Bill's Notebook

Two interesting articles about organizational culture in the latest issue of the “Journal of Organizational Change Management.”  The first article is a cultural analysis of organizational memory and its role in organizational change while the second article describes how organizational memory can hinder learning a new technology.

In the first article, McCabe gives a more detailed description of organizational culture as a collection of shared memories.  These memories can contradict each other or just be ambiguous about past organizational events but, woven together, these memories form a dynamic and conflicting culture for the organization.  McCabe disputes the common belief of many management theorists that the past can be erased in favor of the new reality because the past always blocks change.  Organizational memory is more complex than that because some memories can help facilitate change while other aspects resist change.  McCabe concludes by stating that organizational memory cannot be managed as part of the change process but must be accounted for.

McCabe’s article illuminates the findings in the second article by Becker.  The second article deals with the process of acquiring new technology in an organization.  As Becker explains, for employees to adopt a new technology they must unlearn the old technology.  They do this through releasing mental models of the workings of the old technology and create mental models of how the new technology works.  Memories of past change efforts can hinder the process of unlearning if it promotes fear and anxiety among the employees.  Becker does not have any specific remedies for dealing with organizational memory and unlearning but she does argue that further research is necessary to fully understand the unlearning process.

The relevance to Gov 2.0 is clear.  Many agencies have long and painful memories of past change efforts that have been woven into the current culture.  Gov 2.0 advocates must understand and acknowledge the past while developing strategies to alleviate the fear that will prevent government employees from unlearning the current way things are done in favor of making government transparent, open, and engaging.  Gov 2.0 advocates must take the positive aspects of the past and use those events to counter the negative past events while realizing that culture cannot be fully controlled.

References:

Becker, K. (2010). Facilitating unlearning during implementation of new technology. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 251-268.

McCabe, D. (2010). Taking the long view: A cultural analysis of memory as resisting and facilitating organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 230-250.

There is an experiment at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to change how government works. The idea is to stop measuring how much time an employee spends at the office but rather to measure how productive the employee is. The employee sets their own working hours and negotiates with their supervisor on what they should be producing and how it will be measured. It is a revolutionary concept and has worked in private industry.

A great example of this is how IBM has reinvented itself to use a ROWE-like environment. As Robert Paterson explains, IBM employees can live where they want and work in virtual teams based on their own schedules. What holds the workforce together is the use of social networking tools and the occasional face-to-face meeting. As Paterson writes, “If IBM can do this with 200,000 people so can you.”

One aspect that he mentions is the use of chat tools in place of meetings. This is not revolutionary as places I have worked at have using instant messaging systems to hold impromptu meetings. You can quickly get to the point, bring in people as needed, and there is a record of the meeting when you are finished.  And this was easily done with 2001 technology. I do not understand why more organizations don’t hold meetings this way instead of dragging everyone into the conference room for the weekly staff meeting.

Another great example from IBM is how well the virtual team works even though employees are in different countries and different time zones.  Allowing people to work at their natural productive hours means you will have better work and happier people.  An interesting point in the IBM experience is that face-to-face meetings are used to help workers build trust and tend to be about team-building rather than doing work.  I wonder how much more effective government workers would be if agencies devoted substantial time to team-building?

ROWE solves a lot of problems from the time wasted to commuting to balancing work-life issues. I’m hoping the OPM experiment is a success.  ROWE is clearly working in the private sector.

According to Mark Drapeau of O’Reilly.

I’ve been saying in various posts on GovLoop how important apps are to Gov 2.0 (not a unique insight as plenty of others have come to the same conclusion).  What is great is the idea of crowdsourcing the development of government apps.

“Dawn of the commercial space age.”

As the author points out, private spacecraft don’t have to meet the requirements for a deep space mission.

“11,800 Direct Jobs to Result From NASA’s $6.1 Billion Commercial Spaceflight Investment, Independent Analysis Shows.”

Looks like a big hurdle to further space commercialization has been cleared – Laser “tractor beams” to tidy up space junk.

I wish the dates were moved up – Obama Vows Renewed Space Program.

“This is an age of Knowledge Economy, where an intelligent organization, whether in the public or private sector, should be a learning organization.”  So writes Khan who argues for the creation of formal communities of practice in the public sector.  The formal communities of practice would be called knowledge groups and would consist of cross-agency teams that work on a shared problem with the goal of producing a body of knowledge to manage the problem. 

Khan starts his argument for knowledge groups by describing the benefits of knowledge and how knowledge is created.  Nothing surprising here and these sections serve as a good review of basic knowledge management concepts.  He then describes how learning organizations learn by using Peter Senge’s framework of the five core competencies.  What I found especially valuable was the description of barriers by public organizations to each of the five competencies:

1)      Shared purpose and vision – public organizations often have conflicting goals that makes creating a shared vision impossible.

2)      Systems approach – public organizations are divided into virtual fiefdoms that compete with each other for resources thus blocking the systems approach to problems.

3)      Personal mastery – Government functions follow routine standardized procedures and individual employees are not recognized for improving their skills.

4)      Mental models – The fiefdom mindset of “us versus them” precludes sharing of mental models for team learning.

5)      Capacity for team leaning – Again, public agency fiefdoms prevent team learning.

Khan further describes the process of organizational unlearning where time and change have rendered existing processes obsolete.  Organizations must unlearn the old process and create a new process in response to the new environment.  Public agencies learn from six major sources – internal resources and experience; citizens and customers; partners, rival, and comparators; top-down direction and review; and critiques, advice, and media.  Even so, agencies tend to ignore outside sources in favor of internal learning sources thus hindering the unlearning process.

Despite these barriers, public organizations do share knowledge in informal groups and through social networking.  Khan argues that these informal structures are constantly at risk of disintegration and he advocates creating formal Knowledge Groups (KG) that can withstand the pressures of being torn apart as members seek their own self-interests.  A KG is created by selecting a professional in a particular field and granting him or her authority from an executive sponsor.  The KG Lead selects relevant subject matter experts and manages stakeholders while setting the vision and direction of the KG.  Khan describes several advantages of the KG:

1)      Governments are more receptive to internally-generated information.

2)      The process of creating and disseminating the information is formalized.

3)      Synergy is created from the diversity of agencies and viewpoints.

4)      The relevant stakeholders are identified and recruited to support the KG.

5)      Avoiding an overdependence on consultants.

I agree with Khan on the importance of knowledge and organizational learning.  His analysis of the barriers that prevent organizational learning in public agencies is also on target but I just don’t agree with the need for a formal Knowledge Group.  There are numerous examples of informal communities of practice and social networks that are robust and provide the same benefits as a formal KG.  Having worked on a top-down KG, I found it to be less valuable for innovation and learning than an informal network.  One just has to look at the example of GovLoop to see the power of a set of informal communities of practice.  So, while the barriers to organizational learning in public agencies are very real they can be overcome without having to create yet another formal organizational layer in government.

Reference:

Khan, I.A. (2010). Knowledge groups: A model for creating synergy across the public sector. Public Organization Review 10. 139-152.