Three Primary Themes
An observation with the all the activities that have not worked over the past 25 years would be that they lacked generally accepted foundations. This chapter suggests a set of foundations or disciplines that will enable the whole of society to develop its knowledge learning in the long term.
The three foundations that this chapter explores are:
In fact you cannot separate these three foundations; they are all inter dependant.
In 1960 Douglas McGregor wrote the very important book – “The Human Side of Enterprise.” At that time he was very conscious of the truly amazing advances in Engineering, telecommunications, radar, medicine etc. that had been achieved in his lifetime. What he recognised was that these advances had been achieved through the rigorous development of physical science theory. His contention was that the “development of theory within the social sciences” (in particular “management”) had the potential to transform our society every bit as much as had the physical sciences transformed society in the first half of the 20th century. He was proposing that “management” be viewed as a science that is underpinned by theoretical assumptions; and that we should vigorously develop and apply social science theories. In the conclusion of his book he wrote:
“The purpose of this book is not to entice management to choose (between theories.) It is rather to encourage the realisation that theory is important, to urge management to examine its assumptions and make them explicit. In doing so it will open the door to the future. The possible result could be developments during the next few decades with respect to the human side of enterprise comparable to those that have occurred in technology during the past half century.”
In essence we are recognising that there is a relationship between :
Theory which leads to Methods which provide the Results
The methods we use evolve out of our underpinning theoretical assumptions. For example if we believe that the main contributor to an organisation’s effectiveness is the competence and diligence of the individual then we develop methods to motivate employees and make them accountable. We utilise such methods as incentive schemes, budgets, targets, appraisals, competence assessment and training. If on the other hand our underpinning assumption is that the vast majority of us come to work wanting to do our best then our focus moves onto to creating the environment (systems) to enable employees to be all they can be. The manager sees the employee as a customer of the system he/she has designed.
If we want to secure significant improvement then it is at the "Theory" level - how we think - that we must focus our attention. If we just improve our methods without challenging our underpinning assumptions then only marginal progress is achieved. (see the paper What has not Worked in the Past)
This aspect of Knowledge based on underpinning theory is expanded in the file "Knowledge." There is also the file "Theory" which provides a link to a comparison between traditional and modern theories.
Systems Thinking
While McGregor et all were opening out our thoughts on theory and intrinsic motivation many including Deming, Senge, Ackoff, Checkland, Juran etc have been developing the concept of systems thinking. Our basic education teaches us to break down problems into their component parts and solve the problem at the component level. This approach goes under the name of reductionist or mechanistic thinking. However systems thinkers recognise that the parts influence each other, they interrelate.
H2 + O = H2O (water)
To use a simple example - we do not understand water by studying Hydrogen and then Oxygen. It is the interrelationship between Hydrogen and Oxygen that produces water.
The majority of our organisations reflect reductionist thinking in that they are structured round the classic hierarchical organisation chart. It has a Chief Executive supported by a range of departments such as Accounts, Sales, Design, Production, Maintenance, Purchasing, HR etc. Each part is managed through having their own responsibilities with budget and targets. And then within each department responsibilities are further broken down into specialist areas and so on. Communication and reporting responsibilities are up and down the hierarchy. Little attention is paid to the interrelationship between departs and between individuals.
A recurring theme found within reductionist organisations is a conflict between Sales and Production. The Sales team, to secure a sale and meet their targets, are drawn into promising not only more than their competitors but also more than the capabilities of Production. They consider meeting the terms of the contract an issue for the production team. Production are then faced with meeting demands that are beyond their capability and are pulled into cutting corners at the expense of either delivery or quality. This in turn creates problems for the sales team and future orders – and so on. Systems thinkers recognise that all functions within an organisation have to work as a team and ensure that there is no impediment to cross functional communication and understanding.
One of the fundamental findings of systems thinking is that the outcome from a system is primarily dependant on the design of the system rather than the diligence and competence of the individual. J M Juran considered that 85% of outcomes are due to the design of the system, Deming thought it more in the region of 97%. Peter Senge talks about us being “prisoners of the system.”
The icon of the quality movement of the 1980s and 90s, J M Juran, published the book “Juran on Planning for Quality” in 1988. Virtually the whole book is devoted to going through an entire company system and meticulously planning the interrelationships.
In the 1990s and into the 21st century we have the work pf Peter Senge where he is identifies two aspects of a system – “Detail Complexity”, as per the work of Juran, and “Dynamic Complexity” which indicates that interrelationships within a system can cause growth or decay.
Organisational Learning (Societal Learning)
The major implication of the fact that we live in complex dynamic systems is that it is beyond the capabilities of leaders to understand and direct the operation of their organisation. A more constructive strategy is going to be around the design of a system that enables thinking individuals or teams to address challenges at the work face and to be continually improving the design of the organisation’s system – a learning system within the system – a system that facilitates the continual learning of the organisation. The other phrase used for this concept would be “Complex Adaptive Systems”
In a command and control enterprise improvement suggestions usually have to be approved by the hierarchy. But this process of gaining approval through various levels of management invariably means that they get lost in the process. If there is no prompt implementation to the proposed idea, work face personnel become disillusioned and stop making any further suggestions. In other words C&C companies can be considered to be slow learners or have a learning disability.
The Theories used by the Organisation
It may seem counter intuitive to consider that it is the organisation that holds the theories by which it operates rather than individuals. That is until we realise that the theories remain more or less static as people join and leave the enterprise. The same can be said of our society. Our society has developed its systems – such as its education system – around the current perceptions (theories) of our society.
Margaret Wheatley extends these concepts when she talks about “organisations as living systems. They too are intelligent, creative, adaptive, self-organising, meaning seeking”
Our society and organisations fail to self organise and learn not because the ability is absent, but because of the impediments created by authority and society. This leads us into the exciting new challenge as to theories and structures that an organisation and society requires to enable its self-organising and learning ability.
Self Organisation
A high profile example of self organisation in the modern world is of course The World Wide Web. The design of the World Wide Web has enabled communication and the sharing of knowledge that could not have been imagined 20 years ago. In particular we can consider the design of the Wikipedia site. It is so structured that it uses the mass of knowledge that is held by the everyday citizen. The site is now thought to challenge the Encyclopedia Britannica in the accuracy of its information.
We also have organisations as examples such as Toyota, John Lewis Partnership, W L Gore and Semco. They have a culture and methods that enables the thinking potential of all their staff to effect how the work is done. They reflect Margaret Wheatley’s vision of a living and continually improving entity
A Belief in People
We now come to the third element of the foundations for learning – that of a belief in people. In this context we wish to differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic refers to our inner drives to learn, act, associate with others, succeed etc. Extrinsic motivation is in context of external persuaders; those things in the external environment that encourages us to do certain things.
Extrinsic Motivation
B F Skinner was the Professor of Psychology at Harvard University who initiated “Operant Conditioning” which sees humans as entities that react to external stimuli. The conclusion of which is that humans can be controlled and directed by developing the appropriate external stimulate. If a reward follows a particular behaviour then that behaviour is likely to be repeated. His thoughts were in line with the school of thought referred to as” Behaviourism.”
The modern equivalent of operant conditioning or extrinsic motivation are incentive and bonus schemes, targets, appraisal relative to meeting a budget, qualifications especially in our education system, etc. It is very popular within “Command and Control” cultures as it supports the concept that the bosses provide the instructions and the workers require to be motivated to follow orders.
Alfie Kohn is highly critical of Skinners work which he disparagingly claimed was a concept founded on the study of caged and starving rats with the findings being transposed onto healthy and free human beings. Kohn’s view of humans is much greater and more complex that that of a caged animal.
What he argues, supported with extensive research, is that when a reward is made available we distort the focus of the individual. His phrase is “Do this and you will get that.” What happens in practice is that the individual’s focus moves from the “this,” the actual task in hand, to the “that,” the reward. His/her motivation to do the job is damaged as his energy has now moved onto how to secure the reward.
Furthermore the use of external stimuli such as a reward (or punishment) is a controlling or manipulative tool. It is an attempt by one person (usually in authority) to influence the actions of another (a subordinate)
As humans we rebel at being manipulated, and invariably we manipulate back. It was recognised way back in the Hawthorne Experiments of the 1930s that management lose control of any bonus system with 2 years of their introduction. By that time the workers were manipulating the system to their benefit.
“The ingenuity of the average worker is sufficient to outwit any system of controls devised by management.” - Douglas McGregor
The highly visible example of this effect is, of course, the use of targets in the public sector. There is abundant evidence to demonstrate the creativity of staff in manipulating data to meet a target. This is the penetrating quote from W Edwards Deming:
"If management sets quantitative targets and makes people's jobs depend on them - they will met the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it"
We just need to consider the crisis in the banking industry to acknowledge the validity of this statement.
Alfie Kohn was not saying never use extrinsic motivators, they are useful when the job has no meaning in itself and all that is required is blind compliance. Thankfully very few jobs fall into this category. What he did observe was that external manipulators diminish our overall motivation.
Intrinsic Motivation
There has of course been extensive work on our intrinsic motivation, starting with Abraham Maslow. He was seen as the father of Humanist Psychology whose basic premise was that people possess the inner resources for growth and healing and they achieve self fulfillment when circumstances allow them to express their intrinsic motivation.
And the many researchers who followed Maslow, with McGregor recognising that work and responsibility is a basic human need, the humanistic approach of Carl Rodgers, the achievement motivation of David McClellend, Deming’s recognition that we love learning and his call for organisations to provide “joy in work,” etc. etc.
The fundamental message is, of course, that if you want to utilise the spirit of people then the focus requires to be on removing inhibitors to allow true motivation to flourish. If we want to get the best out of people we first have to believe in them.
Conclusion
To establish a “Learning Society” we will need foundations that has significance across all our organisations, such as: