Possible Program Elements

This powerful new model of workplace learning explains the importance of the personal practical knowledge of each person in the organization and how to use this knowledge effectively to achieve core business objectives. Personal practical knowledge is the knowledge from which you drive your workplace performance. It is not what you can talk about; it is what you can do. The model explains how adults learn, and why most current approaches to workplace learning are unsuccessful. Such understanding commonly breaks down the ineffective mental frames that most people hold, which inhibit their workplace performance and learning.

This model explains “the pit experience” whereby people must go through stages of confusion and frustration in the learning process. These stages are an essential element in any workplace change and knowing how to manage “the pit” skillfully is essential for all staff, but particularly for leaders. Not understanding this process, results in many individuals and companies losing their nerve when the benefits from powerful workplace learning are about to emerge. This closes opportunities for development of the business and encourages the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality which almost totally brought U.S. businesses to their knees.

This model, developed by the Dreyfus brothers from Berkeley in the U.S., explains the growth from Novice to Expert performance. This allows people to do an honest skills audit on themselves. We are all contextually skilled. The model provides an effective basis for looking at on-the-job training, for planning training to meet workplace realities, and for more effective approaches to promotion and leadership. It also puts quality management systems into a more realistic framework. An understanding of this model reveals how to shift staff beyond competence, where many get stuck and start to slide backwards.

Most people have a limited conscious repertoire of thinking strategies. Parallel thinking enables you to better tap the full intellectual power of groups, to direct your own thinking more effectively, and to have more effective meetings and project planning processes. Lateral thinking provides skills for increasing the generative power of all staff. This has strong impact on individual and group creativity and innovation. It also helps focus on what are the real core issues effecting productivity and how to think oneself, or the team, into more effective strategies. We have worked closely with Edward de Bono over the last 30 years and have a distinguished international track record in research on the teaching of thinking and in the powerful application of thinking tools in workplaces and in leadership.

The Levels of Perspective tool, designed by Daniel Kim and Peter Senge, helps to focus the energy of leaders on areas of highest leverage. It also highlights the difference between management and leadership. According to John Kotter, Professor of Leadership at Harvard, most organizations are over-managed and under-led. This fits with our own research, where we have also targeted the problems created by micro-management. We have identified a set of key mental models that are fundamental to effective leadership. 

The techniques introduced here come from the work of Peter Senge and his team at the M.I.T. Center for Organisational Learning. The concept of action at a distance and systemic loops leads to practise in the use of double loop learning, which gets to root causes, as opposed to single loop learning or “band-aid fixes”. 

We provide processes for skilled conversation and workplace dialogue, which help staff to understand more clearly the impact of the beliefs, values and assumptions that drive their behavior. Our research shows that by changing the way people talk to each other in the workplace you can create an environment where people grow collective workplace competence on an everyday basis. Most organizational failure can be traced back to failures of conversation. Facilitative questioning provides structured practise in more productive forms of dialogue. It draws on the fundamental research of Carl Rogers.

Most models of workplace change try to provide an external theoretical model to be “welded” onto the organisation. Our approach draws on the lived experience of change of all staff, to develop models that will work for them within their own workplace settings and with the people who are actually there. Matching experiential knowledge of change against powerful research results draws into sharp focus the strategies that will provide maximum leverage in the particular context. We are aware of the need to maintain the effectiveness of the core business during change processes. There are skilled ways to set up parallel systems and practice fields to facilitate innovation.

Helping people to look more closely at the way they think and see the world generates the insights that can lead to more effective workplace interactions. To be successful, this needs to be done using a low-pressure process, away from the workplace Through interviewing each other and processing the results, people can explore workplace conflict resolution, the effective operation of teams, effective interactions with clients, and ways to improve personal professional performance. The establishment of a common language around new ways of working is essential to effective change.

A key element of organisational learning is to build the appropriate organizational architecture to support the shift to a Learning Organisation. Every time a person is handed a job to do, they are handed a particular level of challenge and support. A matrix can be constructed which facilitates a clearer understanding of these needs, as well as a clear focus on designing the maximum use of your human resource, and ways to grow this.

Effective management of time across the organization is crucial to the achievement of core goals. An analysis of time management at an individual, team, and corporate level almost invariably reveals major inefficiencies. The provision of simple yet powerful tools for analysis and action impacts in a major way on individuals and companies.

We have well tested processes for the generation of a Shared Vision with organizations of any size. These have been used successfully in over one hundred organizations across six countries. The Shared Vision provides an alignment tool for decisions about future direction, investment, and resource allocation. It also prevents organisations from becoming bogged down in their current reality and captive to it. A relentless focus on the future generates creative tension inside the organisation. We also have a Personal Visioning Process. “The deal” for most successful organizations is:

You give one hundred per cent to helping us achieve our shared organizational vision and we will give one hundred per cent to helping you achieve your personal vision.

People must act to learn. Central to workplace growth is the individual and team design of continuous improvement actions. These embed new strategies into workplace practice and provide the generative power necessary for change and for follow through. Without such thoughtful designed action and follow through, professional development programs have no real impact on organisations. Our programs are all designed to be at the cutting edge of international best practice in business-driven action learning. 

Feedback is crucial to professional growth. It addresses one of the three major sources of workplace stress; most people feel they are not receiving the feedback they need. Receiving skilled feedback is the only way by which you can find out about what you really do in the workplace. Despite this, most people work in a feedback vacuum. We have developed the Productive Feedback Relationships Model; a new model for the skilful giving and receiving of feedback, both positive and negative, as a part of everyday work life. How to act on feedback and incorporate it into your work practice is a central part of this process. It is based on personal responsibility for one’s own actions, performance, and feedback. This model provides a new basis for effective performance review processes.

Chris Argyris from Harvard postulates that we each have an espoused theory: what we say we do; and a theory-in-use: what we actually do. None of us walk our talk, and most of us are unaware of the consistency with which we are inconsistent. Through Argyris’ concepts you learn how to analyse and transform workplace interactions at a deep level. We have strong research evidence for the impact of such learning on unproductive work practices.