you draw lots (lootjes trekken). You buy a present, make something nice and write a poem for that person.

My family is surprised though, that my daughter still believes in Sinterklaas bringing the presents. An intelligent girl, how come she doesn't see that the beard is not real? That the presents in her shoe are not brought by 'zwarte piet' in the night?

I think this is an example of double loop learning. Single loop learning involves the detection and correction of error. You want to do something and learn how to do it. Double loop learning, however, in contrast, involves questioning the role of the framing and learning systems. In other words, single loop learning takes place within the framework of existing belief system, double loop learning questions the belief system. It takes a lot more for double loop learning to occur.

My daughter has always been told, by friends, family and the media that Sinterklaas exists. She has seen him arrive by boat. She has seen the presents he brings. This has become part of her belief system. Even though there is now evidence against this belief: friends telling her he doesn't exist, buying your own presents for friends, the belief is so firm that it will take more to change this belief. Probably if I'll tell her that he doesn't exist... But let's wait another year, because it is a lot of fun to hide the presents and surprise them!

Schein's ten step culture deciphering process for enterprise2.0

I've reread Schein's Organizational Culture and Leadership. I read it in 2001 with the organisational change processes of Ghanaian organisations in mind. Now I'm reading it with social media introduction glasses. It's been a joy to read it, such good understanding and so practically applicable.

About a learning culture in organisations Schein writes that we don't know tomorrow's world,but we know it will be different, more complex, more fast-paced and more culturally diverse. Hence the need for organisations and their leaders to become perpetual learners. So there is a need to speed up our learning processes and mechanisms. I think social media can contribute to that. But there is a paradox with culture in organisations, culture being a stabilizer, a way to make things predictable. Strong cultures are stable and hard to change. So does it mean that we need more flexibility to change assumptions? A rapidly learning organisation will change its assumptions too.

How and when to assess cultural dimensions? Schein is very strongly saying that it is not useful to assess culture as part of a desire to change the culture. Rather, there should be a clear goal, an organisational problem to be worked on. If that problem has cultural dimensions, it would be good to assess culture and how the shared assumptions support or get in the way of solving the problem of the organisation.

If that is the case, you can use a ten-step culture assessment process to decipher the assumptions at work within the organisation. The steps role from obtaining leadership commitment, via group interviews to identifying artifacts and espoused values. From there you go to the shared tacit assumptions and identify cultural aids and hindrances in relation to the stated problem.

How does this relate to social media introduction in organisations? I think it is very relevant because social media is not introduced out of the blue, but linked to a certain objective. (see the POST model from the Groundswell). If you take the additional step of doing a culture assessment, it would help to decipher assumptions at play which help or hinder the use of social media. Though you may generalize by stating that you need a 'open' or 'knowledge sharing' culture this is so general that it's not helpful. The culture deciphering process could help you to find cultural or subcultural elements that need to shift. And elements that are already in place that match the use of social media for a certain objective. It will definitely increase the chances for success I strongly believe.

I would be very interested in trying this process out in an organization!

Learning from mistakes versus learning from feedback

On the knowledge management for development list there was a discussion about learning from mistakes. Matt Moore pointed to the mistakebank ning platform. I decided to join because I was curious to understand whether you can really learn from mistakes. Some of the examples I felt were rather blunders. For instance, I bumped into another cyclist today- that was clearly my mistake or rather blunder but nothing that you can really learn from, unless maybe to watch out more carefully but hey this is life... so you just say sorry.

And can we only learn from our own mistakes or also other people's mistakes? Through the mistakebank I found a blogpost citing Eleonore Roosevelt who said "learn from the mistakes of others, you can't live long enough to make them all yourself" which was contrasted with the idea that you can only learn from your own mistakes. That would imply we can observe others, their mistakes, and incorporate that in our own practices.

However, most mistakes are not as obvious as bumping into another cyclist. Most mistakes may go unnoticed, may not be recognised like mistakes by the mistaker (did I hear someone mention Bush??) or only by some and not by others. Or the effect of the 'mistake' may take long to become visible. I went back to Kenya where I worked and found out the whole irrigation scheme we built was flooded again because the water levels had risen. And at times it is easy to label something as mistake in retrospect.

In terms of changing practices, learning from honest feedback may be more important, in the form of spontaneous feedback or in organised processes like After Action Reviews. Today I got positive feedback about my blog by being mentioned in this list of knowledge management bloggers. I also got positive feedback after a meeting I conducted "may I give you a huge compliment for this meeting" someone said spontaneously. Since I became freelancer I got much more positive feedback than when I was an employee. I have the impression it is much harder to create a culture of feedback in organisations, after all, it is quite sensitive and may alter your relationships. I also got feedback recently I don't recognize. Hence, it's important the receiver recognises the feedback in order to act upon it, by giving clear examples.

Maybe we need to distinguish levels and types of mistakes? Or rather talk about experiments? Or is it more worthwhile to improve feedback? And how do we learn from mistakes as organisations?

Obsolete (learning) practices

Following on my last blogpost on Is Yours a Learning Organisation, I started thinking about change processes. Becoming (even) more of a learning organisation is basically guiding a change process and improving practices.

Yesterday I noticed that my arms are getting sun-tanned but that on the place of my watch there is an extremely white piece of my wrist. That's because I've taken on the habit of having my watch on all the time. Before I had children, I was quite reticent against watches. If I had one (and I regularly lost them) I kept it in my pocket. This all changed when I started breastfeeding. I was living so much by the clock that I kept my watch on day and night (yes, poor mothers even have to breastfeed in the middle of the night). Now my daughters are 6 and 8 years, so no need for breastfeeding - though I heard a story in Ethiopia that a man of 24 in Harar was still breastfeeding but that's another story altogether- and no need for a watch on my wrist day and night.

What does this have to do with changing practices? I'm really intrigued by practices and habits and entry points for changing them. I never liked the phrase 'resistant to change' because I think it lack understanding and respect for the person. Everyone wants to change, as long as you know what for, why and how, and you can see the point. So when you are talking about a learning organisation 'culture' try to find those obsolete practices and try to find out the history. If you can point out why they are obsolete, you have done half of the work. - time to get back to losing my watches!

Is Yours a Learning Organization?

Via Jay Cross I found this learning organisation scan under the title Is Yours a Learning Organisation? on the Harvard Business Review site, developed by David A. Garvin, Amy C. Edmondson, and Francesca Gino. There is a short online survey with 12 questions, and a longer one, with more depth, can be found here. I'd recommend the longer one, with lots of relevant questions, most of them related to the culture in the organisation with regards to experimenting, networking, etc. A good tool to start talking about what a learning organisation is. To read the full article, you have to pay for it.

I think the term 'learning organisation' knows many different interpretations. A lot of development NGOs have used the Bruce Britton scan, as outlined in his paper the Learning NGO. You can find more information in the km4dev wiki here. Maarten Boers from ICCO started an interested discussion on the the email group of km4dev about the fact that ratings may go down when people become more aware of the complexity of a learning organisation. When discussions about being a learning organisation have just started, people may rate their organisation relatively high, because they are not so critical yet about their practices. Johannes Schunter linked this to a high relevant framework of the conscious competence learning framework. Hereby people move from the unconscious incompetence stage, through the conscious incompetence stage to the compentence stages. It is during the conscious competence stage that people become more critical about the practices in the organisation.

Personally, I shocked a manager once, by stating that his professionals were learning rapidly, but that his organisation wasn't. When the professionals left, the organisation was left at a loss. He was of the opinion that his professionals were not rapid learners. I made him look more carefully at the processes in the organization to leverage individual learning, to become organisational learning. For me, the crux of organisation learning is in making sure there are the processes that transform individual learning into innovation in the organisations practices are functioning. Secondly, it is important to see that the sources of learning, the feedback loops are the right ones. I have been in another organisation, where colleagues thought the organisation was learning, because it was changing all the time. However, the organisation was changing to the latest management whims rather than in response to feedback from its clients.

Diving in the deep to learn

I often wonder whether there is a certain type of person who is attracted to learning in communities of practice, and whether there are people who may have some adversary feelings towards being part of communities of practice. If so, it will probably have to do with learning styles and learning preferences. Ruijters and Simons wrote an article in Dutch titled: 'Ook van in het diepe springen kun je leren'. It's a very good article about the lack of language to make choices about appropriate workforms. When does an action-learning trajectory work? When does a community of practice make sense, or when does a training do the trick? I noticed that that there is indeed a lot of confusion about the differences between these (facilitated) forms of learning.

They wrote about the 'learning architecture' which is the combination of implicit and explicit learning in an organisation and all interventions aimed at stimulating learning in organizations.

'Learning' is used in many different ways, to talk about what happens in a classroom, for a training, for the result of a conversation. People learn in different ways, but preferences may change. It would be best to choose for appropriate learning interventions that match learning preferences. They mention 5:

• Learning by copying


• Learning by participation


• Learning by knowledge acquisition (facts)


• Learning by practising


• Learning by discovery

When we pay more attention to preferences of learning at individual, team and organizational level, we can improve the effectivity of learning interventions and for instance determine which preferences can be supported by online learning. Learning profiles can be developed for people, or teams. The example is given of a management trainee. He is a fast learner and trainings often irritate him. He dislikes learning by practising. He does not like learning by reading books either, but has high preferences for learning by copying. To support his learning process, he needs challenges and sparring partners, rather than training and coaching.

It is a very useful model. With this model in mind, it is clear to see that people with a preference for learning by copying and learning by participation would thrive in communities of practice. People with a preference for learning by practising in a safe environment may not always feel at home, unless the communities offers opportunities to practise new skills or behaviours. Since communities also have different learning modalities, the model could also be used to analyze learning in a community of practice.

Argyris and intercultural settings

Last Friday I attended a the M&O conference 'samenwerking in allianties en netwerken' (=collaboration in alliances and networks). I think it was my first real conference, you're never too old to attend your first conference... and immediately I can join the unconferencing movement. Can't say I was impressed by the general level of presentations and sessions. BUT a real treat was the presentation by Chris Argyris. And it was really cute that he was using a good old overhead projector with slides (see picture). That did not diminish the power of his presentation. It was impressive how he told a story and explained both theory in use versus espoused theory as well as model 1 and model 2 thinking and behaviour, and I felt like he had explained the book I read (knowledge for action) in less than 30 minutes. He stressed that model 1 behaviour is universal behaviour.

One question I have is whether working in intercultural situations helps to move towards model 2 thinking and behaviour. Model 2 is behaviour where you try to make your assumptions explicit, check them and ask for feedback. Unfortunately I didn't dare to ask him (even though I spotted him in the corridor)..

We're too much in a 'to do' mode

I know Maaike Smit and I'm proud that she has written a very revealing paper with a very explicit title about learning in the development sector: We're too much in a 'to do' mode (the title reads almost like a conclusion and recommendations at the same time :).

She did action research amongst development NGOs in the Netherlands, and investigates how they 'think and talk about learning, which influences the way they shape their organisational learning. Organisational learning remains a vague goal without 'hands and feet'. Most organisations categorise themselves as having an activist learning style. Joint reflection on experiences in not common practice. Reflection is mostly informal and project-related.'

She takes the stand that self-knowledge — understanding how you learn — is an essential first step in improving your own learning processes. Supporting people and organisations to reflect on their own learning processes and capacity is central to assisting them to learn. I think that's a brave and clear stand.

On page 18 there is two things that struck me, as I have been thinking about them for long. The first one is that new staff entering the organisation was mentioned most often as a factor promoting learning as it brings in new expertise and a fresh, critical view. I fully agree with this, but also see that potential is rarely leveraged. So probably finding out about how an organisation deals with the input of newcomers, will tell something about their learning abilities.

The second is that monitoring and evaluation were hardly mentioned as enabling factors for learning. Nancy Dixon was the person who talked about separating learning from accountability during her master class in the Netherlands, which seemed very refreshing after all the struggle to 'force' people to learn from monitoring efforts. As monitoring and evaluation is part of the accountability system, it is hard to get fully honest data on the table. When data do not match people's gut feeling, they do not really learn from it.

Having this information about learning styles of the development sectors (though the 3 cases already show how hard it is to generalise!); what consequences does this have for communities of practice? Does it mean that in the start up phase, you have to make sure you respond to the activist preference? And how and when do you introduce more reflective elements? Or will a community of practice automatically mould itself according to the preferential styles of the sector and are they not the best vehicle to deal with learning disabilities? (some of these questions I have tried to inject into a mini-project group of the english foundations workshop, so I'm waiting for them to give the answers...).