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A Common Meeting Place for SoL Members to Share Learnings, Questions and Experiences. |
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Inside
Interview: Aries de Geus
SoL International:
A Glimpse Ahead at the SoL Annual Meeting
Action Design:
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Interview:  Arie de Geus
Arie de Geus, SoL consultant member, worked for the Royal Dutch/Shell Group for 38 years, and is widely credited with originating the concept of the learning organization. Since his retirement, he has advised many government and private institutions and has lectured throughout the world. He has also held appointments as a visiting fellow at the London Business School and as a board member of both the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT and the Nijenrode Learning Centre in the Netherlands. Arie's publications include an influential article entitled "Planning as Learning" in the Harvard Business Review (1988) and a lecture entitled "Companies: What Are They?" published by the Royal Society of Arts, London (1995). A second article titled "The Living Company" appeared in the March/April 1997 issue of the Harvard Business Review. Arie's first book, The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment, was published by Harvard Business School Press in May 1997 and has won several prestigious awards, including the Lex Prize, given by The London Financial Times for the best business history book published each year. Arie has been a strong proponent of the drive for an international SoL organization. This month, SoL Common spoke with him about the creation of SoL International. S.C.: Where is the organizing energy coming from that is driving the evolution of SoL International? Arie: I know what's driving me: the urgent sense that we need a lot of research into how companies "live" and organize their lives. If we think of corporations as species, the average life expectancy is now down to just 12 years in many developed countries -- instead of the hundreds of years that is the possible life expectancy. These early deaths represent enormous wasted potential. I believe that companies are important for humankind and for the life of nations. After all, they produce the wealth. So, when they die prematurely, there? a price to be paid. How does this early death come about? One reason is that corporations find it difficult to stay in harmony with the world in which they live. This search for harmonization -- between what a company is and what it does, and how it evolves in relation to a changing world -- is a learning process that unfolds through the company's decision-making process and informal group talking. I realized ten or fifteen years ago that we needed more research into how to improve this process. When the original SoL (what I'm calling "the first SoL," based in Boston) started up, I felt convinced that we could create a network of similar research centers across the world -- a network that would let us make tremendous progress in a short time. I am confident in the value of cultural diversity for serious research. From the moment that the first SoL proved viable, for me the unavoidable next step is to think about how to spread the research around the world. S.C.: In your view, what is the mission of SoL International? Arie: I see the mission as researching the weak spots in institutional learning; in other words, improving the quality of the decision-making process in our organizations. As I'll explain, I think this ties into the incredible proliferation in the number and kinds of institutions that has taken place since the middle of the last century. This institutional "population explosion" is occurring everywhere. So, the mission of SoL International, to me, would be to activate, promote, and intensify this research into the nature of decision-making. I believe that the formula we found for the original SoL is valuable in this effort. In it, we incorporated an almost obligatory cooperation among consultants, researchers, and practitioners. There has been tension, but the system, by its very nature, encourages each participant to move beyond that tension and work together. We need to bring business, academics, and consultants together in different cultures and see what they identify as important to study. I think it's going to be fascinating to watch, and we'll be quite surprised by the quality and speed of the results. S.C.: You sound a bit like a corporate anthropologist, when you talk about companies as organic, as living species. Arie: My thinking is not so much anthropological as biological. Most people still view human beings as being at the center of reality. But as life has evolved on this planet, it has manifested itself in more and more variety of forms -- which Richard Dawkins calls survival machines for genes. In a sense, we can imagine institutions as the next step up in genes' efforts to design ever more sophisticated survival machines. After all, it is through our institutions that humanity becomes more effective and survives. But if we think of our institutional "population" as a newly evolving species, we must also consider it highly underdeveloped. It is miles away from actualizing its full potential, perhaps because this new species uses its brain in such a primitive way. SoL International -- and SoL in general -- is a frail human effort to promote high-quality research into this issue. However, if this effort works, the payoff is going to be immense for the individual members as well as for the wider human community. S.C.: Can you explain the relationship between the original SoL and SoL International? In other words, what genetic code do they have in common, and how do they diverge? Arie: Joe Jaworski's word synchronicity is key here. The synchronicity in the development of the first SoL was the remarkable fact that Peter Senge met Dee Hock. From this meeting, we got the cross-fertilization of ideas about institutional learning, systems thinking, and new ways of organizing. Dee Hock has a strongly biological view of how to organize institutions: You create a space in which human beings and institutions can come together inside a binding structure called a constitution. This allows cells to grow, which in turn form symbiotic, interconnected relationships that grow in every direction -- that's what life is like. Applying biological thinking to the creation and organization of institutions is a brilliant idea. Dee has proven how incredibly effective this formula is compared to the top-down engineering approach we've used before. The relationship between the original SoL and SoL International would be based on this biological metaphor, where SoL International would provide the binding infrastructure for the vast network of SoL 'fractals'. In other words, the first SoL would be like one cell in the body of SoL International. It may be a brain cell or a heart cell or another kind of cell, but it'll be one cell among many. The original SoL will find its place and function in that institutional body, and so will the 'genetic material' now floating around in France, the U.K., Japan, Singapore, and so forth. S.C.: Where would you like to see SoL International by this time in 1999? Arie: The perfect scene would be to have a modest number of new 'cells' beginning to organize themselves -- a number that the central communications structure can handle. Of course, you often see extremes in the early stages of such efforts: either a flood of interest or a total lack of reaction. Since this will be an organic growth process, it isn't going to be neat. But we shouldn't underestimate the self-organizing power of a well-constructed life form!
Suggested Reading
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 1989) |
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SoL International: A Talk with Rita Cleary
Rita Cleary is a SoL member-at-large and a member of the international SoL organizing committee, which supports the emergence of an international SoL. Other members on the committee are Goran Carstedt, Arie de Geus, Dee Hock, Joe Jaworski, Peter Senge, and Iva Wilson. Rita is a founding partner of The Learning Circle. S.C.: When did the international community begin showing interest in the organizational learning work? Rita: The community has expressed a strong interest for many years. In 1992, during the Pegasus Systems Thinking in Action Conference, we hosted a gathering for people from the international community who had an interest in organizational learning. The only time available was six in the morning. So, we expected that we would get maybe just a few people attending. Instead, seventy-five people showed up. S.C.: What is the international community looking for in this affiliation? Rita: Some groups in Asia want to become members of the existing SoL so that they can connect to what is happening here. The people in Europe are interested in connecting, as well, but also want to create a relationship with SoL as equal partners. Each country has its own piece to contribute. They have a history of being successful in ways that are so different from success as it's measured here in the United States. S.C.: Why are we thinking about it as SoL International? Why not SoL Europe, SoL South America, SoL Asia, etc.? Rita: We are thinking about it as both. There is an organizing committee that has formed with a blessing from the SoL Council. Next, we need a broader design team with representation from the international community. Then we can create a design based on their needs. To me that? what's so exciting about the SoL community: providing a space where people from around the world who are committed to this work can affect the design. I also believe that there's no limit to the number of ways the new SoL organizations might be structured. We've talked about organizing by industry, community, areas of interest, and geography. We have an opportunity to go beyond the traditional view of organizational learning, to deepen our understanding of how organizations are affecting life at both local and global levels. As this community comes together, it will frame questions that will elicit global conversations and responses that could transform individuals, organizations, communities, and the world.
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June 22-25, 1998
Amherst College Once a year the SoL community comes together for conversation, reflection, inspiration, and decision-making. This year, we're gathering at Amherst College from June 22 to 25. It's not a public meeting; this is a private gathering just for SoL members. Most important, we will have the opportunity to swap stories with old friends over coffee and the chance to walk and talk with people in the community we have only begun to know. Of course, there are also planned events. If you enjoyed the presentation by Action Design partners Bob Putnam, Diana McLain Smith, and Phil McArthur last year (remember the Goldilocks story?), you can look forward to meeting with them again this year. They will engage us in an afternoon exercise of building peer learning skills. (See the interview with Bob Putnam on page 4.) We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Humberto Maturana, the world-renowned biologist from Chile, has agreed to be the Keynote Speaker. Those who have never had an opportunity to hear Dr. Maturana are in for a treat. He takes the idea of reflection to new levels, and offers a unique methodology for reflection based on his pioneering work in understanding cognition as a biological phenomenon. If you haven't yet made your plans to come, call Nadine Chase at 617-492-7236 or nchase@sol-ne.org and ask her to hold a place for you.
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Action Design:
Bob Putnam, SoL research member, and his partners at Action Design are organizing a major component of the upcoming SoL Annual Members' Meeting. SoL Common asked Bob to reflect on Action Design's work with SoL and to give us a glimpse into what SoL members might experience by participating in the Annual Members' Meeting. S.C.: How did you decide on peer learning as the focus of this session? Bob: About a year ago, Peter Senge asked us to think about how Action Design might help SoL stimulate and nurture learning processes among its membership. The idea of peer learning struck us as having strong potential, and that's what we'll be building on at this year? Annual Meeting. Probably the single most important thing in developing one's professional competence is having a group of peers to talk with. It's widely known that skills develop primarily through practice coupled with conversations among users of those skills. At the Annual Meeting, we're going to offer a model for encouraging a particular kind of conversation among participants. We're also going to explore how to create an environment that makes participants feel both accepted and challenged to push beyond how they currently think. S.C.: Is your intention to create a personal experience as well as model a technique or method that participants can apply in their own work? Bob: People will definitely have a personal experience, because they're going to be working extensively in small groups. We expect participants to gain new insights about themselves and each other from this process. As for modeling a technique, I expect mainly to offer some guidelines and stories to get the process started. More important, I think we'll be presenting a structure to a large group of people that will in turn make the small group discussions more learningful than they would have been otherwise. My guess is that participants will adapt the structure we offer and take it with them to use in their own way within their practices or organizations. We're also asking people to come to the Meeting having identified others with whom they'd like to be learning partners (a mailing on this will go out to all attendees soon). That way, they can embark on an ongoing process of peer learning beyond the Meeting. These partnering groups might consist of people who all come from the same geographic area, or are widely scattered and want to continue the peer learning process through email. Probably they will be groups that already interact regularly. Forming groups for ongoing reflection will be a major part of the experience. In addition, we're encouraging participants to do a little homework ahead of time. During the small group discussions, we're going to ask each person to describe something about his or her practice or work that they'd like the group to reflect on. To prepare for this, people might think of a key moment in their work. This might be a time that clarified a distinctive or unique aspect of what they do. In other words, what's special about their work? What do they actually do, and what's an example of a time it worked well? A key moment might also be a persistent dilemma or challenge, or an example of ways in which people they're working with keep getting stuck. The important thing is for each person to describe something about their work that the group can grasp and keep talking about. This process leads to a valuable outcome that my partners and I at Action Design have witnessed among ourselves: Each participant in the reflection process has a theory, whether tacit or explicit, about the best way to perform their work. Consultants, for example, have assumptions about how they can be most helpful to their clients. As we conduct our practice or perform our work, we further refine these mental models and make them explicit. My hope for the peer learning process is that the group members will help each other build and clarify their own mental models about how they might best do their work. S.C.: So the members of the peer learning groups can help each other see mental models that might be transparent to the person sharing his or her experience? Bob: Yes. I believe that the peer learning process offers this benefit for all participants, whether they're consultants, practitioners, or researchers. Any participant can describe an important but difficult area of their work, or share something about what they do that adds value in the world. A practitioner, for example, might share an experience in which she is trying to get agreement across functional boundaries in the face of certain difficulties. A researcher might describe negotiating access to an important site in an organization while grappling with frustrating politics, etc. This process of sharing, reflecting, and clarifying one another's mental models requires astute observation and can be very challenging. However, I'm confident that people from all three constituencies of the SoL membership will be able to share experiences -- both positive and negative -- from their work. Any of these examples will make ideal raw material for group reflection and peer learning. I believe there's a huge amount of talent among the SoL membership, and I expect that many participants will bring a lot to this experience.
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SoL Publication Series Launched in SPring 1998
This spring, SoL is launching its new publication series, which deals broadly with the
subject of organizational learning. We invite all SoL community members to submit ideas
for consideration in the series. SoL accepts workls for publication based ib solidarity
of content, originality, and eclecticism. We welcome learning histories, thought
pieces, articles on tools and methods, and journal articles. In addition, we invite you
to help us review submissions for publication. For more information, contact Stephen C.
Buckley at
sbuckley@sol-ne.org.
Have You Moved?
Help us and your fellow SoL members find you! Pleae let us know if your address, phone, fax, and/or email have
changed. See "Feedback Loop" below for how to contact us.
Calling All Aspiring Cartoonists!
If you're an illustrator or cartoonist who's just getting started and would like to introduce your
work in SoL Common, contact Lauren Jphnson at ljohnson@pegasuscom.com
or (781) 398-9710 (voice).
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SoL CommonSociety for Organizational Learning955 Massachusetts Ave. , Suite 201 Cambridge, MA 02139 Feedback Loop
E-mail: contact@sol-ne.org |
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Rita Cleary
Bob Putnam