Tony Kortens replied on 25 Jul 1996 to my LO8595:
Tony:
Thank you very much for your excellent posting! You raise some great
points, which show a very real concern for how organizations treat
newcomers. Please do not think that I reject experiential learning. As
an engineer/scientist the way we learn or develop new knowledge is by
observing, theorizing, and experimenting. I was reacting to an either/or
situation that was arising on this list which seemed to bad mouth "lists".
Maybe I am unduly influenced by the chemical industry in which I have
worked for the past 25 years. I have seen this industry become highly
regulated, just about as much as the nuclear industry in some sectors.
You refer to the "org socialitization process". There are many things
that engineers and other professionals do not learn through their academic
training. It is these processes which we try to inculcate early on. You
state that these processes are a justification or rationalization to
maintain the status quo". Mind you, we hire engineers and scientists to
IMPROVE our operations, costs, quality and products. Every new position
that I justified over the last few years was to improve SOMETHING!
The way I see how our organization learns to improve its products and
processes is through a cycle of plateau/growth/plateau/growth. When you
are operating a chemical/nuclear/manufacturing plant you want to have a
very stable operation which has very predictable results. So you find
that all of the organizational learning has been transcribed into "lists".
You really do not want that chemical/nuclear operator to decide he is
going to start up the reactor tonight a little bit different. It sort of
reminds me of the check lists that pilots go through in airplane cabins
before take off. You really do not want a pilot to tell his co pilot that
"we'll wing it this time, forget the check list'. I remember when in 1991
there was a fatal airplane crash when a Continental plane took off and
went right through to the end of the runway and plowed into an over pass,
killing most people on board. It was proven later that the pilot forgot
(!!) to lower the flaps before take off!
So how do you create new knowledge in such an environment? Suppose you
want to modify the manufacturing process to improve quality. What we do
is follow a well documented plant trial procedure. In that document the
engineer states the idea/objective of the plant trial, what are the
detailed steps and actions that will be taken, who will conduct the
training, what new test methods are needed, how much product is to be
classified as experimental, a summary of the statistical design of the
experiment, and how much improvement must be noticed for us to be
confident that the results are different from normal. An experiment of
this nature requires involvement of operations, research, process
engineering, quality control, safety, operations planning, marketing,
warehousing... There are many, many years of experience incorporated into
this plant trial procedure. You really do not want an engineer/scientist
to decide to just go out there to the plant and tell the operator to
change the settings on some dials to see if quality turns out better.
Once the plant trial is completed and the results show that we have made a
significant improvement, then the new operating procedures are made part
of the standard operating instructions. All operators and affected
personnel will be trained on the modified instructions. This becomes the
new list. So I think that by using a systematic approach to plant
trials, we have built an organization that knows how to learn and tries to
improve its learning capabilities.
You mention that the organizational socialization process may repress
newcomers from joining informal networks of self organization. It depends
on the organization, I guess. In our company we have a Chairmans Award
for Technical Excellence. This year the award was won by a team which no
one commissioned! ( All other teams competing had been formed by the
hierarchy!) What happened was that a scientist developed a new method for
analyzing in process material and thus improving the control of the plant
process. He could not figure out how to take the new test from the lab
bench to the plant. He got the buy in of a few plant and quality control
people and made a team. The team then convinced the plant manager to let
them try to control the plant with the new test. It was a tremendous
success. Of course, the plant trials were conducted strictly under the
plant trial procedure! So the new test becomes the list by which the
plant is controlled.
What the Fifth Discipline has taught me is that "a good systems thinker
is someone who can see four levels operating simultaneously: events,
patterns of behavior, systems, and mental models". I realize now that
many of our processes need to be improved because there was poor or no
systems thinking in their design (if they were ever "designed"). And to
quote again, "this confidence is based on first hand experience of the
power of people living with integrity, openness, commitment, and
collective intelligence, -when contrasted to traditional organizational
cultures based on fragmentation, compromise, effectiveness and fear".
Forgive this extremely long post... I'll make them shorter next time, but
I felt I hadn't gotten across in a constructive way. I am struggling with
how organizations learn in the real world and how it can be improved. The
Fifth Discipline and the concept of learning organizations has helped me
tremendously, not to change what we are doing radically, but to improve it
substantially, and I mean SUBSTANTIALLY.
--Roy Lyford-Pike VP Engineering and Development SCM Chemicals Hunt Valley, MD 71075.2421@compuserve.com
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