Groupware & Org Learning LO2474

Richard Karash (rkarash@world.std.com)
Sun, 20 Aug 1995 15:47:23 -0400 (EDT)

Greetings to all my friends. I'm just back from a few days of immersion
in "Groupware" at a conference/exposition where I met several
learning-org participants, including KCBY F2F. (F2F = "Face to
Face").

The conference was stimulating for me (that was my manin objective) and
I'd like to try out a few ideas with you.

Throughout the conference, and most of the talks, seemed to be the
recognition that learning is important, or at least "hot." But, then the
extension was, "Oh, yes, groupware supports learning" and then attention
quickly moved on to the product features, emerging stds, etc.

The mental model seems to be that a learning organization is one in which
anyone can get any piece of information anytime (and from anywhere).

In my prep for speaking at the conference and while there, I began
thinking about just what Groupware *is* good for, and what we're trying
to do with the learning organization ideas.

I'm thinking that there are two orthogonal dimensions:

1) Technologies for scale in organizations (that is, technologies that
make it possible to be *an* organization even though spread over distance
and time zones)

2) Technologies for effectiveness

I'm thinking that most of Groupware is technology for scale, for dealing
with distance and time zones. The earliest important technology for
dealing with scale is the hierarchical organization, with direction
flowing down, and information flowing up. This was invented and perfected
in the Roman Army, the Catholic Church and the railroads. And, it's still
with us today. These succeeded in creating large organizations that work
OK, but they aren't very "human."

Other technologies for scale are the telegraph, standard time zones,
the telephone, etc. Now we have nice technologies for different time,
different place electronic conversations (including learning org). These
can play a role in supporting learning, even when the people are widely
dispersed, but it won't happen automatically (as the product-focused
people might hope); we'll have to use all we've learned about learning
organizations if learning is to happen.

In contrast, the learning organization ideas represent a technology for
making organizations more human, for taking better advantage of the
particular characteristics of the human spirit, in order to obtain higher
performance and satisfaction for the people.

Some of the groupware technologies are relevant here (meeting support
systems, Questmap to diagram the conversations, video to convey the body
language and voice inflections in addition to the words, etc).

But, in this dimension, I think the soft technologies are the most
important. (Although, perhaps there are ways that the soft technologies
can be imbedded into software.)

In my experience, I've found that the learning organization ideas can make
a real difference in organizations, but usually it's in teams, project
teams, parts of the organization. It's hard to find enterprise-wide
success stories for the learning organization ideas.

I'm starting to think in these equations:

1) Groupware is for scale (distance and time zones)
2) Learning org is for making organizations human and high performing.

3) Learning org + groupware is for creating organizations that are both.
That is, large, human, and high performing.

And, let me close by noting that here on the learning org list I feel that
we've created something that is very human and very large (in terms of
distance, time zones, different organizations, different industries).

--
         Richard Karash ("Rick") |  <http://world.std.com/~rkarash>
     Innovation Associates, Inc. |    email: rkarash@world.std.com
 3 Speen St, Framingham MA 01701 | Host for Learning-Org Mailing List
 (508) 879-8301 and fax 626-2205 |     <http://world.std.com/~lo>