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Learning Systems
It is not in the natural order for organizations, as systems, to remain at rest.
Since change is natural, then why not make it intentional? An organization that wants
to reset its vision and aspirations but feels trapped in the old way of doing things,
or that has created a new mission/vision but can't seem to put it into practice,
or that is unable to break the bonds of hierarchical relationships, is among the
candidates for an intentional evolutionary approach to change.
While change may be resisted, and refrains such as "if it ain't broke don't
fix it" may file alongside the nostalgic urge to "return to the good old
days," pressure to respond to new internal and/or external forces is an ever-present
reality of life, both organizational and personal. When pushed to make change, because
the old ways are ineffectual in meeting new challenges, anxiety may be the first
and most pervasive response. Things seem overwhelming or out of control. In psychology
we refer to such a phenomenon as cognitive dissonance. Things have seemingly been
going along great and all of a sudden something happens that seems to threaten everything.
We become confused and/or angry and generally feel insecure and aroused. It is not
in our natures, either organizational or personal, to long tolerate such a state.
We move to resolve the dissonance either by returning to the old ways by repairing
what's wrong, or by pursuing a new path into transactional or beyond into transformational
change.
We have all been in the situation when we knew it was time to make a decision. Dissonance,
its management and creation, is a key component of organizational change. This is
an important point to remember and one we will come back to later. An organization
may move to resolve its dissonance in, more or less, three ways: 1) simply self-repair,
2) install transactional reforms, or 3) transform.
A self-repairing reform might best be seen as a fix-it response. Methadone maintenance,
for example, may be seen as a self-repair response both for the client and for the
community. A transactional response carries the organization further along to challenge
some basic assumption(s) and reach some new level of awareness. A community mental
health center may, for example, de-emphasize methadone maintenance and launch a new
personal growth and development initiative for at-risk youth. The center has to realize
that the community needs more than a symptom-treating approach.
Transformational change embraces a longer-term dynamic process. This process carries
the organization beyond a new awareness to a new way of responding and a new way
of learning. The organization moves toward a basic restructuring on how it views
the world, how it goes about doing its business, and how it relates to its internal
and external realities and constituencies. Note, the transformational organization
is going about internal reorganization as it reframes its response to the external
world. It is the character of these organizations that their internal relationships
reflect the paradigm they project on the external world. The organization that values
people values its staff, the organization that sees resources in youth sees resources
in its staff, the organization that can nurture adult/youth partnerships can create
staff teams that transcend normal hierarchies. These new relationships lead to new
assessment and thus knowledge, and the cycle continues. An organization moving in
this direction may be said to be on the road toward becoming a learning organization.
A person following this path may be said to be on the road to empowerment or self-actualization.
It is the transformational or learning organization that we have chosen as the focus
of our discussion. We made this choice because it is precisely this kind of reorganizational
reform that organizations moving toward a community youth development paradigm need
pursue. We have further chosen to view the change process through the eyes of Intentional
Evolutionary Design (IED) (see New Designs for Youth, Vol. 10 #4, fall 1993,
pp. 27-36). The idea of such transformation is sometimes placed in the well-worn
metaphor of metamorphosis, wherein the caterpillar is transformed into the butterfly.
While romantic, this imagery avoids two important differences. First, given longevity,
the caterpillar has no choice but to transform into a butterfly. She could not, for
example choose to be a frog, or stay as a caterpillar. Secondly, once transformed
into a butterfly that is the end of it. Nothing else now remains but aging and death.
These important differences underscore two underlying assumptions of IED. Change
is 1) willfully intentional and not predetermined, and 2) ongoing and therefore not
terminal. While our intention is to focus more on the learning processes of an organization
going through such change, a brief recapitulation of the fundamentals of IED seems
in order.
Starting Points
What's important for IED is that the effort be:
Vision driven--envisioning a new reality that can anchor the efforts in the improvement
of the conditions that will bring the new reality about. In effect this is an effort
to bring into play a new story. It is in juxtaposition to activity traps that find
the leadership and staff focused on outcomes, activities, funding dictates and/or
political efforts that lock their organizations into the old story. The old story
supports conditions that:
- underlie the fragmentation of
services, externalize the organization's purpose (a political and funding process
that draws organizations into reactive, crisis-oriented, fund-seeking activity sinkholes)
- inhibit the development of unifying
visions--including the sharing of theory and practice
- victimize youth through the clinicalization
or criminalization of youth problems.
Intentional--reaching the vision or new reality is a thoughtful action
process occurring within an open system. It is a complex process that requires leadership,
guidance, and intelligence.
Evolutionary--moving developmentally over time through discrete stages
toward the achievement of the vision/new reality.
And the approach must be:
Appreciative--seeing that within the organization lie the strengths
and resources key to its healthy development. To appreciate this is to acknowledge
that every system and person within the organization is a resource.
Applicable--leading to generation of knowledge (theoretical and applied)
that can be put to practical use and made accessible to those who need to use it.
Proactive--assisting the community to take an active role in guiding
its own evolution.
Collaborative--entering the key players, including the evaluator, into
collaborative relationships with the community.
The evolutionary process may be seen, as depicted in Table I below, as developmental,
cycling through five overlapping phases.
TABLE I: FIVE PHASES OF CHANGE
Phase I
Pre-Planning |
Analyze Existing
Conditions & Culture (Past & Present) |
Phase II
Start-Up |
Set Goals and Objectives:
Implement on Small Scale |
Phase III
Involvement |
Widen Involvement
within Organization; Expand to Community |
Phase IV
Installing Change |
Modify Culture &
Conditions to Reflect Vision (Future) |
Phase V
Sustaining Change |
Keep the Process
Open & Generative |
The Learning Spiral
Learning flows developmentally and incrementally. A failed plan or strategy is not
necessarily a failure or setback but a clue to the need for adaptation. The process
of learning is neither linear nor cyclical. It may more accurately be envisioned
as a spiral, as represented below:
As we have diagrammed it, the learning begins within the homeostatic or the "let's
not fix it" organization. This is pedagogical on our part, for the process may
very well occur further along the spiral. But, to understand the sociopsychological
dynamics of the process, we reason that homeostasis is a good place to begin. For
it is here, within the closed system that perceives that everything is going just
fine, that the role of leadership becomes a source of inspirational dissonance. Recall,
early on we said change will not occur without dissonance--some forceful challenge
to the status quo (note a seeming contradiction further on in the spiraling process
when change becomes the status quo). At this point the leadership may provide the
initial infusion of dissonance and energy to begin the process of change, and the
authority necessary to guide that process along an intentional evolutionary path
as depicted in the learning spiral above.
Inherent to success in this endeavor is an organizational culture that values:
- Commitment to a coherent, articulated
vision that is universally supported and presents a new world view of opportunities.
- Vigorous pursuit of opportunities
to practice new ways of doing things in order to realize the new world view.
- Learning and reflection as paramount
to action. The importance of learning through reflection on and conversation about
how these new ideas and practices "feel" and how they are "working"
will be honored by providing time and space to think, reflect, and converse.
- A drive to competency: to become
the best the organization can become in pursuit of its vision. The organization and
its members pursue the clarification and improvement of thought, perception, or feelings
and behavior. This leads to a powerful sense of competency and enhanced performance.
An organization that demonstrates these values and develops the capacity to act on
them may be said to be intentional and evolutionary in its design and purpose. A
person who demonstrates them may be said to be empowered or self-actualized.
The trick is to intentionally guide the processes of homeorheosis, the state of flow.
Learning organizations intentionally go on learning: that is their modus operandi
and vivendi. The learning is, as we said earlier, not linear, nor is it always smooth.
Once an organization traverses beyond the transactional and embarks upon the journey
of the transformational, it has charted a new and exciting course. But, as in a rush
down the rapids, moments of terror and doubt are evoked. It should not be expected
that this course will be without pain and error. Recent longitudinal studies on addiction
have found that often those who are addicted do not go to one program and recover,
"transform" themselves. Rather, over time, with many relapses in between,
people with a vision of being better and a desire to achieve that vision do succeed.
Similarly, organizations beginning on the path to transformation may still be hooked
into the old system. The hooks can be the thoughts, feelings, and actions that pervaded
the old system, the old culture. Learning the new ways is not easy. It does not come
from reading a book or going to a workshop, although these may be motivating experiences.
It comes in the practice. Taking the new vision out on a road test is the beginning;
this, for many, is a simulation that occurs during a workshop experience or in a
new visioning exercise. That's fun, that's exhilarating, and that's easy. When you
get home and try to apply the new ideas to your practice is when it gets tough. In
workshops we learn words and definitions, concepts and simulations, but will they
hold in the trenches? How do they get applied? How many times have you observed the
jargon phenomenon? Everyone's got the words and can talk the constructs but can they
"walk the talk"? How many times have you heard the term "new paradigm"
over the last five years? Or "youth as resources" over the past ten?
Organizations that will be successful as learning organizations will, in our opinion,
need to be intentional and evolutionary in perspective and be willing to commit significant
resources to the job. Money is not the only resource. Time, for example, is a significant
resource. Recognize that substantive cultural change within your organization will
take time, several years at least. A commitment to learning as a value means designating
a specific time and place for staff to learn. Learning requires reflection, conversation,
and action in a never-ending interactive relationship. The popular notion of practice
fields, as Anne Dosher earlier points out (see New Designs for Youth, Vol.
12 #3, summer 1996, pp. 11-13), is a concrete acknowledgment of this need. Practice
fields require an honored, permanent, and prominent place. IED organizational change
is neither a drive-through dinner nor a new "gizmo"--it's a new way of
seeing things.
Getting there requires a designed process that reflects the values discussed above.
As stated, it must be expected that the change will come about over time, but will
not be immediate. The honeymoon following the vision-setting exercises could end
abruptly and painfully. What's in place to save the vision? The answer to this cannot
be a question mark. Dissonance can be a danger or a friend. Successful organizations
will have a process in place that will capitalize on the initial enthusiasm, facilitating
the organization over time toward the IED model. The National Network for Youth,
for example, supported by a DeWitt-Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund grant, invested considerable
money and time over a three-year period to promote such organizational change (see
Rebecca Lane's discussion in New Designs for Youth, Vol. 12 #3, summer 1996,
pp. 14-18). Understanding the need for solid process, they invited the Institute
for Cultural Affairs to teach the ICA method. This method, the Technology of Participation,
is extremely sensitive to the need to facilitate a change process over time and to
the need to break vision down into winnable, doable components. Other methods exist
as well, such as those developed by the former Associates for Youth Development and
more recently Peter Senge of MIT and his colleagues. The caveat here is that while
there may be more than one path to a learning organization, "if you don't know
where you're going, you're not likely to get there."
Some organizations are successful without calling in outside facilitators. For some
excellent examples we refer you to Urban Sanctuaries, a work done by Milbrey W. McLaughlin,
Merita A. Irby, and Juliet Langman, published by Jossey-Bass in 1994. It is our view
that outside knowledgeable facilitation provides greater emphasis and focus and thus
a greater likelihood of success. Good facilitation, and here "caveat emptor"
should be employed, provides good process control. The facilitator is to the process
what the traffic officer is to the busy intersection. Further, the facilitator can
provide to the process what the coach provides to the team--good solid coaching.
Another important formal structure that needs emphasis is evaluation. Typically deployed
as a method to judge success, and thus thumbs up or down for future funding, program
evaluation has generally been silent in its capacity to inform as a coach, although
this is shifting. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) and SEARCH
Institute exist as exceptions. In the IED process the key role of evaluation is to
inform both the learning process and the drive for competency. A solid integrated
evaluation design is an indication of the value the organization has placed on learning.
The Choices for Children Program, an independent nonprofit organization providing
community liaison to develop appropriate services for children and families in Covington,
Georgia, and Middle Earth, a multiservice youth agency dedicated to partnering with
youth for responsible citizenship in Somerville, New Jersey, are but two examples
of community-based organizations employing facilitators and evaluators in this fashion.
Within the IED approach evaluation is appreciative, applicable, proactive, and
collaborative. It serves both summative and formative needs of a learning organization.
What is summative in this context? Traditionally, summative evaluation has had as
its major responsibility judging the efficacy of a program or intervention after
it has been completed. IED assumes there is no completion. Summative evaluation provides
a summing up and moving forward impetus at strategically and regularly determined
intervals--recommended on an annual basis. More formal in its format than formative
evaluation, summative evaluation provides the context and the data to guide the organization's
intentional and continuous evolution. This is a time when major decisions or midcourse
adjustments are made.
Formative evaluation is the process through which evaluators provide feedback on
an ongoing basis at regular intervals, usually quarterly. Formative evaluation provides
the context and basis for forming and reforming the activities so important to adaptive
learning organizations. Ideally, this process is integrated into the learning methods
of the practice fields. "This is the coach speaking."
IED stresses both summative and formative evaluation, which have as their major task
providing knowledge about:
- what people need to do to be
effective as they intentionally create and maintain learning communities in order
to continue to achieve their vision
- how a self-generating learning
community can be nurtured and sustained
- what the values and processes
actually are that deepen the relationship between thinking and doing.
IED provides a model within which all three tasks outlined above are addressed. Learning
is not linear in this system, but it is narrative. It is the story that is being
told and constantly re-created that forms the basis of the relationship between the
activists and the evaluation. In the continuous pursuit to learn, the model stresses
evaluation as integral, but only as an equal to two other integral components, i.e.,
1) a guidance system, such as a guide team, and 2) practice fields. It is upon this
three-legged stool that the learning organization flourishes.
References
McLaughlin, Milbrey W., Irby, Marita A., and Langman, Juliet, Urban Sanctuaries:
Neighborhood Organizations in the Lives and Futures of Inner-City Youth, Jossey-Bass,
San Francisco, 1994.
Senge, Peter et al., The Fifth Discipline Field Book: Strategies and Tools for
Building a Learning Organization, Doubleday, 1994.
Ann W. Dosher, Ph.D. is a nationally recognized and active consultant in the
area of community development. She is presently involved in a major community development
program in San Diego County, California. Dr. Dosher is a member of the national guide
team working to develop an ongoing theory-in-use for the community youth development
field.
John Terry, Ph.D. is Editor-in-Chief of New Designs for Youth Development.
Formerly the Director of Research and Evaluation for Associates for Youth Development
and Associate Editor for New Designs, he is currently a freelance consultant
in community development and open systems planning and evaluation. Dr. Terry's professional
life has been dedicated to social justice. His experience in the field of prevention
and community development includes teaching, research, program implementation, staff
development, and evaluation.
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