Learning and Change--Individual Considerations

This post is a continuation of the post from February 20, 2010 and from an earlier post on February 21, 2010.

Learning and change need to take place on an individual level--even when teams, groups, and organizations want change as well.  Two additional meta-models have been created to explain how individuals respond to the need for change (see slide 2) and what happens to individuals as they build the skills they need to change successfully (see slide 10).

(Click on the picture to see it separately and completely.)

(Click on the picture to see it separately and completely.)

 As stated in an earlier post, learning and change are not easy and are often resisted.  The Shame Affect Decision Model (slide 2) shows how most of us discover the need for change--when something we relied on ceases to produce the positive results we expected.  If we retreat into our pre-existing comfort zone, we have four possible responses:  attack others, attack self, avoid, and withdraw.  If we choose to move to positive change, this is our opportunity to learn.

As we begin to learn, we move through the Personal Performance Change Curve (slide 8). Comfort Zones Mapped to the Performance Change Curve (slide 10) show how our performance level and comfort drop before we begin to integrate the new knowledge and skill we are learning.

The Learning Outcome Grid (slide 7) shows some of the results of learning activity.

(Click on the picture to see it separately and completely.)

Innovation and Comfort Zones--Insight, Common Sense, Common Practice

Innovation is challenging for many reasons.  Amazingly enough, even though many people claim to want innovation, habits, comfort zones, and common practice all form an effective barrier to innovation.

Common practice is different from common sense (which may not be as common as the words indicate).  Common practice has people use elevators to get to the upper floors in high-rise buildings and to come back down.  In the event of an emergency (fire, explosion, etc.), the instructions are to use the stairs.  Common practice and habits often have the people waiting for the elevators as usual, even in emergencies.

Common sense may tell us not to use cell phones or text messaging while driving, especially in school zones and construction zones.  Common practice has us communicating all the time, often opposing common sense.

Innovation, at least in my experience, is frequently connected with insight.  As I approach a challenge--learning design, for example, insight lets me see into the process and to identify a different way of working that generates better results.  (See the Integrative Learning Design Jump-Start Workbook for an example.)  The Meta-Models I have created and posted on one of my websites all represent insight and innovation.

Getting others to accept these innovations and to work with them is a separate challenge.  When I began this blog, my intention was to begin to publish my work.  I felt that having the discipline to do a daily blog might give me a head start toward publishing.

I hope to publish this blog in book form soon.  If I wait for a year of entries, that might be too many pages in the book.  I'll have to think about that more to see what I have and what I need.

Organizational Culture, Comfort Zones, Support, Trust, Norms, and Change

Organizational culture contains norms of accepted behavior, comfort zones, and processes to find support and to develop trust.  There is an Organizational Performance Change Curve (slide 9) that shows how organizations move through a process of change.

Some organizations have created habits of looking internally for support--a kind of "inside the box" thinking.  As organizations grow and mature, some learn to look outside the box and outside the organization for appropriate support.  It is difficult for people enmeshed in the culture of an organization to seek outside support unless it is endorsed and encouraged by the culture.

In many small to mid-sized entrepreneurial businesses, all employees turn to the business owner for support.  This can create problems for the entrepreneur.  He or she can get bogged down by the number of daily challenges and problems brought to him or her for decisions and advice.  Instead of putting his or her energy toward the improvement of business processes and in growing the business, he or she is invested in putting out innumerable small-fire-problems brought by the employees.

Often the entrepreneur can seek outside support for the business owner, the business, and the employees.  By finding a trusted advisor outside the business, he or she can suggest that employees take many of their small-fire-problems to the consultant who is not going to have his or her support for the business interrupted by dealing with the problems and the employees.  When entrepreneurs can use these consultants more effectively, they can choose a few employees to be the "go-to" people within the organization and the outside consultant can coach those people to be effective in helping employees with small-fire-problems and in improving their own ability to make daily decisions and to put-out the "small-fires" themselves.

Coaching Supervisors--the Supervisors' Dilemma

In conversations this weekend, I was reminded of what I call the "supervisors' dilemma."  Traditionally, supervisors are usually very good in performing whatever tasks they were doing when they were selected for promotion to supervisor.  Once they are supervisors, only rarely do they receive training or coaching in how to be effective in managing others.  Frequently they are good problem-solvers and are eager to help the people they supervise.  When they step-in to do what they "did best" before they were promoted, they frequently forget to help the people they supervise learn how to perform better.

Years ago I worked with many organizations to train supervisors to be instructors and instructor-trainers in a program designed to help supervisors learn to manage the people they are supervising.  As I worked with more than 100 supervisors from many organizations, it became clear that the "supervisors' dilemma" is a common problem.

Some organizations recognize the problem and provide supervisory training similar to the training I worked with years ago.  Once supervisors received the training, they were frequently left on their own to apply it.

Another feature--rarely offered--is ongoing coaching for supervisors to be more successful.  Some of this coaching can be one-on-one, perhaps helping supervisors acquire the learning they need without having to take a formal training.  At other times this coaching can be on an "as needed" basis, helping supervisors to have a support person in place to help them move to a new perspective in their lives.

Yesterday's post dealt with "unintentional intolerance."  The connection between that post and today's post is that life-experience (slide 3) is what we bring with us to face any new challenge or decision we make in our lives.  Frequently we are not aware of all of the components of this life experience and make our decisions based on a very limited "sub-set" of our life experience--frequently what we are aware of "in the moment."  To be more successful as supervisors (and as coaches), we need habits of reflection (slide 2) to be able to access more areas of our life experience as we make our daily choices and decisions.

Coaches need to be "trusted advisors"  so that the people they are coaching can be honest with them and bring forward their real experience and thinking for assistance in reflecting on new performance choices and comfort zones.

"Business as Usual"--Sustainability, Emerging Economy, Death Spirals, and Change

Chief Executives (CEOs, COOs, CFOs, etc.--all members of the "C-suite") and Business Owners in today's emerging economy are all facing significant challenges to "business as usual."  Business does not operate "as usual."  Many businesses have a core series of processes that generate most of their income.  Between the drying-up of sources of income (bank loans) and demand (no disposable income to make "normal purchases"), the volume of business has decreased significantly.  For those who still enjoy a positive cash flow, the flow may have moved from US$16 million to US$6 million in a year.  If the organization is geared for the volumes of US$16 million, significant workforce reductions and other restructuring will be required for the organization to remain viable when generating US$6 million.

Depending on how the businesses are organized, structured, and run, some may continue to operate on their own inertia for some time in the emerging economy until their forward progress comes to a stop (inertia).  In earlier posts the book, Who Moved My Cheese, by Spencer Johnson, was introduced in terms of explaining how we are often reluctant to stay aware of changes and to make the change to do something different.  When the economy has changed to the point that the way a business is organized and run is no longer sustainable, it may enter a death spiral and become extinct (like the dinosaurs). 

Sustainability, in terms of the new economy, may also need to focus on the details of the organization.  Is the organization's mission and are its processes sustainable in terms of planetary needs?  Buckminster Fuller, in 1971, wrote Spaceship Earth (mentioned in a previous post).  In this book, the author notes that the Earth is like a spaceship moving through space.  We need to pay attention to our renewable resources and, as a planet, to take care of our planet.  We cannot continue to pollute the air, water, and land.  In the Constitution of the United States of America, we say, in part, that we want to ". . . secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity."  We need to leave a planet that our posterity can prosper in.

While the "green movement" may be an extreme example of this idea, each of us can focus on making minor changes in our daily lives to make our lives and our planet healthier rather than destroying it.

What is the reality an organization faces?  Rather than trying to take how a business is organized and structured at the moment, what if there were a "4th of July Revolution (as in 1776)?  What does the economy present in terms of business today and how would a business best be organized to meet the requirements of the emerging economy, ignoring present organizational structures, people, and processes?  This may give an idea of "what we need to change to."  Once that activity is completed, we need to look at how we are currently organized and structured to find out "what we need to change from."  After that, we need a plan to make the transition.  Many occupants of the C-Suite are not ready to face the need for change.  The consequences of not facing these needs are enormous--and we are just beginning to feel the impact.  While we have high unemployment in this country, a more challenging problem is that the jobs that are being created will not be the same as those being given up.

Each of us needs to begin to think about the emerging economic reality and what we need to prepare for to be sustainable in the new economy.  Not only do people in the C-Suite need to face the need for change.  Each of us needs to face this need and to find some assistance to help us prepare for the changes we need to take.