In this new context, managers must develop a different mindset. They need to deal with a high level of unpredictability and accept the incompleteness of our knowledge base. Moreover, they need to act on the fact that the key differentiating factor between success and failure will be the ability to learn collaboratively with others — both within and outside of their organizations.

Why collaborative learning? In the current business climate, no one person or organization can bridge the chasm between present levels of skills and knowledge and the level of understanding necessary to take advantage of breaking technologies. The challenges of the global economy require that we join with customers, vendors, competitors, and partners from other industries to share insights. Organizational survival into the next century may well depend on our ability to configure collaborative arrangements within and across organizations — quickly, flexibly, and with a clear learning strategy. Companies that cannot network with others to share key knowledge — using the latest technology — will fall hopelessly behind their rivals.

The Practice of Collaborative Learning

What is collaborative learning, and what does it entail in practice? Collaborative learning is the process of generating new knowledge and capability that occurs when two or more people explore key business issues together, with the goal of fulfilling organizational needs and continually building their ability to work and learn in tandem. The practice of collaborative learning moves relationships beyond the mere exchange of information that characterizes most project teams or corporate partnerships. Collaborative learning begins at the individual level. For it to take root in an organization, employees must first develop a collaborative mindset and a collaborative skillset.

A Collaborative Mindset: Seeing New Opportunities

Individuals who adopt a collaborative mindset maintain an active awareness of the collaborative learning potential in every business transaction. They possess an openness and keen interest in others’ perspectives, and develop the ability to gather resources to experiment with and implement new ideas. These employees realize that their own tacit knowledge — when combined with a colleague’s tacit knowledge — may hold the key to a new innovation. Therefore, individuals working from this orientation constantly seek opportunities to explore collaborative potential with partners, coworkers, and even those who seemingly have no direct connection to the business. They leave themselves open to serendipitous opportunities for new partnering that may arise on airplanes, in shopping malls, or in other environments that we typically do not think of as supporting learning.

But a collaborative mindset at the individual level is not enough. To foster this same mindset on an organizational level requires that a firm understand the learning and data acquisition styles of partner organizations. Then the firm must deliver information and knowledge in forms that partners can use. This activity can be as simple as providing a list of the organization’s commonly used acronyms, or as complex as opening the company’s intranet to partners so that they may understand the firm’s inner workings.

When companies become aware of the potential in collaboration, knowledge-generating opportunities arise both by conscious design and by chance. For example, a manager at one firm gave a presentation to a partner company, knowing that a dissatisfied customer sat in the audience. By working from a collaborative mindset, this manager openly engaged the customer in recounting the problems he had experienced with the product and made a commitment to remedy the situation in front of the audience. Over time, this collaborative stance led to a new partnership with the now satisfied customer and resulted in several joint projects, including one at a major airport. Working from a collaborative mindset means continually seeking opportunities to build on existing relationships, and turning neutral or negative circumstances into advantageous ones.

A Collaborative Skillset: Spanning Boundaries

In addition to developing a collaborative mindset, individuals need to build a set of competencies that let them cross boundaries between groups and companies, learn from others, and disseminate that learning throughout their organizations. The six “boundary-spanning skills” described below provide managers with the tools they need to work more productively with others — within and outside of the organization — and to create and manage the knowledge gained through those interactions (for a boundary spanning competency model, go to www.pegasuscom.com/model.html).

Double-Loop Learning. The usual approach to a new experience or piece of data is termed single-loop, or adaptive, learning. (These concepts derive from the work of Chris Argyris.) Single-loop learning occurs when we alter our actions based on new information but we do not question the assumptions and beliefs concerning that data. We see an example of this in how organizations typically handle failure. Analyzing the “lessons learned” from a particular problem may be valuable, but it often results in a list of do’s and don’t’s — single-loop learning. This technique doesn’t delve into the assumptions that brought about the shortfall, nor does it seek to change the system created by those assumptions. In double-loop, or generative, learning, when we encounter failure, we explore our assumptions and commit to behaving differently in the future. Developing skill in double-loop learning involves increasing our awareness of the filters and suppositions that we use to interpret reality, and acting on this insight.

Communication (Dialogue, Feedback, Listening). Effective boundary-spanning relies on hearing, understanding, and empathizing with others. This ability involves listening not only to others but also to ourselves to uncover hidden biases. The practice of dialogue, as first defined by physicist David Bohm, can help. Dialogue supports divergent communication, in which a group allows a stream of viewpoints to flow through the conversation without feeling a need to reach a set conclusion. It also teaches us how to listen to others without judging them. Another component of boundary spanning communication is the capacity to give and receive feedback. This challenging skill helps us to see beyond our own view of reality and improves our ability to communicate with others. Tactfully done, feedback conveys potentially ego-damaging information in a neutral and helpful way. Mediation. As organizations continue to move toward flattened hierarchies, they have less need for traditional management techniques. Instead, they must help their workers learn to influence their peers in productive ways. In particular, mediation capabilities let parties go beyond political maneuvering and a winner-take-all attitude to achieve alignment through a focus on shared interests.

Systems Thinking. Systems thinking provides the essential backdrop for understanding the cause-and-effect relationships between organizations and their larger environments. This perspective highlights the functioning of the system as a whole, rather than the discrete parts that make up that system. The systems thinking toolbox — which includes causal loop diagramming, systems archetypes, stock and flow diagrams, and other tools — provides a powerful methodology for surfacing barriers to change, identifying leverage points for effective action, and building new connections.

Peer Learning. Peer learning is a vital and, in many cases, the most effective form of learning. Traditional corporate learning models involve either in-house classroom training or university courses. These methods emphasize the transfer of theory and case studies from the expert to the student. In current business practice, however, learning must take place “just-in-time,” with theory and practice developed in parallel and all players taking part in problem-solving activities. The concepts of self-directed work teams, 360-degree feedback, and communities of practice all support the increasing relevance of peer learning.

Cultural Literacy. Research shows that success in managing relationships with individuals from other cultures hinges on flexibility, openness, sensitivity, tolerance, curiosity, the ability to handle stress, and a sense of humor. Even armed with these skills, people can still fall victim to their own cultural values and assume that their perspective is the right one. This attitude can spawn unexpected conflict. To work successfully on a global level, organizations must continuously build awareness of cultural differences among employees and help them develop a level of comfort working across cultural boundaries. Such awareness emerges primarily from actual interactions with members of other cultures; it cannot be acquired from books and lectures, no matter how engaging or insightful.

A Collaborative Environment

By combining a collaborative mindset and skill set, managers acquire the skills and flexibility they need to move their organizations forward. As a result, they can inspire individuals to cross boundaries, learn from others, and disseminate that learning through-out the organization (see “The Collaborative Learning Cycle”). Such boundary spanning activities give workers access to business expertise in the moment — and can lead to rich, new insights.

However, there is another prime ingredient necessary for collaborative learning: the organization must support and sustain a collaborative environment. Organizational consultant Edward Marshall defines a collaborative environment as consisting of:

• A Collaborative Culture: a set of core values that shape a business’s behavior, including respect for people, honor and integrity, ownership and alignment, consensus, trust-based relationships, full responsibility and accountability, and recognition and growth
• Collaborative Team Processes: including team formation, management, self-sufficiency and renewal, and closing processes
• A Collaborative Structure: support for collaboration from human resources and information systems
• Collaborative Leadership: the ability to recognize many leaders, not just one; these leaders fulfill a number of functions, such as facilitator, coach, healer, member, manager, change agent

How can an organization bridge the gap between individuals’ development of a collaborative mindset and skillset and the company’s development of a collaborative environment? One way is to form an internal learning group. Drawn from various divisions and levels within the company, such a group focuses on building collaborative capability — and deriving business results from that enhanced capability — within the organization.

These groups begin by assessing the organization’s level of support for collaborative efforts. For example, one company found that workers failed to share technical information across departments because they didn’t understand the firm’s policies regarding intellectual property. In this case, the organization provided additional training to help employees work through these concerns.

Internal learning groups cultivate boundary-spanning skills and practice collaborative learning themselves in addressing the company’s business challenges. For example, a small West-Coast chemical company experienced communication barriers after merging with a lab on the East Coast. Management assembled a group consisting of members from each of the merged entities to address issues of collaboration. This team put together a personnel directory and a compendium of technical success stories from both firms. In addition, it designed a plan for an organization-wide session to inform employees about the merged organization’s new accounting processes, lab procedures, technical competencies, and customer care approaches. In the process, the group discovered pockets of people who were interested in exploring collaboration. Encouraged by this finding, it began to support ongoing experiments in collaborative learning, such as periodic meetings of project managers to exchange knowledge and practices.

These internal learning groups also play a central role in disseminating new knowledge throughout the organization, using tools such as after-action reviews, internal publications, and intranets. The sharing of cutting-edge tools and ideas with other teams creates value because it improves processes and hones collaborative skills. For example, the learning group of a Fortune 500 company experimented with the use of e-meeting software and disseminated that knowledge throughout the company through the technical staff. Finally, the learning group members experience an enhanced degree of interdependence, which steps up collaboration — and performance — even further. The group’s process both begins and ends with a reassessment of the organization’s collaborative learning capability, at an increasingly fine-grained level of inquiry.

Forming a Learning Network

Once the internal learning group has completed some successful projects, it will likely encounter barriers to moving the organization to a fully collaborative environment. These barriers often take the form of inherent conflicts between espoused beliefs, such as “We are a collaborative company,” and core values, such as “The individual is who counts here; watch out for number one.” One way to surmount these barriers is for the group to participate in a learning network (see “The Learning Network” on p. 1), drawn from the work of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Edgar Schein on the learning consortium.

A learning network is a cross-organizational forum in which internal learning groups from diverse organizations can explore challenges together. Group members come together on a regular basis to give and get feedback and create new knowledge. The interaction among the parties sparks behavioral changes that create value for each organization. This is because outsiders may have a more objective view of an organization’s operations and strategies than do those who are involved in the firm’s day-to-day operations. For example, when an information technology company’s learning group presented a new project for a Web-based internal instructional system to the other members of its learning network, someone from another company asked how it would implement the program in countries where Internet access is limited. This query served as powerful feedback for the presenting group.

For a learning network to succeed, the organizations involved must decide how to deal with differential power among the stakeholders; define the network’s mission, goals, and norms; involve dedicated and trained participants; develop a level of trust among individuals and organizations; and assume a win-win orientation. Each member group engages in a process of experimentation, application, and dissemination of knowledge within its own organization. The network member groups then meet regularly to share knowledge and to engage in collaborative projects across organizations. These projects can take the form of joint research, standards setting activities, experimentation, problem-solving, or peer-teaching seminars. Interdependence and trust strengthen when network members follow through on commitments, provide feedback, and come to new insights together.

The ongoing support and vitality of internal learning groups is central at this stage. To create value within their home organizations, member groups in the learning network must capture and transfer learnings from the network’s cross-organizational programs. They can do so through ongoing activities that link internal groups’ projects to the network. This might include visits between companies, the design of collaborative spaces — both physical and Web-based — for network activities that are broadly accessible to members, and frequent face-to-face and virtual meetings, both internal and cross-organizational.

For instance, the Collaborative Learning Network is a consortium of seven companies from a variety of industries dedicated to understanding how collaborative learning can enhance organizational performance. Its members have engaged in a series of monthly virtual seminars over the past year that link semi-annual face-to-face meetings. Network members have found that experimenting with virtual processes for cross-firm communication has directly helped their business units build expertise in collaborative tools. Below are some findings from these joint experiments:

• For virtual meetings, simple tools like phone conferencing, e-mail, and Powerpoint presentations shared on the Web work best. These tools are standardized across organizations and platforms.
• Synchronous meetings, whether face to face or virtual, garner more consistent participation than more open-ended, asynchronous methods, such as Web-based discussion boards.
• Information overload is at best irritating and at worst debilitating. Networks must find a balance between “push” (e-mail, phone, print) and “pull” (Web sites, scheduled events, conferencing) methods of information exchange.

Of course, companies must receive a return on their investment in collaborative processes. Questions to pose in assessing learning network results include: What has been the bottom-line impact of new sources of learning? Have new applications of technology emerged from the network activities? If so, are they now producing profit or cutting costs? Has senior management acted on any feedback received through the learning network’s activities? If so, what has been the outcome?

Each learning network will have a natural life cycle. Once the initial period of activity has concluded — as agreed at the outset — the network members need to enter a closing or renewal phase. If the network chooses to disband, then the participants should schedule a formal closing meeting to celebrate the network’s achievements. Members might also document the network’s experiences in some final form, such as a learning history. As a final outcome, members could assemble a core group of mentors willing to guide other individuals in each organization who may wish to initiate their own learning network (see “Forming a Learning Network”).

Bringing It All Together

If used skillfully, collaborative learning can improve work performance; heighten strategic awareness; enhance responsiveness to changes in the marketplace; and foster more productive relationships with customers, vendors, and other stakeholders. It can also encourage teams to experiment with fresh approaches for addressing problems and for working and thinking together. By combining collaborative awareness and skills at the individual, group, firm, and inter-firm levels, organizations can effect significant and lasting change. In this challenging climate, we all need to develop powerful new models of partnership and learning. Collaborative learning offers a structured way for organizations to quickly adapt to the needs of a changing business environment — to the benefit of individual employees and the organization as a whole.

Dori Digenti is president and founder of Learning Mastery, an education and consulting firm focusing on collaboration and learning. Over the past 20 years, Dori has worked with business, academia, and government to develop cultural literacy, learning capacity, and collaborative competence. She has written the Collaborative Learning Guidebook (1999), as well as articles for Reflections: The SoL Journal, the Organization Development Journal, and other publications. Dori is webmaster for www.learnmaster.com, www.collaborative-learning.org, and a forthcoming Web site on the work of Edgar Schein.

The post Collaborative Learning: Real-Time Practice for Knowledge Generation appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

There was a period when the view of organizations as mechanistic entities served us well and led to significant increases in production. From the time of Henry Ford through the remainder of the Industrial Age, organizations benefited from the learning gained from this perspective. Today, however, the speed and complexity of the business environment has forced organizations to take a different approach. Indeed, those that wish to thrive must be able to adapt to changing conditions, similar to how living organisms evolve in response to environmental changes.

The concept of organizations as living systems is not new. Extensive work, particularly in the area of systems thinking, has brought this perspective into the limelight. By exploring some of the more elegant biological models from our own human physiology, we can gain insight and generate “new” ideas for managing our enterprises. This article will consider five different processes from human biology and will propose practical ways in which the characteristics of these models may have applications for organizations. In addition, I offer questions for further dialogue as a foundation for further learning in teams.

Neural Networks

In the human brain, intelligence and learning are closely related to the number and types of interconnections between neurons. As new learning takes place, connections are modified to incorporate new intelligence. In addition, the more a particular learning is reinforced, the greater the strength of the connections between key neurons.

Margaret Wheatley observes that, to foster greater health for a living system, we need to find ways to “…connect it to more of itself” (Margaret J. Wheatley, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2005). The implication for organizations is that collective organizational intelligence, as well as the speed of organizational learning, is directly related to the number of interconnections among the members of that group and with outside entities. As a result, learning in “silos” is less desirable than learning that is shared.

Another implication, related to Daniel Goleman’s social intelligence theory, is that shared intelligence will facilitate “high-road” cognitive responses to challenges rather than “low-road” responses that are driven by emotion (Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationship, Bantam, 2006). In other words, the automatic stress response of both individuals and organizations can be overridden by higher-level functions, and more thoughtful adaptations can be made. The ability to do so, however, depends on the degree to which this higher-level awareness exists. In organizations, this capability springs from the power of relationship.

Questions for Dialogue

• How often do we tend to rely on “low-road” or “knee-jerk” responses to events? How do these responses serve us well, and how might they not serve us?
• How well does our organization share new learning and intelligence?
• What synapses (connections) and networks exist, and what connections need to be established?
• How do we currently manage the sensory inputs (internal and external information gleaned) to our organization?
• What space and process currently exists for scanning these inputs?
• As new teams are created or as new individuals enter the organization, how are they connected with the necessary “neural networks” in a purposeful manner?

Endocrine Feedback Loops

The endocrine system provides us with a biological example of how feedback loops are used effectively in the human body. The prototype loop that is most frequently referred to involves the relationship between the pituitary gland (located in the brain) and the thyroid gland. The thyroid gland is responsible for the production of active thyroid hormone, which has a number of effects on metabolism. Patients with an excessive production of thyroid hormone will experience a hypermetabolic state resulting in heat intolerance, sweating, weight loss, rapid heart rate, and other symptoms. On the contrary, as one would expect, an underproduction of thyroid hormone causes a slowing down of many functions, resulting in cold intolerance, weight gain, slow heart rate, constipation, hoarseness, and other symptoms.

The secretion of thyroid hormone is regulated by another hormone, thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), produced by the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland “senses” the amount of circulating thyroid hormone and, if it is low, increases the amount of TSH produced, thus sending a signal to the thyroid to produce more. Conversely, if excessive thyroid hormone is sensed, then a reduced amount of TSH is produced, sending a signal to the thyroid gland to reduce production. Feedback loops such as this, as well as more complex ones, are numerous in the body. Blood pressure regulation is another example that relies on a number of interrelated loops.

For organizations, systems thinking tools and approaches are a natural way to adapt these models for practical use. Organizations with a results orientation, and those with a focus on continuous process improvement, are likely already using these tools. However, even if an organization is not involved in this work or does not have a systems-based approach designed into its processes from the start, there are practical opportunities to begin doing so immediately. Ensuring that up-regulation or down-regulation of processes takes place based on the results achieved and aligning resource allocation with the up- and down-regulation is an achievable first step for many teams.

Questions for Dialogue

• What are the most essential core processes for your team or organization, and how do you currently examine and adapt to the results of those processes?
• What feedback loops currently exist in your organization, and what loops should exist but do not?
• How does up-regulation or down-regulation occur in your organization based on value and results?
• How is the process of resource allocation consciously tied into these feedback loops?

Immunologic Memory and Modulation

The immune system has the task of protecting our bodies by attacking external threats (infections), while at the same time, not mistakenly attacking parts of the body or potentially beneficial processes. In order to do so, our immune systems develop an acute awareness of what is “self” and what is “non-self,” typically by identifying and recognizing the types of proteins and other molecules present on cell surfaces. Similarly, when the immune system encounters new threats, such as happens with a bacterial or viral infection, the system is capable of “learning” by developing the ability to “recognize” the characteristic proteins on the surface of these invaders.

Organizations would do well to ensure that organizational learning and memory are not kept local.

The ability to re-create the necessary antibodies that are specific for these external threats remains in place as a sort of “immunologic memory” and is the reason why immunizations work to protect us against diseases.

Organizations, too, can learn from this immunologic model. By developing a keen awareness of “self” versus “non-self” through purposefully eliciting shared values, purpose, and meaning, organizations foster a strong sense of cultural identity. When a company achieves this level of clarity, it establishes high levels of engagement and a strong foundation for shared learning. Along these lines, as an organization becomes clear about its self-identify, it improves its ability to identify and recruit new talent with shared purpose and values.

The aspect of “immunologic memory” has some interesting lessons for organizations as well. When one part of the body successfully fights off an infection, the knowledge of that particular event does not remain local. Instead, it is shared throughout the immune system. Similarly, organizations would do well to ensure that organizational learning and memory are not kept local. Rather, they must exist in a widely distributed nature, so that they can maintain the ability to rapidly identify and resist similar threats in the future. The body uses multiple messengers to disseminate this knowledge (mediators, antibodies, and other modes of cellular communication discussed later), and organizations should consider doing the same.

Cancer cells provide a unique situation for the immune system. As cells reproduce, “mistakes,” referred to as mutations, often occur. When mutations take place, the immune system is involved in identifying the abnormal cells as “non-self” and destroying them quickly and rapidly. On occasion, however, when abnormal cells escape this mechanism, they go on to multiply and spread out of control, depleting resources and interfering with normal processes essential to life. We refer to such a malignant process as “cancer.” On occasion, organizations may encounter situations where sub-cultures or teams may act in ways that threaten the life of the organization, even depleting resources disproportionately. In these situations, a healthy “organizational immune system” would identify and adapt to stop the abnormal and destructive growth process.

Occasionally, mutations take place that actually provide survival benefits. These sorts of subtle mutations allow us to evolve and adapt. For example, the mutation involved in sickle-cell anemia provides a survival benefit in areas where malaria is widespread. For organizations, this implies recognizing that sometimes disruptive innovations take place and that, even though these novelties may initially be perceived as “non-self,” the adaptive benefits they may confer should be recognized and assimilated rapidly.

Question for Dialogue

• What is the core purpose of your organization or team?
• How aware are we when “non-self” destructive behaviors, mismatched values, mismatched goals, or mismatched purposes are at play? How quickly do we recognize and act when these arise?
• How rapidly do we currently sense and adapt to threats? What space have leaders created for this purpose? How does this process currently take place?
• How do we deal with innovation, especially when disruptive innovation arises (, “adaptive mutations”)?
• How has “malignancy” harmed your organization? In these situations, what degree of resource depletion, uncontrolled growth, and interference with core processes have occurred as a result?
• How would we describe our own “organizational immune system”? How does local knowledge get distributed widely so that it’s assimilated into organizational memory?

Cellular Turnover, Rejuvenation, and Replenishment

The human body is in a constant state of renewal. Cells are destroyed and replaced when necessary, as the body is aware of stagnancy. The cells of your body today are not the cells that were there a year ago, and thus, the physical “you” today is not the same physical “you” from the past. Of course, “you” as a whole do retain your identity, sense of self-awareness, purpose, and values in the midst of all this constant reinvention.

For organizations, the implication is that constant renewal and “reinvention” is a necessary component for success. At the same time, the organization must retain ongoing awareness of core purposes, shared values, meaning, and other things that create a sense of organizational identity. Without the ability to continuously renew and reinvent, an organization loses its ability to adapt to changing conditions. Leaders must be attuned to this important process as worthy of ongoing attention.

Questions for Dialogue

• What areas of your organization are at risk for stagnancy? What signals are present?
• How does your organization currently take purposeful steps to reinvent processes?
• In what ways has your organization evolved as a result of continuous reinvention? How have core purpose, shared vision, and shared values changed, and how have they remained the same?

Cellular Communication

Cells communicate in a multiplicity of ways. Mediators, when secreted by cells, serve as signals to other cells and systems throughout the body. Cellular communication travels through multiple pathways and has redundancy built into it.

For example, when the body is under stress, it sends messages to multiple systems to react quickly to perceived threats. These same messages can also have unintended consequences in negative effects on the immune system, digestion, and learning.

Similarly, the messages sent by leaders and throughout organizations must take into consideration both intended and unintended consequences. A sense of urgency, for example, may be important in order to stimulate change, but organizations that find themselves stuck in this frame of reference for too long or in excess may find it difficult to foster learning and innovation. Consequently, leaders must develop a heightened degree of social awareness to assess the impact of messages that permeate the ranks.

Questions for Dialogue

• What modes of communication are used most often in your organization?
• How are your communications achieving intended consequences?
• What unintended consequences have you seen as a result?
• What level of social awareness exists within your organization? How might this be enhanced?

Conclusion

Living models have parallels in organizations, when one considers organizations as living systems. Five examples from human physiology, in particular, point toward potential ways to enhance the adaptability of organizations. These examples, along with the prescriptions they suggest, include:

• Neural Networks — enhance the number of interconnections within the organization, as well as between the organization and the larger system within which it exists.
• Endocrine Feedback Loops — ensure that the feedback loops relevant to an organization are up-regulated or down-regulated based on results, and that learning occurs along the way.
• Immunologic Memory and Modulation — learning from one area of an organization must be distributed widely, and organizations must be able to distinguish “self” from “non-self” in the context of shared purpose, vision, and values while at the same time allowing for “adaptive mutations” (disruptive innovation).
• Cellular Turnover, Rejuvenation, and Replenishment — continuous reinvention is necessary for organizations to adapt effectively.
• Cellular Communication — modes of communication within organizations can have both intended (adaptive) and unintended (non-adaptive) consequences, and a certain degree of social awareness must exist among leaders in order to achieve the right amount of impact without harming the organization.

The ability to adapt is one of the critical success factors for organizations existing in the complex, rapidly changing environments of today. The examples of ways in which the human body adapts can provide leaders with a framework with which to foster adaptability for their own organizations, while also laying a foundation for sustainability.

Manoj Pawar, MD, MMM, is chief medical officer of Exempla Physician Network, a multi-specialty group in Denver. He is also a senior consultant, speaker, and executive coach with an organizational and leadership development firm based in Denver that works with organizations in health care as well as in other industries. Manoj can be contacted at pawarm@comcast.net.

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