Groupware and Organizational LearningGroupwareand Organizational Learningby: Richard Karash[*] Copyright (c) 1995 Richard KarashMay be reproduced for personal, non-commercial use.IntroductionToday's information technology projects, including Groupware implementation,aren't just systems projects -- they involve a cultural change. Approachednarrowly, they will encounter resistance, inertia, and even subterfuge. We needto approach them with the same tools we would apply to organizational culturechanges.Groupware applications have been slow to take-off, despite their obviousbenefits of collaboration and sharing. Why should we be surprised? Withoutcomputer mediation, it has been hard to get real sharing and collaborationin our organizations, and including technology in the equation may be makingthings worse, not better. The limiting factor is not technology, but ourtheories, tools, and methods for achieving major culture change inorganizations. In the past few years, the Learning Organization concepts haveshed new light on this field. The purpose of this paper is a brief tour of theLearning Organization and what we've learned about the relationship toGroupware.Groupware is synergistic with the Learning Organization concepts. Theprinciples and disciplines of the Learning Organization can substantially helpachieve the change involved in today's technology projects. If Groupware cantruly support communication, collaboration, and coordination, then it will playan important enabling role for the Learning Organization.In this paper, I will follow the definitions and disciplines of the LearningOrganization as outlined by Senge and by Nonaka and Takeuchi.Most of my career has been as a manager in high-tech entrepreneurialorganizations, and I am now a practicing organizational consultant. Although Ihave some technical background, I'm a Groupware user, not a Groupware expert. Idon't expect you to accept without challenge anything I say here. But, I dohope that by sharing my experiences and beliefs, and by being aprovocateur, this may launch something for some among you who read this.THELEARNING ORGANIZATIONWhat'sa Learning Organization?Senge has defined a Learning Organization in terms of continuous development ofknowledge and capacity.[1] He and otherresearchers have identified disciplines and processes that seem to beassociated with building a Learning Organization. Following Senge, I will use these definitions: Knowledge: Capacity for effective action. Learning: Increasing knowledge, that is, increasing capacity foreffective action. Learning Organization: When the organization as a whole and the peoplewho comprise it are continually increasing their capacity to produce theresults they really want to produce. In simple terms, we use learning in the sense of learning to do,not in the sense of knowing things.A learning organization harnesses the collective intelligence and commitment atall levels of the organization. Although this may seem like motherhood, westill refer to the senior person in a group as the "head," and it was not solong ago that the majority of the people in an organization might be called"hands." Organizations in general have a long way to go before they can trulybe called Learning Organizations. Fig. 1 -- What does it feel like in a Learning Organization?WhyWould Anyone Want to be a Learning Organization?Becoming a learning organization will involve a tremendous amount of attention,energy, and change. Why would any organization want to do so? Fig. 2 -- Most people report that learning to do is enormously rewardingand personally satisfying.For the organization: It's simple! Today's performance requirements make itessential. We find that in industry after industry, the performance challengestoday from competition, globalization, technology changes, shorter cycle times,customer demands, etc. are remarkably intense. Not just in commercialenterprises, but in government, health care, and non-profits, the pressures arejust as high. Many leaders are concluding that successful business strategiesrequire them to become more of a learning organization.For the people involved, learning is fundamental in human nature. When we askpeople about the times which have been the most rewarding and personallysatisfying (see Fig. 2 above), there is a consistent response. The mostrewarding and personally satisfying experiences involve a significant elementof learning to do. And, it's not just learning to do anything;but learning to do something we care about. Kids learn to talk, walk, and ridea bike because they want to. Not for rewards, not for approval, but becausethey want to. The Win-Win prospect of the Learning Organization excites us. The organizationachieves higher performance and the people find personal reward andsatisfaction. The prospect is to get out of the either-or tradeoff thatincreased performance for the organization can come only at the expense of thepeople. ORGANIZATIONALLEARNING -- MODELSFor me, there are three important foundations for thinking about the LearningOrganization.First, Senge has identified five disciplines essential to building a learningorganization. These are disciplines in the sense that they deserve study andattention for a very long period of time, perhaps throughout a lifetime, notskills to be mastered quickly. Fig. 3 -- Senge's Five Learning Disciplines -- Disciplines are areas ofpersonal improvement that might be worthy of study and practice over anextended period of time.Senge's approach to Mental Models draws heavily from the work of ChrisArgyris.[2]Second, from a different cultural background, Nonaka and Takeuchi complementSenge by focusing on the distinction between Tacit Knowledge and ExplicitKnowledge. "Tacit knowledge is personal, context-specific, and therefore hardto formalize and communicate. Explicit... Knowledge, on the other hand, refersto knowledge that is transmittable in formal, systematic language."[3] In my personal experience, I see thedistinction clearly: I have Tacit Knowledge when I know how to do something,but would have trouble describing how to another person. I have ExplicitKnowledge when I tell or write down the important how-to information. Clearly,viewing knowledge as the ability to do, then our organizations are richin Tacit Knowledge. We would like them to be richer in Explicit Knowledge.Simplistically, knowledge is created as Tacit Knowledge by individuals, thenmade explicit and shared. But this simplistic a view would be confuseinformation with knowledge. The acquisition of knowledge (abilityto do) involves much more than taking-in information. Knowledge, for Nonaka andTakeuchi, involves action and is not just intellectual, but resides in part inthe body. From my Western point of view, I can understand this as knowledge istentative until practiced.This is a real change from our usual Western way of thinking, but thedifference is confusing, subtle, and difficult to see clearly. In Westernculture, we see ourselves as people of action. Knowledge enables action in bothcultures, but, there is a difference in our models for where knowledge comesfrom. We carry consciously or unconsciously DeCartes' insight, "I think,therefore I am!" Our Western model is that thinking gives us the knowledge thatenables us to act. We properly see the Eastern tradition as more reflective,more contemplative. But, the Eastern epistemological tradition emphasizesknowledge coming from careful observation of and reflection upon experience.Does knowledge come from thinking? Or from experience? Both seem important.Nonaka and Takeuchi go on to describe four modes of knowledge conversion whichthey propose are the processes for knowledge creation: "In our view, however,tacit and explicit knowledge are not totally separate but mutuallycomplementary entities. They interact with and interchange into each other inthe creative activities of human beings. Our dynamic model of knowledgecreation is anchored to a critical assumption that human knowledge is createdand expanded through social interaction between tacit knowledge and explicitknowledge... This... conversion is a `social' process betweenindividuals and not confined within an individual."[4]Nonaka and Takeuchi see a spiraling process through these four quadrants[5] Fig. 4 -- Knowledge is created by human interaction when knowledge istransformed within a type or between types. The process is a spiral through thefour quadrants.Third, and finally, the Learning Organization recognizes that there aredifferences in personal communication styles and that these can be quitesignificant. We tend to think that people can adjust to our technology, thatthe benefits will win over, but my own experience has been largely contrary.Here is a short personal story: I took a job as the VP-Marketing for a veryhigh technology software company (artificial intelligence, object-orientedprogramming, etc.). One of the senior technical people, to my greatdisappointment, was completely ineffective in face-to-face meetings. And, weneeded his contributions on the team! Then, I began to realize that in e-mailhe was articulate, insightful, helpful, everything you could want! We've allmet the opposite: effective people who are just not able to cope with computersand e-mail.I believe these differences in personal communication style are verysignificant, that it can be very difficult for people to shift styles, and thatthis is an element of diversity to be nurtured, not shut-down.[6]This has been an exceedingly brief tour through the models underlying theLearning Organization. I suggest that the reader mull these over, try them onfor size, and read further in the references if interested.AGROUPWARE CASE STUDYCase Study:In our own company, Innovation Associates, we felt a need in 1993 forbetter computer support for collaborative discussion, especially for somecurrent "hot" issues. We had computers in use throughout the company fordocument preparation and very active e-mail usage by LAN and remote dial-inusers. Topic-based computer conferencing seemed like just the ticket.A reasonable amount of thought was put into structuring the conference intotopics, creating the technical mechanisms, obtaining resources, and gettingpeople started. We kept the existing e-mail to hold down the investment, butthis made the conferencing system "additive." Participation, at leastinitially, was "required." The enthusiasts among us tried valiantly to createenough "good stuff" to create "critical mass," but this never occurred.Participation dwindled to a core few. After some technical problems and anepisode of lost information, the whole thing disappeared. The next "obvious" application was shared schedule/calendar, but after thisfailure, we didn't dare.Discussion:I'm sure this case is not unique. Assume for a moment that thetechnology employed was capable of supporting the desired outcomes. Why,despite the obvious benefits, in a company where most people really arecommitted to mutual learning and sharing, did it fail to take-off? If thesharing benefits of Groupware won't sell here, it'll be harder in moretraditional organizations. What could the Learning Organization ideascontribute to this and to other Groupware projects?I believe, for starters, we suffered from the thought that Groupware was goodenough that the benefits would sell themselves, creating momentum. The projectwas launched by a few of us who were especially pro-technology. In hindsight, Ibelieve that the generic benefits of Groupware are just not strong enough tocreate the momentum for change that's required.  Fig. 5 -- The generic benefits of Groupware are significant, but not enough toovercome resistance to organization and culture change.Lessonsfrom the Learning OrganizationHere are some lessons from the Learning Organization that apply to the casestudy above and, I believe, to many Groupware projects: Fig. 6 -- Lessons from Innovation Associates' work in building LearningOrganizations which may apply to Groupware and other technology implementationprojects.1.Start with a critical business imperativeNumbers 1-3 are to insure that there is sufficient energy to carry through theinertia and well-intentioned resistance. Sometimes this is a "hot" current issue, but more often the current issues aretransitory and the really important business imperatives that could drive andsustain a major change are deeper, overarching, and more consistent over time.They may be less obvious in the moment and must be "discovered" in order tocreate and channel the energy of the organization.In our case, the need to make progress on the current issues was transitory.The deeper critical need to support mutual learning throughout the staff, to beable to develop new practitioners more easily -- this could have energized andsustained our project.2.Awaken the desires and aspirations of the peopleThis is much harder and takes more attention than launching the project basedon the rational, objective benefits. But, this will be needed if the projectinvolves a large change. The quality of energy that flows when people are working on something that theyreally care about is different from the quality of energy when people are doingsomething because they should, or because they are told to do so, even if theyknow it's "good" or "right." This is the quality of energy to harness for ourmost important projects.3.Develop a widely-shared vision for what is desired, develop a commonunderstanding of the realities of the "as is" state, and establish the tensionbetween them. Maintain this tension throughout the project.I've kept this long heading because this is the core of the learning and changemethodology we employ. Energy, creativity, and innovation flow from the tension between "desired" and"as is."Much of our early work was focused on creating the shared vision. We felt thatthis was the side most lacking in attention, that if we just had a clear andcompelling vision of the future, then everything else would follow.Our experience has been that it's equally demanding to be insightful aboutcurrent reality, to create an honest, penetrating picture of the "as is" state,and that this has just as much impact on stimulating progress.The tension will be difficult to hold. Organizations tend to see the gaps asthreats. Someone must be to blame if things aren't the way they should be! Fearof a "who-hunt" leads people to disguise, hide, avoid, and lie; this may beconscious, and may also occur unconsciously. Leaders must support anenvironment in which the tension can be brought out into the open, as insightrather than blame, so that it can stimulate progress.Leaders at all levels must maintain the tension throughout the project.4.Explore mental models with tenacity! Numbers 4-6 are to eliminate pitfalls before they catch us.Our mental models of how things work in the world, in this organization, andbetween people generally -- these strongly affect our thinking and our actions.They are usually effective, and essential for our survival as a species. When aSaber-toothed Tiger came bounding out of the trees, we didn't need to do a lotof analysis!The danger lies in mental models that are out-dated, inappropriate,ineffective, or just plain wrong. We believe that 30% of what an organization"knows" is not just wrong, it's toxic! And, this is most dangerous when themental models are un-conscious or semi-conscious.A simple example: In industries undergoing major change, people tend to carryin their heads, and act in accordance with, outdated models, obsoleteparadigms, without realizing it. Bringing these out into the open, evaluatingthem, and reshaping for the new reality is hard work, but this is some of thehighest leverage work we do in supporting organizational change.[7]5.Recognize differences in personal communication styles and support themI believe this is not a small matter of relative preference but a deeperdifference in personal comfort and communication style. I believe that mostpeople find a forced change (which often occurs with technology) to be awkward,inhibiting, and even impossible. It's more than a question of willingness tobend. I believe that there is a rich opportunity for Groupware to mediate betweendifferent personal styles, enabling people to communicate well who wouldotherwise do so with great difficulty. Supporting increased diversity in humaninteraction could enrich us all.6.Work from a systemic model for how the effort will evolve successfullyIn our case, we could have seen that adding the conferencing system on top ofvoice mail and e-mail would create an overload. Busy people were already havingtrouble keeping up with incoming communications. A stronger vision for what waspossible and a more systemic view of realities might have helped us see thatthere was enough payoff to drop the old e-mail system and transition to e-mailintegrated in the conferencing structure.Most often, we should be looking to create a reinforcing spiral in whichsuccess brings the interest, resources, and energy that create furthersuccesses. We need to beware of the slowing forces and resource limitationswhich could turn the upward spiral into a vicious cycle. We must attack thesebefore they affect results. All this is simple to say, but not easy to do inpractice. It's worth the attention.7.Be prepared to stick it out for long enough to get through the valleysOne of the insights from Systems Thinking is that often the short-term andlong-term effects of an action are in opposite directions. One of the systemsarchetypes is "Fixes that Backfire," in which a well-intended solution makesthings better in the near term, but creates a vicious cycle by making thingsworse in the long-run.[8] In many important projects, progress will not be a nice, steady upwardprogression, but will include a significant valley during which leadership willbe important to stay the course.8.Match the process to the desired end-state The Learning Organization approach marshals powerful forces of humanaspiration, insight and energy for important purposes. These can be diluted orturned back against us if certain covenants are broken. Unleashing these forcescan be backfire if the organization does not keep it's commitments, creatingcynicism and a bigger gulf between the organization and it's people.I give special emphasis, because of it's importance and frequency of failure,to matching the process to the desired end state. For example, if the desiredend-state is collaboration and sharing, with respect for the intelligence andcapacity at all levels, then the process for getting there should emphasize thesame points. This is a particular opportunity for Groupware because the toolsthemselves can be used within the project teams in the course of the effort.Remember that it's not just the tools, but the way people interact with eachother using the tools.I believe that this case illustrates a project that "should" have succeeded andcould have, if we had applied our own Learning Organization knowledge morefully.THEGREAT POTENTIAL OF GROUPWAREIN ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNINGNow I want to shift attention to the other side of the synergy: How Groupwarecan support Organizational Learning. Communication, cooperation and sharing areessential elements of the Learning Organization, and if Groupware can supportthese, then it will certainly contribute to organizational learning! Informationvs. KnowledgeI'm reminded of an interaction recently with a prospective client, a largeprofessional firm who had a major initiative underway "to be a learningorganization." For many in the firm, the picture of what this meant was limitedto "For any issue or process, find the person in the firm with the bestknowledge and expertise, and make it available to everyone." Some of theclassic failures in Groupware have, I believe, occurred because of limitedthinking like this.Although sharing best practice is an important benefit, there is much more toorganizational learning -- and much more that could be supported by Groupware.The Learning Organization is about marshaling energy and human spirit to createnew works and new capacities. It is about creating new knowledge, not justabout spreading information. I see Groupware supporting Organizational Learning at three levels[9] (see Fig. 7 on the following page). Across allthree levels, time- and location-shifting are important benefits. Messagingvs. Database ApproachesIn my experience, and my inspection of the table above, I have come to feelthat e-mail is being utilized well outside it's effective scope. E-mail restson a delivery-based paradigm. Each message in your in-box commands your currentattention and action. "Read me! File me! or do something with me! Now!" E-mailitself is transitory; once gone, it's gone unless someone makes a specialeffort to save it. E-mail is very effective for conversations "in the moment."But, to support the continuing, evolving conversations of the LearningOrganization, we need a different paradigm.Much more effective for the Organizational Learning applications at all threelevels is a browsing paradigm[10] whichsupports: 1) seeking items when you are interested, not when they arrivein your mailbox; 2) a history of the discussion that's easy to access (e.g. anarchive) so that people can join late or re-ignite it even later; and 3)search, classification, and indexing so that people experience a high hit ratewhen looking for something, even if their target is only partially defined.These are the advantages of conferencing systems over e-mail and I believe thatconferencing systems are a closer fit than e-mail for most of the needs ofOrganizational Learning. The challenge for Groupware is to create facilities that are moreeffective than face to face, in-meeting communication. I believe this ispossible.A current internet project of mine shows the one outstanding advantage ofe-mail: broader reach. When I decided to launch a world-wide internetdiscussion of the Learning Organization, I chose an e-mail automated mailinglist as the place to start, because it reaches so many more people than anyother mechanism.  Fig. 7 -- Three levels of Groupware supporting Organizational Learning. At allthree levels, time- and location-shifting are important benefits. The Browsingparadigm seems especially valuable.Inter-operabilityThe same project illustrates the kind of inter-operability that is nowpractical. The archive for the Learning-Org e-mail list is accessible by ftpand Gopher. More recently, we added World-Wide-Web pages that incorporate thearchive and automatically update with current messages daily. The Web sitesupports browsing on demand, has several forms of indexing, and permits fullparticipation in the discussion from a suitable Web browser. Five subsidiarysites have our message flow on a Lotus Notes database for use within theirorganizations, and one site has a gateway to an internal Usenet-type newsgroup.If this were commercial, I'd want to have a fax delivery service. Thisinter-operability enables different people and different organizations to "haveit your way!" Inter-operability relates to the earlier comments about personal communicationstyles. When we try to shoe-horn everyone into one form for in-house projects,I think this is working against important personal traits. I recommend that wetake inter-operability seriously. This means supporting all the operatingenvironments in which people want to work, and also the ways and styles inwhich they work most effectively. It means making provision (e.g. facilitatinguse by surrogates) for those who just don't get along with computers. ConclusionOrganizations see the need for making knowledge explicit so that it can bestored, indexed, shared and transferred -- so that knowledge becomes a moretangible corporate asset.I'm reminded of a common story in continuous improvement efforts. In the courseof a project we find that workers on the line were aware of an improvementopportunity for years, but didn't raise it. Why? "Aw, we knew itwouldn't go anywhere!"I feel that point of focus should be on creating infrastructure that makesexplicit knowledge more usable and valuable. By creating the infrastructurethat makes it easier to transform tacit into explicit, that makes explicitknowledge available to others more effectively and more easily, that supportsthe application of explicit knowledge by another person thereby transforming itinto new and enriched tacit knowledge -- then there will be an outpouring ofexplicit knowledge and more willingness to use it. Groupware is a technology, the Learning Organization is an approach toorganizational change and continuous improvement; the two are synergistic andmutually supportive.BIBLIOGRAPHYArgyris, Chris. 1990. Overcoming Organizational Defenses. Needham, MA:Allyn and Bacon.Argyris, Chris. 1991. "Teaching Smart People How To Learn," Harvard BusinessReview, May-June 1991.Karash, Richard. 1995. "Mental Models & Systems Thinking: Going Deeper intoSystemic Issues," The Systems Thinker, Feb. 1995. (Published by PegasusCommunications, Inc., Cambridge, MA, 617-576-1231.)Nonaka, Ikujiro. 1991. "The Knowledge Creating Company" Harvard BusinessReview, Nov.-Dec. 1991.Nonaka, Ikujiro, and Hirotaka Takeuchi. 1995. The Knowledge-CreatingCompany. New York: Oxford University Press.Senge, Peter M. 1990. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of theLearning Organization. New York: Doubleday.Senge, Peter M., Charlotte Roberts, Richard B. Ross, Bryan J. Smith, and ArtKleiner. 1994. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. New York: Doubleday.Seagal, Sandra, and David Horne. 1986-92. An Introduction to HumanDynamics. La Topanga, CA: Human Dynamics International. |
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