By Amanda Sterling
Edition 6 – October 2015 Pages 30-33
Tags: human resources • learning and development
The industrial revolution is often remarked upon as the period of the greatest change in how we work and live that we’ve ever seen. The cornerstone of that change was the introduction of steam-driven machinery in the 1700s. Steam meant greater efficiencies, increased production, and unprecedented growth in income and populations for developing countries. It also meant that workers flocked to big cities to work in factories. Craft production, where small quantities of goods were produced by hand at home, became a diminishing art.
Then Henry Ford came along in 1913 and introduced the moving assembly line for automobiles, further increasing production and lowering costs. At about the same time, Frederick Taylor designed the principles of scientific management, which divided work into tasks to be performed by each individual as goods moved down an assembly line. Work became more fragmented and more controlled. Organisations got even bigger and more hierarchical.
We’d like to think that a lot has changed since then, but I don’t think it has. We’ve modernised our work, but we haven’t transformed it. There’s a big difference between the two. My friend Heather is a school teacher who works for a progressive school in Auckland, New Zealand; and I like how she explains this difference.
“Formal education began as a result of the industrial revolution and the need to provide a skilled labour force. As a result, our schools were built around a factory model where you were pushed along the assembly line from one year to the next until you received your diploma. Teachers were seen as the experts and the holders of knowledge. “
The pace and style of learning was set by the institution, following a one-size-fits-all model. This model has basically remained unchanged for the past 100 years. To think about that is scary. What’s even scarier is that most people, teachers included, don’t even realise this. It’s because along the way, we have been busy modernising.
People are often fooled into thinking that modernisation means change. I see this each year when the schools I’ve worked at host open evenings. Parents come along with their children to look at the prospective school, they’re given a tour and way too much information, and I laugh because I often hear parents say, “Wow, school has come a long way since my day.” They say that because they see data projectors, and smart boards and YouTube presentations and fancy new buildings, new subjects and programmes and they say, “Oh wow, progress!”
The problem is that, while it looks new and modern on the outside, it’s only superficial. When you actually look a little bit closer, you’ll notice we haven’t really changed at all. Instead of sitting in rows and copying notes off the blackboard, students are now sitting in rows copying the PowerPoint off the whiteboard. The actual process that underpins learning is still the same.”
I see the same thing happening in the business world. We offer people flash offices, the latest phones, stand up desks, and pets in the office. But fundamentally, the way that we work has not changed. In fact, it’s become more intense and controlled. The same technology we see as making our lives easier is tying us to our work, making us more accessible and on demand. It’s also raising expectations of when, and how quickly, we get things done.
We’re now grappling with the consequences of this constant connectivity. As ever, technology has been driving much of this change, rather than humans. Things should instead be the other way round. In other words, we’ve modernised, but we’ve not transformed.
I think we have an opportunity, right now, to transform the way we work and learn. Social technology is handing us this on a plate. The question is whether we take it, or just go about things the same way we have since the industrial revolution (with just a few new whizz-bang features).
So what does transformation look like? It means putting people first –before technology, profit or process. It means flipping the power dynamics from top-down to bottom-up, to encourage greater innovation, creativity, ownership and flexibility. It means engaging with new technologies or processes in a way that brings out the best in people, not in a way that makes people the secondary concern.
We should do these things not just because they’re warm and fluffy,or even because they’re the right things to do. We should do them because the companies that do actually see results. I’m not just saying that to ease the money-driven types either – I’m saying it because it’s true. And I’m not the only one who’s saying it: check out Frederic Laloux’s book Re-Inventing Organisations1 for case studies of People First designed workplaces in industries that include nursing and energy. Also have a look at Worldblu’s Freedom Centered workplaces2. ‘People First’ is not just a pipe dream, but an economically validated reality.
These transformative approaches are already happening in the consumer landscape. In their book A World Gone Social, Ted Coine and Mark Babbitt3 explain that we are living in a world where it’s the customer that tells the story about the goods or services they have purchased, not the corporate marketing team. Consumers can readily Tweet, Facebook post, YouTube share, Snapchat story or Instagram image their positive or negative views of a products to their thousands, or millions, of followers.
As Eric Qualman, author of Socialnomics4, points out, people are more likely to buy something based on someone else’s recommendation. That’s true even if the recommendation comes from someone they don’t know. They’re much less likely to listen to marketing spin, which means marketing control is no longer held by the marketers. So marketers must get to grips with the greater power of consumers to create their own narrative about products.
Likewise, employees are creating their own stories about what it’s like to work for their organisations. Glassdoor, the website where employees, ex and current, can review their employer, is an overt example of this. But, more covertly, it’s the connections we’re creating and the conversations we’re having behind the scenes that are just as, if not more, powerful than what is immediately visible. These connections are made possible through digital technology: you can now connect through a friend of a friend, who knows someone, who works with that manager, to find out what it’s really like to work for them. This is the less visible undercurrent of communication and connectivity in our hyper-connected world.
And the shift goes beyond recruitment: we’re finding more information about everything ourselves – it’s all at our fingertips. What do you think this means for the way we design and deliver organisational learning? Should we be sitting in workshops or at conferences listening to what one person tells us? Relying on this approach just doesn’t make sense anymore. We don’t need to “know” stuff; instead, we just need to know where to find it. Terms like “personal learning networks” and “networked intelligence” are part of our new lingo. Our skills are now in how we search, sort and share information – not whether we have it in the first place.
In this environment, organisational learning is context-based; and it happens on the job, as we find what we need, when we need it. Learning is in the hands of the learner. The elegance of our design is in the environment we provide our learners. How do we make sure they are motivated and that they have the resources to seek out knowledge, and the opportunity to do so?…