Transcript Lecture 5 - Texas Tech University

Prototypes
Fall 2010
Contents
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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
2
Recitation
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What is the role of the subconscious in
personal mastery?
February 19, 2004
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Recitation
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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?
February 19, 2004
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Part IV: Prototypes
Senge, Chapter 13--OPENNESS
THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE
Prototypes
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Are essential to discovering and solving
key problems
We are in the prototyping stage
Significant innovation requires
prototyping
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Where are we (in the Rawls
COBA)?
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Somewhere between invention and
innovation
To what extent are we open to
innovation?
To what extent are we willing to
address
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new curricula
new organizational structures
Prepared by James R. Burns
7
What explicit innovations would
we like to see prototyped?
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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?
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
8
Another Reality: Business
Integration
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Integrating themes
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Information technology
Quality
Entrepreneurship
Leadership
Systems thinking/System dynamics
Projects and processes
9
Business Integration
ACC
FIN
IS
MAN
MAR
Information Technology
Quality
Leadership/Entrepreneurship
Systems Thinking/System Dynamics
February 19, 2004
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Back to prototyping
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How to encourage openness
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How to discourage localness (Ch 14)
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the elimination of politics and game playing
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
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Openness--Chapter 13-Outline
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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
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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How to eliminate politics and
game playing
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A political environment is one in which
“WHO” is more important than “WHAT”
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Who proposes the idea is more important
than the idea itself
Some individuals lose political power at
the expense of others
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The wielding of arbitrary power over others
is the essence of authoritarianism
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
13
Is there anything that can be
done about org. politics??
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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
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Shared vision
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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.
February 19, 2004
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Openness
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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
February 19, 2004
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Building an environment where
self interest is not paramount
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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
February 19, 2004
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Shared Visions
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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
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Honesty begins to Prevail
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Honesty and forthrightness must
pervade every relationship
Cannot sanction lying to anyone,
administrators, students
February 19, 2004
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Unlearning the habits of
politics and game playing
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Shared vision, once it takes root, does
not completely dissolve game playing
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Participative Openness and
Reflective Openness
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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
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Reflective Openness
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While Part. Openness gets people
speaking out, reflective openness gets
people looking inward
Starts with the willingness to challenge
our own thinking
February 19, 2004
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Reflective Openness,
Continued
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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
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Localness
Senge: Chapter 14
THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE
How to achieve control
without controlling
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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
February 19, 2004
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Two new challenges emerge
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How to get senior managers to give up
control to local managers
How to make local control work
February 19, 2004
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Giving up control:
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Will this make senior managers
dispensable?
Senior managers must assume
responsibility for continually enhancing
the organization’s capacity for learning-THEIR NEW ROLE
February 19, 2004
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Other questions about
localness:
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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
February 19, 2004
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What experience has shown:
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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
February 19, 2004
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Learning organizations:
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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
February 19, 2004
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The illusion of being in control
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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
February 19, 2004
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Vacillation
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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
February 19, 2004
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Beliefs
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Unless senior management believes:
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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
February 19, 2004
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Today: Expediency
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Many organizations are cutting
management levels
Becoming more locally controlled, to cut
costs
But these arrangements do not last a
business downturn, usually
February 19, 2004
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Control without controlling
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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
February 19, 2004
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The Tragedy of the Commons
Archetype
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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
February 19, 2004
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Tragedy of the Commons
Archetype, Continued
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Occur frequently in businesses where
localness is valued
When several divisions share a common
support group
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Corporations’ Depletable
Commons
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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…
February 19, 2004
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The experience
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Breaking business into smaller pieces is
supposed to encourage local initiative
and risk taking
IN FACT, IT DOES JUST THE OPPOSITE
February 19, 2004
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The experience, Continued
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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
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Managing COMMONS
structures
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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
February 19, 2004
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The new role of central
management
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Identifying and managing the
COMMONS
Become a researcher and designer
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Test new structures in a simulative
environment, and recommend those that
succeed
Encourage organizational learning
Encourage risk-taking
February 19, 2004
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Forgiveness
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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”
February 19, 2004
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A Manager’s Time
Senge: Chapter 15
THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE
How do manager’s create the
time for learning?
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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,…...
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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
February 19, 2004
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What do American Managers
do?
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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
February 19, 2004
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Learning takes time
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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
February 19, 2004
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The example of Hanover’s
O’Brien
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Doesn’t schedule short meetings
Only considers complex, dilemma-like
“divergent” issues
Only makes 12 decisions a year
February 19, 2004
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Hanover’s O’Brien, Continued
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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
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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For top level managers
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Their job should be consumed with
identifying important issues the
organization must address and helping
others sort through decisions they must
make
February 19, 2004
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In the future, Senge suggests
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High-level managers will spend more
time reflecting, modeling and designing
learner processes
Because reflection and inquiry are
integral to the development of valid
mental models
February 19, 2004
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Managers must set aside time
for thinking
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The way each of us go about managing
our time will say a good deal about our
commitment to learning
February 19, 2004
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Ending the War Between Work
and Family
Senge, Chapter 16
THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE
Introduction
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Finding a balance between work and family-number one issue
Learning organizations will, Senge believes,
end the imbalance between work and family
Personal visions are multifaceted--personal,
professional and family lives
The boundary between work and family is
anathema to system thinkers
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
54
The Structure of Work/Family
Imbalance
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Success to the Successful Archetype,
page 308
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Success to the Successful
Desire fo r work t ime
Success in work
T ime in work
T ime in family
Desire fo r family time
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
Success in family
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This is very unstable
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Once it starts to drift one way or another, it
will tend to continue to drift
There are several reasons why it tends to
drift toward more and more time at work
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Income
pushing ahead at work becomes a convenient
excuse for avoiding the anguish of going home to
an unhappy spouse
The imbalance is not self-correcting--it gets
worse over time
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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The Futility of Managing your
Life Within this Structure
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One-time improvements in family tend
to get overwhelmed by escalating
pressures at work
Eventually, people realize that the
structure itself must get changed
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
58
The Individual’s Role in
changing the structure
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Is it really your vision to have a balance
between work and family?
Making a conscious choice will entail setting
clear personal goals for time at home.
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being home for dinner, giving up weekends for
family, reduce evening business meetings
Be willing to pay a price for taking a stand for
a vision of balance between work and family
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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The Organization’s Role
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By fostering such conflict, orgs. distract and
un-empower their members
By fostering such conflict, orgs. fail to exploit
a potential synergy that can exist between
learning orgs, learning individuals, learning
families
Bill O’Brien says the skills of leadership in a
learning organization are the skills of effective
parenting.
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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What does Leading involve in
a Learning Organization?
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Supporting people in clarifying and
pursuing their own visions
Helping people discover underlying
causes of problems, and empowering
them to make choices
Looking for synergy between productive
family and productive work life
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Senge believes
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these changes will lead more
organizations to undo divisive pressures
and demands that create family/work
imbalances
orgs will acknowledge that strong
companies cannot be built on a
foundation of broken homes and
strained personal relationships
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Steps Orgs. can Take
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Provide day care for single parents
Support personal mastery as a part of
the org’s philosophy and strategy
Make it acceptable for people to
acknowledge family issues
Where needed, help people obtain
counseling and guidance for how to
make effective use of their family time
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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The conflict of work and home
is ...
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a conflict of time
a conflict of values
but can be perceived as something else
entirely
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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What the parent learns at
home….
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can be used at work
how to build self-esteem works in both
contexts, for example
February 19, 2004
Prepared by James R. Burns
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Let’s take a break
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Stand up
Walk around the room—in single file
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Bet its been a few years since you’ve been
asked to do that
Now return to your chair
Now, touch the top of your head with
your left hand
Now sit down
February 19, 2004
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Microworlds: The Technology
of the Learning Organization
Senge, Chapter 17
THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE
How can we rediscover the
child learner within us?
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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
nor unambiguous because the consequences
of our actions are separated from us in time
and space
February 19, 2004
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How then can we learn?
Microworlds (MW)
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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 organization
February 19, 2004
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Transitional objects: the way
children learn
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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
microworld.
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Transitional objects: Are they
the best?
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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
February 19, 2004
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What about computer
simulations?
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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
February 19, 2004
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How Does Organizational
Learning Occur?
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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
February 19, 2004
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MWs allow for….
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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
February 19, 2004
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MWs are being used today by
managers….
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for managing growth
for product development
for improving quality in both service
and manufacturing business
and they build upon the system
archetypes
February 19, 2004
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MW1: Future Learning:
Discovering Internal
Contradictions in a Strategy
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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
February 19, 2004
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The Business Plan of Index
Computer Company
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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
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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
system
February 19, 2004
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Sawyer continues...
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we got most of our sales people originally by
hiring away from competitors
today 20% is so many people that we cannot
possibly 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
February 19, 2004
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Consequences
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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
February 19, 2004
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Sawyer’s assessment

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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
February 19, 2004
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Then Susan Willis, Director of
Human Resources had her say

sales people resist any call to invest
their time in training and developing
new salespeople
February 19, 2004
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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

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There are no incentives or commissions for
helping newcomers
The proposed strategic plan would simply
reinforce this problem
February 19, 2004
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Conclusions of the MW session
at Index
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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
February 19, 2004
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MW2: Seeing Hidden Strategic
Opportunities: How our
Beliefs Influence our
Customer’s Preferences
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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
February 19, 2004
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Seaver believes...

That the key to success in the market
place lays in having good products
priced competitively
February 19, 2004
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Henry agrees but...
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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
range of services from better account
management to office design and
troubleshooting customers problems
February 19, 2004
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Seaver’s response was...

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.
February 19, 2004
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Sales people said...
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“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 have better
service after the sale
Still he held onto his belief that there must be
a way to gain competitive advantage through
better service
February 19, 2004
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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 they had experienced poor
service for so long
February 19, 2004
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Further, the MW showed…

Investing in service quality took a long
time to exhibit its effects because


customers have to experience improved
service before they take it seriously
the repurchasing delay in the shelving
industry took two-to-four years
February 19, 2004
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Both Seaver and Henry were
right….
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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.MW3: Discovering Untapped
Leverage: The Drift to Low Quality in Service
Businesses
February 19, 2004
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The Leader’s New Work
Peter Senge, THE FIFTH
DISCIPLINE, Chapter 18
Self-directed teams require a
new leadership style
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The traditional style of clear directions and
well-intentioned manipulation doesn’t work
People with a sense of their own vision and
commitment would naturally reject efforts of
a leader to get them committed.
One leader did not know what to do, now
that he had a self-directed team
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Our view of leaders….
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Is wrong
Especially in the West, leaders are
heros--great men who rise to the
occasion
This view reinforces a focus on events
and charismatic control of those events
rather than on systemic forces and
collective learning
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Our view of leaders, continued

At its heart, the traditional view of
leadership is based on assumptions of
people’s powerlessness, their lack of
personal vision and inability to master
the forces of change
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The new view of leadership in
learning organizations
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Leaders are designers, stewards, and
teachers
Leaders build organizations where people
continually expand their capacity to
understand complexity, clarify vision, and
improve shared mental models
That is, leaders are responsible for creating a
culture where learning is rewarded
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Leader as …..

Suppose your org is an ocean liner and
you are the leader. What is your role?


The commonest answer, not surprisingly, is
“the captain.”
Other less common answers include the
helmsman, the navigator, the social director
(making sure everybody is involved, and
communicating)
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The neglected leadership role
is …


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
the designer of the ship.
No one has a more sweeping influence than
the designer.
It does no good for the captain of the ship to
say turn starboard 30 deg. when the
designer only allowed for 15 deg.
Yet NO ONE thinks of the designer when
they think of the leader’s new role!!
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Why did no one think of the
designer

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
Lao-tzu: little credit goes to the
designer
The functions of design are rarely
visible
Consequences today are the result of
work done long ago in the past
Design work today will show its
consequences long in the future
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What must leaders design?

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



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Policies, strategies, “systems,” organizations,
specifically
Selection policies
Vision strategies
Value systems
Culture systems
Measurement systems
Rewards systems
Criteria by which excellence will be
determined
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And what of Design?

It is an integrative initiative



All of the parts must fit together and work
well together as a whole under a variety of
circumstances
The leader must view the firm as a
“system” -- Ray Strata
Corporate executives must become
organizational architects -- Ed Simon
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Gives rise to a new discipline:
Business Design




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Must loose focus on the P&L statement
Look at the long term, instead
Have to get away from piecemeal reactions to
problems
Have to integrate the five component
technologies
Must integrate vision, values, purpose,
systems thinking, and mental models
The synergy of the disciplines can propel an
organization to major breakthroughs
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First tasks of Business Design




Design the governing ideas--purpose, vision,
and core values
Building shared vision is important because it
fosters a longer-term orientation and an
imperative for learning
Get the systems thinking going early on
Get the concept of mental models and surfacing
underlying assumptions going early as well
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Subsequent tasks of Business
Design


Design the learning processes
Get personal mastery going
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The Leader as Steward

Leaders have a purpose story


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This is an overarching explanation of why
they do what they do
how their organizations need to evolve
how that evolution is part of something
larger
Most gifted leaders have a “larger
story”
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The Leader as Teacher

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First job of leader is to define reality
Leader must help people achieve more
accurate, more insightful and more
empowering views of reality
Must view reality at four levels: events,
patterns, structures and ultimately a
“purpose story”
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Creative Tension

What role does it play in leadership?
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How can such Leaders be
Developed??
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Time to Choose

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Learning or not
Systems thinking or not
PM or not
MM or not
SV or not
TL or not
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THE END
That is all, Folks
See you tomorrow
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