Domain of Action
PRACTICE FIELDS
Following this reasoning, we have focused much of our research at MIT on one potentially significant innovation in infrastructure - the managerial practice field. The underlying idea grows from comparing organizational settings where teams learn reliably with other settings where little team learning occurs. In sports and in the performing arts, two settings where teams consistently enhance their capabilities, players move regularly between a practice field and the real game, between rehearsal and performance. It is impossible to imagine a basketball team learning without practice, or a chamber music ensemble learning without rehearsal. Yet, that is exactly what we expect to occur in our organizations. We expect people to learn when the costs of failure are high, when personal threat is great, when there is no opportunity to "replay" an important decision, and when there is no way to simplify complexity and shorten time delays so as to better understand the consequences of actions. Is it any wonder that learning in organizations is rare?
At MIT, we are experimenting with two types of managerial practice fields. Our "learning laboratory projects" are focused on particular issue areas, like new product development and cycle time in complex supply chains. For example, several companies are collaborating at MIT in designing and testing a New Product Development Learning Laboratory.
Other practice field projects, the "dialogue projects," focus on the quality of conversation and capability for collective thinking. In some cases these projects take place with intact teams, such as management teams; in other cases, the ''teams" are diverse groups of people who need one another to take effective action in a broad area of concern such as the health care system of a community The dialogue projects create a different sort of practice field, which is not defined by a set of particular management issues but by a common commitment to generate deeper levels of conversation which can penetrate into whatever issues, both personal and substantive, need to be addressed.
In both types of practice field projects, the overarching principle is to establish a new cycle of learning that connects practice and performance. And, in both types of projects, initial evidence suggests that the practice field concept may, indeed, be a breakthrough in learning infrastructure. At Ford, the learning laboratory is making a significant impact on internal coordination, quality, productivity, and timing in a major new car project.
At GS Technologies, an ongoing dialogue project has led to a profound shift in union-management partnership and consequently the birth of a new organization.
The next steps in both projects are to diffuse the practice fields more widely, to further test their merits, and to see if they may indeed constitute significant new infrastructures for organizational learning.
The Integrity of the Architecture
Leaders intent on developing learning organizations must focus on all three of the architectural design elements. Without all three, the triangle collapses. Without guiding ideas, there is no passion, no overarching sense of direction or purpose. People ask, "Why are we doing this?" or "What is this change in infrastructure all about?" Top management gets fired up about "total quality management," "reengineering" or some other hot idea. Time and resources are poured into achieving intended changes. But, after a year, with little tangible to show for the effort, something else hot comes along and the effort is abandoned. Ultimately, the organization remains at the whim of circumstance and external conditions. This happens again and again unless people discover that leadership involves articulating transcendent guiding ideas to which they will stay committed.
Without theory, methods, and tools, people cannot develop the new skills and capabilities required for deeper learning. Efforts at change lack depth and are ultimately seen as superficial. For example, the CEO and managers through the organization may espouse a guiding idea about "openness," and the importance of surfacing mental models. But if people do not practice regularly with tools like left-hand column cases, conversations polarize when issues get hot. People withhold their genuine views to avoid uncontrollable conflict, trust erodes, and "openness" is seen as a facade of "nice ideas" inconsistent with what actually happens in the organization.
Without innovations in infrastructure, inspiring ideas and powerful tools lack credibility because people have neither the opportunity nor resources to pursue their visions or apply the tools. Changes cannot take root and become part of the fabric of organizational life. Learning is left to chance. It is not managed with the same commitment that other critical organizational activities are given. Efforts to promote systems thinking, reflection, or other learning capabilities have little, enduring organization-wide impact. Infrastructure that is incongruent with guiding ideas can also lead to cynicism. Managers may espouse that "Human beings are intrinsically motivated to learning," but if people feel that they must pursue learning only "on their own time" then they lose faith not just in the organization, but in the idea of learning.
The early days of the quality movement in U.S. manufacturing provide an example of the need for all three elements. In the early 1980s there was a rush to implement "quality circles," an innovation in infrastructure. However, the quality circle fad faded quickly. Gradually, we discovered that people working in quality circles needed to learn how to employ new tools and methods so they could begin rigorous analysis, testing, and improvement of their processes. But even then, quality circles (and the quality movement which replaced them) fell short of creating transformative change. They needed the third corner of the architectural triangle: appropriate guiding ideas to energize and direct organization-wide improvement.
In the case of quality management, three sets of guiding ideas are critical. The first, according to W Edwards Deming, concerns "constancy of purpose" for the enterprise as a whole. The second has to do with understanding the nature of variation. Lastly there is a set of guiding ideas that concern human motivation. All human beings, said Dr. Deming, are born with "intrinsic motivation": an inner drive to learn to take pride in their work, to experiment, and to improve. Without this lasting guiding idea, managers think they must motivate people to study and improve, and that they must keep watch over people to make sure that learning is occurring.
In my judgment, few American firms have grasped all three of these guiding Ideas Consequently, rarely has quality management become the "thought revolution in management" envisioned by Japanese quality innovator Kaory Ishikawa.
Interestingly, when these three sets of guiding ideas are all present, basic innovations in infrastructure typically occur far more easily and sustainably. Levels of supervisory management are removed and don't return. Quality inspectors are eliminated permanently. Authority to study and improve work processes is pushed down to front-line workers, who embrace it as their own. Guided by an overall philosophy, and empowered by effective tools and methods and by the authority to take action, the quality improvement process then begins to lead to significant change.
Moreover, pursuing all of the elements of the architecture simultaneously generates synergies that do not occur when attention is paid to only one of the elements alone.
