Cycling and the Art of Success

Success today is looked upon as an art. Enterprises take great pains to recruit persons not only knowledgeable but also capable of leading teams. Senge, in his 'The Fifth Discipline', noted that the pursuit of success was an art but believed the art would be made simpler with the practice of the disciplines. That was in 1990. Two decades later Learning Organizations, those that engage to learn the disciplines or skills for success, are still rare. The problem, as noted in my last post, is the availability of intelligent energy to drive practice of the skills. Like cycling, no amount of theory can drive learning of the skills. They can only be acquired by practice. Today, personnel unless inspired or driven by culture simply do not have enough energy to spare for the practice.

The shortage of the energy today is generating rage in the workplace. My post 'The Big Bump' mentions the study done by Theresa Welbourne on the growing incidence of rage. The murder of Yale student Anne Le reminded me of the study. I repeat here the reported comments of the police officer investigating the case:

At a news conference Thursday New Haven Police Chief James Lewis called Le's death a case of workplace violence. "It is important to note that this is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country," Lewis said, adding that he would not rule out additional charges.


I hope to soon launch a solution to the problem of intelligent energy shortage. I believe my conversion of IT to inexhaustible intelligent energy has the simplicity to succeed on a global scale.

Redefining education

Yesterday a meeting between Hillary Clinton, US Secretary Of State, and Aamir Khan, a leading Indian actor and Director who has made his mark on the subject of developing minds with his film Taare Zameen Par on sensitive education, was televised. A member of the audience noted that what distinguished her from the under privileged children she was teaching was her ability in the English Language. She asked whether this would be the norm and whether the US was doing anything about it.

Mrs. Clinton lauded the question. She observed that commerce and opportunities would indeed be determined by English, that the internet was driven by English, and that the US too was divided by language. She concluded by stating that America had yet to find an answer to the teaching of language as ethnic backgrounds that made up its diversity like Spanish, Latins and Chinese, needed to be preserved. Aamir Khan ventured that perhaps language was not as important an issue as the development of the mind and this could proceed in any language. To preserve culture and values perhaps education should be progressed in the native language and English could serve as the link language.

The question asked by the audience addresses a key issue: the acquisition of Knowledge vs. the application of knowledge. Enron, Kodak, the car industry in the USA and closer home, Satyam, underwent convulsions not because of their lack of knowledge. The car industry of USA has perhaps the most advanced use of technology to mine data for information. Enron had an outstanding vision for Knowledge Management (not application of knowledge). Satyam was a leading company in the use of technology. These enterprises lost their market equity because of their failure to apply knowledge. They succumbed to human nature.

Perhaps participation in world power shall be determined by use of language for learning, sharing and emerging the reality as the internet makes the acquisition of knowledge free. As for enterprises, what will distinguish countries will be the ability to apply knowledge. Today personnel energy is critical to follow the disciplines needed for good application of knowledge, in particular the feedback needed for emerging the reality, developing team learning and embracing system thinking. It follows intelligent energy must be created to supplement personnel energy for organizing and driving feedback as, given their nature, personnel have reached the limit of their delivery.

It is ironic that in our focus on survival and progress we, as humans, are consumed by sourcing physical energy. Our future shall actually be determined by intelligent energy to protect us from our own base nature as well as promote the key force for human prosperity - innovation.

The idea of Reforms

Recently the McKinsey Quarterly presented an excellent case for reforms. However, by offering the gamut of solutions from customer consciousness and quantitative measures to change agents it revealed precisely why reforms fail. It is not because the transformational-change efforts are short of leadership capacity, money, and management talent. It is because the idea of reform is devoid of a guiding philosophy. Leaders can encourage the way but their efforts have to follow a philosophy that will deliver. Best practices, quantitative measures, etc., make sense only in context of a philosophy. This has been amply demonstrated by the efforts of American managers to copy Kaizen from Japan. For years they gained nothing by aping what they saw. The consciousness needed for effective thinking eluded them.

In the 90’s Peter Senge defined the concept of the Learning Organization based on the nature of man and the anatomy of success. He identified feedback was the single most important ingredient of success and defined the powerful skills it fostered. Dialogue, his panacea for learning and success, was proven in practice. It was simple enough to follow but Learning Organizations continue to be rare. The energy needed to organize and drive knowledge flow for dialogue in the daily operations is immense. Today this energy can only be provided by personnel and they are overwhelmed by political considerations, power equations established by the possession of knowledge, low trust, misguided incentives, unsupportive cultures, and heavy odds created by the pace of change and uncertainty. The present offering of IT is just tools for collaboration. They are incapable of organizing and driving feedback in context amidst chaos.

It follows that reforms are only the symptoms of the cure needed. The core need is intelligent energy that can organize and drive feedback in context for trust and teamwork. They possess the power to emerge the reality and drive responsible action in response to directions established by inspirational leaders.

Teams in perspective

Technology helped organize and drive the assembly line. Taylor and later the Quality Movement progressed learning on the system defined by the assembly line. The sustained improvement has resulted in a fifty-fold increase in manual worker productivity since the inception of the assembly line between 1908 and 1915. At the core of the Quality Movement is thinking about the Manufacturing System as a whole. On it rest all the economic and social gains of the 20th century. Technology has yet to create means to assemble the thinking of a group on a decision event. Knowledge worker productivity has stagnated. Personnel largely function as islands, sharing knowledge at their discretion. Consequently, the ability of personnel to think of the enterprise as a whole has suffered though its importance is appreciated.

My previous two posts dealt with the concept of Learning Organizations. They extend the learning behavior of Quality Circles to teams for the knowledge work and services that drive an enterprise towards its goals. Unfortunately, today there is a glass ceiling on the performance of teams. Often the possible is known, can be strategized for but remains out of reach because personnel have reached the limits of their time and energy in coping with the demands of the work place. I propose to highlight the contribution of teams here to reveal the nature of their latent potential. The internet is silent on estimates of this latent potential.

The sharing of vision together with feedback for group learning builds teams.

Teams overcome Defense reactions/Learning disabilities:

These are unconscious behaviors that serve to reduce stress. Their purpose is to hide the reality. Honest flow of knowledge leverages the thinking of a team to emerge the underlying reality behind the obvious events and symptoms.

Teams isolate the assumptions and generalizations:

The flow of debate reveals the biases and mental sets that camouflage the reality.

Teams emerge the reality:

Thinking driven by short term gains often falls prey to either the obvious or to biases. The obvious can engage personnel effort in pursuit of fixes instead of success while biases can derail judgment. To a considerable extent the reluctance of personnel to venture out from comfort zones created by defense reactions, learning disabilities, assumptions and generalizations furthers the distortion of reality. Free flow, with its spirit of openness, stretches the comfort zone to aid the perception of reality. It stands to reason that growth in the pace of change has shrunk the comfort zone and made it more rigid.

Teams harness the unconscious:

Teams have the power to progress the natural desire to learn and participate. It facilitates open thinking. This is a known force for harnessing talent to drive innovation.

Teams create time:

Ability to work and interact at ones own convenience is one aspect of time creation. Personnel take time to appreciate the reality if left to their own resources. The process of dialogue amongst team members speeds up the emergence of reality. This reduction of the time to reality is another and valuable aspect of time creation.

Per Jim Collins excellent organizations average seven times the performance of comparative companies in the stock market. They number under 1% of the stock market. This tallies with my own estimate that teams access under 20% of their potential ability.

I expect my work to shatter the glass ceiling with its creation of intelligent energy to organize and drive the free flow of knowledge.

The Big Bump

John Seely Brown of Xerox made a very pertinent observation in 2003: "Senge’s five disciplines provided instant utility for learning to organizations in 1990, yet learning organizations remain rare to this day."

And the potential for Learning Organizations has further declined since 2003. Senge expressed dismay in 2006 that CEOs are not interested. Why?

Organizations are besieged by stress in the 21st century. Stress was there earlier as well but it was perhaps bearable. Defensive reactions and corporate learning disabilities served unconsciously to keep the stress manageable. It is possible unconscious mechanisms are no longer adequate with the growth of stress. An authoritative study has established growing incidence of rage in the workplace due helplessness to deliver results. Personnel exhaust themselves in coping with change, power differentials, internal politics, short term interests, poorly administered incentives, unsupportive cultures and just old-fashioned overload. It is inescapable that personnel now simply lack the time and energy to organize and drive themselves for overcoming the handicaps to success.

Rage is only one of the many downstream effects of the helplessness that follows from bumping against human limits. Terrorism, environmental degradation, pervasive under-development, and the melt down could very well be amongst the consequences. The need is a means to empower organizations, including governments, to leverage the latent collective ability lying neglected today for want of organization. It will offer a new lease of life to the disrupted process of peace and happiness encompassing balance with nature, healthy living, protection of human and animal rights, regulation of power and social stability.

The powerful philosophy of Learning Organizations shows the way to unlock the huge latent potential for success with existing resources. All that it needs is reliable means to drive the free flow of knowledge across the space, time, cultural, hierarchical and departmental boundaries that exist within organizations and across their business partners. Man has organized and driven the flow of knowledge since genesis. His peace and happiness today is hostage to this dependence for Drucker did say rather vehemently in 1990: “nothing else will work at all”.

IT tools for collaboration have given hope to the intelligentsia. Seely Brown observed in his review in 2003: “I think, therefore I am” has paled. “We participate, therefore we are” is where we’re heading. Here’s to the next 20 years. The hope is a new culture driven by the need for survival. With almost half their projected horizon traversed there is practically no change in culture. I hope the transforming power of the inexhaustible intelligent energy possible with IT will be appreciated and it is given a chance to overcome the limit man is experiencing today.

I have begun the journey to transform IT from a tool to intelligent energy.

Progressing Good Outcomes

Ian Davis of McKinsey has written a thought provoking article to crystallize thinking on the nature of Government participation in context of the bail outs taking place to save national economies. I have interpreted the article in the context of Learning Organizations.

An unregulated economy tends to be driven by short term reasoning. By its very nature such reasoning is based on the linear assembly of Cause and Effect. It is now evident that it progresses the eco-system to a melt-down. Only the Government can balance short term interests with long term thinking to address the underlying factors at play like an abused environment, natural avarice of those in power, social welfare, depleting resources, etc.

Balanced Government participation is particularly important for developing economies. In them Government participation has tended to follow the ‘bad outcome’: policies that restrict much needed flexibility. With their head start in Government participation, guided by greater coordination and transparency to emerge the reality that lies beyond Cause/Effect reasoning, the developing economies can progress to safely exploit the known drivers of their growth, namely productivity gains, technology adoption, and cultural and institutional changes. The balance they achieve will protect them from the capitalist danger of a meltdown as well as the more imminent one of social instability.

It becomes clear that the philosophy of Learning Organizations must permeate Government thinking. Only this is capable of emerging the reality that lies beyond Cause/Effect reasoning. As discussed in my last blog, the potent philosophy of Learning Organizations is today rendered powerless because of its dependence on personnel energy. Without reliable means for learnng the ‘bad outcomes’ of government participation and erosion of investor confidence are more likely.

Whither IT?

In late January, 2009, McKinsey Quarterly published the views of Prof. Hal Varian, Chief Economist with Google, on how IT needs to be understood so that it may be applied for best results.

Must family, including my 6 year old nephew, understand email to keep in touch with my brother away on an overseas assignment? No, and that is the power of technology.

Based on my work I have raised a few questions on Prof.Varian's views to define what I believe to be possible:
Is cheaper information the critical unsatisfied need for raising value-add? Will its economic stimulus match that of the assembly line or quality control movement? The massive investments in IT have not changed the ‘IT is a tool’ Knowledge work paradigm. The demand on personnel time and energy for self-organization and sharing ignores Davenport’s query of 2003: ‘We’ve been experimenting with IT support for knowledge work for several decades now. When will we figure out what works?’ The low return on investment in IT this implies may be a cause of the downturn.

Senge’s ‘The Fifth Discipline’ presents the complete philosophy of Learning Organizations for thinking beyond the shallow cause and effect reasoning common with IT:

• Feedback forms the core of team culture
• The free flow of knowledge emerges the reality:

1. Overcomes defensive reactions and disabilities
2. Tests assumptions and generalizations

• Free flow urges holistic thinking over tunnel thinking
• The group learning and sharing following free flow build the team.

In sum, free flow matures enterprises to progress executive action for superior pursuit of success. Means to assure a culture for free flow is today inconceivable. Delivering an assured means to organize work and drive free flow will convert the IT paradigm to ‘IT is intelligent energy’. It will elevate IT to a major factor of production and knowledge flows to a dominant factor of success. The present goal of averting mistakes may only transfer problems across the enterprise.

Why have serious attempts at improving knowledge interactions failed to evolve the IT paradigm? Knowledge work is unpredictable, discretionary and unstructured. A one-size-fit-all process for anticipating and driving interactions is logically impossible. The ruling wisdom avers knowledge workers must self-organize for results. Per Drucker ‘nothing else will work at all’. The wisdom has smothered ambitions for a compelling IT means to conduct Knowledge interactions. Knowledge Management swept the market in the late 90s but failed to change the work culture. The IT industry has resigned itself to urging responsibility on busy workers for a work culture to progress knowledge sharing.

Must IT remain a tool? It is possible that a mindset has prevented evolution. The eminently possible all-sizes-fit-one knowledge process can deliver the desired compelling means. Only norms are needed to assemble the repeatable actions that constitute all knowledge processes and conduct teamwork. The evolution of teamwork over centuries should establish them.

I agree with Prof. Varian that leveraging IT is critical. However, just availability of knowledge to support cause/effect deductions is not enough. This conventional use of IT only leads to short term fixingof mistakes and symptoms and not a cure. The cure can only come from appreciating the reality and responding to it. The delivery of IT must foster the flow of information, exchange of insights and testing of assumptions in context across boundaries to emerge the reality and progress unified action. Else, like the big three automobile manufacturers, the enterprise shall be left gasping in the wake of a crisis despite an advanced IT culture.