I was having a discussion the other day with my ITA colleague Jay Cross, and the topic wandered over to how to use the social approaches we foster under the umbrella of the Coherent Organization to help organizations  become one. And I went feral.

Do we work top down, or bottom up?  In the course of the conversation it occurred to me that given the model we propose, that you can’t just have the broader social network create it, and you can’t even really build a community of practice (CoP).  The smallest unit is the working group; how could we use that?

The thought that struck me was creating a working group who’s goal was to create a CoP around being a Coherent Organization. That is, they’d have to understand the principles, start defining and discussing it, document the opportunities, and start disseminating the ideas through the organization.  Inherently, it  has  to be viral, and the most effective way to introduce a virus is by inoculation.

The idea then is that the mission of the working group is to develop a community of practice around understanding and implementing developing communities of practice. It’s a bit recursive or self-referential, but it’s the seed that needs to sprout.  Seeding it is the action that’s needed to get it going, and then some feeding needs to happen.  While it’s possible that a self-supported initiative could survive, having some external support may make sense in making this happen.

Yes, I’m assuming that the end result is desirable and possible.  The former is, I think, reasonably well accepted (short form: working effectively is a necessary survival tactic, going forward), even if the path to get there isn’t.  I’m suggesting that this is a path to get there. It’s not easy; it takes persistence, support, all those things that make organizational initiatives succeed, with an understanding of the strategies, policies, and cultural adjustments needed.  Yet I’ll suggest that it is doable.  Now, it’s time to do it!

#itashare

A recent post on organizational cognitive load got me thinking (I like this quote: “major learning and performance initiatives will likely fail to achieve the hoped-for outcomes if we don‘t consider that there is a theoretical limit to collective throughput for learning”). I do believe organizations have distributed thinking that they apply to solving problems. Usually this is individual, but how might it be greater than that?

I think back to the Coherent Organization, and how folks are collaborating and cooperating in moving the organization forward. There’s lots of thinking going on, in many ways. Folks are solving problems in formal or informal working groups in many ways, whether achieving organizational goals directly, developing themselves together, and furthering the frontiers of their field in a variety of ways. Individual cognitive load we address through providing resources and tools. How do we reduce collective load?

In short, by making access to social networks, to collaborative media, as easy and ‘ready to hand‘ as possible. We want the focus to be on the task, not the tools. It’s about co-creating a performance ecosystem that works fluidly, seamlessly integrating the different resources we need.

It’s cultural as well as structural. You need to remove the barriers to working well, facilitating the ability to constructively interact by welcoming diversity, sponsoring psychological safety, soliciting new ideas, and providing space and time for reflection. You need leaders who walk the talk, learning out loud.

You can’t do this if you don’t understand how folks work and play together, and what it takes to get you there and stay there. The field continues to develop, but you need to be explicit about how this happen, and actively work to minimize interference with effective flow: communication and work.

#itashare

I’ve been revisiting performance support in preparation for the Guild’s Performance Support Symposium  next month, and I’m seeing a connection between two models that really excite me. It’s about how social and performance support are a natural connection.

So, let’s start with a performance model. This model came from a look at how people act in the world and I was reminded of it during a conversation on informal learning. Most of the time, we’re acting in well-understood ways (e.g. driving), and we can keep our minds free for other things.  However, there may be times when we can’t rely on that well-practiced approach (say, for instance, if our usual route home is blocked for some reason). Then we have a breakdown, and need to consciously problem-solve. Ideally, if we find the solution, we reflect on it and make it part of our well-practiced repertoire.

So what I wanted to do was use this understanding to think about how we might support performance.  What support do we need at these different stages?  I propose that when we have a breakdown, ideally we find the answer, either as an information resource, or from a person with the answer.  Some of the time, we might identify a real skill shift we need, and then we might actually take a course, but it’s a small part of the picture.

If we find the answer, we can go back into action, but if we can’t find the answer, we have to go into problem-solving mode. Here, the support we need differs.  We may need data to look for patterns that can explain what’s going on, or models to help find a solution, or even people. Note, however, that the people here are different than the people we would access for the answer. If there were a person with the answer, we would’ve found them in the first step. Here it’s likely to be good collaborators, people with complementary skills and  a willingness to help.

If and when we find the answer, then we should share that so that others don’t have to do the same problem-solving, but can access the resource (or you) in the first step. This step is often skipped, because it’s not safe to share, or there’s just not a focus on such contributions and it’s too easy to just get back to work without recognizing the bigger picture.  This is one of the components of what Harold Jarche means by ‘narrating your work‘, and I mean in ‘learning out loud’.  If it’s habitual, it’s beneficial.

The connection that I see, however, is that there’s a very strong relationship between this model, and the coherent organization model. At the first step, finding the answer, likely comes from your community of practice or even the broader network (internal or external).  This is cooperation, where they’re willing to share the answer.

At the second step, if you get to problem-solving, this is collaboration.  It may not just be in a work group (though, implicitly, it  is  a work group), but could be folks from anywhere.  The bigger the problem, the more it’s a formal work group.

The point is that while the L&D group can be providing some of the support, in terms of courses and fixed resources, at other times the solution is going to require ‘the network’. That is, folks are going to play a part in meeting the increasing needs for working.  The resources themselves are increasingly likely to be collaboratively developed,  the answer is more likely ‘out there’ than necessarily codified in house.

There’s going to of necessity be a greater shift to more flexible solutions across resources and people, to support organizational performance.  The performance support model will increasingly require an infrastructure to support the coherent organization.  Are you ready?

In an insightful piece, Harold Jarche puts together how collaboration and cooperation are needed to make organizations work ‘smarter’, integrating workgroups with the broader social network by using communities of practice as the intermediary.  This makes a lot of sense to me, and I was inspired to take a look at the practices within those categories.  (Jay Cross has explored different facets of the implications of this way of thinking and talks about how we are building on this.)

In this depiction,we see behaviors of effective collaboration within work groups, such as coaching each other, using good practices for brainstorming, the elements of a learning organization, being willing to admit to problems, and being willing to lose if you don’t lose the lesson.

At the next level, communities of practice need to continue to evolve their practices, sharing issues and working together to resolve them.  Within these communities, sharing pointers as well as deeper thoughts are mechanisms for ‘stealth mentoring‘ and explicit mentoring is valuable as well.

At the outermost level, social networks are about tracking what’s happening and who knows what, looking for developments in related fields as mechanisms for improving designs, and sharing practice is a way to give back to the community.

At the intersections, you need practices of both sharing outward and bringing inward, always looking for fresh inspiration and valuable feedback. The transparency provides real value in developing trust among the constituencies.

I put reflection underpinning all of these, as a core practice.  Reflection is absolutely critical to continual improvement in every area.

Note that the firewall tends to cross the middle of the diagram, and by blocking access you’re effectively cutting off a portion of the corporate brain!

This should not by any means be considered definitive, as it’s my first draft, but I think it helps (me, at least) think about what practices could accelerate an organization to be both effective and efficient, able to move nimbly to deliver ongoing customer delight by continual innovation while executing as well. We’re thinking about this as the ‘Coherent Organization’, aligning the flows of information, and aligning the work with the organizational goals.   As always, I welcome your feedback: what should be added, removed, modified, etc.