The Wisdom of Monty Python and the Failure of Learning and Development Teams to Notice

As organizations become large, complex and distributed, the transactional cost embedded in their day-to-day operations, which at one point may have been an acceptable trade-off for getting things done, can suddenly become crippling. Still many organizations turn to up-scaling existing solutions to address growth and continue to re-purpose strategies that are no longer suitable for the size, complexity and breadth of their network.

Organizations, like the people that operate within them, will often continue to do something that has in the past proven to be successful until it becomes blatantly clear that they are now failing. Recognizing failure is difficult because companies that have invested significant effort into their current processes are likely to try to replicate approaches several times over before being open to exploring new ideas. Unfortunately, under today’s rapid change and diminishing competitive barriers, slowness is a problem.

In the Corporate Executive Board Company’s (CEB) publication Preparing Learning and Development for the Future the authors’ sentiment that Learning and Development teams can no longer focus on learning intervention is right, but lacks the commitment to do things differently. Thomas Handcock and Ducan Harris definition of “network learning” emphasizes the importance of creating cross functional teams to facilitate learning. They distinguish “network learning” from “social learning” by suggesting that the former focuses on informal, on-the-job learning and the latter implies structured learning . While I don’t support the distinction, I believe the more relevant and true point is that Learning and Development teams need to better support on-the-job learning. Still, when we consider Handcock and Harris’ suggestions for a future learning function, we can see that the paper remains on familiar ground.

Suggestions that include elevating a corporate learning strategy to the enterprise level, strengthening skills of learning practitioners to assert learning principals with operational leaders, and focusing on helping people better understand how they can learn instead of pushing learning to them, will all certainly resonate with the intended audience. Similarly, methods that emphasize strategies such as coaching will have most readers nodding their heads, professing they’re doing just that. I like the spirit of this paper, but can hold it up as an example of how Learning and Development teams and their organizations have not yet hit the level of exasperation that jars them into considering new possibilities.

Handcock and Harris very effectively set up the context for change, but their proposals don’t address transactional costs, which will have proponents screaming, “It sounds good in theory but it’s not practical”. To effectively coach a large network, for example, organizations distribute the load, making it everyone’s responsibility. Centralizing , on the other hand, often results in rigidity and organizations will ultimately return to decentralized models in pursuit of agility. We’ve seen the story played out time-and-time-again and we go on inheriting more and forever shifting responsibilities.

“One thin mint?”

“I’m stuffed.”

And for those who have seen Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, you’ll recognize the paraphrase. We know the ending of that scene, don’t we. For those that haven’t seen it, watch it.

We can avoid such a dramatic conclusion if we are willing to re-imagine what learning could look like for organizations. Our solutions need to take heed of obvious signs that organizations don’t want to be taught, but want to learn; don’t want to be managed, but want better situational awareness; don’t want more, but want to do more of the right stuff. Yes, Learning and Development professionals have a role to play, but it won’t be the role they play today. They won’t be engineering experiences or managing processes, but rather they will be engineering the network itself so that it can function without them.

What we need is a quest for a “Holy Grail”, to loosely make another Monty Python reference, that guides our direction forward. I suggest we start to think about how we can create autonomous networks that learn on their own. As a member of that network, I should be able to learn what I need, when I need it without a Learning and Development team. Every step we take forward should be in that direction.

Dynamic Leadership - New Leadership Development for Collaborative Organizations

A recent report by the Conference Board of Canada, A Snapshot of Leadership Practices in Canada, confirms that leadership development is among the top priorities of Canadian companies; however, leadership investment wanes during economic downturns. The same report also suggests that the main strategies companies use to develop leaders often focuses on internal leadership programs and 360 degree feedback assessments, which are less effective than stretch assignments, job rotations and real-time coaching. Perhaps, what this suggests is that companies are not as committed to developing leaders as they may profess to be, either deprioritizing investment at times when it is most critical, or investing in leadership development solutions that are easier to manage instead of those that are more effective.

What struck me most, however, as I reviewed the Conference Board of Canada's report was the focus on individual leader development. While the discussion solely remains on how to develop individuals, we are missing the proverbial forest-from-the-trees. In today's global, virtually-connected, hyper-communicative, technology-based environment, our discussion needs to consider not only the individual within the system but the system itself. To put it simply, we need to ask "how can we enable the system to demonstrate market leadership". With this question, we are forced to shift our thinking away from an autocratic, scientific-management, leadership model to one of coordinated decision making across a community.

The fact that companies today have yet to explore shared leadership models and complex adaptive leadership strategies suggests that most organizations are not expanding their leadership perspective to account for new capabilities. We can easily point to financial markets, democratic governments, open-source movement, open-government, predictive markets and crowd-sourcing as inspiration. I am not suggesting we abandon our current leadership development practices in favour for more pioneering approaches, rather I think the time has come for strategic experimentation to ensure that companies exploit collaboration and maximize everyone's leadership contribution.

Creative Thinkers Undervalued by Executives

In the Preliminary Survey Report: The Skill Needs of Major Canadian Employers issued by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, Canadian employers rank creative thinking amongst least important skills for entry level employees. At a time of exponential change and when barriers to global competition across established industries and product offering are diminishing, an organization's capability to innovate is critical. John Hagel's blog "The Big Shift in Business Strategy"  calls for businesses to strategically position themselves as central nodes within industry networks to intercept multiple information points. Companies privy to a broader breadth of information points early in their gestation are uniquely positioned to identify trends and possibilities before their competitors and influence downstream recipients to shape outcomes to their benefit. Who better to draw connections between disparate points of information than creative thinkers. Perhaps then Canadian executives should rethink creative thinking. If they don't, they risk building stagnant organizations that operate well, but which risk being left behind as new innovations transform their industry.

Many, I suspect will argue that creativity can be developed later; it's more important entrants come equipped to work effectively with people, follow process and be able to apply analytical reason to immediate problems. The unromantic in me interprets that as people who can smile and put things in boxes. What Canadian companies need is individuals who can expand those boxes, maybe transform them into something else.

To illustrate the point, consider a recent conversation I had with a fellow management consultant. I presented my views of the future of learning. "Technology", I told him, "will monitor every digital transaction you make, interpret its meaning and identify your level of competency by cross comparing it with every other related digital artifact". I continued, "...the system will know you better than anyone else by tracking you over time and when you step beyond your capabilities it will support you like a personal assistant until you develop the required proficiency."

"I'm not sure I like the idea of being so accurately assessed," he responded. "...and if cognitive tools can be used to overcome knowledge gaps, then what will my value proposition be?"

My colleague's concern is grounded in today's knowledge market in which we sell information and experience. We are valued for what we know and not for our future knowledge potential . A new reality, however, is on the precipitous of unfolding. In the not so distant future cognitive tools will enable everyone to know. People will no longer be valued for what they know, but rather they will be valued for what they can learn and learning will be defined as knowing something before everyone else. Once it is learned it quickly becomes collective knowledge and you must quickly learn something new to remain relevant. Creative thinkers will likely generate new knowledge faster than everyone else because they will connect what for many seem to be irrelevant points of data.