Here at RSVP we’ve recently had a lot of contact with the Center for Creative Leadership. We’re developing, via our Mobile Learning Design (MLD) persona, Apps that allow CCL’s famous body of research and practice to be accessed via mobile communication devices.
As part of my research I’ve been doing some archeology in the past-papers and other written materials that have come out of CCL over the past 20 years – and I’ve turned up a gem that, I think, is well worth revisiting.

The piece in question is an essay that was first published in 1997 and revived as a blog in 2008 entitled Leadership in Permanent Whitewater: Playing with the Metaphor
http://lmeccl.blogspot.com/2008/07/leadership-in-permanent-whitewater.html
I can’t stress enough just how much I relate to the messages that are embedded in this essay, but it’s the powerful metaphor of organisations as whitewater rivers and leaders as intrepid kayakers that has a particular attraction for me. Not just because I’ve run a few rivers in my time – but because the metaphor is, if anything, more appropriate here in 2011 than it was back in 1997.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since 1997 but just listen to three of the ideas forwarded by the author Chuck J. Palus in the essay:

a) Chaos in organizations is not random.
b) Play is essential within organizations if people are to develop an eye for patterns within chaos.
c) Fundamental innovation can come from serious play at the fringes of organizations.

These ideas are totally aligned with my beliefs about the learning that organisations need if they are to survive and thrive in waters that are infinitely more challenging than they were 14 years ago. But I have to ask why, if these ideas are so valuable, is it so hard to access them? Why do they gather dust in archives and collections of past-papers? I think that the answer lies in the possibilities offered by the increasing range of new media through which ideas can now be brought to the world.

The original essay was published in a 1997 journal, the essay was revived in a 2008 blog, I’m linking back to it in a 2011 blog – I wonder which has been read by (and hopefully influenced) the most people?

I’d be interested in your thoughts – you’re obviously reading this blog, but did you see the essay first time round? Did you read the 2008 blog? Was it worth me bringing it to current attention? What other gems have you found in the archives and how did you try to breathe new life into them?

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Very often, when I describe and demonstrate RSVP Design’s range of experiential learning activities to L+D professionals, consultants and HR advisors, they respond in a predictable fashion. Something along the lines of…

“Yes, I do use games and learning activities like these with some groups but I couldn’t possibly offer these to some of my clients – they are much too senior.”

There seems to be a belief that the more senior a leader or manager in an organisation, the less likely they are to respond positively to learning through the ‘metaphor’ that a well-designed learning activity or simulation offers. It is perceived that these activities add value, for example, to a team-building event or to a management skills workshop for young employees but that they are, in some way, inappropriate for more senior leaders. There is a fear and anxiety about offering a form of learning that is seen as too trivial for senior executive education.

“I couldn’t offer that at Board level – they simply wouldn’t engage with it…..”

Our experience is exactly the opposite. The more senior and successful leaders are in a business environment, the more likely they are to engage with the learning activities we offer and to play, experiment and challenge their own learning and performance. They ‘get it’. They have the ability to see beyond the presenting activity and understand the processes it mirrors. They are also confident enough in themselves that they have nothing to prove – they are ‘comfortable in their own skins’ and able to demonstrate a willingness to step outside of their comfort zone -even if it means short-term failure – in order to develop their own, and their organisations’, performance.

Ben Bryant, a skilled and experienced psychologist, is  Professor of Leadership and Organization at IMD. He commissioned RSVP Design recently to work with him on perhaps the most senior programme we have ever delivered. The participants built geometric shapes out of plastic construction components, raced wheeled vehicles along the floor and connected complex webs of coloured ropes in order to solve a puzzle. They were completely engaged and immediately able to make the connections between what they were doing and the leadership capability they were at IMD to develop.

Ben explained this to us from a psychologist’s perspective. He confirmed that it is all about ego. These leaders are so senior they’ve left their egos behind. They don’t have to prove themselves – their track records stand for themselves. They can make the connections, see the big picture, be confident in their own abilities – confident enough to allow themselves to play, get things wrong, make a fool of themselves, knowing that that is crucial in learning and innovating. They can see the parallels in the ’simulated world’ and the ‘concrete world’.’

In contrast, we experience much more resistance from more junior team leaders and managers – the very people for whom these activities are often chosen. Many of them are likely to be working from a position of uncertainty and anxiety and they need to keep proving themselves to their teams and colleagues. They are reluctant to step into the unknown – concerned about losing the respect and confidence of those they manage. Asking them to leave ‘ego’ behind is a much bigger challenge. So, offering an experiential exercise becomes high risk for the facilitator and participating is high risk for the manager. It may be rejected as ‘demeaning’, when in fact it is just too scary!

Knowing this can help the learning designer to choose and frame appropriate activities and consider the appropriate level of ‘confrontation’ that the activity, and the facilitation, offers. The more successful and senior your team, the more likely they are to respond positively to the challenging experiential learning opportunities you offer. For all sorts of reasons, primarily to do with organisational politics, senior leaders are starved of in-depth, unfiltered, authentic feedback. Well researched, well-designed and well-facilitated experiential learning provides a rare opportunity for senior leaders to tap into the support and challenge that they are hungry to receive.

For more information about RSVP Design’s work with Senior Leadership teams, please contact us via the website

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk

creative leadership, Experiential Learning, facilitation, leadership, learner engagement, Learning Design, Learning Games, simulations Hide

In a press release to promote their upcoming Content and Collaboration Summit 2010 (London, UK, September 15-16) Gartner Research forecast 10 key changes in the nature of work through to 2020:  “Work will become less routine, characterized by increased volatility, hyperconnectedness, ’swarming’ and more,” said Tom Austin, vice president and Gartner fellow. By 2015, 40 percent or more of an organization’s work will be ‘non-routine’, up from 25 percent in 2010. “People will swarm more often and work solo less. They’ll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organization,” he added. “In addition, simulation, visualisation and unification technologies, working across yottabytes of data per second, will demand an emphasis on new perceptual skills.”

We agree with the predictions, and see it as a continuation of change we are already seeing in organisations; and with it will come some major challenges for L&D/OD departments. Here are the ten key changes Gartner forecast, and where we think L&D professionals should be considering a response.

1. De-routinization of Work – the obvious response here is the de-routinization and individual personalisation of training. We look forward to when “Here is the list of available training courses” is accepted as an outdated and wasteful use of trainer and delegate time & resources. I suspect the public sector in the UK has some way to go on this …
2. Work Swarms – workers need more insight into how they might work effectively with others who think differently or have different problem-solving approaches etc. Tools like HBDI or Effective Life-long Learning Inventory will be useful in being able to quickly work effectively in ’swarms’ of people you don’t know well.
3. Weak Links – formal and informal networking will become an even more important skill in the future, and not just for salespeople! Consider how and where social and business networking sites can and should be used during worktime. Is time spent networking on Facebook helping to build weak links, or just chatting with friends? Will updating my blog be considered as vanity or essential to developing these weak links?
4. Working With the Collective – Perhaps ‘influencing’ will become the most desirable skill of any business leader as we move to a position where ‘the collective’ replaces any internal hierarchy? This suggests more  prefered ‘right-side’ thinking style in the HBDI model than the traditonal ‘left-side’ found in many management positions today.
5. Work Sketch-Ups – ‘Designing-in-flight’ or ‘managing in ambiguity’ requires a very different set of skills and behaviours than that typically suggested by teaching through a ‘case-study’ method. How will our Business Schools and academics respond? Will we move to more activity-based learning facilitation than ‘teaching’?
6. Spontaneous Work – This suggests creating the type of corporate culture where this is not only desired but encouraged. How do you build this culture? Contrast this with today where most ‘leaders’ set the work agenda – how do you lead/manage people who develop their own work activities and priorities?
7. Simulation and Experimentation – of course we believe that activity-based learning provides the ideal ’synthetic’ environment to experiment and simulate behaviours. That’s why we create tools to help organisations build their learning environments!
8. Pattern Sensitivity – See Ann’s forthcoming book:  Pattern Making,  Pattern Breaking
9. Hyperconnected – in a hyperconnected world there is probably no time for formal contracts and agreements. Does this suggest an increase in the importance of ‘Trust’ and a requirement to better understand how to build and maintain it? Is it hopefully the end of long-winded tender processes?
10. My Place – how do we deliver training at ‘My Place’  (the workplace may be virtual, may physically be at home, or indeed may change on a daily basis)? Will it be more ‘edutainment apps’, delivered outside of the normal working hours, paid for by discerning individuals (who want to build their learning power) out of their own pocket (or personal learning account)?

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I read the recent Chartered Management Institute Review which stated some interesting and disturbing statistics for UK managers:

CMI recently questioned UK managers to find out which aspects of management they thought they were best at. Of the 2,158 managers polled, almost half (44 per cent) said they excelled at managing people. Twenty-one per cent were target-busters, 19 per cent believed they were strongest at managing themselves and just 14 per cent felt they were born to lead.

CMI has since put those perceptions to the test by inviting UK workers to use a specially-developed self-diagnostic tool to work out where their strengths and weaknesses lie. The results strongly contradict managers’ perceptions, revealing that, in practice, UK managers are best at getting results (41 per cent) and strong leadership (37 per cent). Just 14 per cent of the 6,056 people who used the tool excelled at people management and a paltry eight per cent proved to be best at managing themselves.

See http://www.hrreview.co.uk/articles/hrreview-articles/hr-strategy-practice/half-of-managers-misjudge-their-workplace-performance/10058

I wondered when I read that where do:

1. Most managers go to find out more about their own learning strengths/preferences and personality/thinking preferences? As little of this is taught to most undergraduates where else can ‘ managers’ get this insight, except through their organisation’s L&D team-building or other activities? Should this be mandatory on all undergraduate courses?

and

2. Managers (new or experienced) go to ‘practise’ their management skills? So much of what we see in corporate/organisational L&D is about presenting theories, models, competency frameworks, performance monitoring etc and less about offering these delegates the chance to practise new skills or behaviours. Group learning through experiential activities is a great way to offer people a non-contentious and safe ‘practice field’ for a wide rnage of management and ’soft skills’ rehearsal – but how do we get employers to provide more of it?

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I recently came across this interesting article that suggests that creativity is in crisis!

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

Creativity involves both divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking opens up new options, ideas and possibilities, disregarding barriers and resource limitations. Convergent thinking then takes these multiple options and works with them, refining them until a useful outcome is produced. Many organisations emphasise convergent thinking but limit divergent thinking. My suspicion is that this is a response to the fear and risk aversion that has developed as a result of a culture of blame and litigation: divergent thinking inherently has risk and failure built in. Standardisation, measurement and control serve a purpose – but the downside is that they diminish creative thought.

If it is true that creativity is in crisis (and according to a recent IBM survey, creativity is an absolutely vital leadership skill) we really need to focus on strategies for re-building creative thinking as a core part of our education system and professional development. Fortunately, the evidence cited in the article also suggests that creativity can be learned. So, what can we, as facilitators of learning, do to enhance the creative abilities of our learners?

Here are some of my thoughts:

1. First re-engage people with the belief that they can be creative. Creativity isn’t just for artists and musicians – it’s the lifeblood of engineers, scientists and researchers too.

2. Help people to understand that creativity is not just about getting flashes of inspiration – it’s about making meaning from connecting ideas together, seeing new patterns in things and viewing existing things from new perspectives.

3. Encourage people to challenge their assumptions.  Help them to see how they can block creativity by holding on to past experience that limits them: “This won’t work because it didn’t before…” or “Stick with this because we know it works”.

At RSVP Design we have a number of tools and workshops that focus on building creativity: we love the activities in our Breakthrough Thinking workshop that aim to do just this. Have a look at the workshop materials you can buy for your own use and enjoy getting creative!

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/breakthrough-thinking-workshop-p-31.html

creative leadership, Experiential Learning, learning challenges, learning tools, thinking styles Hide

I’ve been reading and watching a lot of interesting stuff recently. For example there is a wonderful piece of an animated, annotated presentation from Dan Pink on motivation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

There’s also a really interesting new leadership study from IBM here: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/ceo/ceostudy2010/index.html

However while both give some examples of why what we’ve previously thought about motivation and leadership might be wrong, and tell us what we ought to be doing, neither give the L&D community much insight into HOW we help people get there. As an engineer by training I’m more interested in how to apply theories than the basic research of how they came to be ‘agreed’. While I reckon that some great individuals will be able to demonstrate the behaviours and skills described as ‘ideal’ ,  I also reckon that most of us need to learn new skills, unlearn old behaviours, and practise to get better. So how do we do that? What practise fields do people use to make sure these theories and concepts move from just being an understanding at an intellectual level to a level where they they are understood by heart as well as head, and demonstrably improve performance?

creative leadership, Experiential Learning, learning challenges, Learning Mindset, Lifelong Learning, motivation, Training Games Hide