Learning from The Learning Organization - Essay Example

Learning from The Learning Organization In Bob Garrett’s book: The Learning Organization, I found a handful of extremely valuable insights that I have seen elsewhere in books published after this small volume. However, Garrett’s book is cited in relatively few, because his models and insights have been passed down several layers, and few people read the original any more, though it is a textbook for several university business management programs still. While the wisdom contained in this short volume may seem rather simplistic now, it was highly innovative when it was published, when most organizations were still hierarchical monoliths of traditional business as usual. Bob Garrett proposed theories for changing the organizational structure which was a new idea at that time and outlines reasons for the need and methods for its implementation in this book. In a nutshell, Mr. Garrett looked closely at the model of management, and especially at the “director’s” role, though he was quick to point out that this is not always the given title. Directors are supposed to make sure everything works as it should, manage the actions and direct the work flow. Like a conductor, Garrett said that a director should not be doing the work, but delegating and managing the process. Symphony conductors do not go out and play each instrument, but they make it all come together for a wonderful sound. He makes it all rather simple and very easy to understand and it makes one wonder why top management has not seen this already. Perhaps they are simply stuck in the groove. It is Bob Garrett’s contention that a huge gap exits between the middle management level and the director level, and when people are promoted over that gap to director, in most organizations they are given little or no help in adjusting to their new jobs. In fact, few actually know what their jobs are supposed to be, and they live in fear of someone discovering that they do not know. It is a big secret at the top which nobody shares, because they figure that everybody else knows and they do not want to look the fool. However, because there is such a large difference in the function which directors are supposed to fill and the jobs of middle management, many directors fail to leap the gap. It really takes supreme confidence in light of the organizational structures which Garrett describes as being the status quo. The really seriously problematic thing which Garrett points out is that middle managers have usually “put in the time” to get promoted, and they have been valued for their domain knowledge and specialist skills. However, in the upper management position of director, these skills are not what is needed, and the director needs to bridge the large gap from being a specialist to becoming a generalist in order to fill his or her role. In addition to this lack of information, directors have a long history of doing things right, and being certain of their ground before speaking. They are not used to taking chances or putting themselves into the very vulnerable position of looking for collaboration. They continue to try to do their jobs as before, instead of training their replacements and helping them to learn. This kind of micro-management is a huge waste of a director’s time and talent. Most important is Garrett’s new definition of the corporate brain, made up of all the members of the company, but especially composed of those at the top who are supposed to think for the company and make decisions in light of what they learn. However, if they don’t learn, there is nothing on which to base decisions. He suggests that many corporations are working without a brain, to their great detriment. This is because the top management have not learned how to think in new ways and to learn and facilitate learning. Garret describes the current practices as being static in a dynamic environment, and policy is stuck on “what we have always done”. Directors need to learn to tolerate more ambiguity and to operate within that uncertainty with confidence and awareness, keeping an open mind and watching for problems. Bob Garrett describes newly promoted directors as being unable to teach themselves to take chances and unable to adjust to their new roles. This is because of a “learning disability”. That is, the mangers have long thought that they need not continue to learn after they leave school and work their way up the corporate ladder. As a result, learning is neither facilitated nor valued. The director is not given space in which to learn, and he or she does not give the same space to the people under them. There has to be some room for making safe mistakes, but there are no mentors, so directors do not dare do anything which might result in a mistake. However, taking no chances results in making no advances. It is the lack of director development which Garrett deplores and names as responsible for nearly half of the corporate failures. He states that organizations can die without a brain, but linger on operating brain dead for months or even years. It is his contention that the lack of director development is largely responsible also for the fast turnover at this level. He names the lack of induction and inclusion processes at this level for the alienation of directors and their helplessness and lack of their own clear direction. So directors do not know what exactly to do and slip quietly back into their old jobs. Garrett believes it is the job of the higher management to develop their directors, and that the various directors should work together to integrate into a diverse team which brainstorms and resolves problems in a strategic manner. One important suggestion which Garrett puts forth is that organizations should document their job descriptions and clarify the various roles within the organization. (Wouldn’t that be nice: to have a roadmap for promotion!) Then it should have an organizational structural design built around a core of education. This design needs to incorporate an educational process for everyone in the organization at every level. In this way, he says, the organization will become a learning organization and everyone will be encouraged to contribute, making the whole more organic and creating a team of teams. He continues to say that public recognition needs to be given for learning and for the courage to try new things. In addition he says the organization must give political cover to new directors as they learn and directors need to give the same to their subordinates. Garrett shows new ways of looking at decision making and insists that directors need to stop looking down and inward and learn to look up at strategy and the overall working of the organization and out at the world. They need to be very aware of what is going on in the world and how it impacts their organization, In fact, they need to be able to publicly read the newspaper and then follow up with discussions among their peers. Directors need to be able to learn publicly, and be seen to participate in learning and sharing activities. The ivory tower does not give any feedback. Garrett mentioned something that gave me some new ideas too. He said that isolating directors from one another is counter productive. I looked at this idea and considered the layout of most corporate offices. They are not productive layouts which promote cross pollination of ideas. Garrett mentioned Churchill’s ploy of making sure there were not enough seats at parliament to create a new dynamic of traffic flow in and out. I will have to look more carefully at corporate office layouts, because I think there is room for improvement there. In fact, perhaps it would even be better if director’s permanent offices are not where they are all the time. Maybe they should move around, rather semi-mobile, carrying their offices with them on PDAs, mobile phones and in their briefcases. It makes me wonder if offices should be redesigned for better mixing of the people in them. One of the most important things which Garrett noted was the need for diversity. When people are promoted for putting in their time or for always doing the “right” thing, they will continue to do so. However, that is counterproductive to maintaining a dynamic organization which is capable of matching change in a timely manner. Learning needs to be faster than change which takes place all around the organization, within and without. It is diversity in the teams which will provide the necessary expertise and the necessary differences in ways of thinking and seeing which will keep the organization ahead of the curve. He says that there needs to bee a degree of difference among team members which makes decisions seldom unanimous. Board rooms are no longer the place for humming and nodding, but more properly the place for lively discussions. In the book, Garret describes a workshop with new directors during which he showed them how to see problems from a new perspective. He confides to the reader that these perspectives were academic in nature, including sociology, anthropology, psychology and other esoteric disciplines which many mangers do not think have any connection to business. However he used different terminology with them and asked the group to consider five types of change from three different perspectives, The five types of change were political, environmental, economic, social - demographic and technological. They were to look at these from an international, a national and, finally, an organizational perspective. Participants had to discuss and make predictions about the future. The participants became very engrossed in this process and excited with the results. They took that learning process away with them. Garrett postulates that this process of becoming constant learners is critical to the survival of any organization. Coping with change is critical to business and learning is the key to coping with change. I think I could benefit from such a workshop. Garrett outlined the process of creating a learning organization and suggested that the organization needs to develop diverse teams by finding out what the team of directors knows and can do, and then filling in the gaps. He said that every team needs both a variety of expertise and a variety of action styles. He then defined the different areas of policy making, strategy and operations, and insisted that directors should no longer be involved with operations, because that is the jobs of the regular work force. Garrett presented new models for directors to learn to think. He diagrammed the dynamic flow of ideas and showed how directors should move from one mode to the next as needed: now monitoring, then reflecting, applying an adjustment, watching the results, considering the results and making decision what to do next. These are new modes of thinking for middle managers who have worked their way laboriously up the corporate ladder. Garrett includes a number of very thoughtful diagrams of thinking processes and strategic action, illustrating the way he thinks the brain of a dynamic organization needs to learn and operate. These diagrams are reprinted in a lot of other literature, though Garrett is not always credited with these ideas. Of course the learned from Drucker, Argyles and others, so they are, perhaps, attributable to them. However, a large portion of literature echoes Garrett’s words and there is no mention of him, though this book was published first.. He seems to have contributed a great deal to the body of organizational management knowledge and theory, mostly anonymously. Garrett uses the last section of the book to illustrate methods for developing integrated thinking processes. He talks about hard and soft knowledge, domain knowledge and people skills (which hw thinks most top managers lack to the detriment of the company). He goes on to describe stereotypical directors and the processes by which they are chosen. He deplores this system, because it puts the wrong people in the position of being directors. He says that many can learn to be good directors, but replacements for those who cannot need to be found on a timely basis if the holes are to be plugged before any damage is done. Primarily, Garrett says that the way people are chosen for directorships needs to change if organizations want to develop dynamic teams which can deal with business in the new millennium, because they are promoting the wrong people due to the way they are chosen. Directorships should not be a company reward, because companies cannot afford to give the resources or the power to the wrong people. Directorships should be given to those who can do the job and nobody else. Garrett uses the last part of the book to describe team making, and the process of team development and why it is essential. He then illustrates this with a short case study. His team development theory is also very familiar, as it has been used in numerous other books and articles. I am not surprised that this book is still used as a text in universities. It is clearly written and filled with ideas which were innovative at the time of its publication. What is surprising is how difficult it is to find any other publications which cite this work. In literally combing databases of publications on the same subject and searching the Internet, I found one citation for every twenty or so publications checked on this topic. Many of thes publications use the same terminology and even publish the same graphs, but no credit is given to Garrett. In fact, peter Senge is credited with coining the term, “Learning Organization”, in 1990, three years after the publication of this volume. Smith, M. K. (2001) Peter Senge and the learning organization, The encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm ; http://www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm The Learning Organization, sensegiving and psychological contracts: a Hong Kong case *.Organization Studies; 7/1/2002; Snell, Robin S. D.K. Garrett and A.M. McDaniel, "A New Look at Nurse Burnout," Journal of Nursing Administration 31, no. 2 (2001): 91-95. Garratt, B. (1990) Creating a Learning Organization: A Guide to Leadership, Learning and Development, New York: Simon & Schuster. Garratt, B. (1995) “An Old Idea that Has Come of Age”, People Management 19:25. Barab, S. A., Cherkes-Julkowski, M., Swenson, R., Garrett, S., Shaw, R. E., & Young, M. (1999). Principles of self-organization: Learning as participation in autocatakinetic systems. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 8(3 & 4), 349–390. Hayes, Treasa, The Learning Organisation::Fashionable Fad or Path to Progress? Research Paper Series. http://www.dcu.ie/dcubs/research_papers/no22.html :Garrett, B. (2000). The Learning Organisation. Developing Democracy at Work. Harper Collins Business: New York Garrett B. 1990. Creating learning organizations: A guide to leadership, learning and development. Cambridge: Director Books. Theron, Alide. The Creation Of A Learning Organization In A Rapidly Changing Environment. University of Pretoria – South Africa   http://www.crcn.co.za/Article%20-%20Learning%20Organisation.htm Garratt, B, 2001, The Learning Organization: Developing Democracy at Work, pp. ix-x, 1-8, 12-27, 36-37, 52-53, 81, 102-105, 113, Harper Collins Publishers http://www.management.unimelb.edu.au/staff/paper/selsky%20manuscript.pdf Department of Management Working Paper Series Working Paper 2003/10014 ISBN: 0 9751999 3 5 A SOCIOECOLOGICAL LOGIC OF STRATEGY MAKING: INTERROGATING THE ‘HYPER’ ENVIRONMENT John W. Selsky† jwselsky@unimelb.edu.au Department of Management University of Melbourne Parkville3010 Australia James B. Goes Cybernos, LLC Cottage Grove Oregon, USA Oguz N. Babüroğlu Sabanci University Levent Istanbul, Turkey Continuous Improvement: A Hands On Approach Victoria Public Service http://www.det.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/hr/wrktrain/VPS_HandsOnGuide_Continuous_Improvement.pdf Quotes Garrett, Senge, Drucker and Agyris Read More