 |
"Leadership, like swimming, cannot
be learned by reading about it." |
Did you ever
wonder how you learned to be a manager? Ever think about the process through
which you, and the other managers in your organization, are improving as
managers and leaders? It likely doesn't have much to do with classrooms, lectures
or e-learning programs.
Recently, I came
across the idea of two broad forms of learning; Cartesian Learning and Social Learning.
A Cartesian view assumes that "knowledge is a kind of substance and
that pedagogy concerns the best way to transfer this substance from teachers to
students." Many
classroom & e-learning programs are based on a Cartesian view of learning;
nuggets of information, sometimes called learning objects, are transferred to
learners who then become better at doing whatever it is they need to do.
Social Learning, on the other hand,
is "based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially
constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded
interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions." I
believe the majority of a manager’s actual learning and
development occurs through this type process.
For example, just reading this
article could be called a Cartesian Learning event. The impact is relatively
small. However if you have a discussion with some colleagues, making sense of the
concepts in this article and figuring out how they might help solve a current
challenge, such as helping the middle managers in your organization learn and
develop while keeping costs low, this becomes Social Learning. The impact for
yourself, your team, and perhaps even your organization, will be far more
significant.
Another term
that has recently become quite popular is Informal Learning, sometimes erroneously
used interchangeably with Social Learning. Informal Learning has been defined
as "the acquisition of skills, knowledge, and values from daily
experience and people around us." I think of Informal Learning as any
learning that occurs outside of a structured learning environment, whether it is
through a Cartesian, Social, or any other educational process.
For example,
if you attend a class and the teacher shows a YouTube video introducing some
concept, this is a formal learning experience. On the other hand if a colleague
happens to send you a link to that same YouTube video which you then watch,
this is informal learning. The only difference is the context during which the
learning took place.
There are
studies that indicate 75% of the learning taking place in an organization is informal.
Which begs the question; why is so much of our leadership and talent development
budget devoted to very formal learning programs, which are mostly based on the
Cartesian view of learning?
Another concept
frequently used in relation to Social Learning is the idea of Social Media. YouTube,
Wikipedia and Blogs are fantastic examples of Social Media, where consumers and
producers of content are one and the same. An extremely useful aspect of the
Social Media paradigm for learning and development is that everyone can
categorize, rate and provide qualitative information about the content. I
recently met the Head of Learning at BT Group who described a YouTube like
system they had built using SharePoint. Employees are encouraged to create and
upload HowTo videos, which were being watched, and used with great benefit, by
many others in the organization. The project, called Dare2Share, proved to be immensely
successful, with hundreds upon hundreds of high quality learning objects
created, categorized, rated and consumed by employees. Though this is a
fantastic use of Social Media as applied to learning and development, the
creation, sharing, categorizing and rating of learning objects in a YouTube
like system is not Social Learning.
Though some educational structures
leverage group discussion they do not necessarily result in Social Learning.
Communities of practice, defined as "Groups of people who share a
concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they
interact regularly" are platforms through which managers have
conversation around problems or actions. Similarly, Action Learning, defined as
"an educational process whereby the participants’ studies their own
actions and experience in order to improve performance", when
practiced by groups, encourages reflection and discussion around problems, or
actions, for learning. Though both Action Learning and Communities of Practice result
in discussion around problems or actions, they begin with a pre-defined problem
and do not typically include conceptual input.
Several years ago, in his book Managers
Not MBAs, Henry Mintzberg, a well known management thinker, wrote that
"Thoughtful reflection on natural experience in the light of conceptual
ideas, is the most powerful tool we have for management learning".
CoachingOurselves is an approach to management development created by Professor
Mintzberg and I based on this concept. Bringing small groups of managers
together to reflect and discuss recent managerial experiences in light of
conceptual content results in a simple, yet highly effective, approach to
management development.
Each CoachingOurselves meeting
focuses on a topic, prepared by a management or business thinker, introducing a
managerial concept and guiding the group discussion.
These are topics
such as "Decision Making; Its not
what you think", "The Play
of Analysis", and "Thinking
Entrepreneurially to Grow your Business", written by management &
business authorities such as David Ulrich, Philip Kotler, Marshall Goldsmith,
Michael Beer and Henry Mintzberg. Unlike Action Learning or Communities or
practice, CoachingOurselves begins with reflection on recent managerial
experiences in light of conceptual input.
The impact of these management groups
getting together, without consultants, external facilitators, or professional
trainers, once every other week is surprising. Individuals develop specific
practical actions and make incremental changes, after each session, rapidly
adding up to impressive improvements for themselves, their team and the
organization.
In
CoachingOurselves, managers are given the responsibility for their own
development and results. Some find this surprising, however it makes sense that
if trust the managers we hire to run large projects and drive teams they can
certainly be given the responsibility to decide how best to spend their time
with respect to learning and development.
All this
makes CoachingOurselves a scalable, cost effective development program with
high impact and almost no overhead for the HR people supporting and managing
the process.
Over time,
CoachingOurselves motivates and inspires broad changes in the culture of the
organization. Henry Mintzberg, in the HBR article titled Rebuilding companies
as communities, wrote that in "an
organizational context... community means caring about our work, our
colleagues, and our place in the world, geography and otherwise, and in turn
being inspired by this caring". Closely related is a comment by Peter
Block, in his recent book on Community: The structure of belonging: "Sustainable
improvements in community occur when citizens discover their own power to act."
The concept
of community makes me think of a small village, where people really know one another
and care for one another. This is much more than a community of practice, where
I offer help and advice if you ask, but I do not really know you and so I am
unable and unlikely to offer help on my own initiative. In a village the people
really know one another, they care for each other and care for the community as
a whole. People take initiative on their own or as a group to improve the
community. Imagine what might happen if managers throughout an organization see
themselves as citizens of their corporation. Imagine what your organization
might accomplish when, as Peter Block describes in his book, "citizens
stop waiting for professionals or elected leadership to do something, and
decide they can reclaim what they have delegated to others."
As CoachingOurselves
groups continue to meet on a regular basis, trust develops rapidly and aspects
of real community take root. People begin discussing what they are really
thinking. All those things that go through our head as we work in our organizations
but never articulate begin to emerge. Once that happens people take initiative
to tackle and solve the real managerial and business problems around them. A
sense of community develops in these teams, which often become major catalysts
for change in their organization.
To get an idea of Social Learning in
general, once you are done reading this article, I encourage you to have a
discussion with colleagues reflecting on recent managerial experiences in light
of the concepts introduced in this article, and then do something with your new
insights.
To learn more about CoachingOurselves
visit us at http://www.CoachingOurselves.com/,
and consider trying CoachingOurselves with your management team, or in your
organization. There are a growing number of organizations around the world now
using CoachingOurselves with impressive results.
