Learning and Change--Action Steps for Teams and Organizations

Teams and organizations are created for different purposes.  In general, they have goals and intend to work together somehow to achieve these goals.    This post is a continuation of yesterday's post on Learning and Change.  There is a follow-up post focusing on individual learning and change.

Sometimes teams are more successful than at other times in achieving their goals.  Over time meta-models have been created that help explain what is going on in the groups and teams that make some more successful that others.

The Team Tracking Tool (see slide 12) is reproduced below.  Notice the "Do Not Enter" sign at the top.  Many teams and organizations think they can go immediately from inputs to outputs without moving through the process steps required.  Almost 100% of the time this spells disaster and the team or organization has to undo or redo everything--as well as recover the lost trust that failure promotes.  Note the trust building elements of the tool.  Blake and Mouton developed a Managerial Grid explaining the different focuses of people and production in teams.  (A variation of that grid is reproduced below the Team Tracking Tool and a link to Blake and Mouton's model is also provided here.)

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

Blake and Mouton created a management grid to explain the relationship of people (maintenance) focus and production (task) focus.  The grid is reproduced on Wikipedia.

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

 Both task and maintenance functions are critical to the successful progress of teams and organizations.  Over emphasis on one or the other delays the development of trust and the effectiveness of teams.  In my early career in Change Management, I learned to make people my task--thus ensuring that both task and maintenance functions were completed.  Trust is the bonding that allows teams to function well and is a critical maintenance function.

(Click on the picture to see it separately and completely.) (See slide 11.)

 If trust is not allowed to develop, synergy--the energy that allows the output to be greater than what could be produced by the sum of its parts (people) will be missing.  As new people are added to a team, group, or organization and as the vision changes, building blocks of trust need to be revisited to allow for the group energy to move freely to the next area.

Collaboration Project--Practice for 21st Century Collaboration

In this first year of the second decade of the new millennium, collaboration is a key word.  How do we develop synergy and do more with less?  Collaborate.  What is an essential ingredient for collaboration?  Trust (slide 12). 

Social Networking is another buzzword for this new millennium.  Wikispaces is one of the tools which enables Web 2 interactive collaboration and communication.  Wikispaces has been recognized for its efforts on the part of collaboration for education.

In the past, many businesses were organized to reward individual effort and to downplay the benefit of true group collaboration.  Meetings were sometimes the only group activity and often produced  less than stellar outcomes considering the time invested in meetings.  For this reason, many companies have explored the use of Webinars--meetings held to share information with people working from their desks.

Wiki-style interactive collaboration is a different approach that has many potential benefits for business, education, and government. 

To offer an example of how to work with Wikis on a collaborative project, I've created a Collaboration-Project page on the DrM-Resources.wikispaces.com website.  I have started one sample project for a business and will be happy to create more for other businesses or for education.  These are examples of how collaboration can be helped by Wikis and there is no fee for participating in these example projects.

As people recognize the value of this type of collaboration, I am hopeful that more organizations will become clients of DrM-Resources.  We'll see how it goes.

Key Processes in Facilitating Change and Learning

In a conversation today about facilitating change and learning for an organization, I was reflecting on some key processes that I have found over the years to be especially helpful and wanted to use this post to keep them "top of mind" and to share them with others. The ideas came from multiple sources have have become a part of my organizational change toolkit that I bring with me when consulting, advising, or otherwise working on projects dealing with learning and change. (See the link at the title of this post and explore some of the stories on that website.)

1. "Begin with the End in Mind" (from Steven Covey's work)--what is the total process involved and what are the final results being produced? This can begin at a high level and may have to come down to a more detailed level when dealing with identifying changes that need to happen.

2. "What are the bottlenecks in the process?" (from Eli Goldratt's work)--What slows down or stops the process flow? What would happen "downstream" if the bottleneck were removed? Most organizations have multiple bottlenecks which are only discovered when one early in the process is removed and it slows down again at the next bottleneck.

3. "Is there a critical chain?" (from Eli Goldratt's work)--Do certain things have to be ready before other things? Does that happen? What can interfere? Do resources have to be mobilized or staged so that the process can pick-up what is needed when it is needed to carry on to the desired results?

4. "Follow the trail of the money" (from Jerry Maguire)--Where does the money come from? Where does it go? Where does the organization place its value--on customers, on suppliers, on employees? Where is the balance and/or the priority of the owners of the business?

5. "Are we trying to force solutions or to ask the right questions?" (from Action Learning)--Do we have a facilitator to help us keep on track asking the right questions? Do we have a group committed to following the action learning process to work through the process of changing the organization? Who composes the group? What questions are being asked?

6. "Do we know what we want or need to change and what we want or need to change to?"--(from Organizational Change literature)--How do we know that? Have we thought it through and tested our beliefs?

7. "Do we share a common vision of the change goal?" (from Jack Gibb's work with Trust)--(see http://joelmonty.wikispaces.com/file/view/Meta-Learning+Models.PDF and look for the Meta-Model on "Trust Dimensions in Team Performance")--Everyone working for the change needs to move through some dimensions of trust and get to a shared (collaborative) vision for the change. Then the group can develop a strategy and then tactics for how to achieve the change. Learning will be part of the strategy and tactics to develop or achieve the vision.

8. "Have we moved through the states of 'awareness--acceptance--action' with regard to the goal?" (from http://joelmonty.wikispaces.com/file/view/Meta-Learning+Models.PDF --see the "Personal Performance Change Curve" and the "Organizational Performance Change Curve")--Individuals and groups need to move through these stages to bring the change about. If a sufficient number of people have not progressed to the appropriate stage, the change will probably be rejected.

9. "What levels of trust and potentials for synergy exist with the change team?"-- (see the meta-models listed earlier in this blog)--Trust is, indeed, the glue that allows change to happen. If it is missing, the group has to work to re-establish it at a sufficiently high level to allow progress to the next step in the trust building and performance change processes.

10. "Are all stakeholders involved and invested?" -- (from organizational change literature)-- If a stakeholder has been missed or is not in agreement, the change can be blocked or sidetracked quickly.

11. "Is everyone communicating clearly with shared definitions of relevant ideas and terms?"--(from organizational change literature)--Regardless of languages spoken, are members of the team talking about the same things when they discuss the change--goal, strategies, tactics, results, learning.

Trust vs. "There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch"

Trust forms the essential "glue" that allows synergy and innovation to take place between people--in business and personal relationships. Without it we have isolation and maintenance of the "status quo" (and, in a growing organizm, the beginning of decay and death.

For a graphic that will help explain this concept, go to the link tied to the title of this post and to
http://joelmonty.wikispaces.com/meta-models and open the Learning Models.pdf file. Look for the "Trust Dimension in Team Performance" model.

People develop habits of trust and distrust--often with good reason. Just like learning to walk, we have to stand up and move (trust) one more time than we fall down (distrust). This is another case of common sense vs. common practice--see my earlier blog. Trust is absolutely essential for learning and change.

We are vulnerable when we learn. (Visit http://joelmonty.wikispaces.com/meta-models and open the Learning Affect Model Collection.pdf file. Look for the "Shame Affect Decision" model. (Small copies of both of these models are also on this web site: http://www.joelmonty.net/innovations. )

Because we are vulnerable we become concerned about the people we may be learning from. The common practice warning has merit--"There is no such thing as a free lunch." In most cases, when something is "free" there are strings attached. This is not always something negative and it doesn't always cost money. On the other hand, in e-mails, I have often found that the strings attached to many "free" offers cost more than whatever was being offered.

When we become jaded and start from a position of distrust, we can have a negative impact on real possibilities for learning and change.
What was in it for me? Is it really "free?"

Recently I had started a project with a group of member associations with the goal of helping their members identify the learning needs of their workforces.  I estimated the value of my contribution to this project to be in the neighborhood of $10,000 which I was offering for free to this group. Because I didn't know everyone who should be involved, I began by contacting people I knew were stakeholders and asked them to recommend others who should be included in the project. I would then contact the people I had been referred to and would mention who had suggested that I contact them about the project. To save lenghy e-mails, I provided copies of the e-mails on the web site used for the project and asked everyone to read the e-mails.

I never asked for money for my services in pulling the project together or for the expertise I was offering.  The purpose of this project was to benefit their members and their community and to be a pilot project for my firm which could be duplicated in other places.  I never intentially said that I was affiliated with anyone else on this project. 

Everyone I contacted at the beginning of this project was interested in participating.  The focus and goal seemed to be well timed and was of perceived value to everyone invited to participate.  One or two people were away from their office and could not readily be contacted, yet they were included in all the correspondence so that they would not be missing out on anything when they returned.

About three weeks into the project, someone who had been away read part of the correspondence and decided that, in some correspondence, I had misrepresented him.  While I had not done so, he made the assumption and proceeded to "poison the pool" of member associations and other stakeholders.

"My mind's made up.  Don't confuse me with the facts."

Even though I cleared up his misconception and that of one of the stakeholders, the brakes were on.  Instead of 10 organizations participating, two followed-through on our next meeting and we were left with half of the needed questions for the organizations. 

While the project could still be completed and still add value, the early momentum and trust had been lost--merely by someone making a false assumption and acting on it.

The project is dormant at present.  While it could be resurrected, at this point I can offer the same process to another group of stakeholders (remember, my free services for this project were valued at about $10,000) with as much ease as starting over with the previous group.

I appreciate the continued trust of the two professionals who continued to work on the project with me.  The community and their members lose out on the opportunities for learning and changes that could have been uncovered by the project.  Perhaps they will find the resources to do it on their own in the future.

Trust is worthwhile. It is important to start group work with trust and to bring questions into the open without acting on assumptions based on previous experiences. A lack of trust brings lots of consequences--including isolation and maintenance of the "status quo." Check out the graphic on the link connected to the title of this post. It is designed to tell a story without words. What does it tell you?

By the way, if you check out the http://drm-resources.wikispaces.com/projects page and know of another group who would like to work on a needs analysis, feel free to let me know.