Nancy Dixon tells a wonderful story about ‘Researcher’s Square’ and the hallway of learning. The whole story is well worth your time. It describes how a diverse group of mostly independent researchers who worked in their individual offices were able to cooperate and even collaborate due to a change in the built architecture. A central hallway was placed in the middle of 20 offices so that everyone had to 1) use the same café area, and 2) use the only available large table & whiteboard, which were visible to everyone, for group meetings. In addition, copies of everyone’s published research was on display in this central area. While most researchers felt this would not change their work behaviours, it did.
Performance Improvement
Human performance technology
mapping healthcare
This past year my wife and I have spent a fair bit of time in hospitals and doctors’ offices, helping friends navigate the healthcare system. One thing we have noticed is the siloed nature of medicine here.
When you get limited time with a healthcare professional and they have limited time to get up to date on the patient, a lot of information and context slips through the cracks. Add in the fact that many of these professionals do not regularly communicate with each other, and the patient becomes responsible for closing these gaps. This is impossible with patients suffering from dementia or other cognitive challenges.
In addition, many family members do not know what information is important and are not able to be effective patient advocates. For example, some information — such as the recent death of a spouse — does not get transmitted and the physician’s diagnosis is based only on the visible symptoms as presented at the time.
This example reminded me of a project we did for a healthcare client in 2004. We conducted an elearning and community of practice initiative for a hospital system as part of the transition to a new nursing care model — from the Henderson to the McGill model. The Province of Québec (healthcare is the responsibility of each Province in Canada) was moving from a patient-centric to a learning-centric nursing framework. As part of our project, we developed software for visual mapping to support the standard patient charts and records. The software was used to create visual models of the patient’s family (genogram) and the patient’s community relationships (ecomap).
adding value with teams
In working collaboratively & learning cooperatively I noted that team collaboration requires the transparent sharing of knowledge — using enterprise social networks and other technologies — so that everyone on a team knows what is going on and why. Decisions, and why they were made, are shared. New processes and methods are co-developed to create emergent practices. This method of work has to be supported by management by enabling — innovative and contextual methods, the self-selection of the most appropriate tools and work conditions, and willing cooperation between workers.
insights over processes
Process improvement, like Six Sigma, stifles innovation. Process improvement is a tool set, not an overarching or unifying concept for an organization. Process improvement is a means — for certain contexts like manufacturing — and not an end in itself. The fundamental problem with all process improvement methodologies is that you get myopic. The evidence is clear.
“Since Frederick Taylor’s time we’ve considered business – our businesses – vast machines to be improved. Define the perfect set of tasks and then fit the men to the task. Taylor timed workers, measuring their efforts to determine the optimal (in his opinion) amount of work he could expect from a worker in a single day. The idea is that by driving our workers to follow optimal business processes we can ensure that we minimise costs while improving quality. LEAN and Six Sigma are the most visible of Taylor’s grandchildren, representing generations of effort to incrementally chip away at the inefficiencies and problems we kept finding in our organisations.” —Peter Evans Greenwood
“But simply following the steps of a process is no longer a guarantee of success, if it ever was. Business is increasingly complex and interconnected, and it seems unlikely any single system can tame it. The smart enterprise of the future will need a constantly evolving rotation of systems and skills, employed by adaptable and flexible workers. They will be harder to teach in a course, but they may outlast all the fads and fashions that preceded them.” —Whatever Happened to Six Sigma?
“Fifty-eight of the top Fortune 200 companies bought into Six Sigma, attesting to the appeal of eliminating errors. The results of this ‘experiment’ were striking: 91 per cent of the Six Sigma companies failed to keep up with the S&P 500 because Six Sigma got in the way of innovation. It interfered with insights.” —Gary Klein
more than re-skilling
Here is the advice of the co-founder of Degreed on a ‘workplace self-training paradigm‘.
First, encourage them to think of reskilling as a game — one they now have more control over winning …
Next, help workers manage their skills with regular checkups to evaluate their current expertise against market conditions …
Finally, work with employees to pinpoint opportunities to put their new skills into action.
It reminded me of advice that Lilia Efimova gave fifteen years ago — on which I based I my own PKM framework — which is a broader approach to workplace learning than merely looking at work from a training or re-skilling perspective.
the silo effect
“Silos are cultural phenomena, which arise out of the systems we use to classify and organize the world,” states Gillian Tett in The Silo Effect. Silos are bounded hierarchies that define specialized work or areas of knowledge. They come in the form of academic fields, organizational departments, schools of thought, and many other forms created by humans. They are all based on an explicit or implicit model of how things are done. But all models are imperfect explanations of the world. Forgetting that can make us blind to what would be obvious to an outsider.
Tett first gives an overview of silo thinking and its effects — such as the 2008 financial crash — and goes into detail with examples. This is followed by various stories of silo-busting. The conclusion provides a few rules of thumb. Hierarchies and classification systems are necessary, especially in complex fields of practice, so we will never get rid of silos, says Tett.
The challenge is to find ways to get outside their boundaries and see from multiple perspectives. Silo thinking can be countered by engaging ‘cultural translators’ — “people who are able to move between specialist silos and explain to those sitting inside one department what is happening elsewhere” — but only about 10% of an organization’s staff need these skills.
Helping information to flow requires that everyone not only share data and information but also have the opportunity to interpret information and share their conclusions. Not everyone sees the world in the same way. Cultural translators are also ‘knowledge catalysts’.
workers are already mature
“Growth is not linear and it doesn’t happen in discrete phases marked by convenient external characteristics” — which is why maturity models are wrong — according to Christiaan Verwijs, specifically looking at agile models.
“Of course, maturity models are meant to simplify the complexities of reality. But what is gained by squeezing such a messy, non-linear thing as the professional growth of individuals, teams, and organisations into an easily digestible model that allows us to feel like we’re making decisions based on something tangible? Oh, wait ….
Maturity models are the best friend of consultants. They are easy to understand and may seem very profound at first. It’s an easy way to make a good impression. This makes them excellent snack food for consultants, and for the organisations that are looking for easy answers to their complex problems.” —CV
Are maturity models useful? Is there a more useful model we could use?
“Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.” —George Box
working collaboratively and learning cooperatively
Improving Organizational Performance
Organizational performance improvement is comprised of reducing errors and increasing insights, according to Gary Klein. For the past century, management has primarily focused on error reduction, with practices such as Six Sigma, especially in manufacturing.
“Fifty-eight of the top Fortune 200 companies bought into Six Sigma, attesting to the appeal of eliminating errors. The results of this ‘experiment’ were striking: 91 per cent of the Six Sigma companies failed to keep up with the S&P 500 because Six Sigma got in the way of innovation. It interfered with insights.” —Gary Klein
Learning and development (L&D) practices reflect this priority on error reduction. But knowledge work, especially creative work, is not mere production.
“Visualize the workflow of a physical job: produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce.
Now visualize the workflow of a creative knowledge worker: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, flash of brilliance, nothing, nothing, nothing.” —Jay Cross (1944-2015)
Based on 120 case studies, Gary Klein identified five types of ‘triggers’ that produced insights.
- Contradictions
- Creative Desperation
- Connections
- Coincidences
- Curiosity
Most of these five triggers can be enhanced through informal and social learning, and the individual practice of personal knowledge mastery. Insights often come while working, resting, and playing — or even in the shower — but not while undergoing formal education or training.
just checking the box
Were the two recent crashes of Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft a result of inadequate training, or design and safety flaws resulting from a lack of regulator oversight? I don’t know and I cannot speculate. However, I am interested in how training design decisions are made and what role Learning & Development (L&D) professionals play in the relationship between building aircraft and flying them. Is there something to learn here?
“The captain of a doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight did not practise on a new simulator for the Boeing 737 Max 8 before he died in a crash with 156 others, a pilot colleague said … The 737 Max 8 was introduced into commercial service in 2017, but pilots of older 737s were only required to have computer-based training to switch, according to Boeing, airlines, unions, and regulators.” —CBC 2019-03-21
actionable insights
I concluded a few years back that rates based on time at work only help to put you into a pigeon hole so that HR and Purchasing can easily classify you. Knowledge professionals are not pigeons.
I have noticed a tendency over the past decade to push wages and fees down. Some may say it’s just the supply and demand conditions of the market. I think it’s the idea that human labour is a cost and it’s best to keep costs down, especially when CEO’s are still focused on increasing shareholder value. Short term objectives rule in this type of market. I recently spoke with someone who had left a large corporation after 30 years. He said that the constant pressure to keep increasing sales, year over year, was too much. The executives were only focused on the spreadsheets.
Large consultancies ensure that when they do work it is wrapped in large documents with fancy presentations so it looks big. But the value is not in big. The value for consulting is actionable insights. Can and will the client do something after the consulting engagement? If not, it was a waste of time. Sometimes the advice appears to be very simple, and therefore appears to be of no value. But master practitioners often make their work look simple.