Q15- Senge’s Journey: from Learning to Presencing?

After two of CCLFI clients in the Philippines decided to become “living, learning organizations,” I was pleasantly amazed at how far the influence of Peter Senge’s concept of “learning organization” (LO) has reached. Today, I stumbled upon a 2001 OECD study on “Cities and Regions in the New Learning Economy.” Wow!

The concept of LO did not solely originate from Senge. It was a concept that has been talked about before 1990 by other experts such as Chris Argyris, Donald Schon and David Bohm. 1990 was the year when Senge’s bestseller book came out: “The Fifth Discipline: the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.” Senge also borrowed ideas from Forrester, Meadows and their colleagues at the systems dynamics group in MIT of earlier “Limits to Growth” fame.

The concept itself is a pregnant one, for it leads to new ways of looking at organizations: that organizations are like living entities. Organizations learn and adapt. They evolve and mutate. They are not like machines that need mechanics, fixers and top-down Taylorist managers; they are more like plants that need nurturing gardeners.

Not all experts agree. For one, David Garvin decries those who see “learning… as a New Age phenomenon, whose goal is releasing human potential rather than improving the bottom line… [whose] discussions of learning organizations have often been reverential and utopian” (see his book “Learning in Action”).

I agree with Garvin that the five LO disciplines are remote from the bottom line. His definition of a LO is more business oriented and practical, which fits well in the context of the Harvard Business School where he teaches. However, I think business is not the only area of application of LO concepts.

Lest “learning organization” remains a “Cloud 9 concept,” Senge and his colleagues came up with concrete tools four years later (see “The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization,” 1994).

Despite the criticisms, I think the fundamental basis of LO is solid. Garvin looks at managing behavior and performance (external view) while Senge looks at the mental models that determine behavior (internal view). In the words of Senge, “the central message of The Fifth Discipline is… that our organizations work the way they work, ultimately, because of how we think and how we interact.” The two views actually complement each other, and a mix of the two should be best in real world situations.

Frederick Taylor’s view of organizations is linear and straightforward. It fits well in managing factories that are basically extended machines. However, 21st century service organizations where knowledge workers rather than machines create value are more complex entities. We are just starting to learn how to manage these entities, thanks to Peter Drucker, Peter Senge and a new breed of management gurus. The next book by Senge’s group (“The Dance of Change: the Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations,” 1999) reflects the difficulties faced by this new breed. It was around the same time when a group of management theorists and practitioners assembled at the Harvard Business School and debated on the fixing/mechanic-versus-nurturing/gardener polarity (or the Theory E versus Theory O; see Beer and Nohria’s “Breaking the Code of Change”). After reading the interesting debate I reached the conclusion that it is not an “either/or” choice but more a “both/and”.

The learning process in organizations is one of the features that distinguishes the two viewpoints.

The process of organizational learning and the nature of human knowledge are two great issues at the root of the amusing confusions among practitioners of organizational learning and knowledge management. The book “Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future” (2004) by Senge and his colleagues at the Society for Organizational Learning raises a third great issue: the human process of innovation.

From our workshops in 1999 CCLFI discovered that the most fulfilling moments in a person’s life are of four types, and for some deep and unknown reason, all the four types are fundamentally creative moments. People are happiest or most fulfilled when they perform or participate in a creative process. We are not sure why. Csiksczentmihalyi, after studying these creative moments, observed that the person’s experience is like forgetting one’s self in a process he labeled as “flow” (see: “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention,” 1996). The new field of transpersonal psychology has formed itself around the study of such experiences.

In Senge’s language, “presencing” is the art and practice of consciously entering a creative space and process where innovation can take place. It is “pre-sensing” the future and participating in bring about the future into the present. It is internally sensing what is emergent within and without. It calls forth the intrapersonal and/or transpersonal skill of entering the quiet creative wellspring within yourself: the bottom of the “U” according Otto Scharmer (see his book “Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges”) or the “flow” of Csiksczentmihalyi.

At CCLFI we have experienced these creative moments. We observed in our workshops that almost everyone had experienced this moment at some time in their life, although they may not consciously recognize it as such. Perhaps it is not a largely cognitive process. We are at a loss to come up with words to describe the experience. “The mind is the last to know,” I tell my colleagues.

All these may sound “New Age-y” to some, but in the end, innovation is essential for hard-nosed business survival or even planetary survival. In the end, we must be able to connect the intangible experiential process of creation with its tangible benefits to the rest of the world. Whether businessmen or business school professors like it or not, we must continue to strive to understand the deeper nature of human creativity and innovation — and put that understanding to work in practical problems that confront not only businessmen but also prime ministers, not only factory managers but also peace negotiators.

Let me end with a quote from Secretary General Takenaka of the Asian Productivity Organization:

“The days when incremental or continuous improvement preoccupied corporate managers are over. It is to innovation and breakthroughs that those managers have turned their attention. For achieving innovation, the most relevant tool is no longer quality control or quality management. It is knowledge management in its broadest sense, which includes value creation or knowledge creation that is the most relevant.”

Tell us what you think.

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Q12- Clash of Civilizations or Dialogue among Civilizations?

In front of me are two books.

The first book is Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” (1996). He said that the end of the Cold War and its ideological conflict is paving the way to global clashes between major cultures: Western vs. Chinese, Western vs. Islamic, Hindu vs. Islamic, Hindu vs. Chinese, etc.

The second book tells a story (Adam Kahane’s “Solving Tough Problems”: an Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities, 2004) of how leaders of warring political groups in apartheid South Africa met and talked together at Mont Fleur Conference Center — a fateful meeting where they mustered the courage and goodwill to clarify together the stark choices and futures South Africa faces, and which eventually paved the way towards the end of apartheid and the rise of Nelson Mandela.

As I read these two books, I feel both fear and hope. I am afraid of a nuclear holocaust started by trigger-happy leaders. What will Israel do once Iran develops a nuclear weapons capability? What will a fundamentalist Islamic group do if they are able to steal Pakistani nuclear weapons? Would desperation push North Korea to send a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile to their Korean cousins in the south?

We may yet save humankind from mutual assured destruction of a nuclear holocaust if we, especially our leaders, learn how to truly talk together.

Harvard Professor David Bohm and Mark Edwards, in their book “Changing Consciousness: Exploring the Hidden Source of the Social, Political, and Environmental Crises Facing Our World,” said

“Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or to conform to those of others and without distortion and self deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture?”

I feel guardedly hopeful because I could see the solution, or at least the direction where humankind can find a solution, namely, generative dialogue (see “D19- Debate versus Discussion versus Dialogue”). This is what happened in 1991 at Mont Fleur. I said “guardedly” because there are people who think it is wrong for their leaders to compromise and who will use violence to stop their leaders. The 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat after he dialogued with Israel in 1978-79 leading to the Camp David Accords is an example. The 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin after the Oslo Accords of 1993 — the first official dialogue between the Israel government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization — is another example.

We all engage in conversations many times a day. It is so common, many tend to think they know how to engage in a productive conversation.

“Managing Conversations” is an entire chapter in the book, “Enabling Knowledge Creation: How to Unlock the Mystery of Tacit Knowledge and Release the Power of Innovation,” by von Krogh, Ichijo and Nonaka. According to them

“…good conversations are the cradle of social knowledge in any organization…(which) allows for the first and most essential step of knowledge creation: sharing tacit knowledge within a microcommunity.”

Referring to the events after September 11, former President Khatami of Iran — who wrote the book “Dialogue Among Civilizations: a Paradigm for Peace” (2006) — said

“Two superficially opposing voices are heard in America and Afghanistan, which in fact are the two sides of the same coin… One says whoever is not with America is a terrorist and the other says whoever does not accept this behavior is an opponent of Islam and a proponent of America… Such false and arrogant judgments are the root cause of violence and terror as well as war.”

William Isaacs, who studied under learning organization guru Peter Senge and double-loop learning proponent Chris Argyris, wrote about how generative dialogue can be achieved (“Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together”, 1999).

Civilizational divides are threatening the security and stability of the planet and all of us, we need to learn how to truly talk to each other. If we can practice dialogue towards learning organizations, perhaps we can next practice it towards learning nations.

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