Transcript Microworlds: The Technology of the Learning Organization

Microworlds: The Technology of
the Learning Organization
Senge, Chapter 17
THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE
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How can we rediscover the child
learner within us?
Human beings learn best through firsthand
experience.
 Learning by doing only works so long as
the feedback from our actions is rapid and
unambiguous
 But learning from experience is neither
rapid and unambiguous because the
consequences of our actions are separated
from us in timePrepared
andbyspace
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James R. Burns
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How then can we learn?
Microworlds (MW)
MWs enable managers and management
teams to begin “learning by doing”
 MWs are nothing more or less than
interactive simulations
 MWs compress time and space so that it
becomes possible to experiment and to learn
when the consequences are in the distant
future and in distant parts of the
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
Transitional objects: the way
children learn
Children have a rate of learning that is truly
astounding
 They rehearse with transitional objects: dolls,
blocks, play-houses, etc..
 Managers too have their transitional objects:
MWs
 When teams go white-water rafting, participate in
a role playing exercise, participate in a dialogue
practice session, they are engaging in a
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microworld.

Transitional objects: Are they the
best?
A white-water rafting trip doesn’t produce
powerful insights into strategic business
issues
 Role-playing exercises do not show us
whether our personnel policies are aligned
with our manufacturing and marketing
policies
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What about computer
simulations?
PC is ubiquitous and getting more powerful
every month
 These simulations will prove to be a critical
technology for implementing the disciplines
of the learning organization
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How Does Organizational
Learning Occur?
According to Shell’s Arie de Geus, by
 Changing the rules of the game (through
openness and localness)
 Through play
 Microworlds are places for relevant play
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MWs allow for….
issues and dynamics of complex business
situations to be explored through trying out
new strategies and policies and seeing what
might happen
 Costs of failed experiments disappear
 Organizational sanctions against
experimentation are nonexistent

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MWs are being used today by
managers….
for managing growth
 for product development
 for improving quality in both service and
manufacturing business
 and they build upon the system archetypes
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MW1: Future Learning:
Discovering Internal
Contradictions in a Strategy
Lying behind all strategies are assumptions,
which remain implicit and untested
 These assumptions have internal
contradictions
 Such internal contradictions cause the
strategy to also have internal contradictions
 Such internal contradictions make the
strategy difficult to implement
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The Business Plan of Index
Computer Company
GOAL: reach 2 billion in sales in four
years
 Reqd. James Sawyer, vice pres. of sales, to
double his sales force
 Other top managers were unsympathetic
saying “you will work it out”
 While uncomfortable, Mr. Sawyer did not
want to become a “nay sayer.”
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Executives split into 3-person
microworld teams to play out the
consequences of the sales plan
They constructed an explicit model of the
assumptions behind the plan
 20% annual sales growth
 Hire 20% more salespeople and you make
20% more sales
 Sawyer says “wait a minute...not all
salespeople are equal…there is much they
have to learn…before they can sell a single
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system

Sawyer continues...
we got most our of our sales people
originally by hiring away from competitors
 today 20% is so many people that we
cannot posibly get experienced people from
our competitors
 assumptions were changed to show
inexperienced sales people to be only 1/3 to
1/4 as productive as experienced
salespeople
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Consequences
could not reach goal of $2 billion in sales in
four years
 could only get to $1.5 billion
 Attempts to get to $2 billion resulted in
having to double the sales force in the
fourth year alone
 This would wreak havoc on the sales
organization and the personnel budget
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Sawyer’s assessment
There would be a lot of pressure on our
veterans
 And, our veterans would have to train the
new salespeople
 This wold result in more veterans leaving
 This would create a vicious cycle
 Many of our veterans came to us to escape
this kind of situation somewhere else
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Then Susan Willis, Director of
Human Resources had her say
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sales people resist any call to invest their
time in training and developing new
salespeople
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Further, Susan Willis said:

Sawyer said this was because of hiring the
most aggressive salespeople who get their
kicks and their commissions from closing a
sale in the field
 There
are no incentives or commissions for
helping newcomers
 The proposed strategic plan would simply
reinforce this problem
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Conclusions of the MW session
at Index
Train new sales people more quickly
 Establish new rewards for sales managers to
develop their staffs
 Get more support to help senior sales people
mentor and train new sales people
 Create a MW for training new sales people
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MW2: Seeing Hidden Strategic
Opportunities: How our Beliefs
Influence our Customer’s
Preferences
Here again MWs are helpful in surfacing
different assumptions and discovering how
they can be related in a larger understanding
 Bill Seaver and John Henry are president
and VP for Meadowlands shelving company
 They have reached an impasse in the way
they saw their customers and their market
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Seaver believes...
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That the key to success in the market place
lay in having good products priced
competitively
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Henry agrees but...
Also felt service quality could play a big
part in whether or not customers chose
Meadowlands
 Believed the company should invest in
upgrading its service through training
Meadowlands dealers in performing a wide
raange of services from better account
management to office design and
troubleshooting
customers problems
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Seaver’s response was...
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These are good ideas but he didn’t support
spending significantly more on dealer
support because he was convinced that it
would not have significant impact on
Meadowlands’ sales.
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Sales people said...
“Our competitors are discounting like mad
and we can only hold our own if we match
or better them
 When Henry himself talked with customers,
frequently they said they would rather have
5% off on their sales order than better
service after the sale
 Still he held onto his belief that there must
be a way to gain competitive advantage
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through better Prepared
service
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What the MW showed...
Continual discounts in the face of poor
service quality became a vicious circle
 Efforts to maintain customers with better
service quality lacked credibility because
that had experienced poor service for so
long
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Further, the MW showed…
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Investing in service quality took a long time
to exhibit its effects because
 customers
have to experience improved service
before thy take it seriously
 the repurchasing delay in the shelving industry
to two-to-four years
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Both Seaver and Henry were
right….
Seaver was right in the short run
 Henry, in the long
 Both learned a lot about the way the
company interacted with its customers and
within itself.
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MW3: Discovering Untapped
Leverage: The Drift to Low
Quality in Service Businesses
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Managing for Quality in Service
Businesses
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Microworlds and Organizational
Learning
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Copyright C 2000 by James R.
Burns
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All rights reserved world-wide. CLEAR
Project Steering Committee members have
a right to use these slides in their
presentations. However, they do not have
the right to remove this copyright or to
remove the “prepared by….” footnote that
appears at the bottom of each slide.
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