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Recap on some uncomfortable truths

"Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." Paul Batalden I think the Summer holiday period can be a good time to reflect and, to restate some realities that are difficult to acknowledge in bureaucratic organisations: Performance of an organisation reflects the system - and systems are wholly owned by leaders Systems are shaped by leaders' choices, which are shaped by their worldviews The focus of most leaders' is to maintain their status and to keep their job Systems are the outcome of the choice of measures, incentives, what gets rewarded, the choice of rewards, processes, policies, rules, team structures, roles and responsibilities, hiring policy etc. etc. Investing in training / coaching / 'transforming individual employees and  / or teams won't change the system Changing the system can enable people to perform for effectively and to fulfil their potential  Individual skills can only have a tiny amount of impact / leverage on overall p...
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What is the current system for?

"It probably doesn't pay to argue over things we have chosen to believe as part of our identity." Seth Godin  The decades old noise on 'the role of the Learning and Development department' misses the real point: 'What is the current system for?' The answer isn't : 'Performance change' 'Productivity' 'Business results' 'Profit' or  'Culture change' The current centralised education model is designed for control . Maintaining a separation between the 'work' and 'learning' (education) Maintaining the role and status of Leaders Maintaining the commercially lucrative illusion that access to and consumption of 'content' enables change Maintaining the structures and processes that rely on the assumption that collective individual performance impacts the performance of the organisation as a whole Maintaining the ability for leaders not to have to challenge their own assumptions and beliefs - that...
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More questions for leaders

"It requires acknowledging that the very management practices and organisational structures that got leaders to their current positions might be precisely what's preventing their organisations from adapting to a complex, rapidly changing world. But that level of self-examination is hard. It threatens established power structures, comfortable routines, and career advancement paths. It's much easier to hire consultants to "fix the culture" whilst leaving management behaviours unchanged. I It's more comfortable to implement new processes than to examine why people circumnavigate existing ones.  It's safer to mandate training programmes than to act on the feedback they generate." Bob Marshall What is the system here? Who benefits from the current system? Do people fulfil their potential? Why haven't we been focusing on enabling performance? What are you prepared to do differently?
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Reputation and status

"Managers are concerned with reputation. They are not concerned with improving their systems. I think they should be concerned with improving their systems." John Seddon In our organisations, leaders could choose to define 'performance' as 'the ability for the people we hired to fulfil their potential in the environment we have created here'. We know that organisational systems determine 'performance' and that systems ('the way the work works here') are wholly owned by the leaders. But the industrial, directive, pace-setting, process and tools led safety zone perpetuated by leaders - focused on managing reputation and status - inevitably discourages a focus on systems. 
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Compromised insiders

"Be careful of asking passengers and crew of the Titanic about the risk of the Titanic. They're on the ship, that tells you everything you need to know. If you paid for it or you're making a living from it, you're probably not going to have an objective risk view." Paul Portesi Compromised insiders - with assumptions and beliefs that form the status quo - are the biggest barrier to systems change. 
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The cultural phenomenon of continuing to invest in things that won't work

"It's difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it." Upton Sinclair The two convenient load bearing myths in workplace 'Learning and Development' are linked: 'Formal learning (education)' and  'Skills' Both are the least likely cause of a 'performance' problem Both (therefore) provide the lowest opportunity for impact However... Both remain the 'go to' priorities for the workplace 'Learning and Development' industry because: Leaders continue to love the idea of 'building skills' and 'investing in education' as both of these require little or no commitment on their part. L&D teams and their vendor whisperers rely on the commercial safety that the status quo continues to provide.  There are many other areas that could be the focus - with greater to opportunities to affect performance outputs: Expectations Incentives and rewards Ongoing feedback Reso...
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Places to hide

"It probably doesn't pay to argue over things we have chosen to believe as part of our identity." Seth Godin Places to hide inside a control based bureaucracy: Status Tactics Tools (includes all technologies) Processes Policies Hierarchies Meeting protocols Slide deck protocols Budgeting  Current measures Lack of current measures.
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'Corporate 'L&D' aren't focused on systems change'

"It is not an intelligent strategy to train people to overcome system deficiencies. Instead, we should design he system properly to make sure that performers can leverage all their capabilities." Klaus Wittkuhn By definition the role, focus and measures for corporate 'L&D' aren't focused on systems change. The priorities remain as: educate individuals in order to create more standardised workers. who will then perform better individually and the individual improvements will sum up to a higher performing organisation (see how that sounds?...). So the perfect recipe for inertia remains in place: Leaders continue to create transactional. low EQ environments (their systems) Corporate Learning don't have a systems change oriented philosophy or (therefore) a coherent strategy that can enable progress.  
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Treating outputs as inputs

"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." Maslow  I've talked before about how control based organisations approach 'defining' and 'deploying' their  values . The same is often true for 'our new culture': Create statements describing 'how it is here now' (inputs) In reality these statements are (random) target outputs The real challenge? - deliberately adjusting the system (the choice of measures, incentives, rewards, strategy, enabling policies, enabling processes, enabling team structures etc.) that might allow the new target culture to emerge over time.  
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Conventional thinking

"And remember, it's a collective devotion to conventional thinking that send organisations over the cliff of irrelevance." Gary Hamel Three reflections on conventional thinking: If you're a leader who is benefiting from operating a control based hierarchical system, then you're probably not interested in ways to operate a less control based hierarchical system. If your vendor commercial model - or internal 'L&D strategy' - relies on training as the 'solution', it's unlikely you'll be interested in acknowledging organisations as complex, connected systems. As Clay Shirky one wrote, 'institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.' The underpinning magical idea in the industrial, commercial 'L&D' model (including 'learning technology' vendors, conferences, awards programs, consulting, 'maturity models', podcasts etc. etc.) is that we can 'fix L&D' whilst everyth...
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New expectations

"It is the very fact that we find it difficult to motivate ourselves to become curious about systems - and work on listening to and understanding systems - that hinders us from asking and seeing what is really needed for transforming the health of systems." Josh Colchester The unmet opportunity for corporate 'L&D' - or (probably) some other team or group - is to help enable and facilitate the conditions for continuous learning that builds organisational adaptability.  This is a leadership challenge for the team - as it sets a fundamentally new expectation for the function: as facilitators of systems with and for the organisation.
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'Shop keeping'

"Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." Donald Berwick The idea of corporate learning (education) operating as 'shop keepers' is not new ( Andrew Jacobs talks about it frequently). The basis if the corporate learning 'shop keeping' model is simple: 'We develop interesting learning products' 'We fill our shelves' (Learning Management System / Learning Experience Platform / SharePoint site etc.) 'We market our products to potential consumers' 'We ask them if they enjoyed our product' 'We ask them what they want next and develop new products' 'We keep the shelves full'. Etc. When we see this self-perpetuating bureaucratic model its impossible to 'un-see' it.  The roles, overheads and performative routines that grow up around the 'shop keeping' model in corporate learning reinforce its detachment from the work systems that actually enable or limit performance.  
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