Bruce LaRue

One of my clients was the VP of National Operations for one of the nation’s largest wireless telecom companies. His team was responsible for the maintenance and operations of the entire wireless network. Their Network Operations Control Center looked like a scene from NASA Mission Control. His team worked under a spot light and in the hot seat; they were highly reactive, but at the same time, highly competent. When my client Don came to us for help, the reaction from his team was loud and united: we don’t have time for this…!

The first problem was a problem of perspective. The team was so busy reacting and putting out continual brush fires that they could never step back to address the causes of these fires.  The result was nothing less than transformational. The biggest critic in the team became our greatest advocate, and years later, we are still friends. He said he was never the same again after the process we took them through. Later, Don, who is also still a friend (though now retired and spends his time sailing here off the coast of Oregon) describes it this way:

“No matter how busy my team is, I now have learned to routinely take them out of the jungle floor and into the canopy of the forest. On the jungle floor, they hack their way through the thick vegetation, seeing only a few feet in front of themselves. From the canopy, they can see over the horizon; the storms that are coming their way as well as the rays of light breaking through the cloud cover showing them the way ahead. They engage together to discuss what they see from their various functional perspectives and vantage points, and chart a course ahead as a team. And last but not least, before I let them climb back down into the forest floor, I make them all look down at the jungle below to see if they have been hacking their way through the jungle in circles or not…”

One lesson learned is that activity does not equal progress….The point here is that perspective can itself be a powerful force for strategic change.

Too many managers appear still stuck in a mechanistic “control” paradigm and as such feel threatened that they are not (nor can they ever be) fully capable of controlling their operations. This is because increasingly, organizations are composed of knowledge workers, who by definition know more about their job than their boss. A boss can take this one of two ways: either they perpetuate the myth that they are (or should be) the smartest person in the room, or they learn that their job is to facilitate coordination, communication, and integration amongst the often fragmented components of their operation.

Knowledge workers, even (and perhaps especially) those at the periphery have knowledge and insight, they are the eyes and ears of the operation. If managers continue to be threatened by this level of knowledge that they themselves can never have full access to, they can never make the transition to their role as overall operations facilitator, coordinator, integrator.

Actionn Steps:

A next step might be the design of a workshop that gets everyone into the canopy for a view of the whole operation. Managers must understand, however, that they take off their manager badge at this meeting and participate only as a participant. Leadership should set the direction and priorities, while those closest to the work figure out how to get from here to there…with some expert facilitation of course. Leadership then gets to sign off on the direction, but they should be at the helm and not in the engine room.

Start with helping them to gain perspective of the whole operation, and how increased complexity has taken them into a new arena where more of the same; working longer, harder, smarter, more efficiently won’t get them where they need to go, and WHY.

Help them paint a picture of their own desired end state based on what the customer expects (integrated solutions) and how increased complexity has led to increased internal specialization and hence fragmentation

Break them into small groups and mix them up cross-functionally

Ask some variation of the following:

Given our desired end state and priorities:

• what is working well today?
• what is not working as well as necessary?
• what should we do differently moving forward?

Capture what they come up with in small group discussions for the larger group to see and then see if you can move toward a pilot project that can be signed off by management. This way, management is setting the direction and priorities, but those closest to the work are coming up with the solutions of how to get from here to there. This helps create broad engagement in change, while ensuring that teams are held accountable for outcomes, not for “just doing one’s job…”

A presentation of how we did this for the Boeing Dreamliner Paris Air show and 30 nation World Tour is at:

 http://brucelarue.com/pdfs/Fusion%20of%20Design%20and%20Engineering%2010.13.051.pdf

I wanted to share with my readers some initial outcomes from the Iceland National Assembly project, which is a participatory action research project developed by Bjarni Snæbjörn Jónsson, one of our student colleagues at Adizes Graduate School. This project was born out of a series of conversations and initial dissertation concept paper drafts Bjarni put together when Iceland was at its peak. After their economy went off the edge, perhaps suffering a worse fate than others in the world, Bjarni landed on this idea as the focus of his dissertation.

I am honored to serve as Chair of Bjarni’s Dissertation Committee, where Don Beck (Founder of Spiral Dynamics Institute) also serves as a member. We are exceptionally pleased with how well this first phase of the National Assembly Project has developed. Again, think of Iceland in terms of a microcosm of the larger world, or perhaps on a smaller scale as an organization in need of redirection. The principles, we believe, that evolve from this project will have much broader implications.

I hope this project inspires you as it has me.

Bruce

http://icelandweatherreport.com/2009/11/great-national-assembly- <http://icelandweatherreport.com/2009/11/great-national-assembly->

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Bjarni Snæbjörn Jónsson is Partner with Capacent Iceland

bjarni.jonsson@capacent.is

Getting Things Done Through Action-Learning Teams

Learn how to look at your organization through a new lens. This article will help you to create Action Teams that generate new internal capacity for change in your organization. Identifying, creating, and leveraging these teams in your organization will help to create heightened engagement in change with a focus on the design, deployment, and integration of strategic priorities. New leaders are created while generating greater cross-functional alignment with internal and external stakeholders. This is an excellent way to augment current and future leadership development initiatives in your organization.

Read this latest article in CEO Quarterly Magazine at:

http://www.ceoqmagazine.com/hrm/actionlearningteams/index.htm

Dr. LaRue is a member of the Board of Advisors of the International Institute of Management (IIM), publishers of CEO Quarterly Magazine.

Published in:

LaRue, B. and S. Galindo (2009). Synthesizing Corporate and Higher Education Learning Strategies. Handbook of online learning : innovations in higher education and corporate training. K. E. Rudestam and J. Schoenholtz-Read. Thousand Oaks, Calif., Sage Publications.

Synthesizing Higher Education and

Corporate Learning Strategies[1]

Bruce LaRue and Stephanie Galindo

The acquisition and distribution of formal knowledge has come to occupy a place in the politics of the knowledge society in the same way that acquisition and distribution of property and income have had a powerful influence in the Age of Capitalism over the last 2-3 centuries. –Peter Drucker

The conceptual foundations underpinning this chapter are based on doctoral research and consulting activities conducted by Bruce LaRue in consultation with diverse multinational organizations representing network technology, forest products, commercial airlines, wireless telecommunications, financial services, surgical products, chemical manufacturing, management consulting, and the U.S. Department of Defense. While the organizations span various levels of technological complexity and their workers function at various levels of professional competence, each organization relies increasingly on the use of network technologies to conduct routine business affairs across cultural and national borders and each faces similar challenges in addressing the need for increased skill and knowledge requirements of its dispersed workforce. Each is also facing heightened levels of competition and rapid change due in large measure to economic forces propelled by the burgeoning use of information and communication technologies, leading to what has become known as the knowledge economy.

This chapter also draws upon Stephanie Galindo’s experience in higher education administration, curriculum management, and instructional design. Both authors have designed programming for mid-career graduate students from major global organizations who are conducting their studies through an online learning environment. These students seek to design models for managing vision and change in highly complex organizational contexts in international and multi-national settings as diverse as Iceland, Mexico, Canada, and Qatar.  Other students focus on themes such as integrity, loyalty, trust, and faith, leveraging their impact in the organizational environment.

We argue in this chapter that knowledge work[1] is predicated on a significantly heightened level of epistemological development and theoretical reasoning capacity wherein otherwise tacit systems of inference, inductive, and deductive schemata are made explicit as a basis of communication and coordinated action within and between knowledge-intensive organizational environments. This characterization of the geographically dispersed knowledge worker forms the basis for a model of networked learning that integrates selective aspects of higher education and corporate training with emerging forms of social networking technologies.

Read more here>>