This supports what we have always stressed, that the best medium of learning is the work to be done. Indeed the meta-levels of such learning are about re-focusing the work to be done to better meet it’s purpose and then evolving the purpose itself – raising the game!

We see this phenomenon in competitive sports (witness the winter Olympics) where people learn to perform and then learn to be among the leaders before, just possibly breaking new ground and learning to take things to a new level. Everyone has a quest to be as good as they can be and therefore has an appetite for learning.

Not all learning is of the same kind.  We need first to learn how to do a job and then how we need to learn to change in ourselves, in order to do it better.  Finally we enable the whole process to become more fit for the world.  In hierarchical control and command organisations, these three levels of learning are often divided.  Those low in the hierarchy are expected to just do as directed.  Middle level people have the job of getting people to get better results. Only the top folk occasionally think about the name of the game.  This division fails to tap into the creative potential of the vast majority of people.  How much better that senior people devolve all three learnings throughout the organisation.  The work of leadership is to lead learning.

So how does this happen?  If leaders are not leading learning, what are they doing? How can people be encouraged to have an appetite for learning and meta-learning?

Scala Group’s founder, Janice Caplan, comments on leadership’s: “critical role in creating shared vision, values and understanding for the organisation. … providing strategic leadership through their … direct reports… will emphasise the issues of communication, coaching and training.”

After the unrestrained greed and gluttony of the boom years, when leadership hardly seemed to matter, recession has given us a wake-up call.  Old ideas of leadership no longer fit the bill. Organisations are made of people, along with their structures, systems and processes. Without effective leadership we have no means of engaging people in working together for their common good.

Leadership is not reserved to top management (where too often it is disconnected from action) but is present in every human interaction in the organisation.  Leadership promotes the flow of information and knowledge to where it is most effective, by setting higher energies over lower ones.  This evolutionary idea of leadership runs counter to the mechanistic model of organisation, that imagines that people need to be manipulated to make them work.  Invoke authentic leadership and you will not be able to stop people giving of their best. If you are not already working on devolving authentic leadership at every level from the boardroom to the shop floor then now is the time to act.

If this all sounds strange to you, and even if it does not, then we should talk.

We read that the Chartered Management Institute’s Future Forecast survey suggests that business leaders recognise the importance of looking inwards and that putting staff back at the heart of their organisations will enhance their chances of a speedy post-recession recovery. We also hear the Work Foundation has proven a link between outstanding company performance and people-centred leadership.

Here is confirmation of what we have long believed. There is little doubt that organisations are shaking off the vestiges of the scientific management paradigm and seeking something more sustainable and wholesome. That means involving and engaging people rather than treating them as assets to be managed. It means we need a new kind of leadership – leadership throughout an organisation not just figurehead leadership. It means changing how people see and value their diversity and how we bring them together in creative relationship. It means helping people to appreciate the value of their unique contributions and to discover ways to serve the greater good. It means breaking free from past dysfunctional systems (e.g. bonus culture) and inventing something better.

People are at the heart of organisations and organisations serve people, so organisations need to organise themselves around their value-adding stream. The start of a new decade and emergence from recession give us all wonderful opportunities to re-think, re-conceptualise and re-invent your organisations nearer to your heart’s desire and nearer to what works.

Here at CMC we are developing the threefold nature of our business to better serve you, our customers.

We can offer you our deep experience in facilitation, designing and running bespoke processes to help you develop the leadership, the teams and the strategies to engage people and keep you abreast of change.

Our High Trenhouse ‘innovation centre’ provides the ideal venue and ambience to develop your strategic teamwork.

LogoVisual technology provides facilitation, training and the processes and tools to help you embrace the new decade’s shifting priorities.

Call us and we will be glad to meet with you to explore what matters to you, what concerns you currently and how our processes can help ensure you keep ahead of the game.

Tapping Creativity is something we all want to do but it has its associated risks. How do we tap creativity in our organisations and for what? Is creativity anything other than the ability to pro-actively change with the times?

Creativity is sometimes seen narrowly as producing novelty for its own sake but truly it underpins how leadership helps us all as individuals, groups and organisations, to maintain our grip on life.

Read the article Tapping Creativity here

It strikes me that there are parallels with the financial crisis. Our bankers are like the tourists, enjoying their adrenalin rush and expecting to be bailed out if things take a turn for the worse. Wise financiers would anticipate the ups and downs and plan accordingly and no doubt some will do so. There is little sympathy for the myopic people whose selfish reward system has cost us all dearly. When the thaw comes will anyone be any wiser? The signs are that they will not. The whole rotten system is un-responsive to feedback and needs to be reconstructed.

The rest of us can get some benefit from our lost investment by learning how to apply these lessons to our own situation. In our own organisations, are we seeing the wider picture (for instance how well are we prepared for the impact global warming?). What are we doing to broaden our perspective and ensure we are prepared to ride the coming storms?

See article on Resilience – How to Survive in Tough Times

It proposes strategy is an historical perspective that enlarges the present moment.

Stories of the future that can achieve this have extraordinary power.

The Copenhagen conference may lack teeth and determination but there is no doubt that climate change is rising quickly up the agenda and response to it will impact hugely on us all. It will change the way we live, what we can afford, how we work and travel. Rich nations will no doubt buck at having to reform themselves to suit a lower-carbon economy and that will affect every business and public sector organisation. Will you be a leader of change or will you choose to fight a rearguard action?

Whether you are carbon conscious, eco-friendly, motivated to rethink your environmental impact or looking to save the cost of waste, Centre For Management Creativity’s carefully managed processes can help you clarify your goals and how to achieve them. By thinking things through and taking a pro-active approach, you can avoid the pain of making changes at the behest of others. In becoming a role model you gain competitive advantage.

Our experience on this subject includes the Trans-Atlantic Environment Conference which we designed and ran in November1998. It has since been honed by smaller conferences, workshops and consultations. We bring useful process knowledge to bear through design, guiding facilitation and knowledge capture. We can help you clarify your values, your strategies and the behaviours needed to deliver the results you seek. We will be delighted to meet with you to explore your needs and develop processes to suit. Contact us for an appointment.

Beinhocker, in ‘The Origin of Wealth’, points out that, for two hundred years, the world’s economy has been wrongly understood as being a balanced equilibrium system – largely because nobody had any way of thinking about complex adaptive systems.  Events such as we have just experienced are the result of mental models that no longer match the reality.

An increasingly common perspective is that a 21st century organisation (the way we organise) is also more complex than the hierarchical, control and command paradigm of the industrial era.  As evolutionary changes take place we can expect that many change programmes will become increasingly complex, but there is an often quoted statistic that up to 70% of them fail to deliver their intended outcomes. From an evolutionary perspective, this is fine and to be expected.  It is more daunting when your own future may depend on getting a positive outcome.  So, if organisations are complex adaptive systems, how does one lead change?

As an aspect of his doctoral research, our colleague, Howard Adams, is offering feedback to change teams who participate.  He is exploring how team effectiveness is affected by team leadership behaviours and how personal values affect the types of leadership behaviours used by the team. These are clearly important factors and anything that shines light on the issues would no doubt be useful. Get in touch if you want to know more.

The most appropriate medium for learning is the work that you do.  However, learning to learn is best done by using experience that is not career limiting or impacting on clients.  This can be almost any activity so long as lessons are drawn from it. Tasks that involve collaboration and problem solving are likely to yield the most learning.  If you want a comprehensive development process be sure to root it in experience rather than just theory. The activity needs to be well chosen according to learning needs and carefully reviewed to draw out salient lessons.

For twenty years Centre For Management Creativity  has successfully incorporated experiential learning, using a great variety of media, including outdoor activities, into strategy innovation, team and leadership development.

Getting Experience as the Basis of Learning

Centre for Management Creativity has extensive experience with change and may be able to help.  So we can explore such a possibility we are offering you, free of charge and without obligation, an introductory consultation.  Call us to arrange an appointment.