Coming About

Bloggers in the Adult Learning Program, you are to be admired! We’re only halfway through Fall semester in using blogs for reflective practice and my eyes have been opened to what you are learning in ways that I never imagined before — thank you for making your thinking visible … or as Buddy so aptly titles his blog, for Thinking Out Loud.

In this post, I want to capture some of what’s going on in our three classes this semester, your reaction to them, and the sensemaking that you are engaging in as you connect your learning to your work world and personal experiences.

Then, I’d like to reflect on what you are teaching me through this reflective blogging in action … or, in the term coined by Paul Lowe, director of the MA in Photo Journalism and Documentary Photography program at The University of the Arts, London, e-flective practice. I really like that term since it captures the reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action written about by Donald Schon, and adds to it the reflection before action that Lowe writes about, as well. For more on this, read about the webinar I recently attended on learning and e-flective practice, led by Lowe.

In the Consulting Skills class, You’ve Experimented with Digital Storytelling Using VoiceThreads

While you all did well in this re-enacted consulting skills assignment, I’m not sure that you found it that helpful in clarifying your thinking about consulting roles and how the consultant can lead the process, even when the client is  difficult.  Your insights on how we might make this experience better next time around …. comments such as less role structure, more exchange of roles (i.e. three different teams who could each plan how to conduct the re-contracting assignment from our Harvard Business Review article) were all worthwhile and heard!   

Your Thoughts on Process Consulting (a la Peter Block)

You’ve had some interesting thoughts and revelations on the process of process consulting, which we are just now beginning to dig our teeth into as you launch your own consulting projects:

As I continue to read about the business of consulting another of my previous notions of consultants bites the dust. I have always through of the consultants (since we were assuming the role of expert) to be someone from outside the organization. How many times have I heard/told the old joke, A consultant is an ordinary person a long way from home. Then there is the other old adage (with biblical roots), It’s hard to be a prophet in your own home town. How true. And yet, here we are, learning about the concept of internal consultants.

So these internal consultants come to the contracting table with an inherent disadvantage. Not only to they have to follow all of the rules of flawless consulting but they are automatically considered inferior in their abilities by the client.  The client doesn’t really expect anything from the internal consultant because they’re local but they often work without a written contract because they trust them (or perhaps because there is no money involved). They client expects the external consultant to be an expert but wants a written contract because they are not to be trusted, especially when the time clock is ticking. …

I’m liking this internal consultant role more and more. Low expectations – high trust factor. Maybe. More to ponder.

On Culture, Organizational Learning, Artifacts, Espoused Values and Beliefs, and Underlying Assumptions — the “STUFF” of ADLT 623

I am enjoying our org learning class this semester. If I had to pick a single favorite topic within the whole range of possibilities in the field of HRD, it would be organizational culture. To me, culture is one of the most fascinating, pervasive, under-utlilized concepts in management and organizational studies.  In our day-to-day work lives, we can feel it, touch it, and certainly experience it in myriad ways, yet it is awfully hard to identify those underlying assumptions even as we bump our heads up against them in the workplace. You’ve been thinking deeply about this concept, too. Here are some of your thoughts that are on target!

In reading Schein this week, I felt really connected to the text because it triggered so many examples in my mind. The first two chapters about culture and leadership really made me think about my own workplace. I can describe the culture there on so many levels. Schein posed the question of whether there is a culture within occupations, and I believe there is. People have told me many times that I am “such a teacher,” so there must be some broad culture of teachers in general. Then of course every school has its own culture, and within that there are many sub-cultures. I found myself thinking about the different grade levels in my school, and how each grade level team really has its own culture. There is a certain dynamic within each team, and an understanding among team members. One could even say that each team has its own “personality.”

As I read Schein’s ideas on culture and its development I can see why it is so difficult to change. I am sure that changing culture is even more difficult when those who are attempting to do this do not understand how cultures develop and of what they are comprised. As I watch the leadership in my workplace attempt to bring about ‘transformation’ in our culture it all seems so forced. It is as if they believe that if they talk about the changing culture enough it will just happen.

Making my way through the chapters in the Schein book this week, I find my mind repeatedly drawn back to a paragraph in the introduction to Part 1.  It seems like such a “Duh!” kind of thing, but I never really thought about how culture comes about in an organization and what impact leaders have on culture vs. the impact culture has on leaders …

What I realized for the first time in reading Schein is that leaders can change culture; it just usually doesn’t happen until it gets to a point where it’s unbearable.  It was interesting though to think about the impact leaders can have on the organization’s culture when necessary.  In thinking about my own organization, I have only known a positive culture since I’ve been there.  But I’ve heard stories of the way it was shortly before I came, what long-time employees call The Dark Years.  I’ve often wondered how it could have been so bad, considering the agency I know now is nothing like that, but I think that likely the leaders of the organization made a conscious change based on the fact that the culture was so bad.  I hope other organizations are able to realize that change as well. 

You’ve also been thinking a lot about what happened at Enron since we watched movie, The Smartest Guys in the Room during our last two class sessions as an example of cultural artifacts, espoused values, and underlying assumptions that created a very destructive organizational culture.  Given the current global financial crisis, this story of greed and deception for stockholders and employees alike hits home in ways that it did not for me when we viewed it this same time in the semester last year.  

Enron.  Wow.  What a nightmare.  If one questioned whether or not there are really bad people in the world, one could look at the attitude and arrogance of Jeff Skilling sitting at the table in front of the Enron hearing, and see that indeed, there are people who lack a conscience …The fallout from the Enron scandal impacts us all, every day.  FASB 157 of 2007 (Financial Accounting Standards Board) and the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 have created a nightmare of accounting red tape so that we can help to ensure that shady accounting tactics are stopped, and effective controls and accountability are implemented. 

 Many of these new laws make sense.  It is important that a CEO and CFO or a publicly traded company be held fully accountable for the reporting of the financial state of the organization.  They must sign off each year that they personally have reviewed the controls in place and are satisfied that they are appropriate in accordance with the Sarbanes Oxley Act.  The FASB rule provides the ability to suspend mark-to-market accounting procedures.  There is more scrutiny of the work that a corporation’s accounting firm may do for the corporation – recognizing that an accounting firm cannot be unbiased when they are raking in consulting dollars for other work on the side.  Consultants who advise publicly traded companies on executive compensation are now subjected to scrutiny regarding other work they may do for the organization.

 

So all of this happened as a result of Enron, Worldcom and other scandals at the turn of this century.  Here we are, only a few years later and we do not seem to have learned a lesson. 

 

The Enron movie is quite captivating.  It graphically illustrates how a culture can grow and then take on a life of its own.  This is essentially the same process that in an individual starts with a tendency, becomes a habit, and then progresses to become a deep character trait.

 

Enron seems to have started at some point to be a place for bold action, certainly a commendable value.  But this snowballed over the years into a testosterone-laden proving ground, for traders and corporate visionaries, and then extended to risky business moves and even to dangerous dirt-biking expeditions.  When the competition to be bolder and more risky starts, then is no backing down from the escalation.  No one wants to be a wimp.

 

This is just one example of a host of characteristics of the Enron culture that got out of control.  Any one characteristic starts (hopefully) as a positive trait expected by the leader.  But if the culture is not managed well it can overwhelm the leader (part of Schein’s point) and even pull the whole organization down the tubes.  Obviously.

Our Program Planning, Management, and Evaluation course is taking shape as you build a program by examining each of the many elements that Rosemary Caffarella describes in her book.

I recently contacted Dr. Caffarella, and she has agreed to an interview with me that we’ll share as a podcast when I return from the AAACE conference in Denver next month, where she is one of the keynote speakers. What sort of questions would you like for me to ask her?  

The descriptions of your field interviews with program planners who work with a variety of non-traditional adult populations led to a great discussion in class last week. Many of you had insights about the nature of program planning, and the program planning process as a result of this assignment and your readings:

One of the most important things I learned in this interview was to remember what your learner’s bring to the table. Retta stressed over and over how important and how powerful the information is that her participants bring to the classroom. As seniors, many of these folks have seen and done things many of us will never see or do. From the depression to slavery to women’s rights, the experiences of seniors should be respected, celebrated and related to others…“things we should never forget”, and these students are also truly teachers in the classroom.

 I would first and foremost like to say that I was truly excited about the assignment to interview a professional in the training and development field. Immediately I knew that I wanted to interview my mentor and reasons that I became interested in this field. For her confidentiality I have chosen to call her Ms. Smith…. Fortunately for me I was able to interview an individual who has worked with multiple non-traditional adults in a corporate field. Overall I have gleaned significant insight from this experience. Number one, the importance to always remain flexible, secondly the value in planning with your audience in mind, thirdly to learn from your previous programs, and finally to cater to your adult learners’ needs as much as possible. I would like to quote Ms. Smith with something that I feel sums up what I have learned from the interview, “I have never delivered two identical programs, and am proud of that because if I did it would mean that I was planning for myself and not my audience.”

I’m finding the readings and discussions on program evaluation to be more worthwhile than I expected. I have never done any sort of formal evaluation…not so much because I saw no worth in evaluation, but rather because I was ignorant. Informally, I have gone over in my head what has worked and what hasn’t – both during and after a program - and we have also had a couple of ESL program meetings where the discussion turned to successes and failures. But that has been the extent of it. I’m interested to spend some more time – precious time! – determining how our programs can benefit from enhanced evaluation procedures.   As a side note, while a large portion of the readings have come from an HR standpoint, I am not finding it difficult to transfer the information to the nonprofit world.

I’m realizing that my years working in a University have limited my vision. Whether reading course texts or listening to information in class, I find myself tuning out certain information that I’m thinking does not pertain to what I do. This is quite a shortsighted approach to learning. I need and want to be very careful to keep my eyes and ears open to all information. In fact, I should probably be focusing more on the info that I seemed to be dismissing as irrelevant, if not only to make myself more knowledgeable and thus more marketable, but also because my narrow view may overlook opportunities for new approaches to my own work – opportunities to think outside of my box. The many types of evaluative methodologies is a perfect example.

 The most important thing I learned during this interview is how different program planning can be for literacy programs, as oppose to programs relating to human resources development. The programs that we have studied thus far appear to be more structured and time consuming than this program…. In an effort to assist the many adult learners that are challenged with learning disabilities, literacy needs, English language speakers and the like; we have got to create and generate more funding, resources and programs to assist these individuals. They are all apart of this world, and if they are to be productive, law abiding, successful citizen, then we must provide the resources necessary to assist them.

What I’m Learning From You

I’ve found “seeing” what you’re learning to be interesting, and helpful, on many levels. I’ve had a chance to see what stands out for you from a particular class session, which may have gone unnoticed by me, but was meaningful in ways unique from your frame of reference.  I’ve seen how you take what we talk about and filter it through the lens of your experience to make meaning of your workplace and the dynamics within it.  As a result, I know you a little bit better … your needs, interests, and goals. That’s helpful, even in a small program like ours when I thought I knew you already!

Sometimes I am stunned by revelations, such as the one that occurred in ADLT 610 last week (Consulting Skills) when we did the “group” level Johari window exercise … an anonymous list of those things that you knew to be true about yourself, but which you do not disclose to others (your hidden side), and those things that you observe in others but which you are pretty sure they are not aware of (their blind sides). Several of you commented on the lack of confidence you had in your own abilities, part of your hidden selves. What do we need to do to change that self-image? In my mind, you are extraordinarily capable … it is my hope that the skills and knowledge you gain through this program enables you to revise that internalized view to one that is more confident, capable, and empowered! Let’s blog on…. and see what happens.