Order

TABLE OF CONTENTS

§ Philips Display Components: Setting the Stage
§ A New Learning Model
     Why The Fifth Discipline?
§ A Radical New Commitment
     Early Challenges
     Selecting Participants in the Change Effort
     Applying Learnings from the OLC Course
     Choosing a Change Project
     Trying a New Leadership Model
     Assessing Organizational Issues at PDC
     Skepticism from the Top
     Launching an Innovative Training Program
§ Reflections on the Philips Experience
     Do Learning Disciplines Work?
     What Kind of Leader Is Needed?
     Creating a Learning Culture
     Clarifying Core Values
     Introducing New Management Philosophies
     Trust and Competence
     Power and Authority
§ Epilogue

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Iva M. Wilson is the retired president of Philips Display Components. In addition to her many years of technical and organizational leadership, she also participated in the design team that created the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) and was appointed SoL's first president, a post that she held until the end of 1997. She serves as a board member of The Environmental Research Institute of Michigan and of Michigan Future, Inc. Over the last decade, she has focused on pursuing ideas for building work environments that unleash the creative power of individuals. She is currently coauthoring a book about organizational change from the perspective of change leaders.

EXCERPTS

What Kind of Leader Is Needed?

As time progresses, organizations will likely operate more and more as networks of interactions in which people must have large degrees of independence, self-confidence, and trust. We will therefore increasingly need a new leadership model. While it is difficult to point to one or more particular leadership model that can be considered ideal for supporting learning organizations, I believe that the principles described in The Fifth Discipline will support the emergence of this much-needed model. There are also several learning histories, as well as the reflections and experiences of individual leaders, that provide some insights into this issue. At the very least, the ideal leader will understand both the interconnectedness and benefits of the five disciplines. He or she will also not leave organizational learning and development issues to so-called "OD" people. As Peter Senge has explained, leaders of organizational change will come from all ranks of employees: executives, line workers, and internal agents of change. These leaders will also have a personal sense of responsibility for cultivating organizational learning, rather than leaving it up to "OD people."

Trust will also play a large role in emerging leadership models. Much has been written and said on the subject of trust, but the concept itself involves a relatively simple principle: To trust others, one has to trust oneself. To trust oneself and project that trust on others, one has to have a clear set of values. To cultivate mutual trust, all parties involved must share a set of values. In organizations, this sharing of values is probably the most difficult challenge, for a fairly simple reason: Trust cannot be commanded, bought, or given. It has to be earned, and that holds true for every individual in the organization—regardless of position, skill, seniority, or knowledge. Because trusting brings out the best in people, leaders would do well to take the time to create a culture of trust.

In hierarchical organizations that want to shift to a more equitable leadership model, the executive leader needs to be the first to demonstrate that he or she lives by nonhierarchical principles. "Walking the talk" needs to happen long before one can effectively apply these tools to creating a learning culture. Managers at PDC did eventually "walk the talk"; however, it took time for people to observe that change in their behavior. In other words, the delays inherent in the system exerted a significant impact on the results. Reading a learning history that recounts events as seen from multiple perspectives and thereby develops a common view can reveal how long it often takes for an organization to observe a change in management style.

To collect as much information as possible about both the progress and the difficulties an organization experiences in the learning process, listening to the organization is critical. Leaders need to hear both good and bad news about the process. Openness to different opinions from the people involved also helps to build trust. Finally, it is important for leaders to listen very carefully to feedback, especially from the skeptics. Learning how to distinguish between the skeptics and the cynics is essential. Healthy skepticism is the source of great inquiry and is necessary for navigating the path to implementation. Leaders should beware of cynics, however. The best strategy with this particular group is to do everything possible to assess the origin of the cynicism, deal with it with resolve and determination, and make sure that the organization understands and respects the leader's actions.

Leaders also need to ensure that the learning effort is not viewed as merely "another fine program" brought in by the boss, no matter how much he or she might be admired and supported. This change work requires continuous deepening of a leader's understanding of how learning unfolds in an organization. There is no ready-made formula for how to implement it or how to make it easy—despite the many articles and books on the subject. One way to minimize the tendency of organizations to dismiss change is to engage other leaders within the organization, especially if they are supported by experts from the organization-development function.

At PDC, the issue of trust in the context of leadership played a crucial role. In simplest terms, I trusted my management team more than they trusted me. In a hierarchical organization, managers have to earn trust through their behavior and actions. Trust is built from the top down. The key lesson for me was that this building process takes a lot of time. I also believe that each leader at PDC should have had more feedback on his or her behavior through sufficient coaching, either from colleagues within the organization or from professional outside coaches. This feedback process would have helped the behavioral changes necessary for building trust to occur faster than they did.

Despite these limitations, the level of trust did increase somewhat during the years of PDC's change effort. This shift gradually made people feel more secure in discussing any disagreements they had with the new initiatives. The increasing sense of openness in turn further strengthened the climate of trust. However, the freely delivered feedback, even though it was conveyed with the best intentions, had some important unintended consequences. Specifically, as people felt increasingly comfortable openly sharing their opinions and disagreements, this kind of sharing started becoming the norm. People began feeling safe to question anything that seemed important to them. Outside PDC, the rest of Philips management—which existed in a much more closed environment—took such feedback as criticism of the Philips management style. In their view, "open and honest" meant intolerably critical. Top Philips management thus began questioning the value of PDC's change initiatives, which began stifling the trusting environment that had begun to take root at PDC (see "Limits to Openness").

On the other hand, it was the very tools of organizational learning that had let the company, within six months from the strike, successfully ratify a contract previously deemed impossible. It was clear that, on one level, the learning initiatives brought concrete results. Still, the organization was split between those who supported the initiatives and those who did not. The unwillingness to support the program seemed to stem from two causes: lack of understanding of and knowledge of organizational learning tools and disciplines, and lack of agreement about their value. Both of these inadequacies continued to foster conflicting messages and eventually eroded the upper management's confidence in the validity of the approaches applied at PDC.

Looking back on this time, I have come to realize that if the larger system that PDC was part of had been capable of creating and/or understanding a causal loop diagram such as that shown in "Limits to Openness," we would have been able to talk about our conflicts in a much more constructive way. However, at the time, neither Philips nor PDC had the ability to recognize the systemic nature of those dynamics or to discuss them on that level. Creating causal loop diagrams together can greatly help a group remain in a place of inquiry. Unfortunately in this case, each person involved insisted on defending his or her position and therefore remained rooted in a place of advocacy rather than generative listening and questioning.