Managers Learning in Action

David Coghlan, Tony Dromgoole, Pay Joynt, Peter Sorensen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134350940
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Rather than offering either a purely practical or theoretical context, this text is written by a team of managers and academics, combining theory and practice to create a holistic, and above all realistic, exploration of learning at work, including real life examples of management challenges. Whether rescuing an ailing organization or managing inter-organization relations, managing change or managing human resources, many of today's crucial management challenges are addressed. Covering a range of sectors, the organizations studied include those in:

• hi-tech manufacturing
• engineering
• telecommunications
• healthcare
• transport
• government agencies.

Contributors are drawn from three well-established academic programmes: the Irish Management Institute/ University of Dublin Masters in Management Practice; the US Benedictine University PhD in Organizational Development and the Henley Management College DBA, and the volume is edited by the academic directors of these programmes.

By offering these managers' own reflections on their experiences in the context of relevant management theory, this text provides an important and innovative contribution for those studying organizations as well as for those managers who are currently learning and developing at work.

Part I
Managers learning in action

Chapter 1
Learning to change

Cynthia Deane

Context

There is a somewhat clichéd aphorism that says there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who let things happen, and those who ask, ‘What happened?’ When an organization is faced with change, some people are content to let it happen, others want to make it happen by managing and influencing it, and some will almost invariably resist or deny it: ‘What change? No change!’ However, if an organization is about to be abolished and reconstituted with a new set of functions and reporting relationships, as mine was when I undertook the action learning project described in this chapter, there are few options: change must be accepted and managed. Otherwise, the future is a very threatening prospect.

The organization in question (let’s call it ‘Oldorg’) was established in 1991 as an ad hoc executive agency of the Department of Education in Ireland. Its role was to set, monitor and certify standards for vocational education and training programmes provided within the public further education sector. In the period from 1991 to 2001, Oldorg developed and implemented a framework for vocational awards, promoted innovation in curriculum and assessment for vocational education and training, and established principles for a national framework of qualifications. In 1999, the government introduced a new legislation which provided for the establishment of a unified national framework of qualifications. Under the Act, Oldorg was replaced by a new agency, ‘Neworg’, established in 2001, which subsumed the existing functions of Oldorg and considerably extended its remit.

When the legislation was published in 1998, I had been the chief executive of Oldorg for four years. In 1998–2000, I undertook an action learning project as part of the Master’s in Management Practice Programme (MPP) run by the Irish Management Institute and the University of Dublin, Trinity College. The project set out to explore how learning could support change in an organization. It involved designing and implementing a learning programme for staff of Oldorg at a time of great uncertainty for the organization, and in a context of vigorous internal and external debate surrounding the introduction of the new legislation. I recognized that it was important for the organization to prepare for the future, so that it could influence the change process and position itself favourably when the legislation was implemented.

When I started the MPP in 1998, Oldorg was a relatively young organization operating in a rapidly changing and expanding environment. There were thirty-five staff, comprising mainly teachers on temporary secondment and civil servants assigned by the Department of Education and Science. Ansoff (1985) proposes a model for assessing the level of turbulence in an organization. Applying this model to the political, economic, social and technological environment of Oldorg in 1998, it was evident that a considerable level of turbulence would arise from changes in policies and structures, in relationships with stakeholders, in markets and products, and in technologies. It was also clear that certain technical, political and cultural changes in the organization would be necessitated by the legislation. In technical terms, there would be new approaches to quality assurance and to validation of learning programmes. Existing systems would have to be adapted to meet the needs of new and more diverse customer groups. On a political level, the new institutional framework would require new coalitions to be formed, with new power structures emerging over time. Underpinning all of this was the cultural dimension of change, which was identified as being of central importance to the implementation of the technical and political aspects. This level of change fits the description of ‘upheaval’ as defined by Tushman et al., because it involves changes ‘of the system … not in the system’ (Tushman et al., 1991: 17). It is a level of change, in short, for which Oldorg was not yet ready.

Having identified what needed to change, the key question was how to implement the change. Posing the question in a slightly different way: could people learn to change? Before seeking an answer, it is helpful initially to consider the nature of the change process itself. A simple model of change comprises three distinct elements: a vision of the future, an analysis of the present, and management of the transition from ‘here’ to ‘there’ (Beckhard and Harris, 1987). Applying this model to the situation in Oldorg, it was clear that the first two stages of the process had been completed. A vision of the future had been formulated, by examining the given and the possible dimensions of the change arising from the legislation. There had also been an analysis of the present state and an identification of key change issues, focusing in particular on the cultural aspects. What was needed was to complete the process by managing the transition to the changed state. This called for a high level of openness to change across the whole organization. In effect, it called for a dynamic and continuous learning process at both individual and organizational level, to cope with the rate of change in the external environment. While in the past Oldorg had worked through change by learning in a largely intuitive and informal way, I now proposed to adopt a more systematic approach. This would closely link the themes of learning and change, first, to effect change through learning, and second, to discover how change could act as a catalyst for learning.

Emergent issues for action

As chief executive I recognized that it was my responsibility to prepare the organization for the future, to predict and plan for change, to influence the change process, and to protect and preserve what was important to the organization in the new situation. I was aware that this presented a great challenge to my leadership: a great deal depended on managing the process effectively, both within and outside the organization. I approached the action learning project with three main questions: Why do we need to change? What needs to change? How can we change? In the early part of the MPP programme, there was an opportunity to examine the organization from a number of perspectives: culture, structure, strategy and environment. This analysis was very helpful in clarifying why change was needed. It was also interesting to discover that a small non-commercial public-sector service organization such as Oldorg had much in common with larger private-sector companies, and even with multinational corporations encountered either in the literature or in case histories presented by class colleagues. The areas of commonality mostly centred around people issues, and on the importance of addressing these issues in any change management programme.

Having identified the major reasons why change was necessary, I moved towards answering the second question: What needs to change? To the casual observer, it might seem that the change envisaged in the legislation was cosmetic, a mere name-change. ‘All that is needed is to change the name-plate on the door and the stationery’ was the view expressed by a colleague from another organization affected by the legislation. However, a closer examination of the legislation indicated that it would mean that the new organizations would have to develop new relationships with stakeholders, serve new customers, adopt new processes and new technologies, and provide new products and services to a bigger market. This was a level of change that could not be taken lightly. The technical and more particularly the political and cultural aspects needed to be recognized and addressed.

One of the concepts that I found particularly helpful in the change management literature was the idea of a ‘constellation’ of change issues, with a complex set of interrelationships between them. Allied to the notion that it is almost impossible to change only one thing, this concept helped me to frame a change agenda for Oldorg. Focusing mainly on the cultural aspects of change, for which it was suggested by the earlier analysis that the organization’s readiness was low, the action learning project then sought an answer to the final question: How can we change? Before I started the Management Practice Programme, I had become aware that ‘learning’ was increasingly being cited as an instrument of social and organizational renewal. Phrases such as ‘the learning society’, ‘lifelong learning’, ‘the learning organization’, ‘organizational learning’ and ‘action learning’ were commonly used in contexts as diverse as management practice and community development. It seemed that a learning approach might provide an answer to the question of how to change. I had a suspicion, however, that what I knew as learning from my career background in education and training was not the same as these new concepts of learning. I thought that there might be an opportunity in the course of the MPP to achieve synergy between my known world and the less well-known area of management practice.

Because my organization was in the ‘learning business’, it seemed interesting to explore a range of theoretical and practical approaches to learning in organizations, in an attempt to identify a set of principles for the project. I thought that this might also afford an opportunity for the project to make a more public contribution in terms of supporting learning in other organizations. The search for synergy was addressed by reviewing current curriculum and assessment theories and practices to establish whether they could make any contribution to the thinking on learning in organizations, and vice versa. It was rewarding to find that there were considerable points of linkage and complementarity, and this provided a good starting point for the action part of the project: using a learning approach to prepare the organization for change.

Throughout the action learning project, I was conscious of my own role as a change agent and mindful of the fact that there were certain skills required of that role. These mainly centred on setting goals and priorities within the change agenda, and getting others to buy in, through communication, negotiation and managing key relationships. I was also aware that there were certain skills gaps that I had to address through my own learning. I needed to achieve a balance between controlling and enabling the change process. I had to learn to be more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. There was a constant awareness that fear of the unknown produces emotional and political tensions in an organization, so I needed to be watchful to prevent this becoming destructive. Throughout the whole process, there was a risk that the organization, or individuals, would suffer from overload because of the stress of managing both continuity and change. The support of the MPP programme itself proved invaluable in this regard.

The action learning project might be visualized as starting with the broad examination of the organization in its environment, then proceeding to an analysis of change issues and to the design and implementation of an intervention to manage the change. At the end, there was an opportunity to reflect on the various layers of learning that had happened: ‘for me’ – my own personal growth through this learning process; ‘for us’ – the effect of the intervention on the organization; ‘for them’ – the possible relevance of the project to other organizations.

Telling the story

The concept of organizational learning and its implementation in the form of the learning organization have become widespread since the late 1980s. A varied literature has emerged on the topic, and many writers have tried to describe the concept and characteristics of a learning organization. Some of the classical literature in the area suggests that a learning organization:

• continually expands its capacity to create its future (Senge, 1990);
• facilitates the learning of all its members and continuously transforms itself (Pedler et al., 1992);
• encourages double-loop learning, whereby not only is an immediate problem or concern addressed, but also the deeper organizational structures are changed for the better (Argyris, 1990);
• responds to changes in its internal and external environments by detecting and correcting errors in organizational theory-in-use and embedding the results of that inquiry in private images and shared maps of organization (Argyris and Schön, 1996);
• learns from mistakes, seeing learning not as a confession of ignorance, but as the only way to live (Handy, 1992).

These multiple perspectives suggest that there is no single, or simple, way to define ‘the learning organization’. While it is clear that learning is seen as a ‘good thing’, not only for individuals, but also for organizations and for society, it is not clear how best to ensure that learning happens in an organization, and how effectively learning can support change. The literature needs to be interrogated for answers to two key questions. Can people learn to change? What learning approaches can best support the changes needed in a specific organizational context?

Having considered the two major branches of organizational learning and the learning organization, each was found to have some merit, while at the same time neither offered a totally satisfactory framework for the purpose of the Oldorg project. A range of action-based strategies was also explored, and this produced many useful insights into effective ways of making learning happen in organizations. Finally, some consideration was given to the possible contribution that curriculum theory and practice could make to the design of a learning programme for an organization. This equally offered helpful guidance, arising from a perceived congruence of thinking on many key learning issues. While no single model of theory or practice emerged as suitable for adoption in its entirety, it was nevertheless clear that an effective learning programme could be designed and implemented incorporating the best elements of the approaches considered. One of the major concepts emerging from the literature was a view of learning as a cultural, as well as a cognitive, construct (Cook and Yanow, 1996). This perspective helped to integrate the conceptual, action and practice-based approaches to learning within the learning programme.

Guidelines for a learning programme in an organization

It was possible to discern from the literature some of the key features of good practice and critical success factors in implementing a learning approach in an organization. The following guidelines adopted for the design and implementation of a learning approach to support the change process in Oldorg were drawn from the literature reviewed, and they incorporate both principles and practical guidance for action:

1. Learning can help people see their current re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on the editors and contributors
• Introduction
• PART I Managers learning in action
• PART II Management learning, research and education
• Index