Prototypes

1. Prototypes Fall 2010

2. Contents • Recitation • Chapter 13 –Openness • Chapter 14 –Localness • Chapter 15 –A Manager’s Time • Chapter 16 –Ending the war between work and family • Chapter 17 –Microworlds: Technology for the Learning Organization • Chapter 18 –The Leader’s New Work

3. Recitation • What is the role of the subconscious in personal mastery?

4. Recitation • Mental Models are important because… • Shared vision has the effect of….. • Team learning is supported by what other disciplines? • Inquiry and reflection are used by what discipline? • What two conversational techniques does Team Learning use?

5. Part IV: Prototypes Senge, Chapter 13--OPENNESS THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE

6. Prototypes • Are essential to discovering and solving key problems • We are in the prototyping stage • Significant innovation requires prototyping

7. Where are we (in the Rawls COBA)? • Somewhere between invention and innovation • To what extent are we open to innovation? • To what extent are we willing to address • new curricula • new organizational structures Prepared by James R. Burns

8. What explicit innovations would we like to see prototyped? • Many of these will fail • Out of these failures workable structures will evolve • Sometimes this is the only way to learn and advance the state of practice • For some firms a culture that encourages trying new things even though they will fail fosters learning • To what extent do we provide a “laboratory” for research in organizational learning? Prepared by James R. Burns

9. Another Reality: Business Integration • Integrating themes • Information technology • Quality • Entrepreneurship • Leadership • Systems thinking/System dynamics • Projects and processes

10. Business Integration IS FIN MAN MAR ACC Information Technology Quality Leadership/Entrepreneurship Systems Thinking/System Dynamics Prepared by James R. Burns

11. Back to prototyping • How to encourage openness • the elimination of politics and game playing • How to discourage localness (Ch 14) • the distribution of responsibility widely, while retaining coordination/control • How do managers create the time for learning (Ch 15) • How can the war between work and family be ended (Ch 16) • How can we learn from Microworlds (Ch17) Prepared by James R. Burns

12. Openness--Chapter 13--Outline • How to eliminate politics and game playing • Building an environment where self interest is not paramount • Participative Openness and Reflective Openness • Openness & Complexity • The Spirit of Openness • Freedom Prepared by James R. Burns

13. How to eliminate politics and game playing • A political environment is one in which “WHO” is more important than “WHAT” • Who proposes the idea is more important than the idea itself • Some individuals lose political power at the expense of others • The wielding of arbitrary power over others is the essence of authoritarianism Prepared by James R. Burns

14. Is there anything that can be done about org. politics?? • In most orgs, no, Senge says, so don’t even dwell on it • Yet very few people want to live in organizations corrupted by internal politics and game playing • Challenging the grip of politics and game playing starts with building shared vision Prepared by James R. Burns

15. Shared vision • Galvanizes people beyond their personal agendas and self interest • We want an organizational climate dominated by merit rather than politics, where doing what is right predominates over who wants what done. Prepared by James R. Burns

16. Openness • The norm of speaking openly -- participative openness • The capacity to continually challenge one’s own thinking -- reflective openness • Openness is needed to break down the game playing that is deeply embedded in most organizations Prepared by James R. Burns

17. Building an environment where self interest is not paramount • Badaracco and Ellsworth in Leadership and the Quest for Integrity assume that practitioners believe that people are motivated by self-interest and by a search for power and wealth • The assumption can be self-fulfilling; assume this and you will have a very political org. • Really, people want to be part of something larger than themselves • Personal Mastery encourages people to look beyond themselves for personal vision Prepared by James R. Burns

18. Shared Visions • Draw forth this broader commitment and concern • Begins to establish a sense of trust that comes naturally • Start by getting people to talk about what is really important to them • When people hear each other’s visions, the political environment begins to crumble Prepared by James R. Burns

19. Honesty begins to Prevail • Honesty and forthrightness must pervade every relationship • Cannot sanction lying to anyone, administrators, students Prepared by James R. Burns

20. Unlearning the habits of politics and game playing • Shared vision, once it takes root, does not completely dissolve game playing Prepared by James R. Burns

21. Participative Openness and Reflective Openness • Most Common, Part. Openness-the freedom to speak one’s mind • Because participative management is widely espoused. • But total honesty does not prevail • There is little real learning Prepared by James R. Burns

22. Reflective Openness • While Part. Openness gets people speaking out, reflective openness gets people looking inward • Starts with the willingness to challenge our own thinking

23. Reflective Openness, Continued • Requires that we test our views, assumptions against other peoples views, assumptions and revise them as necessary • Requires inquiry and reflection discussed in the mental models chapter Prepared by James R. Burns

24. Localness Senge: Chapter 14 THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE

25. How to achieve control without controlling • LOCALNESS--extending authority and power as far from the top or corporate center as possible • More akin to the word EMPOWERMENT • Learning organizations are ones in which thinking and acting are merged for every participant • Localness is especially needed in times of rapid change

26. Two new challenges emerge • How to get senior managers to give up control to local managers • How to make local control work

27. Giving up control: • Will this make senior managers dispensable? • Senior managers must assume responsibility for continually enhancing the organization’s capacity for learning--THEIR NEW ROLE

28. Other questions about localness: • How can locally controlled organizations achieve coordination? • Synergy between business units? • Collaborative efforts toward common corporate-wide objectives? • How can the local organization be something other than just a holding company

29. What experience has shown: • Rigid authoritarian hierarchies thwart learning • Hierarchies fail to harness the spirit, enthusiasm, and knowledge of people throughout the organization and to be responsible for shifting business conditions • Failure has sprung up from not being able to relinquish control

30. Learning organizations: • do less controlling of people’s behavior • invest in improving the quality of people’s thinking • invest in improving the capacity for reflection and learning • develop shared visions • develop shared understandings

31. The illusion of being in control • Most senior managers would rather give up anything than control • Senge illustrates the illusion of control from the top with roller skates connected by springs • Even though senior managers think they are in control, they are not

32. Vacillation • When business is going well, localness prevails • When business is not going well, control gets returned to central management • Such vacillation is a testament to a deep lack of confidence • Is an example of a “shifting the burden” archetype

33. Beliefs • Unless senior management believes: • that the quality of learning • the ability to adapt • the excitement and enthusiasm • the human growth • ARE WORTH THE RISK, they will never choose to build a locally controlled organization

34. Today: Expediency • Many organizations are cutting management levels • Becoming more locally controlled, to cut costs • But these arrangements do not last a business downturn, usually

35. Control without controlling • Local decision making may not be wise • Local decisions can be myopic, failing to appreciate the impacts of decisions • Just because no one is in control does not mean that there is no control • Central control is too slow and too unaware of what is happening locally

36. The Tragedy of the Commons Archetype • What is right for each part is wrong for the whole • This is also called “suboptimization” in the context of quality management • Each individual focuses only on his own needs, not on the needs of the whole

37. Tragedy of the Commons Archetype, Continued • Occur frequently in businesses where localness is valued • When several divisions share a common support group Prepared by James R. Burns

38. Corporations’ Depletable Commons • financial capital, productive capital, technology • community reputation, good-will of customers and suppliers, morale of employees • When a company decentralizes, local divisions compete with each other for those limited resources • Andersen…

39. The experience • Breaking business into smaller pieces is supposed to encourage local initiative and risk taking • IN FACT, IT DOES JUST THE OPPOSITE

40. The experience, Continued • Divisionalization and autonomy has created more short-term oriented managers, managers who are more driven by the bottom line • These aggressive division managers are driven by short-term profits only Prepared by James R. Burns

41. Managing COMMONS structures • Who will manage the commons? • Depletion of the commons will work to everyone’s disadvantage • Establish signals that will alert local actors that a commons is in danger • Do not take “below the waterline risks” as was the case for the Titanic

42. The new role of central management • Identifying and managing the COMMONS • Become a researcher and designer • Test new structures in a simulative environment, and recommend those that succeed • Encourage organizational learning • Encourage risk-taking

43. Forgiveness • Localness must encourage risk taking • To do so is to practice forgiveness • “If you are making mistakes, that means you are making decisions and taking risks--and we won’t grow unless you take risks • “Making the mistake is punishment enough”

44. A Manager’s Time Senge: Chapter 15 THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE

45. How do manager’s create the time for learning? • How do we expect people to learn when they have little time to think and reflect, individually and collaboratively? • Even when there is time to reflect,…... • Most managers do not consider the impact their actions have had carefully • Managers are too busy contemplating their next move to consider why their previous policy did not pan out

46. What do American Managers do? • They adopt a strategy • When it runs into problems, they switch to another strategy • Then to another and another • Possibly to 4 or 6 different strategies, without once examining why a strategy seems to be failing • Senge calls this the READY, FIRE, AIM atmosphere of American Corporations

47. Learning takes time • When managing mental models, it takes considerable time to surface assumptions, examine their consistency, their accuracy, and see how different models can be knit together into more systemic perspectives

48. The example of Hanover’s O’Brien • Doesn’t schedule short meetings • Only considers complex, dilemma-like “divergent” issues • Only makes 12 decisions a year

49. Hanover’s O’Brien, Continued • If a manager is making 20 decisions a day, the manager is looking at convergent issues that should be dealt with more locally or is giving insufficient time to complex problems • Either way its a sign that management work is being handled poorly Prepared by James R. Burns

50. For top level managers • Their job should be consumed with identifying important issues the organization must address and helping others sort through decisions they must make