The conversation went something like this.

“People who know they are being assessed will pay more attention in a training course or at their daily work. We need to use exams and assessments to getthem to pay more attention because otherwise they will just flake off. People are inherently lazy and we need to make sure they work.”

The conversation above sounds like a hidden threat. The threat I see goes something like… If you miss something you are in trouble on the exam or “Pointy Haired Dude” is watching…. This is an old school paradigm that destroys critical thinking in my experience. For example, the issue of an Exam has dogged classic PMP training and has generally pulled down the quality of critical thinking across the spectrum of corporate environments. It dogs classic workshop training when the conversation moves from “whats the best way to think about this ….. to ….. will this be on the Exam? If not on the exam then, can we move on to stuff that will be on the exam?”

When people become more concerned about the exam or assessment they have often stopped thinking critically. For agile training, which is most of what I do these days, people can easily fall back to old learning styles of known answers to known questions. Most of today’s business problems are demandingly complex and do not have predictable outcomes. A test or exam is a simple predictive Q/A model and that includes the situational stuff as well. For situational stuff, I just memorize the abstract pattern for which the situational question is written for and then answer according to the pattern. To deal with complexity people need an empirical thought process for the finding stuff we don’t know we don’t know. Cramming more factoids into adult heads is counter productive. As adults we typically have more than enough information crammed in our heads. The question becomes “Can we make better use of what we already know or have experienced to deal with uncertainty?”

In my experience, open reflective learning will occur and empirical behavior will result when, as a trainer/leader to I make the environment safe for learning. As a manager/director of people the same policy holds true, if you punish people for making mistakes they will stop making mistakes by trying not to do to much beyond what is painfully obvious that needs doing. In either case, learninig is shut down for knowlege workers. Sharing of knowledge, both tacit and explicit, comes to a halt and the organization’s ability to learn atrophies because those muscles are no longer being used. At this point the best we can achieve is a pursuit of efficiency and what you find is a focus on faster / cheaper / quicker. Anything that is different and innovative gets squeezed out by the fear of not doing something that is well understood and controllable.

Innovation is needed across most areas of today’s corporation. Learning should be part and parcel to every engaging job and challenge. For innovation to occur people need to focus on learning and that means expect mistakes. If they do not feel safe they will make feeble attempts to do some new things but, never really bravely reach out of their comfort zone. If you are hiring for factory / robot type positions then expect robots but, knowledge workers are key for innovative culture and fresh ideas.

People in my workshops pay attention because they care and I care. It is a social bond. As a leader/trainer you set a behavior pattern that will be modeled. Are you modeling “I am watching you!” ? People that work/report to me pay attention because we both care to do the best. Those that don’t care can and should be asked to leave or excuse themselves until they sort out their destructive tendencies. I call not caring destructive because it destroys empirical behavior .

Generally, it is useless to retain people that do not care. In most cases the overhead of managing them is in excess of not having them there. Which sadly means I am better off doing the job myself. As a leader or trainer your first job should be to foster an atomosphere where learning is safe and encourage your people to become learning machines. Better teams make better people who make better products.

• At the forefront of learning is where innovation occurs.
• Learning is about knowledge creation (see Nonaka’s paper).
• Knowledge creation is an interactive process.Organizations that foster learning reach new heights.
• People that are in learning mode are paying the best kind of attention.
• A good scrum process enables the team learning process.

Maybe I am completely off my rocker but, I found the conversation interesting.
Comments?
- Doug

So, Are Organizations Really Benefiting Social Networking

 Often the answer is “NO“.

Web Of Technical and Social Patterns

Why?

We commonly find organizations adopting technologies and building processes with needless structures at a rate that is chewing away at the benefit social networking technology brings.  For example, we continue to see rampant signs of multitasking, despite a large amount of evidence that shows people do not multi task well, especially on demanding deep thought. Of course we can always walk and chew gum but, how many people can read a novel, play a game a of chess and carry a conversation all the same time? multitasking is an opiate of the lazy minded who want a quick fix for productivity.  Too often, we become forced into bad behaviors and frenetically driven pattens that force us to make the wrong decisions. These bad decisions chew away any gains we make.

We are dealing with the need to nurture and grow complex systems. This transcends traditional ways of thinking and requires a respectful shift and appreciation for how to work with complexity. Devloping a complex system requires a the development of an smart adaptive approach to planning and dealing with new information.

Smarter Social Organizations Are Possible Now

Enabling these smarter organizations is a matter of freeing up the intellectual capacity you already have. The tools and technology available now can bring about a vastly smarter organizations to emerge than we have previously seen. With a smarter organization, patterns of practices will emerge that defy one mind’s limited capacity to understand and digest.  However, a team who’s focus is to help the organization become better can see these things and tune the environment.  Collaboration tools and outcomes need to be applied and adapted by the people using them. A collaborative tools and outcomes enabler team needs to support and nurture a base level of knowledge for that to occur. 

Work From A Know Center

A team who’s job it is to nurture smarter social organizations needs to focus on a simple rules based applied practice. Simple rules are clearly being shown to be the key lever to emerging complex adaptive patterns of behavior. The team will need to continuously adjust and tune the organizations social structure and it’s interaction.

Transforming organization to work smarter needs to be adopted and done in an empirical way. A team that is dedicated to stimulating the environment so that adaptive patterns of practice emerge is necessary. The team that stimulates the environment should be comprised of people who have skin in the game and should be driven by an evidence based decision making process.  These experts should have a passion for becoming adept to leveraging social media as a source of vibrant rapid feedback. Expertise should be developed locally and nurtured through applied collaborative practice. 

Great leadership of tomorrow will  be recognized by it’s ability to bring people together through the use of technology and do not suppress their identity.

Great leaders must allow for individual recognition inside/outside the corporate walls and reward  success through collaborative effort. For individuals this means pursuing professional development through collaborative exchange. This is the promise of social media and the benefit it can bring to organizations both large and small. 

It will take a lot of time to explore and deepen my use of this tool. Facebook is the most populare of the publish, share and network social media sites on the planet.

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My focus is owning my own name space. These tools are a poor substitute for casting the image you wish to present. Besides owning your own website is like owning your own house.

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