Training That Supports Corporate Change
Team Learning: Training That Supports Corporate Change
Managing change is a challenge. Whether it's a new vision, a merger, a new quality program, or a team oriented strategy, few CEOs are satisfied with the tempo of change.
It's true that organizations have become more adept at introducing changes with the support of videos, "town hall" meetings, satellite hook-ups and other techniques. In addition there are a growing number of highly competent consultants available to deal with the technical aspects changes.
However, a third critical factor in the equation of change often goes unaddressed: the organizational culture represented by the entire employee population. The mechanics-the communications campaign and the consulting process-are relatively short-term initiatives. Cultural changes take longer to achieve, but without them, an organization cannot derive the full benefit from strategic initiatives.
Typical
Some examples of failed initiatives:
- After investing a great deal of effort, an organization defines a new vision. With much fanfare and hoopla, it distributes brochures and framed copies of the vision statement. A few months pass. The vision statement still hangs on the wall, but it is now just another piece of corporate furniture, and invisible.
- Two companies merge, aiming to exploit their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. A year passes, but the two companies remain "two solitudes" instead of merging into a unified organization.
- Another company re-organizes its employees to work in teams, hoping they will efficiently evolve through the four stages of team development-forming, storming, norming and performing. A year later, many teams are still storming, and performing is still just an Executive's dream.
Why are these failures so prevalent? Because most organizations focus on the hard stuff-the mechanics of change-to the detriment of the soft stuff-the people and the corporate culture. But in fact, the hard stuff is relatively easy; it's the soft stuff that's hard. Cultural change requires a consistent, people-oriented, long-term strategy.
Overcoming Alienation
Today, after a prolonged period of downsizing, re-organization and economic austerity, it's become even more difficult to enlist employee support. In the Darwinian environment of today's corporate workplace, employees realize that their own survival is not guaranteed, and they hesitate to take risks. No matter how good their ideas, they're often reluctant to express them or share them with others, in case their ideas are rejected or they're labeled as loose cannons aboard the corporate ship. As a result, even in the best organizations, few employees outside the executive ranks will spend much time engaged in a serious, sustained conversation about improving their work.
Yet somehow an organization has to find a way to encourage its employees to respond creatively to change. It has to challenge employees to think and talk about the changes over the long term, rather than ignoring them and filing them away with the rest of yesterday's news.
A Learning Organization
If a organization is going to survive, we need to provide people with the ability to receive and exchange new ideas and a forum in which to do it on a sustained basis. Organizations have to develop a culture that's receptive to change, where the seed of a major initiative can take root and flourish. According to Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, a culture in which people are watchful and curious, where they strive for continuous improvement as a matter of course, is a Learning Organization.
One of the most effective ways we've seen to create such an environment is through a process we have been working with for the past three years called: Team Learning.
Small groups of four to five employees assume responsibility for managing their own learning without the need for trainer or classroom. Meeting for an hour every two weeks, employees share their work-related ideas to support the corporate initiative in their work area.
Essentially, team learning brings the art of serious and meaningful conversation back to the workplace. By learning to really communicate, employees abandon the backbiting and political in-fighting that inhibits change and robs a corporate culture of its vitality. Instead, individuals learn how to work together contributing to the organization's vision and putting its values into effect. Employees participate in change as it evolves.
To involve their employees in change, organizations first have to give them the skills to participate. They have to help employees learn to work together more effectively, and to manage themselves with less supervision in a downsized environment.
A Way To Reach All Employees
Through team learning, employees throughout an organization develop these fundamental skills. Even front-line, customer service and shop-floor workers-the people we rely on to bring an organization's vision to life-can participate, because learning sessions take only one hour every two weeks and need not impinge productivity.
In the process, employees learn to pay more than lip service to the corporate buzz words of the 1990s, such as empowerment, lifelong learning and continuous improvement. Like most clichés, these words describe valid and critical concepts but only when employees have the opportunity to put these concepts into action.
For several years, we've watched team learning in action. We've seen it help organizations focus more consistently on their vision. We've seen organizations create mergers that really work. We've seen organizations begin the difficult process of inverting the pyramid and empowering their employees. In fact, the impact of team learning that I've observed has surprised even me, and I helped to develop the concept.
How Does It Work?
Regardless of the subject, participants follow the basic ground rules of an effective learning team. These ground rules, inspired by the work of Peter Senge, are:
- Reflection
- Exploring each other's views
- Coming to consensus
- Brainstorming
Employees learn these skills in their brief team learning sessions, and they use them from day to day, on the job. They practise reflecting more deeply on their ideas before they express them; they practise exploring each other's views before trying to reach consensus; and they practise brainstorming like professionals. In short, they become adept at communicating.
More Than Meets The Eye
The obvious benefits of team learning are continuous learning and reduced costs, with little disruption to organizational routines. Other benefits are not so obvious. They include:
- Team building: The nature of team learning encourages bonding because people engage in serious conversations based on mutual respect. Participants learn to appreciate their team members and feel more appreciated themselves.
- Raising self-esteem: In a classroom environment, where an authority figure-the trainer-is present, adults sometimes feel afraid of looking like fools. In a learning team, this fear dissipates, and people are less inhibited from expressing their opinions. "When people have gained more confidence through team learning, they feel more comfortable expressing their ideas in business meetings," says Zlata Savic, Manager of Human Resources at Noranda Metallurgy. "Even the quiet ones now contribute their ideas."
- More effective decisions: Through team learning, people become more adept at exchanging ideas. "People make better and faster decisions," says Bill Wade, Director of Sales Development for Labatt Breweries. "In meetings, they can now accomplish in two hours what used to take them four to six hours."
- More fun: People learn better when they're having fun. They look forward to their team learning sessions, not just for the fun of learning, but for the sense of affiliation they feel with their team. As Jeffrey Friedman, former Vice-President of Human Resources for Novopharm, says, "Team learning has helped people gain a better understanding of the company and its objectives. People like participating, talking about issues, sharing experiences and exploring new ideas. It's nice to hear laughter and see people having a good time while they're learning."
- Reduce the "fade syndrome": The "fade syndrome" occurs when a participant is introduced to new concepts and techniques in a workshop or seminar but the memory fades and only a small percentage is applied to the job. With team learning, participants meet for an hour then go back to their work and there is peer pressure to practise what they had just discussed in their learning session.
Walking The Talk
The pressure is felt upwards as well. Managers; In fact, before team learning is introduced, we make sure that Managers recognize the positive impact they can have on their organization by being seen to apply their team learning skills on the job-and the destructive impact they can have if they don't walk the talk.
At The End Of The Day
"The continuing reorganization of work itself is part of a social transformation," observes Fortune magazine, "as massive and wrenching as the industrial revolution." Organizations can adjust to this difficult transformation in a positive way by relying on the power of shared ideas to pursue their corporate goals.
At the end of the day, organizations with the cultural flexibility to adapt to change and initiate new ideas will lead the way into the next century; organizations that can't adapt to change will wither. It's as simple as that.
by:
Mervyn Rosenzveig,Chairman
MR Communication Consultants Inc