Learning is never in a vacuum, and so it’s impossible to analyze and synthesize my experiences in this course without integrating that which I’ve experienced outside of the class, and that which I brought with me into the class. There are a number of identifiable sources of learning that impact how I am beginning to think about organizational change but I initially opened myself to these resources because of a single event.
In August of 2009, I experienced an abrupt separation from my life partner that led me to question and explore much of what I believed about myself, my partner, my relationships and my life. In this process, I have gained a deeper, more loving and I hope a less clouded understanding of myself and of others.
The unexpected event also led me to:
1. Leave a comfortable employment of 8 + years and began a new job at a (from the outside) similar non-profit organization with a (from the inside) dissimilar organizational culture.
2. Read A LOT, particularly the works of the Vietnamese Zen/Buddhist Monk Thich Naht Hahn.
I start by sharing with you the event and the succeeding influencing factors because they have shaped the insight I have gained about organizational change over the past few months. Many new ideas that have come out of our readings, class discussions and large group intervention experiences have converged with concepts I gleaned and formed from these other sources of learning. I am in a convergence of sorts, and it is this that I will write about now.
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It’s important to understand the assumptions with which I operate today. Please keep in mind that these assumptions have been taking shape over the last 5 years and very definitely include the notions about organizations, change and interventions that we learned in class.
Organizations are organisms
Our initial readings in William Bennis’ comprehensive reader introduced us to the metaphor of organizations as organisms, complex systems that are impacted by the environments in which they live. Organizations are not machines that can be controlled from the top down in a linear manner. Rather, they are open and living beings that are subject to external and internal conditions and that must adapt to the demands and forces of their environment. In fact, the environments in which organizations live today are gaining in complexity and are changing rapidly. We read that in order to thrive, organizations must be able to sense, predict and respond to this dynamic environment. Very few organizations exist today that have continued to perform since the early 1900s (according to Foster and Kaplan in chapter three of Bennis’ reader) and those that have performed in the markets have been able to recast and renew themselves as the market has fluctuated and evolved.
This notion of organization as organism has implications for organizational structure and management philosophy and style. Bureaucracies do not respond quickly to the need for change, and many of the underlying assumptions of bureaucracies have to be questioned and transformed. These include the idea that organizational heads are the experts and thus hold the answers to problems. In a nimble, adaptable organization, managers and leaders embrace that all members of the organization, and stakeholders outside of the organization, have pieces to the knowledge puzzle that must come together in order for the organization to understand itself, to understand the context in which it lives and thus to remain viable.
Hence,
Valuable knowledge exists throughout the organizational body and not just in the head
Those of us in the Adult Learning program learned from Edgar Schein and Nancy Dixon in ADLT 623 that knowledge creation is a process of meaning making. Collective knowledge creation (organizational learning) is a collective meaning making process. Experts, be they organizational leaders or specialists or otherwise, are not the ones who hold the answers and knowledge is not about owning information or facts. Knowledge creation is a group process in which all participants have something to contribute. Collective knowledge and organizational learning arise in the space in which each member of the organization shares what he or she believes or knows.
We’ve also learned that there is a preferred method for creating collective knowledge or gaining collective understanding, and that process is
Dialogue
One of the articles we read this semester (actually, a chapter for publication in The Handbook for Organization Development) proposed that dialogue is critical to transform collective thinking processes and find deeper meaning. Dialogue is not just discussion; rather, it’s a specific relational process that occurs between people, that allows diverse perspectives to be held in the space of the conversation. Parties engaged in dialogue suspend their own beliefs and assumptions in order to listen, tease out, and fully understand the other perspectives, feelings, beliefs, ideas that are present in the room. It’s a process that creates energy or synergy and is much more than words and cognition, and it allows individuals to go beyond what the “self” holds as true to generate what the “whole”, the collective, the system, constructs as true.
Dialogue is not easy to facilitate or in which to engage. I discovered this myself when I recently facilitated a one day retreat with the management team at my new place of employment using a large group intervention (one we did not learn about this semester) called World Café. The management team’s method of discussing problems has been to debate on a good day and argue on the rest of the days (so voices are raised, people interrupt each other in order to press individual perspectives, promote specialized interests, etc.). The World Café approach helped to create a space and boundaries in which the group could learn about dialogue. However, I have learned that facilitating a group to hold dialogue when they are new to it, and so is their facilitator, is quite challenging. It requires skills, practice and finding voice (and I will return to my Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook from the Groups and Teams class to get assistance!).
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Where theory met practice this semester was in the large group interventions we facilitated or experienced as participants. These interventions fit well with, are dependent on, the organization as open system (organism) concept. I appreciated all of them and they share much in common, including:
1. The importance of getting the whole system in the room. Of course, the whole system varies from intervention to intervention: in Open Space, whoever shows up are the right people; in Future Search and Appreciate Inquiry (AI), selection of stakeholder representatives is important.
2. Appreciating diverse perspectives: all of the large group interventions depend on individual contributions to create a whole picture. Diversity is essential to the health, the wholeness of the picture that is embraced by the group. A safe environment is foundational--one of the ways I experienced this facilitating Future Search was to encourage expressions of opinions of the one that was not shared by the others without judging the one or the others. In AI, I believe safety is created by the relentless focus on the positive--the positive core, an inquiry process that strives to elicit from people the best they have experienced. In Open Space, a safe environment in which to share unpopular opinions is induced by the few guiding principles and the one law of two feet. The vastness of time and space--and the expectation to take responsibility for ideas and contributions (and if you don’t like what’s being discussed in one group, then go to another!) create the paradoxical sense of responsibility and liberation.
3. Movement, energy, presence, release: the large group interventions are successful because they are not cognitive in nature. Rather, they are designed to hold group energy and spirit that already exists--Open Space depends a great deal on movement, space and time to generate and release this energy. Future Search moves participants from the past to the present and into the future as does AI. Yes, people talk--but people also draw and map and construct timelines and make models and slogans. People can act and dance and sing if they choose (at least in Future Search). The point is that the knowledge or beliefs or energy or whatever you want to call it, THAT ALREADY EXISTS or that is being created in the moment, is allowed to show itself in whatever form is most comfortable for participants. What lies very deeply inside of us as individuals is released and becomes part of the whole.
Once that which already exists is released and recognized as present, it seems like dialogue flows much more easily.
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Harrison Owen writes about Open Space that participants must come to an Open Space conference for something, and the outcome or topic is the something. The intervention or the process does not matter to most participants (although it might be of the utmost importance to us as HRD practitioners). He writes that as long as it works, participants don’t care what intervention or strategy is used.
Perhaps he is right to tell us not to emphasize the process but rather to generate the topic of interest. I beg to disagree that the intervention itself does not matter. In fact, I propose that the intervention itself may be the learning that leads to the change.
My experience this semester has been a change for me. In reading about, then practicing in class both facilitation of and participation in three of the large group interventions, I was able to gain enough confidence to try a modified large group intervention at work. In the attempt, I have experienced (and learned about and from) facilitation and dialogue and group energy and dynamics. I have seen the gap between an organization’s desire to change and their readiness for it. In the one day retreat I facilitated, some in the group learned that they lack the skills to hold dialogue but know very well how to argue. Individuals I work with have begun to reflect on their OWN behaviors that contribute to and detract from creating safe space. People have reflected on and talked about how they help create a sense of the collective “whole”, or how they retreat from it, and why.
And here is the point of convergence of what I’ve learned in class with my recent experiences outside of class.
I have learned through my experiences and readings about the principles and practice of Buddhism the importance of mindfulness and of being present in the moment. This is difficult for people to accomplish because we are so consumed by thoughts and feelings, past and future, of a world that we have constructed that may not be real. Nine months ago, I lived in a world that I constructed and that I felt very good about, but I ignored the presence of what was real in the world of others, one other in particular who is very important to me.
Buddhism teaches that it is through the practice of meditation that we are able to begin to let go of the thoughts and feelings and representations that blind our recognition of what is really there. Meditation is a tool that can lead to mindfulness, which just means the recognition of all that is present in a moment.
Perhaps large group interventions are a type of group meditation. Perhaps LGIs help us let go of our blinding egos so that we can recognize (not judge, not ignore, but really recognize) what is present within the group. The foundation on which both mindfulness and LGIs are built are amazingly similar.
I propose that in order for organizations to be adaptable organisms, they must evolve in the same way that their parts, their human beings, grow and develop. They must seek those things that we know as self-awareness, renewal, wisdom. One way to do that is to integrate principals and techniques of these large system interventions into practice. For example, organizations may practice creating open space in meetings, allowing that which is present in a group or team to arise and be recognized. They may use the skills and spirit of dialogue to gain deep understanding of the self, other selves and the whole. They may actively develop a level of self-awareness that allows them to accept and recognize what the moments have to offer and, with wisdom, respond to what is there.
The greatest lesson for me about organizational change is that what I’ve experienced under the name of “intervention” is not to be considered an intervention at all. Rather, the assumptions and philosophies and principals and techniques incorporated into large group interventions can be “practiced” in an organization that is at any stage of change readiness. In the practicing, we as the HRD professionals may find that we can prime an organization to be ready for change sooner rather than later, we can help employees embrace and integrate adaptations with less resistance, and that our organizations can navigate a new (renewing every day) world with skills that are necessary for survival in a complex and rapidly changing environment.
Perhaps, through our practice, we can help build self-regulating, self-renewing, self-aware and responsive organizations that this semester we, as a group, envisioned for the future.
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