Understanding complexity (and trying to deal with in order to innovate)
1. Managing
Understanding
Complexity
(… and trying to deal with in order to innovate)
David VALLAT
Lyon University – France
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr - @DavidVALLAT
Creativity,Innova
and Design
MS2105
Prof:Stefan Haefliger
Creativity, Innovation and Design
(MS2105 – Prof. S Haefliger)
4. Learning Goals
• Understanding the difference between
COMPLEX and COMPLICATED (A)
• Using a KM tool: the Lesson Learned Workshop
(B)
• Practicing collaborative knowledge creation (C)
• Discovering how “Teaching Smart People How
to Learn” (first step to build a learning
organization) (D)
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
8. Lessons Learned Workshop (B)
• We learn nothing by experience only
• Practicing collaborative knowledge creation:
https://urlz.fr/90zP (Framasoft) (C)
• What did you learn?
• what are my feelings?
• what occurred?
• how to succeed?
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
9. Discovering how “Teaching Smart
People How to Learn” (D)
• How to succeed?
• Chris ARGYRIS (HBS Professor)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Argyris
“Teaching Smart People How to Learn”, Harvard Business Review, 1991.
https://hbr.org/1991/05/teaching-smart-people-how-to-learn
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
10. C. Argyris (1991), “Teaching Smart
People How to Learn”, HBR
• “[…]success in the marketplace increasingly depends on
learning, yet most people don’t know how to learn.”
• “Put simply, because many professionals are almost always
successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And
because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how
to learn from failure.”
Two mistakes leading to Single Loop Learning:
• “First, most people define learning too narrowly as mere
“problem solving,” so they focus on identifying and correcting
errors in the external environment.
• Second: “to behave defensively” ; “What happened? The
professionals began to feel embarrassed. They were
threatened by the prospect of critically examining their own
role in the organization.”
10david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
11. Learning How to Reason Productively
(Double Loop Learning)
• Use valid information (prior to decision making),
observable data with reliable sources;
• Show how the data have been used to build ideas
(transparency);
• Accept and encourage contradiction, controversy
(innovation needs diversity);
• Don’t hide or dodge subjects/ideas.
=> it’s close to the method to produce scientific knowledge
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
12. A Loops Story…
• Organizational learning is about detecting and
correcting error
Source: http://www.afs.org/blog/icl/?p=2653
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
13. Model I: Single Loop Learning
Source:
http://www.reallylearning.com/Free_Resources/Organisational_Learnin
g/organisational_learning.html
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
14. Model II: DoubleLoop Learning
Source:
http://www.reallylearning.com/Free_Resources/Organisational_Learnin
g/organisational_learning.html
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
15. To Conclude
• To deal with complexity
an organization needs to
unlearn Command &
Control
• Innovation needs
method: PRODUCTIVE
REASONNING
• Innovation needs tools:
Lesson Learned
Workshop, collaborative
note taking…
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
18. GALLUP – 2017
State of the Global Workplace
85%
18
85% of employees
worldwide are not
engaged or are
actively disengaged
in their job.
david.vallat@univ-lyon1.fr
Notes de l'éditeur
Simple problem solving / linearity / optimum answer/solution => CONTROL : algorythm/predictability
READY TO USE ANSWER
H Simon: bounded rationality, satisfying solution => NO CONTROL
How to be prepared to complexity?
FORMING A ‘BA’
Framasoft is a non-profit popular educational organization, a group of friends convinced that an emancipatory digital world is possible, convinced that it will arise through actual actions on real world and online with and for you!
Open knowledge
Argyris & Donald Schön, Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective (Addison-Wesley, 1978): drawing/diagrma
The theory’s foundation is that all organisational learning involves detecting and correcting error.
When an error is detected and corrected and the organisation is then able to carry on where it had left off, or go on to achieve its original goals, that ‘error-detection-and-correction process’ is termed single-loop learning.
Single-loop learning, then, focuses principally on accomplishing existing goals, and solving familiar problems.
It works very well when errors can be corrected whilst keeping things in the organisation largely constant.
Argyris and Schön liken it to a thermostat that turns the heat on or off according to a predictable and familiar variable; the room temperature.
By contrast, double-loop learning involves error correction where things are not so predictable, namely ‘the modification of an organization’s underlying norms, policies and objectives’.
Whilst single-loop learning is dealt with regularly and efficiently by most organisations, double-loop learning is far harder to adopt.
To illustrate the concept, Argyris and Schön describe a hypothetical industrial firm which, in order to remain competitive, has set up a new research and development department and encouraged it to generate new consumer products which the firm will manufacture in place of the intermediate products upon which it has relied for many years.
The consequent shifts in production processes, marketing, advertising and distribution, as well as in the entire image of the firm to staff and general public alike, are immense.
All this conflicts strongly with the ‘corporate norm’ firmly established in the company; that represented by stability and predictability (ROUTINES).
In this example, the establishment of the R&D department is the ‘error’ which must be fixed.
Single-loop processes are useless, as nothing here is familiar or normal or predictable. For double-loop learning to work in such a situation, Argyris and Schön explain that the first step is to recognise the conflict between corporate norm and radical change. The next step is to examine this conflict in order to realise that the error will not be corrected ‘by doing better what they already know’.
Chris Argyris looks to move people from a Model I to a Model II orientation and practice – one that fosters double-loop learning. He suggests that most people, when asked, will espouse Model II.
To sum up Model I
To sum up: productive reasoning
To be able to implement Model II we usually need to slow down our reasoning and increase our capacity for analysis and reflection, otherwise we unwittingly revert to Model I.
Argyris and Schön (1974) present two models that describe different theories-in-use.
Model I describes the behaviour of a group of professionals that they studied. It is based on the values of unilateral control of the situation, “winning” (proving oneself right), and suppression of any data that does not fit the actor’s assumptions. Such control can produce defensiveness that inhibits communication. Argyris and Schön believe that Model I describes features of a theory-in-use commonly employed by people in difficult situations. They go on to present Model II, “a model of theories-in-use that is free of the dysfunctionalities of model I” (page 85). The following summary draws on a presentation by Absolum (2006), based on the original models proposed by Argyris and Schön.
Model II represents a consultative approach in which the participants in learning have “bilateral” control of the process, where winning is not being “right” but rather making better sense of the evidence, and where no dialogue is suppressed, even if it is painful. It requires people to pay close attention to their own behaviour and to the way they interact with others. Argyris and Schön suggest that “In general, Model-II learning tends to facilitate others’ learning, which in turn facilitates one’s own learning” (page 92). They say that in a Model II world, “research activities and learning activities would reinforce each other” (page 93).
Argyris and Schön (1974) present two models that describe different theories-in-use.
Model I describes the behaviour of a group of professionals that they studied. It is based on the values of unilateral control of the situation, “winning” (proving oneself right), and suppression of any data that does not fit the actor’s assumptions. Such control can produce defensiveness that inhibits communication. Argyris and Schön believe that Model I describes features of a theory-in-use commonly employed by people in difficult situations. They go on to present Model II, “a model of theories-in-use that is free of the dysfunctionalities of model I” (page 85). The following summary draws on a presentation by Absolum (2006), based on the original models proposed by Argyris and Schön.
Model II represents a consultative approach in which the participants in learning have “bilateral” control of the process, where winning is not being “right” but rather making better sense of the evidence, and where no dialogue is suppressed, even if it is painful. It requires people to pay close attention to their own behaviour and to the way they interact with others. Argyris and Schön suggest that “In general, Model-II learning tends to facilitate others’ learning, which in turn facilitates one’s own learning” (page 92). They say that in a Model II world, “research activities and learning activities would reinforce each other” (page 93).