Speed. Change. Time LO10447

pcapper@actrix.gen.nz
Sat, 12 Oct 1996 16:31:43 +1300 (NZDT)

Replying to LO10398 --

Mark Peal wrote:

" When a snowstorm clogs the roads, we call out the snowplows. In all but
extreme cases, that solves it, and no adapting or new learning needs to
happen. When the usual responses don't work, something needs to change in
people's values, attitudes, or behavior habits. It's often a challenge
they'd rather not face. The leader's job is to mobilize people to adapt,
not eliminating distress, but by modulating it so that people aren't
overwhelmed by it".

Our research centre is very interested in this subject at the moment. Here
is a sketch of the components of our interest, together with a suggested
hypothesis.

1. Rasmussen's model of three levels of performance:

Skills based performance - which involves the repetition of a
predetermined task.

Rule based performance - requiring pattern recognition and the choice and
application of predetermined rules to a situation where the pattern has
been correctly identified and the correct rule applied.

Knowledge based performance - where knowledge of 'why' and 'how' things
happne is applied to devising a solution to a previously unencountered and
unpredicted problem.

2. Engestrom's Cycle of Expansive Learning which posits that 'learning'
and development occurs when a needs state exists which requires a response
from a person or group because a situation has arisen for which a
'business as usual' response will not work.

3. The large body of research running from John Dewey to the present which
indicates that 'experts' outperform 'novices' in routine and repetitive
tasks, but that 'novices' outperform 'experts' in coping with the new or
the unexpected.

4. The concept of 'The Learning Curve' which implies that performance
improves by doing the same thing better and better and by eliminating
error, as opposed to 'Double and Triple Loop Learning' which implies that
performance improves by constantly revisiting ones assumptions and seeks
for improvement through changing one's practices and learning from the
mistakes made as one does so.

5. James Reason's work on Human Error and the causes of catastrophic
accidents.

6. The whole Learning Organisation school of thought.

We suggest that all these lines of inquiry indicate that there are modes
of learning and skills formation, work organisation and design,
conceptions of what constitutes 'expertise', personnel management
practices, and financial management practices, which are appropriate in
conditions of relative stability (ie - to do with repetition of
predetermined or predicted events); and that are a whole set of different
modes which are appropriate in conditions of relative uncertainty and
instability (ie - to do with frequent operational encounters with the
novel and the unexpected).

We go on to suggest that much of what constitutes current organisational
confusion is concerned with significant shifts in the environment from the
stable and towards the uncertain end of the continuum, and the inability
to identify or appropriately analyse the fact, the unwillingness to
acknowledge that the shift requires new modes of practice, or the lack of
knowledge of modes appropriate to the modified environment.

I guess that for participants in this list most of the foregoing
represents a stating of the obvious. But:

(1) it is our experience that even many people who are very interested in
the whole LO thing often have little or no theory in which to situate
their interest - resulting in their continued adherence to totally
incongruent components of their organisational practice even as they seek
to move towards LO principles; and

(2) the obvious isn't nearly as well known or accepted as I often think.
This was brought home to me by the experience of one of our partners. He
recently spent some time in Boston, doing some personal developmental work
with the LO people at MIT. One evening he found himself in a private
Boston home, within walking distance of the Sloan School of Management,
and seated alongside a Very Senior Executive of a Very Large And Well
Known US Corporation. The Very Senior Executive wondered what had brought
a New Zealander to Boston. It then transpired that this VSE of a VLAWKUSC
had never heard of Peter Senge or the term 'learning organisation', and -
when he had had the bare bones of a definition given to him - could not
imagine why someone would come all the way from New Zealand to equip
himself to better understand such a piece of arrant nonsense.

Phillip Capper
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business
PO Box 2855
Wellington
New Zealand

-- 

pcapper@actrix.gen.nz

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>