The Ecology of Leadership by Peter M Senge

Leader to Leader No 2 Fall 1996

IN the past 5 years corporate leaders have talked more about learning and development than in the previous 50 But the discussion inspires frustration as well as hope Senior executives invariably want to know How do I build a learning organization It is the most frequent question I am asked but it is the wrong question for two reasons First it implies that the president or CEO can singlehandedly make changes in an organizations genetic code Second it suggests that building a learning organization (and learning itself) involves a definitive formula rather than an ongoing process As with any lasting change the senior executives ability to implement a true learning organization is overrated Most people who reach the top of an organization soon find they have little unilateral power to control its complex workings That reality led the CEO of an international energy company to call the word drive -- as in How do you drive change -- the most useless word in the language You drive an automobile he says You dont drive a human system If you try you might end up doing more harm than good If you doubt the limited power of chief executives consider the usual ways they try to bring about change They articulate new strategies They devise new cost-cutting campaigns And most popular of all they restructure their organizations -- often more than once They do so because there is little else they really can do They dont design or produce products They rarely sell directly to customers And they are usually too far removed to demonstrate the connection between the strategies they devise and the work of people at the front line

Thought Leaders Forum Peter M Senge

Peter M Senge is director of the Center for Organizational Learning at MITs Sloan School of Management He has helped leading corporations including Federal Express Motorola and Intel improve their group learning capacity He is author of The Fifth Discipline one of the best-selling books of the decade and The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (996) More on Peter M SengeFrom Leader to Leader No 2 Fall 1996

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Executive leaders can develop guiding principles They can change their own ways of thinking and interacting and thereby become a persuasive role model They can and must develop strategies for building a sustainable competitive advantage which means creating an environment in which people are open to new ideas responsive to change and eager to develop new skills and capabilities Above all to sustain change -- particularly change requiring new organizational capabilities and collective intelligence -- senior executives must do two things develop personal learning strategies and understand the context in which they work

The Context for Change

ORGANIZATIONS work the way they do because of the way people work in those organizations Deep organizational change requires a change in people Redrawing the lines and boxes in your org chart without addressing the way people within the organization interact may be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

While many executives acknowledge the need for leaders at every level of the organization they rarely manage the enterprise as if those leaders existed They fall into a trap that has become embedded in our language they confuse rank with leadership The belief that the leaders are only those with executive titles and corner offices serves to reinforce the lack of initiative enterprise and entrepreneurship that these same executives rightly say is stifling their organization Truly innovative adaptive companies recognize that a healthy leadership ecology requires three kinds of leaders local line leaders (branch managers project team leaders sales managers and other credible front-line performers) internal networkers (front-line workers in-house consultants trainers or professional staff who spread ideas throughout the organization) and executive leaders All three have an essential role to play Without the initiative of local line leaders no change effort will get very far Without internal networkers innovative practices rarely spread Without executive leadership the overall corporate climate will continually thwart basic innovation

What People Want from the Boss

ONCE you see the necessary interdependence of these different types of leaders the next step is to ask What do local line leaders and internal networkers need from executive leadership Its a powerful question that spotlights the role of senior executives If we dont ask the question from the perspective of those inside the organization we end up asking what the investors or the board of directors need from the executive leaders And that perpetuates the dangerous myth that senior executives must drive change What local line leaders and community builders ask of their executives usually falls into two categories First they want conceptual leadership Where are we trying to go and why (The why is as important as the where) Where have we come from What are the deep insights about our business and market and what has made us unique (For additional diagnostic questions see the sidebar Asking the Right Questions) In short what people are looking for is not the leadership of exhortation its the leadership of clarification In a world where decision making is distributed throughout the organization where front-line people are involved in what often turn out to be strategic not just operational decisions executive leaders have a new responsibility to contribute to the quality of thinking throughout the organization The second thing that people look for from their senior executives is personal commitment -- to learning teamwork or whatever key ideas and values are being advanced One of the most important ways executives can demonstrate their commitment -- and their credibility -- comes through how they work within their own teams

Where Executives Miss the Mark

A healthy team is one in which an outsider would leave a meeting thinking These people are really good at talking through tough issues Theres a lot of candor and a lot of willingness to challenge ones own thinking to lay out tough issues and say

The learning capabilities of teams tend to

deteriorate steadily the higher you go up the

corporate ladder

Heres something that I dont understand Unfortunately such gatherings are rare The learning capabilities of teams tend to deteriorate steadily the higher you go up the corporate ladder The top team is often the most dysfunctional of all Why The precondition for building a team is that people perceive themselves as needing one another And a lot of senior executives dont perceive this with respect to the other members of the top team They focus on their own functions their own turf their own agendas That lack of perceived interdependence is in part a result of the way we select and promote people If you look at our classic leadership profile you see people who are strong individual contributors -- forceful articulate and ambitious They have steadily advanced in their careers ideally because of their ability to produce results but often because of their ability to make impressions Theyre great political figures but often not particularly good team players I know corporations where everyone at the executive vice president level and above is over six feet tall That sounds like a strange coincidence unless a primary criterion for the post is image

A New Role for Hierarchy

ITS easy to bash corporate hierarchy Hierarchical authority as it has traditionally functioned is the authority of compliance -- and compliance wont get you far in todays fluid fickle marketplace But hierarchy still has important functions especially if we can learn to recognize its limitations and to adapt it to the changing nature of leadership Canadian researcher Elliott Jaques has suggested an important foundation for management hierarchy based on a little-understood responsibility of executive leaders In any organization different people need to have different time horizons People at the front lines who are dealing with customers or producing goods typically have a perspective that may stretch to months perhaps in a long-term customer relationship years But it more often spans weeks days or even hours The nature of the work requires that short-term perspective At the other extreme the most senior levels of an organization should be looking out 20 years and longer Based on this reasoning Jaques justifies up to seven levels of requisite hierarchy based on accountability for different time horizons (Of course many companies horizons dont extend beyond the expected tenure of the CEO so you might argue that US corporations lack the top two or three levels of hierarchy altogether) So from both a practical and theoretical standpoint senior executives are expected to provide insight and vision about how the world is evolving over the next 10 to 30 years But Americans probably have less sense of history than almost any culture on the planet and we seem to be if anything hell-bent on having even less sense of history Understanding the past is yet another capability that senior executives in particular must develop

Strategies for Personal Learning

ACTION learning -- a current buzzword for meaningful learning on the job -- is a hot topic among corporate trainers Its a fine notion but too often theories of learning exclude those at the top Can senior executives learn on the job The answer better be yes because if they cant learn on the job they cant learn anyplace else All learning processes really come down

to what one does on a regular basis you dont develop new capabilities in small doses They have to be continually reinforced and refined and enhanced Historically most senior executives didnt see themselves as needing to learn much of anything They were not learners they were decision makers Learning was something they did in school -- and by implication stopped doing when they left school (Of course real learning begins when you leave school) When top managers were honest enough to acknowledge they didnt know the answer to a problem they would hire consultants And because they want to keep getting their bills paid many consultants end up colluding with this antilearning mind-set -- they help solve a problem but rarely transfer the skills that enable them to help Today I think more managers are becoming aware of their need to develop new capabilities Senior executives are more motivated than ever to foster the kind of dialogue and honest inquiry that are essential to all learning

Consultants may help solve a problem but they rarely transfer the skills

that enable them to help

How People Learn

AT the senior executive level you have to ask how to make learning a continual part of your day-to-day experience Formal training and education programs have a role to play but it is a limited role The most effective training programs are catalytic -- creating a very new experience getting you thinking out of the box Learning is not just about some brilliant new insight or breakthrough experience How do you learn say team-based product development The same way you learn to write or to play the piano or to perfect your golf stroke you practice You never reach the end No matter how much you write play piano or golf youre aware how much better you can get You have to exploit opportunities in peoples daily experience to continually enhance their capacities -- which is really all that learning means To do that you need a learning infrastructure -- the time and resources to support reflection practice and dissemination of ideas and experience Ford for instance created a car development learning laboratory for the 1995 Lincoln Continental project to allow the development team to experiment with new processes and materials and to capture their learning for others Saturn has a similar learning lab on its manufacturing floor One of the best diagnostic tools I know for assessing your capacity to learn on the job is to ask yourself How do you use your time I often find a huge disconnect between what executives say is important and what they spend their time doing The most effective leaders consciously use their time to develop both a personal learning strategy and a unique leadership style (see the sidebar A Strategy for Learning and Leadership) But most alas feel powerless to control their own schedules As one experienced consultant told me recently when he confronted a CEO about how he spent his time the man responded Dont you understand Im too busy to work on my problems As a leader you have to find learning opportunities in your own work as well as others For example how do we find learning opportunities in meetings -- one of the places managers spend (and waste) the most time Several years ago at the Learning Center we developed a simple tool we called check-ins and check-outs You start a meeting by everybody taking a minute to check in with what they are thinking You then take a few minutes to check out -- finding out what people are thinking at the conclusion of a

meeting Initially the comments may be perfunctory But over time as trust and safety develop people start to share ideas and feelings and to understand each others concerns problems and hopes Eventually integrating learning and working means asking tough questions and giving up long-held assumptions And the more you have to give up the more your psyche your attitudes and beliefs are exposed People tend to internalize an organizations culture which for senior managers can mean internalizing a hierarchical culture of compliance rather than an inclusive culture of shared learning So the people who will have the most difficulty in changing may be the most senior people for two reasons theyve been around the longest and they have been selected by the system as exemplars of what the system values Clearly there is no simple answer to the question How do I build a learning organization But thats just as well The answers to how-to questions often turn out to be superficial I believe that the most important questions are the what questions What do we have to do to become more competitive What do we really want What do we really believe Do we really want to distribute power Do we really believe we have to organize in a different way And if the answers to those questions are not crystal clear -- if theres any ambivalence -- no amount of effort expense or strategizing will make much difference As people at the front line could tell you in the blink of an eye theres no substitute for commitment

Asking the Right Questions

The best way to learn is to ask questions Here are a few starters for diagnosing the strengths and weaknesses of your organization

bull What are our unifying values What have we stood for over time The ability to provide context and meaning for the work people do is key

bull How do you organize your time Is it spent on what you say is important If you want to know if youre really adding value look at your calendar

bull Whom do you depend on Your real work team is those people you count on to do your job -- including support staff suppliers customers direct reports even regulators Your performance depends on the quality of those relationships

bull What are you being paid for All leaders must understand what results theyre accountable for

bull How well do you practice teamwork empowerment service or whatever values you espouse Credibility is the No 1 issue for leaders By taking an honest look at your own practices -- and asking others to look at them -- youll know where you stand

bull How do you convey difficult issues Learning requires an acceptance by definition that one doesnt have all the answers Your ability to discuss complex problems and develop solutions without making others defensive is a key to learning

Return to reference

A Strategy for Learning and Leadership

Bill OBrien the long-time CEO of Hanover Insurance had a powerful strategy for combining learning and leadership OBrien observed that the calendars of many CEOs are divided into 15- to 30-minute increments and their days may contain 10 to 20 meetings If there are issues that can be resolved in 15 minutes he asked why am I spending time on them Those are exactly the issues that people should be dealing with at more local levels The solution was to spend less time in brief meetings and more time talking with people about learning organizations about spirit and shared vision about understanding interdependencies and business innovation When he had executive meetings they typically ran one to two days to wrestle together with complex divergent issues that plagued local decision makers The outputs were often not decisions per se but better ways to frame key strategic dilemmas and help people understand short- versus long-term trade offs

After more than 20 years of service during which time Hanover went from the bottom to the top quartile of the property and liability industry OBrien concluded that real organizational transformation is a journey few understand Everybody always buys into the ideas he told me After a while you start to wonder if everybody wants to be part of an organization with shared vision openness and continual learning why is it not the reality

He concluded that people have no idea of what it takes to lead such an organization He discovered that to be an effective leader in a true learning organization you have to be willing to continually give up your most cherished mental models You need to be willing to give up whats made you effective in the past Very few of us are

Perhaps the most difficult mental models to give up concern the very nature of executive leadership OBrien said it was a big year if he made three decisions -- and two of them were usually personnel-related decisions that he was the only person in the organization able to make Its not about making decisions says OBrien If do a good job of understanding tough issues and clarifying and disseminating our principles good decisions can be made throughout the organization

The Practice of Innovation by Peter M Senge

Leader to Leader No 9 Summer 1998

PETER Drucker has elegantly presented the three ingredients of the discipline of innovation focus on mission define significant results and do rigorous assessment But if it sounds so simple why is it so difficult for institutions to innovate There are two possible explanations representing dramatically different worldviews These opposing outlooks were first clarified nearly 40 years ago by Douglas McGregor in his groundbreaking Human Side of Enterprise Theory X (employees as unreliable and uncommitted chasing a paycheck) versus Theory Y (employees as responsible adults wanting to contribute) One possibility for difficulties innovating is that most people really dont care about innovation After all Theory X is still the prevailing philosophy in most large institutions -- certainly in the American corporate world Few people in positions of authority would admit to that view but our practices belie our espoused values If we look honestly at how organizations manage people most appear to operate with the belief that people cannot work without careful supervision As Arie de Geus has shown in his recent book The Living Company we treat the business enterprise as a machine for making money rather than as a living community Consequently we view people as human resources waiting to be employed (or disemployed) to the organizations needs (The word resource literally means standing in reserve waiting to be used) From the Theory X perspective institutions fail to innovate because most people lack the desire to innovate forget Druckers theory of innovation The answer to that problem is simple find more capable people But thats a never-ending story We dont have the right people is an excuse that suits all times and all circumstances it is a refuge for scoundrels Moreover it obscures leaders fundamental task of helping people do more together than they could individually If on the other hand we take the Theory Y perspective that most people come to work (or at least came to work at one time) truly desiring to make a difference to gain as Peter Drucker puts it a return on their citizenship then the failure to innovate becomes a bigger puzzle It cannot be laid off on not having the right people It must have more to do with why Peter Druckers three core practices are more difficult than meets the eye It requires that we try to understand how it is that good people desiring to learn and innovate can consistently fail to produce what they intend

Thought Leaders Forum Peter M Senge

Peter M Senge is a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chairman of the Society of Organizational Learning a global community of corporations researchers and consultants dedicated to personal and institutional development He is the author of the widely acclaimed The Fifth Discipline and with Charlotte Roberts Rick Ross Bryan Smith and Art Kleiner co-author of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (698)

More on Peter M Senge

This article is Chapter 8 in Leader to Leader See the complete contents

From Leader to Leader No 9 Summer 1998

bull Table of Contents bull From the Editors bull Resources

Additional resources for this article

The Practice of Innovation by Peter M Senge

Leader to Leader No 9 Summer 1998

PETER Drucker has elegantly presented the three ingredients of the discipline of innovation focus on mission define significant results and do rigorous assessment But if it sounds so simple why is it so difficult for institutions to innovate There are two possible explanations representing dramatically different worldviews These opposing outlooks were first clarified nearly 40 years ago by Douglas McGregor in his groundbreaking Human Side of Enterprise Theory X (employees as unreliable and uncommitted chasing a paycheck) versus Theory Y (employees as responsible adults wanting to contribute) One possibility for difficulties innovating is that most people really dont care about innovation After all Theory X is still the prevailing philosophy in most large institutions -- certainly in the American corporate world Few people in positions of authority would admit to that view but our practices belie our espoused values If we look honestly at how organizations manage people most appear to operate with the belief that people cannot work without careful supervision As Arie de Geus has shown in his recent book The Living Company we treat the business enterprise as a machine for making money rather than as a living community Consequently we view people as human resources waiting to be employed (or disemployed) to the organizations needs (The word resource literally means standing in reserve waiting to be used) From the Theory X perspective institutions fail to innovate because most people lack the desire to innovate forget Druckers theory of innovation The answer to that problem is simple find more capable people But thats a never-ending story We dont have the right people is an excuse that suits all times and all circumstances it is a refuge for scoundrels Moreover it obscures leaders fundamental task of helping people do more together than they could individually If on the other hand we take the Theory Y perspective that most people come to work (or at least came to work at one time) truly desiring to make a difference to gain as Peter Drucker puts it a return on their citizenship then the failure to innovate becomes a bigger puzzle It cannot be laid off on not having the right people It must have more to do with why Peter Druckers three core practices are more difficult than meets the eye It requires that we try to understand how it is that good people desiring to learn and innovate can consistently fail to produce what they intend

Thought Leaders Forum Peter M Senge

Peter M Senge is a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chairman of the Society of Organizational Learning a global community of corporations researchers and consultants dedicated to personal and institutional development He is the author of the widely acclaimed The Fifth Discipline and with Charlotte Roberts Rick Ross Bryan Smith and Art Kleiner co-author of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (698)

More on Peter M Senge

This article is Chapter 8 in Leader to Leader See the complete contents

From Leader to Leader No 9 Summer 1998

bull Table of Contents bull From the Editors bull Resources

Additional resources for this article

Know Your Purpose

E can start by inquiring into what we mean by mission anyway It is very hard to focus on what you cannot define and my experience is that there can be some very fuzzy thinking about mission vision and values Most organizations today have mission statements purpose statements official visions and little cards with the organizations values But precious few of us can say our organizations mission statement has transformed the enterprise And there has grown an understandable cynicism around lofty ideals that dont match the realities of organizational life The first obstacle to understanding mission is a problem of language Many leaders use mission and vision interchangeably or think that the words -- and the differences between them -- matter little But words do matter Language is messy by nature which is why we must be careful in how we use it As leaders after all we have little else to work with We typically dont use hammers and saws heavy equipment or even computers to do our real work The essence of leadership -- what we do with 98 percent of our time -- is communication To master any management practice we must start by bringing discipline to the domain in which we spend most of our time the domain of words The dictionary -- which unlike the computer is an essential leadership tool -- contains multiple definitions of the word mission the most appropriate here is purpose reason for being Vision by contrast is a picture or image of the future we seek to create and values articulate how we intend to live as we pursue our mission Paradoxically if an organizations mission is truly motivating it is never really achieved Mission provides an orientation not a checklist of accomplishments It defines a direction not a destination It tells the members of an organization why they are working together how they intend to contribute to the world Without a sense of mission there is no foundation for establishing why some intended results are more important than others But there is a big difference between having a mission statement and being truly mission-based To be truly mission-based means that key decisions can be referred back to the mission -- our reason for being It means that people can and should object to management edicts that they do not see as connected to the mission It means that thinking about and continually clarifying the mission is everybodys job because as de Geus points out it expresses the aspirations and fundamental identity of a human community By contrast most mission statements are nice ideas that might have some meaning for a few but communicate little to the community as a whole In most organizations no one would dream of challenging a management decision on the grounds that it does not serve the mission In other words most organizations serve those in power rather than a mission This also gives some clue as to why being mission-based is so difficult It gets to the core of power and authority It is profoundly radical It says in essence those in positions of authority are not the source of authority It says rather that the source of legitimate power in the organization is its guiding ideas Remember We hold these truths to be self evident The cornerstone of a truly democratic system of governance is not voting or any other particular mechanism It is the belief that power

To be mission-based means that those in

positions of authority are not the source of

authority

ultimately flows from ideas not people To be truly mission-based is to be democratic in this way to make the mission more important than the boss something that not too many corporations have yet demonstrated an ability to do While this might appeal to our ideals living this way is extraordinarily challenging We are all closet authoritarians For most of us it is the only system of management we have ever known starting in school To be mission-based and to be values-guided is to hold up lofty standards against which every persons behavior can be judged Moreover mission is inherently fuzzy abstract It is so much easier to make decisions based on the numbers habit and unexamined emotions To be mission-based requires everyone to think continuously But it can be done and when done it can work The largest commercial enterprise in the world in terms of market value is not Microsoft General Electric or Mashushita It is VISA International whose annual volume exceeded $125 trillion in 1997 If its different member organizations balance sheets of VISA products were combined and assessed according to common banking practices it is estimated that its market value would exceed $333 billion But VISA is not a typical corporation Its a network of 20000 owner-members who are simultaneously one anothers customers suppliers and competitors in the words of founding CEO Dee Hock VISAs innovative governance system grew from an extraordinary effort to clarify purpose which after several years emerged as to create the worlds premier system for the exchange of value Truly clarifying purpose and the principles which elaborate our deepest beliefs can be the hardest work you will ever do says Hock But without it there is no way to create an enterprise that can truly self-organize where you can balance broadly distributed decision-making function and control at the most local level with coherence and cohesion at any scale up to the global

Define Vision

HE second requirement for innovation -- define results -- is easier in some ways Managers by nature are pragmatic ultimately they are concerned about results and must concentrate on how not just why The danger is that short-term goals can obscure larger purposes Here again language matters After all vision -- an image of the future we seek to create -- is synonymous with intended results As such vision is a practical tool not an abstract concept Visions can be long term or intermediate term Multiple visions can coexist capturing complementary facets of what people seek to create and encompassing different time frames Leaders who lack vision fail to define what they hope to accomplish in terms that can ultimately be assessed While mission is foundational it is also insufficient because by its nature it is extraordinarily difficult to assess how we are doing by looking only at the mission For this we need to stick our necks out and articulate an image of the future we seek to create Results-oriented leaders therefore must have both a mission and a vision Results mean little without purpose for a very practical and powerful reason a mission instills both the passion and the patience for the long journey While vision inspires passion many failed ventures are characterized by passion without patience Passion comes from what

you contribute rather than what you get

Clarity about mission and vision is both an operational and a spiritual necessity Mission provides a guiding star a long-term

purpose that allows you to balance the inevitable pressures between the short term and the long term Vision translates mission into truly meaningful intended results -- and guides the allocation of time energy and resources In my experience it is only through a compelling vision that a deep sense of purpose comes alive Peoples passions flow naturally into creating something that truly excites them Taken together mission and vision fill a deep need All human beings have a purpose a reason for being Most of us believe that there is something more important than what you can buy acquire or market The passion at the heart of every great undertaking comes from the deep longing of human beings to make a difference to have an impact It comes from what you contribute rather than what you get Now these ideas might sound good but if we take a deeper look we realize that they are radical statements in todays society The return-on-investment orientation -- the view that people go to work primarily for material gain -- is the bedrock of our beliefs about people in contemporary industrial society Thus the real discipline of innovation not only threatens established power relations it also runs counter to our cultural norms Consider for example the saying People do what theyre rewarded for What management is about in many peoples minds is creating the right set of incentives and rewards so people will do what the enterprise needs them to do As W Edwards Deming saw clearly our system of management -- in all organizations -- is based almost totally on extrinsic motivation It is pure Theory X thinking It is why in the last years of his life Deming said that our system of management has destroyed our people This may not be our intent but it is the consequence of our actions If we didnt view the human being as an amoeba that does only what its rewarded to do then why would we spend so much time worrying about incentives Just ask people in the organization if they think the senior management really believes that people come to work every day as Deming said seeking joy in work Thats intrinsic motivation and its assumed to be in scarce supply in todays management Joy in work comes from being true to your purpose It is the source of the passion patience and perseverance we need to thrive as individuals and as organizations However people cannot define results that relate to their deeper passions unless leaders cultivate an environment in which those passions can be safely articulated While there are some extraordinarily principled and value-driven organizations the defining characteristic of far too many enterprises is cynicism And cynicism comes from disappointment As the saying goes Scratch the shell of any cynic and youll find a frustrated idealist Make speeches to your organization about upholding high ideals or contributing to a better world and most people will roll their eyes (if theyre in corporations theyll almost certainly roll their eyes) That reaction is the product of thwarted expectations and it is the reason so many organizations fail to innovate They are afraid to let the genie -- passionate purpose -- out of the bottle With good cause Passion is a powerful force but when frustrated it is also dangerous

Assess Results

HE third dimension of innovation is assessment We must continually gauge how we can best use our scarce resources As managers we all know what assessing is about its one of the fundamental activities of all management

Assessment has two components measurement and interpretation The problem is that the second and more difficult component of assessment -- interpretation -- requires understanding participation and physical presence Statistical measures of an activity may be disappointing but if youre actually involved you may see that people are engaged and learning They may be on the brink of a breakthrough Incomplete or premature assessment destroys learning As Bill OBrien retired CEO of Hanover Insurance says managers are always pulling up the radishes to see how theyre growing Thus assessment is fundamentally about awareness and understanding without which any set of measures can mislead Someone sitting on the outside judging rather than fully understanding can make effective assessment impossible But with awareness comes yet another problem as Drucker has pointed out after assessing results we must be willing to abandon what doesnt work Abandonment often precedes innovation It clears the decks for trying something new Again this sounds so simple Yet how many of us have ever found that it is difficult for organizations to abandon what isnt working To stop doing something that has been done for years To remove a person from a position who really does not have credibility with his or her colleagues I worry about organizations that cannot fire one person but can fire a thousand says OBrien There are good reasons why abandonment is a challenging organizational practice

I worry about organizations that cannot fire one person but can

fire a thousand

The first step in practicing abandonment is openness -- creating an environment in which at a critical moment somebody with lots at stake can tell a boss This is not working Building a culture in which people can express their views without fear of reprisal is a huge challenge for most organizations How often for instance have you noticed that when a group of people gets together informally the night before a staff meeting their conversation bears almost no resemblance to the same groups discussion at the official meeting the next day How many meetings have you attended where the real meeting takes place not in the conference room but in the hallway or the rest room afterward when the very people who asked lots of intelligent questions in the meeting say What nonsense Furthermore when people do feel safe enough to speak openly in a meeting insiders those with the most on the line tend to discount what is said When for instance a junior salesperson a young woman (or an old one) tells the boss something is not working you see how quickly an ostensibly open organization can reject unwelcome news Ive never seen an institution that isnt deeply afflicted with these dynamics Even the best managed corporations in the world fall short of their full potential mostly because people know that the official meeting is not where the issues are really discussed or decided The litmus test for measuring openness is simple How fast does bad news travel upward In most organizations good news travels upward faster than the speed of light But failure is denied before the word can be spoken Whose failure What failure That wasnt a failure we just didnt have enough funding Make no mistake the process of innovation is a process of failure By nature innovation is a continual learning process You must

The process of innovation is a process of failure

experiment assess reflect on mission identify results experiment some more Yet from an early age in school and continuing in work we have been trained to avoid failure and thus real learning Chris Argyris in his 1991 Harvard Business Review article Teaching Smart People How to Learn lays out a basic problem of learning in organizations He notes that most people in organizations are quite smart but that to succeed theyve learned to find correct answers and cover up incorrect ones This undermines the inquiry skills essential to real innovation and leadership because these skills revolve around how to uncover what isnt working in ways that do not invoke defensiveness Consider this true story A top management team of exceptionally bright committed people is discussing key issues facing a major American corporation In three hours not a single genuine question is asked Of course trivial questions get asked like Didnt we go over this issue two years ago Or Dont our experienced salespeople disagree with that view Or Whens lunch Each implies that we are wasting our time with the subject that we already have the answer Genuine inquiry starts when people ask questions to which they do not have an answer That is rare in organizations In most large corporations people rise to the top because theyre very good at a combination of two factors merit and gamesmanship In a good organization the mix may be 5050 in a great one 8020 The problem is that even the best leaders -- those who create a terrific impression and get results -- actually know very little In todays world how could they know much Obviously organizations want people at all levels who can produce results But often the most important act of executive leadership is the ability to ask a question that hasnt been asked before the ability to inquire not just dictate or advocate Unfortunately most people in executive leadership positions are great at advocacy but poor at inquiry These are just a few of the issues revolving around effective assessment This is an extraordinarily complex issue with complex intellectual issues (How do we know how long the radishes should take to grow) complex emotional issues (Who is not attached to ideas they believe in many of which are wrong) complex interpersonal issues (I didnt want to tell him what I really think because it would hurt his feelings) and complex political issues (But it is the boss pet program that is not working and the company has invested millions in it) It is one thing for an organization with Peter Drucker advising it to abandon practices that are not working It is another for the rest of us who can only learn from peers For those reasons assessment is a core research initiative within the new Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) leading companies researchers and consultants working together to advance the state of the art of how organizations learn We are coming to believe that there is a big difference between assessment for learning and assessment for evaluation Because most of the assessment we have encountered in our lives was the latter the very word tends to invoke defensiveness But no learning can take place without continuous assessment The key is that the assessment is done by the learners and the purpose is to learn that is to enhance capacity to produce intended outcomes not to judge someone else

From Habit to Discipline

experiment assess reflect on mission identify results experiment some more Yet from an early age in school and continuing in work we have been trained to avoid failure and thus real learning Chris Argyris in his 1991 Harvard Business Review article Teaching Smart People How to Learn lays out a basic problem of learning in organizations He notes that most people in organizations are quite smart but that to succeed theyve learned to find correct answers and cover up incorrect ones This undermines the inquiry skills essential to real innovation and leadership because these skills revolve around how to uncover what isnt working in ways that do not invoke defensiveness Consider this true story A top management team of exceptionally bright committed people is discussing key issues facing a major American corporation In three hours not a single genuine question is asked Of course trivial questions get asked like Didnt we go over this issue two years ago Or Dont our experienced salespeople disagree with that view Or Whens lunch Each implies that we are wasting our time with the subject that we already have the answer Genuine inquiry starts when people ask questions to which they do not have an answer That is rare in organizations In most large corporations people rise to the top because theyre very good at a combination of two factors merit and gamesmanship In a good organization the mix may be 5050 in a great one 8020 The problem is that even the best leaders -- those who create a terrific impression and get results -- actually know very little In todays world how could they know much Obviously organizations want people at all levels who can produce results But often the most important act of executive leadership is the ability to ask a question that hasnt been asked before the ability to inquire not just dictate or advocate Unfortunately most people in executive leadership positions are great at advocacy but poor at inquiry These are just a few of the issues revolving around effective assessment This is an extraordinarily complex issue with complex intellectual issues (How do we know how long the radishes should take to grow) complex emotional issues (Who is not attached to ideas they believe in many of which are wrong) complex interpersonal issues (I didnt want to tell him what I really think because it would hurt his feelings) and complex political issues (But it is the boss pet program that is not working and the company has invested millions in it) It is one thing for an organization with Peter Drucker advising it to abandon practices that are not working It is another for the rest of us who can only learn from peers For those reasons assessment is a core research initiative within the new Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) leading companies researchers and consultants working together to advance the state of the art of how organizations learn We are coming to believe that there is a big difference between assessment for learning and assessment for evaluation Because most of the assessment we have encountered in our lives was the latter the very word tends to invoke defensiveness But no learning can take place without continuous assessment The key is that the assessment is done by the learners and the purpose is to learn that is to enhance capacity to produce intended outcomes not to judge someone else

From Habit to Discipline

AKEN together mission vision and assessment create an ecology a set of fundamental relationships forming the bedrock of real leadership These tools allow people regardless of job title to help shape their future The failure of Industrial Age institutions to embrace the three components of innovation shows how far there is to go to meet the challenge of the next century Moreover Drucker is exactly right that innovation is a discipline a word having its root in the Latin disciplina one of the oldest words for to learn Many have talent but real learning requires discipline the process through which we draw out our potential through commitment practice passion patience and perseverance It is a difficult process but there is reason for hope The discipline of innovation is practiced successfully in many domains of human affairs notably the arts and science Interestingly when it is practiced effectively it is invariably done so within communities among diverse individuals who share a common purpose Energized communities for example characterize most periods of innovation in the arts such as the birth of impressionism or modern dance or jazz Likewise science at its best is an intensely collaborative undertaking even when the collaborators are strong individuals competing with one another their competition occurs within a larger mediating community Likewise in business real innovation is often much more collaborative than at first appears For example studies such as those by MITs Eric von Hippel have shown that many of the best new product innovations come from customers The problem is that most companies are not organized to tap this source of innovative thinking My guess is that mastering the discipline of innovation will require organizations working together learning from one anothers efforts We must learn to do what artists have done for millennia what scientists do when science works To do something new people invariably experience periods of profound discomfort Confronting the threat and uncertainty such change brings is best done together not in isolation Several years ago at one of our early SoL community meetings (then called the MIT Organizational Learning Center) a manager approached me and said I see exactly what youre talking about all these organizations learning from one another This is Alcoholics Anonymous for Managers I laughed but I think he hit the nail on the head We are all addicted to maintaining control to avoiding failure to doing things the way we always have We cant help it And we need one another to break the habit

• Leader to Leader No 9 Summer 1998