From the Founding Editor

EDITORIALL

ast December, the field of organization development and learning lost oneof its founders and great leaders with the death of Richard Beckhard at age
81. Dick was one of my mentors and a close colleague throughout my career.
He served on the board of the original MIT Organizational Learning Center, wasclosely allied to Innovation Associates, and was always a steady influence on
many of us who today are trying to evolve the concepts and methods of organizational learning. The ability to design human processes that would make adifference is crucial to learning and change, yet is sadly lacking in some of themost talented change agents operating today. Dick was a master of designing
events that produced the kinds of connections needed to make things happen.
Why have we chosen “Connections” as a theme for this issue of Reflections? J.-M. Guehenno states it best in The End of the Nation-State when henotes that “power no longer consists in knowledge, but in functioning as a link
between bodies of knowledge.” I want to remind our readers that part of themission of Reflections is to connect academics/researchers, consultants, andpractitioner/managers with each other. Contrary to some theories, I do notview knowledge as emanating from the researcher and trickling down throughthe consultant to the practitioner, though it often appears that way. Each of these constituencies has a body of knowledge and know-how that tends to get entrapped in its
own occupational sub-culture. And the difficulty of communicating across these subcultures is enormous because the members of each group “know” they have the truth
because it works for them in their environment. Yet it is worth recounting Doug
McGregor’s answer when he was asked by a manager how he had ever come up withthis esoteric Theory X and Theory Y stuff. His answer was that he had observed effective and ineffective managers in the field and noticed that they managed differently. He
then described these differences and put a label on them, but the know-how was in the
managers, not in the researcher.
To return for a moment to Dick Beckhard and the role of design; he was a genius at
knowing whom to bring into a room together and creating a conversation that allowed
the participants to connect with each other. One of my not-so-hidden agendas for Reflections is to try to do a bit of this in the impersonal publications format. By juxtaposing
articles from the different constituencies whenever we can and by stimulating commentary from the different groups, I hope we can let readers discover that members of theother groups have important things to say and contribute. The articles themselves pointout how connections were crucial in making some of the changes happen that are described, so I hope that readers will be convinced after reading and browsing that
Guehenno is correct in noting that power in the future will lie in connecting.

Ed Schein

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

1

EDITORIAL

In This Issue
Edgar H. Schein and Karen Ayas

I

t is with great pleasure that we start this issue of Reflections with one of Dick
Beckhard’s most important and seminal articles, “The Confrontation Meeting.” This
1967 article showed, well before its time, the importance of connecting all the parts ofan organization if significant change was to be accomplished. We should all examine thisclassic closely for both its theoretical insight and its practical applicability. Marvin
Weisbord, one of Dick’s colleagues, offers comments and practical wisdom as a current
leader in the field of “large systems change.”

Features2

We continue with an original paper by Robert Bauer and Noam Cook showing the social
infrastructures that emerge and evolve within work practice. Through what the authors
call a “coherence agent,” small groups with different areas of expertise succeed in connecting, and they link and leverage their local knowledge to produce significant innovation at a global level. This valuable case shows the details of how complex the processof connecting can be, as our commentator Stephen Buckley points out.
Otto Scharmer’s 1996 interview of Ikujiro Nonaka gives us some historical perspective and a more conceptual overview of what the connections process would have to be
for knowledge creation and diffusion on an organizational level. This interview is followed
by a report of a different kind of connections enterprise, the 1999 SoL Research Greenhouse. Natalia Levina provides an excellent account of this gathering through a lens ofknowledge sharing across boundaries. Bringing together a wide range of researchers, consultants, and practitioners around a common theme is a crucial method of generating anddisseminating knowledge, as documented by comments from John Carroll and Karen Ayas.
Barbara Lawton next provides us with a first-hand account of an organizational
learning project. She shares her experience as a change agent, reflecting on both her failures and successes. Her account illuminates the dynamics of learning and change but
also, as commentator Nancy Dixon indicates, raises questions about the level of detailed
knowledge that is needed before one can fully understand such a change process andlearn lessons that might be applicable to other situations.
Peter David Stroh picks up a theme from a previous issue in documenting how systems
thinking helped an organization solve some current problems. But, in that process, he also
shows how it was the connections that different parts of the organization made with eachother in the process of doing their systems analyses that produced some of the dramatic
results. Nelson Repenning and Linda Booth Sweeney analyze this paper thoroughly fromboth academic and practitioner points of view. Stroh responds to both comments.
David Coghlan’s analysis of how interventions at different levels in an organization canand must be used if total organizational change is to be achieved highlights an important
point that is often forgotten in our models. Each system is nested in a larger system, and to
make real changes requires us to understand not only what is appropriate at the individual,group, intergroup, and organizational levels, but, even more importantly, how crucial are theinterventions that connect the levels to each other. Sherry Immediato relates this work to othertheoretical contributions that have been valuable to her as a consultant, and Coghlan replies.
Next is an account from Judy Rodgers of a dialogue at the Brahma Kumaris World
Spiritual University. This remarkable organization connects people from all over the
globe and from all walks of life to reflect on and explore the state of the world. Peter
Senge, a participant in the dialogue, comments.
We close the issue with Peter Senge’s reflections on knowledge, knowledge management, and connections.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSContributors

4

Karen Ayas is associate editor, Reflections.
Robert S. Bauer is a founding member of Xerox PARC, where he has worked as both a researchscientist and laboratory manager.
Richard Beckhard was a private consultant and Adjunct Professor of Management at MIT and
Columbia University.
Gene Beyt is on the health systems management faculty at Tulane University and a memberof SoL.
Stephen C. Buckley is an entrepreneur, writer, and independent consultant in Somerville, MA.
Raphael Bustin is a photographer in Gloucester, MA.
John S. Carroll is professor of behavioral and policy sciences at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
David Coghlan teaches organization development and action research at the University of
Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland.
S.D. Noam Cook is associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University and a consulting researcher at Xerox PARC.
Linda Cooper is a photographer based in Evanston, IL.
Nancy M. Dixon is an associate professor of administration sciences at The George Washington University.
C. Sherry Immediato is an organizational consultant, founder of Heaven & Earth Incorporated, and co-chair of the SoL Council of Trustees.
Barbara B. Lawton is a knowledge strategist at TIS Worldwide, an e-business architecture
consultancy.
Natalia Levina is a doctoral candidate in the information technologies group at the MIT Sloan
School of Management.
Ikujiro Nonaka is a professor at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, and Xerox Distinguished Professor of Knowledge, University of California, Berkeley.
Nelson P. Repenning is assistant professor of management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Judy Rodgers is a communication and media strategist who has specialized in translating thework of organizational theorists and business authors for a wider audience.
C. Otto Scharmer is a visiting lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a research partner at Generon Consulting.
Peter M. Senge is a senior lecturer at MIT and chairperson of the Council of Trustees of theSociety for Organizational Learning.
Emily Sper is the founder of Sperphoto, an Internet-based graphic arts and design company.
Peter David Stroh was a founding partner of Innovation Associates with Peter Senge, Charlie
Kiefer, and Robert Fritz, and most recently was a principal with its parent company,
Arthur D. Little.
Linda Booth Sweeney is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Educationand coauthor of the Systems Thinking Playbook, volumes 1–3.
Marvin Weisbord is codirector of Future Search Network, an international nonprofit organization based on public service, colleagueship, and learning.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSThe Confrontation Meeting

CLASSIC

Richard BeckhardO

ne of the continuing problems facing the top management team of any organizationin times of stress or major change is how to assess accurately the state of theorganization’s health. How are people reacting to the change? How committed are subordinate managers to the new conditions? Where are the most pressing organization problems?
In the period following a major change—such as that brought about by a change inleadership or organization structure, a merger, or the introduction of a new technology—
there tends to be much confusion and an expenditure of dysfunctional energy that negatively affects both productivity and morale.
At such times, the top management group usually spends many hours together
working on the business problems and finding ways of coping with the new conditions.
Frequently, the process of working together under this pressure also has the effect ofmaking the top team more cohesive.
Concurrently, these same managers tend to spend less and less time with their subordinates and with the rest of the organization. Communications decrease between the top
and middle levels of management. People at the lower levels often complain that they areless in touch with what is going on than they were before the change. They feel left out.
They report having less influence than before, being more unsure of their own decisionmaking authority, and feeling less sense of ownership in the organization. As a result of
this, they tend to make fewer decisions, take fewer risks, and wait until the “smoke clears.”
When this unrest comes to the attention of top management, the response is usually to take some action such as—. . . having each member of the top team hold team meetings with his subordinates
to communicate the state of affairs, and following this procedure down throughthe organization;. . . holding some general communication improvement meetings;. . . conducting an attitude survey to determine priority problems.

5

Any of these actions will probably be helpful, but each requires a considerable investmentof time which is competitive with the time needed to work on the change problem itself.

Action Plans
Recently I have experimented with an activity that allows a total management group, drawn
from all levels of the organization, to take a quick reading on its own health, and—within amatter of hours—to set action plans for improving it. I call this a “confrontation meeting.”
The activity is based on my previous experience with an action-oriented method ofplanned change in which information on problems and attitudes is collected and fed
back to those who produced it, and steps are taken to start action plans for improvementof the condition.
Sometimes, following situations of organizational stress, the elapsed time in moving from identification of the problem to collaborative action planning must be extremely
brief. The confrontation meeting can be carried out in 412 to 5 hours’ working time, and
it is designed to include the entire management of a large system in a joint action-planning program.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

Reprinted by permission of
Harvard Business Review. From
“The Confrontation Meeting”
by Richard Beckhard, MarchApril 1967. Copyright © 1967
by the President and Fellows ofHarvard College.

BECKHARD
The Confrontation MeetingI have found this approach to be particularly practical in organization situations
where there are large numbers in the management group and/or where it is difficult totake the entire group off the job for any length of time. The activity has been conducted
several times with a one evening and one morning session—taking only 212 hours outof a regular working day.
The confrontation meeting discussed in this article has been used in a number ofdifferent organization situations. Experience shows that it is appropriate where: There is a need for the total management group to examine its own workings.
 Very limited time is available for the activity.
 Top management wishes to improve the conditions quickly.
 There is enough cohesion in the top team to ensure follow-up.
 There is real commitment to resolving the issues on the part of top management.
 The organization is experiencing, or has recently experienced, some major change.
In order to show how this technique can speed the process of getting the information andacting on it, let us first look at three actual company situations where this approach has
been successfully applied. Then we will examine both the positive results and the possible problems that could occur through the use and misuse of this technique. Finally, after a brief summary, there are appendixes for the reader interested in a more elaborate
description of the phasing and scheduling of such a meeting.

Case Example A
The initial application of the confrontation meeting technique occurred in 1965 in a large
food products company. Into this long-time family-owned and closely controlled company, there was introduced for the first time a non-family professional general manager.
He had been promoted from the ranks of the group that had previously reported to thefamily-member general manager.
This change in the “management culture,” which had been carefully and thoroughly
prepared by the family executives, was carried out with a minimum number of problems.
The new general manager and his operating heads spent many hours together and developed a quite open problem-solving climate and an effective, cohesive team. Day-today operations were left pretty much in the hands of their immediate subordinates, while
the top group focused on planning.
A few months after the change, however, the general manager began getting some
information that indicated all was not well further down in the organization. On investigation, he discovered that many middle-level managers were feeling isolated fromwhat was going on. Many were unclear about the authority and functions of the “management committee” (his top team); some were finding it very difficult to see and consult with their bosses (his operating heads); others were not being informed of decisions
made at his management committee meetings; still others were apprehensive that a new
power elite was developing which in many ways was much worse than the former family managers.
In discussing this feedback information with his operating heads, the general manager found one or two who felt these issues required immediate management committee
attention. But most of the members of the top team tended
to minimize the information as “the usual griping,” or“people needing too many decisions made for them,” or“everybody always wanting to be in on everything.”
The general manager then began searching for some
way to—© Emily Sper6

. . . bring the whole matter into the open;. . . determine the magnitude and potency of the total
problem;. . . give his management committee and himself a true
picture of the state of the organization’s attitudes andconcerns;. . . collect information on employee needs, problems, andVolume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSThe confrontation meeting was created to satisfy these objectives and to minimize thetime in which a large number of people would have to be away from the job.
Some 70 managers, representing the total management group, were brought together
for a confrontation meeting starting at 9:00 in the morningand ending at 4:30 in the afternoon. The specific “design”
for the day, which is broken down into a more detailed
description in Appendix A, had the following components:

BECKHARDThe Confrontation Meeting

frustrations in some organized way so that corrective actions could be taken inpriority order;. . . get his management committee members in better tune with their subordinates’
feelings and attitudes, and put some pressure on the team members for continued two-way communication within their own special areas;. . . make clear to the total organization that he—the top manager—was personallyconcerned;. . . set up mechanisms by which all members of the total management group could
feel that their individual needs were noticed;. . . provide additional mechanisms for supervisors to influence the whole organization.

The confrontation meeting was
created . . . to minimize the time inwhich a large number of people
would have to be away from the job.

1. Climate setting—establishing willingness to participate.
2. Information collecting—getting the attitudes and feelings out in the open.
3. Information sharing—making total information available to all.
4. Priority setting and group action planning—holding work-unit sessions to set priority actions and to make timetable commitments.
5. Organization action planning—getting commitment by top management to theworking of these priorities.
6. Immediate follow-up by the top management committee—planning first actions andcommitments.

During the day-long affair, the group identified some 80 problems that were of concern topeople throughout the organization; they selected priorities from among them; they began
working on these priority issues in functional work units, and each unit produced action
recommendations with timetables and targets; and they got a commitment from top management of actions on priorities that would be attended to. The top management team met
immediately after the confrontation meeting to pin down the action steps and commitments.
(In subsequent applications of this confrontation meeting approach, a seventh component—a progress review—has been added, since experience has shown that it is important to reconvene the total group four to six weeks later for a progress review bothfrom the functional units and from the top management team.)

Case Example B
A small company which makes products for the military had been operating at a stablesales volume of $3 million to $4 million. The invention of a new process and the adventof the war in Vietnam suddenly produced an explosion of business. Volume rose to thelevel of $5 million within six months and promised to redouble within another year.
Top management was desperately trying to (a) keep raw materials flowing throughthe line, (b) get material processed, (c) find people to hire, (d) discover quicker ways ofjob training, and (e) maintain quality under the enormously increased pressure.
There was constant interaction among the five members of the top management team.
They were aware of the tension and fatigue that existed on the production line, but they were
only vaguely aware of the unrest, fatigue, concern, and loneliness of the middle manager andforeman groups. However, enough signals had filtered up to the top team to cause concern
and a decision that something needed to be done right away. But, because of the pressuresof work, finding the time to tackle the problems was as difficult as the issues themselves.
The entire management group agreed to give up one night and one morning; theconfrontation meeting was conducted according to the six component phases described

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

7

BECKHARD

Case Example C

The Confrontation Meeting

earlier, with Phases 1, 2, and 3 being held in the evening and Phases 4, 5, and 6 taking
place the following morning.

A management organization took over the operation of a hotel which was in a sorry stateof affairs. Under previous absentee ownership, the property had been allowed to run
down; individual departments were independent empires; many people in management
positions were nonprofessional hotel people (i.e., friends of the owners); and there wasvery low competence in the top management team.
The general manager saw as his priority missions the need to: Stop the downhill trend.
 Overcome a poor public image.
 Clean up the property.
 Weed out the low-potential (old friends) management.
 Bring in professional managers in key spots.
 Build a management team.
 Build effective operating teams, with the members of the top management team as
links.
He followed his plan with considerable success. In a period of one year, he had significantly cleaned up the property, improved the service, built a new dining room, produced an enviable food quality, and begun to build confidence in key buyers, such as
convention managers. He had acquired and developed a very fine, professional, young
management team that was both competent and highly motivated. This group had beenworking as a cohesive team on all the hotel’s improvement goals; differences between
them and their areas seemed to have been largely worked through.
At the level below the top group, the department and section heads, many of whomwere also new, had been working under tremendous pressure for over a year to bringabout improvements in the property and in the hotel’s services. They felt very unappreciated by the top managers, who were described as “always being in meetings and unavailable,” or “never rewarding us for good work,” or “requiring approval on alldecisions but we can’t get to see them,” or “developing a fine top management club but
keeping the pressure on us and we’re doing the work.”
The problem finally was brought to the attention of the top managers by some ofthe department heads. Immediate action was indicated, and a confrontation meeting was
decided on. It took place in two periods, an afternoon and the following morning. There
was an immediate follow-up by the top management team in which many of the issues
between departments and functions were identified as stemming back to the modus operandi of the top team. These issues were openly discussed and were worked through.
Also in this application, a follow-up report and review session was scheduled for five
weeks after the confrontation meeting.

8

Positive Results
The experience of the foregoing case examples, as well asthat of other organizations in which the confrontation
meeting technique has been applied, demonstrates that
positive results—particularly, improved operational procedures and improved organization health—frequently occur.

© Gene Beyt

Operational Advantages
One of the outstanding plus factors is that procedures
which have been confused are clarified. In addition, practices which have been nonexistent are initiated. Typical ofthese kinds of operational improvement, for example, arethe reporting of financial information to operating units,

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSBECKHARDThe Confrontation Meetingthe handling of the reservation system at a hotel, and the inspection procedures and responsibilities in a changing manufacturing process.
Another advantage is that task forces, and/or temporary systems, are set up as
needed. These may be in the form of special teams to study the overlap in responsibilities
between two departments and to write new statements and descriptions, or to work out a
new system for handling order processing from sales to production planning, or to examine the kinds of information that should flow regularly from the management committee
to middle management.
Still another improvement is in providing guidance to top management as to specificareas needing priority attention. For example, “the overtime policy set under other conditions is really impeding the achievement of organization requirements,” or “the foodin the employee’s cafeteria is really creating morale problems,” or “the lack of understanding of where the organization is going and what top management’s goals are is producing apathy,” or “what goes on in top management meetings does not get
communicated to the middle managers.”

Organization HealthIn reviewing the experiences of companies where the confrontation meeting approachhas been instituted, I have perceived a number of positive results in the area of organization health: A high degree of open communication between various departments and organizationlevels is achieved very quickly. Because people are assigned to functional units and produce data together, it
is possible to express the real feeling of one level orgroup toward another, particularly if the middle echelon believes the top wants to hear it.
 The information collected is current, correct, and“checkable.” A real dialogue can exist between the top management team and the rest of the management organization, which personalizes the top manager to the total group.
 Larger numbers of people get “ownership” of the problem, since everyone has someinfluence through his unit’s guidance to the top management team; thus people feelthey have made a real contribution. Even more, the requirement that each functional
unit take personal responsibility for resolving some of the issues broadens the baseof ownership.
 Collaborative goal setting at several levels is demonstrated and practiced. The mechanism provides requirements for joint goal setting within each functional unit and between top and middle managers. People report that this helps them to understand“management by objectives” more clearly than before.
 The top team can take corrective actions based on valid information. By making realcommitments and establishing check or review points, there is a quick building oftrust in management’s intentions on the part of lower level managers.
 There tends to be an increase in trust and confidence both toward the top management
team and toward colleagues. A frequently appearing agenda item is the “need for better
understanding of the job problems of other departments,” and the output of these meetings is often the commitment to some “mechanism for systematic inter-departmental communication.” People also report a change in their stereotypes of people in other areas.
 This activity tends to be a “success experience” and thus increases total morale. The
process itself, which requires interaction, contribution, and joint work on the problems and which rewards constructive criticism, tends to produce a high degree ofenthusiasm and commitment. Because of this, the follow-up activities are crucial inensuring continuation of this enthusiasm.

A real dialogue can exist between the
top management team and the restof the management organization. . . .

Potential Problems
The confrontation meeting technique produces, in a very short time, a great deal ofcommitment and desire for results on the part of a lot of people. Feelings tend to be

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

9BECKHARDThe Confrontation Meeting

more intense than in some other settings because of the concentration of time and manpower. As a result, problems can develop through misuse of the techniques.
If the top management team does not really use the information from its subordinates, or if there are great promises and little follow-up action, more harm can be caused
to the organization’s health than if the event were never held.
If the confrontation meeting is used as a manipulative device to give people the“feeling of participation,” the act can boomerang. They will soon figure out
management’s intentions, and the reaction can be severe.
Another possible difficulty is that the functional units, full of enthusiasm at themeeting, set unrealistic or impractical goals and commitments. The behavior of the key
man in each unit—usually a department manager or division head—is crucial in keeping suggestions in balance.
One more possible problem may appear when the functional units select a few priority issues to report out. While these issues may be the most urgent, they are not necessarily the most important. Mechanisms for working all of the information need to be
developed within each functional unit. In one of the case examples cited earlier, thegroups worked the few problems they identified very thoroughly and never touched theothers. This necessitated a “replay” six months later.

In Summary
In periods of stress following major organization changes, there tends to be much confusion and energy expended that negatively affects productivity and organization health.
The top management team needs quick, efficient ways of sensing the state of theorganization’s attitudes and feelings in order to plan appropriate actions and to devote
its energy to the most important problems.
The usual methods of attitude surveys, extended staff meetings, and so forth demand
extensive time and require a delay between getting the information and acting on it.
A short micromechanism called a confrontation meeting can provide the total management group with:10

 An accurate reading on the organization’s health.
 The opportunity for work units to set priorities for improvement.
 The opportunity for top management to make appropriate action decisions based on
appropriate information from the organization.
 An increased involvement in the organization’s goals.
 A real commitment to action on the part of subgroups.
 A basis for determining other mechanisms for communication between levels andgroups, appropriate location of decisions, problem solving within subunits, as wellas the machinery for upward influence.

APPENDIX ACONFRONTATION MEETING
Here is a detailed description of the seven components which make up the specific “design” for the day-long confrontation meeting.

Phase 1. Climate Setting (Forty-five minutes to one hour)
At the outset, the top manager needs to communicate to the total management group hisgoals for the meeting, and his concern for and interest in free discussion and issue facing. He also has to assure his people that there is no punishment for open confrontation.
It is also helpful to have some form of information session or lecture by the top
manager or a consultant. Appropriate subjects might deal with the problems of communication, the need for understanding, the assumptions and the goals of the total organization, the concept of shared responsibility for the future of the organization, and theopportunity for and responsibility of influencing the organization.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONS

“Think of yourself as an individual with needs and goals. Also think as a person concerned
about the total organization. What are the obstacles, ‘demotivators,’ poor procedures orpolicies, unclear goals, or poor attitudes that exist today? What different conditions, if any,
would make the organization more effective and make life in the organization better?”

Each unit is instructed to select a reporter to present its results at a general informationcollecting session to be held one hour later.

BECKHARD

The total group is divided into small heterogeneous units of seven or eight people. If there
is a top management team that has been holding sessions regularly, it meets as a separate unit. The rest of the participants are assigned to units with a “diagonal slice” of theorganization used as a basis for composition—that is, no boss and subordinate are together, and each unit contains members from every functional area.
The assignment given to each of these units is along these lines:

The Confrontation Meeting

Phase 2. Information Collecting (One hour)

Phase 3. Information Sharing (One hour)
Each reporter writes his unit’s complete findings on newsprint, which is tacked up
around the room.
The meeting leader suggests some categories under which all the data from all the
sheets can be located. In other words, if there are 75 items, the likelihood is that thesecan be grouped into 6 or 7 major categories—say, by type of problem, such as “communications difficulties”; or by type of relationship, such as “problems with top management”; or by type of area involved, such as “problems in the mechanicaldepartment.”
Then the meeting breaks, either for lunch or, if it happens to be an evening session,
until the next morning.
During the break all the data sheets are duplicated for general distribution.

Phase 4. Priority Setting and Group Action Planning(One hour and fifteen minutes)
The total group reconvenes for a 15-minute general session. With the meeting leader, theygo through the raw data on the duplicated sheets and put category numbers by each pieceof data.
People are now assigned to their functional, natural work units for a one-hour session. Manufacturing people at all levels go to one unit, everybody in sales to another,and so forth. These units are headed by a department manager or division head of thatfunction. This means that some units may have as few as 3 people and some as many as
25. Each unit is charged to perform three specific tasks:
1. Discuss the problems and issues which affect its area. Decide on the priorities andearly actions to which the group is prepared to commit itself. (They should be prepared to share this commitment with their colleagues at the general session.)
2. Identify the issues and/or problems to which the top management team should giveits priority attention.
3. Decide how to communicate the results of the session to their subordinates.

Phase 5. Organization Action Planning (One to two hours)
The total management group reconvenes in a general session, where:
1. Each functional unit reports its commitment and plans to the total group.
2. Each unit reports and lists the items that its members believe the management teamshould deal with first.
3. The top manager reacts to this list and makes commitments (through setting targets
or assigning task forces or timetables, and so on) for action where required.
4. Each unit shares briefly its plans for communicating the results of the confrontation
meeting to all subordinates.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

11

BECKHARD

Phase 6. Immediate Follow-up by Top Team (One to three hours)

The Confrontation Meeting

The top management team meets immediately after the confrontation meeting ends toplan first follow-up actions, which should then be reported back to the total management
group within a few days.

Phase 7. Progress Review (Two hours)
Follow-up with total management group four to six weeks later.

APPENDIX BSAMPLE SCHEDULE
9:00 a.m.

9:10

10:00
10:15

11:15

12:15 p.m.
2:00

2:15

3:15
12

4:15
4:30

Opening Remarks, by general manager
Background, goals, outcomes
Norms of openness and “leveling”
Personal commitment to follow-up
General Session
Communications Problems in Organizations, by general manager (or consultant)
The communications process
Communications breakdowns in organizations and individuals
Dilemmas to be resolved
Conditions for more openness
CoffeeData Production Unit Session
Sharing feelings and attitudes
Identifying problems and concerns
Collecting data
General Session
Sharing findings from each unit (on newsprint)
Developing categories on problem issues
Lunch
General Session
Reviewing list of items in categories
Instructing functional units
Functional Unit Session
Listing priority actions to be taken
Preparing recommendations for top team
Planning for presentation of results at general meeting
General Session
Sharing recommendations of functional units
Listing priorities for top team action
Planning for communicating results of meeting to others
Closing Remarks, by general manager
Adjournment

Commentary
by Marvin Weisbord

Marvin Weisbord
Codirector
Future Search Network

When I started consulting in 1969, I read every item I could find on organizational development (OD)
practice. Nearly all the pioneers were academics, including Douglas McGregor, whose The Human
Side of Enterprise had inspired me to experiment with self-managing teams in the 1960s. It was Dick
Beckhard, the front-line practitioner, though, who showed me simple ways to bring McGregor’s
Theory Y assumptions alive in the workplace. I had just left a family business that had been a sort of
10-year learning lab with no processing. I had learned a great deal about managing. I was hungry foradvice on how to consult and soon came upon Beckhard’s little volume on Organizational Development in the Addison-Wesley OD series. I was struck by his practicality, his use of language that amanager could understand, and his specific action procedures, all backed by real cases.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSBECKHARDThe Confrontation Meeting

Among my first clients was a consumer products firm. The perpetual tension among R&D, engineering, and manufacturing had escalated. People had gone from guerrilla skirmishes to the vergeof open warfare. I ping-ponged among the combatants, something like a State Department emissary jetting around the Middle East, “collecting data,” with an eye to bringing the parties face-toface. But how to do it? There were so many levels and functions involved. And then a friend steered
me to Dick Beckhard’s article, “The Confrontation Meeting.” I got the three relevant managers together and ran down Beckhard’s list of benefits. They quickly agreed that the situation was worth a
half-day of everyone’s time. We booked a conference room in the factory basement. I went home,studied Dick’s meeting design, and proceeded to run it just as it appears here in Appendix A.
For me, this was a magical experience. People fixed many problems at the same time. Rather
than personal confrontation, they confronted shared dilemmas. There was tension aplenty. Still,
their focus on mutual goals and joint responsibility, as Beckhard wisely knew, kept the proceedings
civil. The principles embedded in this meeting soon informed my consulting practice. To wit—
1. Get all the relevant parties to sit down together.
2. Focus on shared goals.
3. Enroll top management first.
4. Work with clients expressing their own experience (rather than the consultants’ experience ofthe clients’ experience).
5. Make “open systems thinking” experiential rather than conceptual.
6. Encourage each person to be responsible for themselves and the whole.
7. Make public commitments for action.
The only aspect of Beckhard’s design that I would change today is to reverse the figure/ground relationship between task and processes. Where he asked people to talk about processes—obstacles,
demotivators, attitudes, and so on—I would focus the conversation on describing what happens
now and what people’s preferred system would look like, putting major systems, projects, or programs front and center. In short, I would seek to have people think “future potential” rather than“problem list,” against a clear-eyed statement about the way things are. This is a subtle shift fromthe original, and one with remarkable effects on people’s motivation to act.
That quibble aside, I believe Beckhard’s work is implicit in most “large group interventions” thatcame into fashion in the late 1990s. He knew early on that we improve large systems only in relation to the larger systems of which they are a part. To make rapid progress in an organization, we
can do no better than expand the boundaries of the system beyond natural work teams and individual functions. By bringing into the dialogue people from all levels and departments with a stakein the outcome, we can make many constructive changes at once. That was not as obvious in 1967
as it is now. Dick Beckhard, with the precision demonstrated by his article, pioneered the translationof systems theory into practical action. A great many practitioners, myself included, have been in
his debt ever since.

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FEATURE

Local Knowledge—Global
Innovation: Leveraging
Distributed Expertise
Robert S. Bauer and S.D. Noam CookA

14

chieving innovation in organizations remains a daunting challenge because of the potential mismatch between the local nature of work and expertise, on the one hand,
and the global nature of business objectives, on the other, particularly in dealing withknowledge as an organizational resource. Insights from recent research in work on knowledge management (Leonard-Barton, 1995), core competence (Prahalad and Hamel,1990), knowledge creation (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995), and intellectual capital(Stewart, 1997) often underscore the importance of understanding and managing thislocal and global interdependency. A top-down approach that imposes standardized
corporatewide technologies and processes can leave untapped valuable capabilities andpockets of knowledge that rest with individuals and small groups. Conversely, efforts toscale up such local resources can reach a seemingly natural social limit of approximately
100 people (if not far fewer)—as reflected in the literature on communities of practice(Lave and Wenger, 1991) and in much of managerial experience (Brown and Grey, 1995).
Robert S. Bauer
There is a clear need, then, for concepts, practices, and technologies that help leverage
Founding Member
Xerox PARC
local knowledge in ways that generate global innovation.
We report here on efforts to develop such concepts, practices, and technologies thatwere initiated at Xerox throughout the 1990s. We focus on two cases in which crossorganizational communities were established with the aim of producing global innovations by supporting and leveraging local knowledge. In particular, these communities
have been developing software for a range of products. Such software contributes to thegreater interoperability of products and/or product components, thus contributing, at the
global level, to greater enterprise coherence. In neither case have global standards ortechnologies been imposed on local settings, nor have there been efforts to achieve scale
simply by replicating or transferring local accomplishments to multiple or vastly expanded settings. Rather, in both cases, innovation on a global scale has been achieved
through the establishment of ad hoc cross-organizational communities in which very
specific technical work has pursued two aims: (1) to produce software that meets thefunctional requirements of individual products, and (2) to produce software that is sufficiently generic to be applied to development efforts across a range of products.
S.D. Noam Cook
In assessing these cases and their successes, we discuss their organizational, social,
Associate Professor of Philosophy
andtechnologicalinfrastructures; the role that coherence agents play in catalyzing work
San Jose State University
within them; and how these communities have leveraged local knowledge by constitutConsulting Researcher, Xerox PARC
ing themselves as knowledge ecologies. We define these terms below.
By organizational infrastructure, we mean the formal and informal structures established in these communities to make possible both their internal operation and their interface with the broader corporation. Social infrastructure consists of the roles,
relationships, and social forms in the communities that have grown from and sustain the© 2000 by the Society for Organi- details and character of their specific work. (Our use of this term has been influenced byzational Learning and the Massa- Stucky’s concept of “social ecology” [Stucky, 1998] and by Cook and Yanow [1993].) The
chusetts Institute of Technology. organizational infrastructure, as we see it, is authorized, while the social infrastructure

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Local Knowledge—Global Innovation

is essentially emergent (Stucky, unpublished). By authorized, we mean both that elements of the organizational infrastructure tend to be authored (someone explicitly creates them) and that they have some official standing. In contrast, by referring to the social
infrastructure as emergent, we mean that it is constantly emerging and evolving in thecourse of a community’s work practice. The technological infrastructure consists of thetools (physical spaces, hardware, intranet archives, and so on) that each community uses,
which reflect the specific character of its work. For the two communities in the cases we
present, a large measure of their success rests on the appropriate fit between their workand the nature of their organizational, social, and technological infrastructures.
In various ways, coherence agents have facilitated the work of these two communities. As the term suggests, coherence agents have helped the communities make greater
contributions to enterprise coherence, that is, to greater interoperability of products or
product components. Although the work of all the members of these communities wasdedicated to this aim, coherence agents have certain characteristics that are particularly
valuable in achieving successful innovation. Specifically, the work of a coherence agent
is distinct from his or her own work (for example, product-specific work) and catalyzes
the work of others by engaging in the actual development work of the community.
By knowledge ecology, we mean a community in which different bits of knowledge
are systematically and productively linked and leveraged. Making various kinds of information (raw data, informal records, sophisticated graphics, navigable intranets, and soon) generally available within an organization is clearly valuable. (Website document archives in both the cases we present are an example of this increasingly common practice.) At the same time, there are forms of knowledge (expertise, know-how, creative
forms of working together, and so on) at the level of individuals and small groups (Cookand Brown, 1999) that can be valuable resources, if they can be found and leveraged. A
community establishes itself as a knowledge ecology when it links these resources together (by way of appropriate infrastructures).

Two Cases
Next we describe two cases of global innovation (in the form of increased enterprise coherence) in which local knowledge was leveraged through the development of communities whose locally appropriate organizational, social, and technological infrastructures
enabled them to function as knowledge ecologies. After we present the cases, we assess
them, focusing on: (1) similarities and differences in their organizational, social, andtechnological infrastructures, (2) the role of coherence agents, and (3) their nature as
knowledge ecologies.

Xerox Common Management Interface
The Xerox Common Management Interface (XCMI) community was initiated to develop
greater networking capability among Xerox products. The goal was a range of productsthat could all be easily managed (that is, installed, configured, monitored, and operated)through a single computer network. For products to operate in this way requires that eachmachine present a software interface to the network that is compatible with that of othermachines on the network; that is, they need a common management interface. However,since each product was developed by a unique product development team, the softwareinterface for each product tended to be unique. The lack of a standing mechanism bywhich the software written by different product development teams could be coordinatedgave rise to the XCMI community.
Two Xerox software developers, Gary Padlisky and Paul Gloger, began, on their own
initiative, to address this challenge. Ultimately, their solution was simple, but it proved
to be highly productive. First, they struck on the idea of establishing software interface
standards that could apply across a range of machines. In practice, this meant getting
each team of software developers for a range of products to agree to write theirmachine’s code so that, when finished, the interfaces for all the machines would be compatible. However, different machines have different software requirements: the software
for operating a fax machine, for example, can be substantially different from that for

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Local Knowledge—Global Innovation

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operating a photocopier. What the respective programmers need to know, meanwhile,
can be similarly disparate: different software developers have different areas of expertise. That is, no one software developer’s knowledge covers all the various machines thatmight be networked. So the problem was double-barreled. It meant generating common
standards for machines with different software requirements and doing so by drawing
on the specialized knowledge of different software developers, who were themselves
scattered among largely unconnected product teams.
Paul and Gary recognized that they needed to findprogrammers who were working on products that could
ultimately have a common interface, and that they would
have to find a way for those programmers to work together. They did two things. Through informal channels,
they began to spread the word about the common interface idea, and they set up a weekly conference call open
to all software developers who wanted to chat about generating interface standards. Week by week, different developers joined the conversation, raising questions fromthe perspective of the products they were working on andbringing their own specialized knowledge. Some softwaredevelopers became fairly regular participants; otherscame and went. In general, the number of participants grew, and the conversations became increasingly productive.
The conference calls began to produce a growing set of standards applicable acrossa range of products. As the standards were either established or augmented, they werearchived in an XCMI website within the Xerox intranet where interested developers could
refer to them and comment on them. This work, meanwhile, began to contribute to thedevelopment of a common interface and, in doing so, to enterprise coherence.
What began as an ad hoc, exploratory conference call became an established occasion
for a loosely associated group of developers from various product teams to work productively. Many participants never met face to face, but they came to know one another andoften chatted about nonwork matters as the “meetings” were getting started. XCMI began
to feel and function like a community of software developers with common interests who
were engaged in productive, innovative work. Although Paul and Gary continued to set up
the calls and maintain the document archive on the XCMI website, they did not see themselves as “owners” of XCMI. Instead, they made a point of acting only as “conveners andfacilitators for the community.” When they made a business card for the XCMI web addressand conference call phone number, no person was listed on the card, only XCMI.

What began as an ad hoc,
exploratory conference call became
an established occasion for a loosely
associated group of developers fromvarious product teams to work
productively.

The Toolkit Working GroupThe Toolkit Working Group (TWG) is an ad hoc community within Xerox concerned withproduct development, research, and advanced technology focusing on machine control
software. The internal operations of modern copiers, scanners, fax machines, and so on
require increasingly extensive, sophisticated, and reliable software. Some products call for
hundreds of thousands of lines of software code that can take months to produce, test,
and implement. The purpose of the TWG has been to establish and contribute to an
intranet archive (the “Toolkit”) of machine-control software that can be a resource fordeveloping software across a range of new products. The idea is to reduce the need towrite each new product’s software from scratch by using chunks of function-specific software from the Toolkit.
There is a clear advantage in being able to streamline product development by reusing blocks of software that have already been written and tested in the development ofother products. The TWG community’s objective, therefore, has been to maximize theamount of control software for a given product that can be taken from the Toolkit, thus
minimizing the portion that is custom, non-reusable code. This allows Xerox to develop
products more rapidly, more reliably, and more cost-effectively. Furthermore, using the
Toolkit helps standardize software functionality and interfaces across products, which
contributes to greater enterprise coherence.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONS

Since inception, the TWG has had twocore values: co-ownership and an
equal voice in decision making.

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BAUER AND COOK
Local Knowledge—Global Innovation

The TWG began in 1991 when a single Xerox software developer, Marc Webster,began looking for ways to reuse software code. It was clear that, for chunks of code to
be reusable, they had to be sensitive to the parallel software needs of different products.
So, Marc figured, the best thing to do was to get software developers from different teams
together to produce a single chunk of code that could work in more than one machine.
Then, when such chunks were put into the Toolkit, their more generic flavor might also
make them attractive to future product development efforts.
As this process began, it was quickly learned that the demands of writing software
as a joint effort typically required the developers to be in the same location. Being able
to point to a line of code on a workstation and discuss it in real time is essential to theefficiency of this work. A major feature of work in the TWG, therefore, became the colocation of key participants. In some instances, TWG members have relocated for days
or weeks to work on joint development projects.
As such projects were completed, their software packages were put into a document
archive on the TWG website, which programmers could access on the Xerox intranet.
Over time, the number of items in the Toolkit grew. New product development teams
then began to draw items from the Toolkit to reuse in their own software development.
Eventually, more and more of Marc’s own work shifted to bringing the Toolkit to the attention of software developers who might work jointly. Over time, the TWG took on alife of its own as more developers learned about it and even began to initiate joint work.
After its first few years, Marc occasionally learned of TWG-related projects and contributions to the Toolkit only after they have been completed.
Since 1993, the TWG has included participants from several product development
teams, both large and small, as well as participants from Xerox R&D organizations. Different groups and individuals have participated for different reasons. Some product development teams have been able to codevelop with other teams, thus increasing eachteam’s productivity. Other product teams have simply picked up existing Toolkit softwarefrom the TWG document archive, which has allowed them to focus more of their development resources on product-specific areas. In addition, R&D units, such as the Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC), have worked with the TWG to do research on product development practices. This, in turn, has enabled innovations to flow more quickly from basic
research into new products, while also bringing product challenges and problems directly to the attention of R&D.
One of R&D’s contributions to the TWG came through a group called Control Software Platforms (CSP) with which Marc had been involved. The CSP group had worked
with two different product development teams helping to define particular aspects of theirsoftware architecture and interface. Their progress was captured in TWG documents. The
joint work began to phase out as the deadlines for the two products approached. CSP
then learned that a third product development team needed to produce similar interface
software. Although the existing software was very close to what the third team needed, asignificant gap in the software architecture would have to be closed. No one from theother two product teams, however, had time to work withthe third team. So a member of the CSP team went to thethird team’s site and spent several weeks working with theprogrammers on the development of the product’s systemarchitecture. He drew on the architecture that CSP and theother two product teams had already defined and posted
in the Toolkit archive. He then translated the terminology
and design rationale of the software from the Toolkit into
terms that addressed the third product team’s design specifications. Together, they built
a refined architecture that supported the goals of all three new products. Ultimately, CSP’s
involvement with the three product teams helped advance innovation that contributed tocoherence across multiple product families.
Since inception, the TWG has had two core values: co-ownership and an equal voicein decision making. The Toolkit is not owned by anyone. Marc is its initiator and an expert on its function, but not its owner. All the participating individuals and groups coown the Toolkit and the TWG’s work. Any individual or group with an appropriate needto draw on or contribute to the Toolkit is free to do so. Each group involved in the TWG’s

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

work has an equal voice in decisions taken concerning the
TWG and the Toolkit. All concerned individuals andgroups make joint decisions on additions or modifications
to the Toolkit or on collaborative TWG work. In this way,
the Toolkit has grown, and TWG has sustained an increasing level of cross-organizational work and has made significant contributions to software reuse and greater
coherence across product lines.

Leverage the Local; Generate the Global© Emily Sper

Next we sketch some key factors contributing to XCMI’s and
TWG’s success in achieving global innovations by leveraging local knowledge. In both cases, members learned fromeach other and by making use of materials posted to theirrespective document archives. However, in each case, important bits of local knowledge
were leveraged without all community members necessarily learning or knowing them. In
this respect, a good measure of XCMI’s and TWG’s success rested on their roles as communities that functioned as knowledge ecologies. That is, they linked physically and organizationally distributed groups and individuals in ways that enabled them to draw on theirdifferent areas of expertise, and through ways of working together to generate new knowledge and new capabilities. This interaction was greatly facilitated by the appropriate fit between the infrastructures they developed and the specific character of their work. Also, ineach case, coherence agents played an important catalytic role in advancing global aims byleveraging local knowledge.

Infrastructure

18

Organizational Infrastructure
TWG and XCMI have two significant features in common. First, people who were interested
in improving the quality and efficiency of their work started the projects; they were notmandated. Second, both groups functioned across traditional organizational lines: by definition, the work of each project needed to move among product development teams thattraditionally did not have formal organizational connections. Eventually, both projects also
became authorized (in both senses of the term). Managers gave them some measure of
official recognition; for example, they began to support and track their progress and identify potential new members. And they were authorized as key members who defined the
projects’ missions and developed membership identity (for example, the TWG logo was
broadly recognized, and XCMI built an identity by circulating its generic business card).
The cross-organizational character of both projects was necessary for both the workat the local level and the global aims they were serving. Each chunk of the TWG’s software needed to be generic enough to be reusable. Likewise, every interface XCMI produced had to meet its common standards. At the same time, each software developer
working toward these global aims was also responsible for ensuring that the software inquestion functioned properly in his or her product. Thus, each software developer’s specific work was both global and local in focus—what we call its glocal character. Further,in designing such software, the developers needed to draw on the expertise of other developers across traditional organizational lines. Finally, to be successful, such crossorganizational work needed appropriate managerial support. (Learning to recognize andaddress this need is an important, emerging challenge for managers.)
Social Infrastructure
The nature of social infrastructure—the emergent social roles, relations, and groupings
through which work is done—is constantly emerging from and evolving within work
practice itself.
In both XCMI and TWG, the people who initiated the projects (Paul and Gary in
XCMI, and Marc in TWG) took on the role of convener or expert. But that role is played
down, and any sense of ownership is rejected. Any relevant members of each project,

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Local Knowledge—Global Innovation

not a key “authority,” make key decisions about membership, the actual work, andpostings to website archives, for example. The co-ownership of the group, of its way ofworking, and of its products has been, in our view, vitally important to each project’s
success. In particular, it has made involvement in each group attractive to potential participants by characterizing its work and products as growing from each participant’s
needs rather than being imposed by some general scheme.
A striking difference between the TWG and the XCMI communities lies in their social
infrastructures. The TWG is largely a loose-knit network of co-located, ad hoc teams. The
XCMI community, in contrast, is a conversation-based work group of physically dispersed
members. We believe that each form of social infrastructure grew from each group’s needs
and is appropriate to the particular details and character of its work. XCMI’s work on network interface standards calls for discussing the functions of various machines at a generallevel, which has been easily and successfully done through conference calls. No aspect of
the work requires co-location. In fact, when Paul and Gary were asked if they would like tobring the participants together, they said it would be great to meet them but it was “completely unjustifiable,” given XCMI’s kind of work. By contrast, the TWG ad hoc teams’ software development work calls for them to look at, point to, and manipulate software code
together in real time. Thus, the co-location that is a signature of the TWG’s social infrastructure grows from the specific needs of its work.

Technological Infrastructure
The technological infrastructure of each community has also grown from and dovetailed
with the details of its specific work. The XCMI community’s conversation-based practiceis easily supported by conference-call facilities, including a phone number for the weekly
conference calls and the XCMI business card. The conference calls have been closely
linked to the community’s use of its website document archive. Commonly, the resultsof conversations have been written up and posted to the website so members of the community can comment on them between weekly sessions. This individual work, meanwhile, feeds into the next conference-call session. Likewise, interface standards are
documented and posted in the XCMI document archive.
The TWG community also depends on its intranet website. The Toolkit exists on
TWG’s website as a document archive. Referring to the archive, drawing from it, andmaking additions and amendments to it are common practices within the TWG. The
TWG’s technological infrastructure differs most strongly from that of XCMI in its supportof co-location. Working jointly on software code gave rise to a need for physicalworkspaces that facilitate verbal and visual communications, such as shared or adjacent
Table 1 The infrastructures of the two communities are compared in the context of their respective work and enterprise aims.
Organizational
Infrastructure

The Work

XCMI

TWG

Support for
conveners
Develop standard Enable cross-product,
for softwarecross-divisioninterfaces
collaboration

Build reusable
softwareSocialInfrastructure

Technological
InfrastructureEnterprise
Aims

Network of distributed
ad-hoc teams

Conference calls

Maximized
networkability
Greater coherence
across products

Support for conveners Network of co-locateddevelopment working
group
Enable cross-platform
cross-divisioncollaboration

WebsiteDocument archive

Reduced customization
costs & time

TravelMore re-usable code

Co-located work
stations
WebsiteGreater coherence
across products
Reduced development
costs
Accelerated
time-to-market

Document archive

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BAUER AND COOK

workspaces and computer workstations on a local network. In such contexts, developers
can look at, point to, and manipulate chunks of code displayed on a single workstation
or written on a whiteboard and print out, discuss, and mark draft documents (table 1).

A coherence agent does work that is distinct from his or her own product-specific work, whichcatalyzes the work of others through active and productive engagement in the development
work of a given community. Coherence agents have at various times facilitated the XCMI and
TWG communities’ productivity, both locally and globally. (Their roles are akin to those oforganizational translators and knowledge brokers [Brown and Duguid, 1999].) In each case,coherence agents’ work was different, but the general nature of the role was the same.
In the case of XCMI, Paul and Gary have been coherence agents. Their participationin the community does not stem from any product development teams they happen to
be on, but rather from the need to loop new members into conversations or to movedeveloping interface standards toward completion. They act as catalysts that make thecommunity’s conversation-based practice possible and productive. They establish andmaintain the conference calls and the website document archive. However, their role isnot simply to set the table and then sit back while others work. Nor is it only a traditional staff role of passing information between different practice areas. As coherence
agents, they are catalysts in the community’s conceptual work. They engage in the substantive details of conference calls and help distill the results into forms that are postedon the website. In doing so, they use their own technical expertise to keep the concernsand expertise of other members in parallel so that no product team’s needs are left behind or ignored in the development of common standards. This work meets all the criteria for coherence agents and has helped contribute to global innovation.
The role of the CSP group in the TWG case also fits these criteria. The CSP’s initial
engagement with the TWG was prompted by an interest in moving new software developments quickly into product streams. Later, when the group recognized the possibilityof bringing the third group into line with the first two, the connection took on a new dimension. In this shift of involvement with the TWG, the CSP began to function as a coherence agent. The CSP member who co-located with the third team shifted his focus
from his original work to engagement with the specific software work of the three product teams. His involvement proved essential in making the software of the three teams
compatible, thus adding to the reusability of the Toolkit.
In both cases, the coherence agents’ involvement in the work of the communities proved
valuable for leveraging local knowledge in ways that have contributed to global innovations.

Local Knowledge—Global Innovation

Coherence Agents20© Emily Sper

Knowledge Ecologies
A community with common interests but different areas of expertise whose
members are able to work together productively by drawing on what eachmember knows is a knowledge ecology. We see projects like the TWG and
XCMI communities as knowledge ecologies. Both are examples of how various
pockets of local knowledge distributed around the corporation are linked toenable creative, productive work. This knowledge (expertise, skills, creative
ways of working together, and so on) is part of Xerox’s intellectual capital.
However, without ways to link such local knowledge, much of this corporate
resource can go untapped.
In each community, the ability to share or transfer certain information is important, as their web-based document archives attest. But there are other waysthat members have drawn on each other’s expert knowledge without sharing ortransferring it. In the XCMI community, for example, expert knowledge of scanner software is essential for designing a common interface. But not everyone discussing that particular interface needs to become an expert in scanner software.
Only one scanner expert is needed. The same is true of the other machines involved in the common interface. This specialized knowledge that is distributed

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSSummaryIn the two cases we’ve presented, significant innovation at a global level has been achieved
by making productive use of local knowledge. Both cases are examples of how knowledge
that is distributed about the corporation has been identified, linked, and leveraged to productive ends. This has been accomplished through the establishment of ad hoc cross-organizational communities of individuals and small groups who have diverse bits ofknowledge yet share common interests. The work of these communities has been madepossible by the existence of organizational, social, and technological infrastructures whose
forms have grown out of, fit, and support the particular details and character of the work
each community does. In each community, the results of the work have been functionallyapplicable to individual products yet generic enough to contribute to development efforts
across a range of products. At key times, coherence agents have helped generate and maintain this dual character. Further, in some instances, information essential to the success ofthese communities is “shared” through such mechanisms as document archives. In others,
knowledge that has been equally essential has been made use of not by its being “shared”(that is, “transferred” or “duplicated”) but by making it “sharable.” That is, knowledge
possessed by individuals or small groups has been used by other members of these communities without it being learned by them. In this sense, the community itself has learned
to make creative use of knowledge variously distributed among its members. Finally, theability of these communities to leverage knowledge in this way has led us to see them asknowledge ecologies. These knowledge ecologies, using organizational, social, and technological infrastructures in which information can be shared and knowledge can be madesharable, have made it possible to leverage local knowledge in ways that generate global
innovation.

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

throughout the community is not shared. However, through the community’s conversations, the knowledge becomes “sharable.” In developing software standards, members of
the XCMI community can draw on each other’s knowledge without acquiring it. In thisway, the XCMI and TWG communities, as knowledge ecologies, can leverage local knowledge from various parts of the corporation in ways that contribute to global innovation.

References
Brown, J.S. and P. Duguid. “Organizing Knowledge.” Reflections 1 (1999): 29–42.
Brown, J.S. and E. Solomon Grey. “The People Are the Company.” Fast Company 1 (1995): 78–82.
Cook, S.D.N. and J.S. Brown. “Bridging Epistemologies: The Generative Dance Between Organizational Knowledge and Organizational Knowing.” Organization Science 10 (1999): 381–400.
Cook, S.D.N. and D. Yanow. “Culture and Organizational Learning.” Journal of Management Inquiry
2 (1993): 373–390.
Lave, J. and E. Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Leonard-Barton, D. Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1995).
Nonaka, I. and H. Takeuchi. The Knowledge-Creating Company (New York: Oxford University Press,
1995).
Prahalad, C.K. and G. Hamel. “The Core Competence of the Corporation.” Harvard Business Review(May–June 1990): 79–91.
Stewart, T.A. Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (New York: Doubleday/Currency,1997).
Stucky, S. “Social Ecology Brief” (Menlo Park, CA: Institute for Research on Learning Working Paper, 1998).
Stucky, S. “Ordinary Organizations” (unpublished manuscript).

Acknowledgments
This paper would not have been possible without the extensive commitment and openness of the key members of the two communities. Gary Padlisky and Paul Gloger (XCMI)
and Marc Webster (TWG) have worked with extraordinary dedication to develop new

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ways of working with teams and across formal organizational boundaries forenterprisewide results. Their collaboration in reflecting on their efforts and sharing theextensive documentation of their projects has been tremendously valuable.
We are also grateful to the encouragement and insights of John Seely Brown, chief
scientist for Xerox, whose support led to the persistence in achieving this work and has
inspired our thinking. Estee Solomon Gray of Congruity has provided extensive collaboration on core competency and communities of practice over the course of several years
and has inspired the XCMI group to take up the early successes of TWG in trying to meettheir objectives.
Portions of the research that contributed to the writing of this paper were supported
by a grant from the National Science Foundation (#9320927).

Commentaryby Stephen C. Buckley

Stephen C. Buckley
Entrepreneur, writer, and consultant

22

Bauer and Cook present a case for investing modestly in “coherence agents” in order to createcross-organizational “knowledge ecologies,” which can link local expertise and garner productive
returns at the firm level. In both the supporting examples, groups of software developers located indifferent departments of Xerox worked together and succeeded in creating something of value tothe organization. While the framework of “coherence agents” and “knowledge ecologies” helps us
conceptualize the activities of the programmers, there are some fairly fundamental prerequisites
for their successes that the authors leave almost unexplored.
The most important observation I can make about these two groups is that they were bothfounded by, and composed of, software engineers. However, not only were they software engineers,
they were also highly specialized types of software engineers. Each was involved in very specifictechnical work. As a result, the contention that the groups were working cross-organizationally becomes somewhat blurred. While these programmers were certainly in different departments, I propose they had far more in common with each other than with the other members of their own“local” departments, such as marketing or accounting. Computer languages are called languages
because they are just that. They enable those conversant in them to build and communicate highly
complex and very specific ideas through time and space for the benefit of others. There can be little
doubt that these programmers enjoyed a productive relationship with each other at least in part
because it was built on the common language and culture of the hacker.
The authors do concede to this, albeit briefly, stating “a large measure of their success rests, weconclude, on the appropriate fit between the specific character of their work and the nature of theirorganizational, social, and technological infrastructures.” Had these groups been cross-disciplinary
as well as cross-organizational, I suggest that the results probably would have been very different.
Therefore, to attribute their success predominantly to the role of the coherence agent, without taking into account the makeup of the participants, paints an incomplete picture.
Seen from this perspective, the concept of what constitutes “local” versus “global” spatially also
becomes blurred. What is local and what is global? The programmers who were part of the XCMI
group stated it would “be great to meet” some of the participants but it would be “completely unjustifiable.” This suggests that locality is of no relevance whatsoever because had these individuals
been either sitting next to each other in the same department or distributed around the world, theresults would have been the same.
There are many other interesting points in these two cases that deserve mentioning. Perhaps mostnotable is that the two groups—without any authorization or support to speak of—conceptualized,
designed, prototyped, manufactured, and delivered two successful products. Nobody told them to doit, yet they did it. Someone generated an idea that was simple and compelling, others coalescedaround it, a team formed, individuals assumed various roles, and the products were built. Cool.
These cases are very similar in nature to the development of the Linux computer operating system in the mid-1990s. Linux, a competitor to the Microsoft Windows platform, was the brainchildof a 22-year-old Finnish college student, Linus Torvald. He wrote the first version of the softwareand gave it away free on the Internet. Soon a loyal following emerged, and other computer hackers
worldwide began adding useful extensions, fixing bugs, and recompiling the open source code soVolume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONS

1. The individuals who initiated the projects communicated a simple, compelling idea for a productthat would benefit a larger community.
2. The initiators had no organizational authority and, therefore, adopted the concept of co-ownership of the process and its resulting products, which made involvement attractive because theother programmers could participate in the creative process.
3. There was no plan, only an objective; therefore, people could have free rein over the creative
process, improvise, and take individual initiative.
4. Participation was voluntary, so the programmers were motivated to work toward the common
goals.
5. The groups used the technological infrastructure in the form of sharing documents and a computer code library on the Xerox intranet to support their social infrastructure.
6. Participants were highly accountable because each was “responsible for ensuring that the software in question functioned properly in his or her product.”

BAUER AND COOK
Local Knowledge—Global Innovationthat it could run on different hardware platforms. This homegrown operating system is now running on 8 million computers worldwide.
This same type of guerilla software development seems to have occurred within Xerox’s organizational boundaries. However, in my experience, many of these initiatives are started and rarely
produce results. So the questions arise, what enabled this type of activity and what made it successful? A few elements seem to characterize these two initiatives:

If any one of these elements were absent, the groups would not have achieved success. While mostof their practices are extensible to other organizational forms, the technical savvy required to use
information technology (IT) in the way in which these groups did may not lend itself well to otherfunctional areas. However, as IT becomes both more ubiquitous and simpler to use, it is easy to
imagine an age in which locale and position within an organization become less important, andshared interest becomes the connective tissue.

23

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

FEATURE

Conversation with
Ikujiro Nonaka
C. Otto Scharmer

C. Otto Scharmer (COS): Why did you become interested in knowledge creation?

Ikujiro Nonaka
Professor
Hitotsubashi University
Xerox Distinguished Professorof Knowledge
University of California, Berkeley

Ikujiro Nonaka: Originally, I was interested in information processing. At the Universityof California, Berkeley, my major was marketing. I studied consumer decision processes
under Francisco Nicosia. His major contribution was the conceptualization of consumer
decision processes from the perspective of information processing. My interest shiftedfrom marketing to organization theory after I took a sequence of three sociology courses
from Neil Smelser’s theoretical viewpoint and Arthur Stinchcomb’s methodological viewpoint—a beautiful marriage of theory and method. We had to construct our own social
theory, so I proposed a theory on centralization versus decentralization.
The turning point in my transition from information to knowledge came when I participated with my colleagues Hirotaka Takeuchi and Kenichi Imai in a Harvard Business
School colloquium on productivity and technology in March 1984. I found that the existing theory of information processing was not adequate. The process of innovation is
not simply information processing; it’s a process to capture, create, leverage, and retain
knowledge. I was beginning to theorize how an organization creates knowledge.
COS: What brought you to the insight that information processing is insufficient? Was it
your exposure to companies, to particular pieces of literature, or was it your thinking?

24

C. Otto Scharmer
Lecturer, MIT Sloan School ofManagement
University of Innsbruck, Austria
Research Partner, GeneronConsulting

Ikujiro Nonaka: When we talked with individuals in innovative organizations, they always started with their beliefs. A belief about images of the world, which you may call amental model, is subjective. They tried to convert this subjective belief into objective language. They also tried to justify it within their organizations and finally realize it in a concrete form. The whole process originated in their subjective beliefs.
But as you know, Herbert Simon’s information processing paradigm tries to separate
facts and values. Value problems are always avoided in “science,” which has to be basedon facts. So in his theory, Simon intentionally excludes value problems. He treats value
as a given because it is subjective. Information processing excludes our beliefs and images of reality. But an innovation comes from a subjective belief or an image of the world.
I tried to differentiate two types of information, namely, syntactic and semantic information, and wrote The Corporate Evolution: Managing Organizational Information
Creation. I shifted from information processing to information creation. With this inmind, I continued research on the innovation process and discovered that information
creation is not enough. Finally, I came up with the idea of knowledge creation.
COS: What is the difference between information creation and knowledge creation?

© 2000 by C. Otto Scharmer.
McKinsey & Co. sponsored theinterview, which was conductedin February 1996.

Ikujiro Nonaka: In simple terms, information is the flow, and knowledge is the stock.
Information is the flow of a message, while knowledge is created by accumulating information. Thus, information is a necessary medium or material for eliciting and constructing knowledge.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSSCHARMER
. . . knowledge has to do withgoodness, beauty, and truth.

COS: On the one hand, you are criticizing approaches tolearning that are overly centered in the mind, that lack“learning by doing.” On the other hand, you relate learning concepts to internalization, which primarily is learning by doing. How do those two go together?
Ikujiro Nonaka: I would like to talk about the differences between organizational learning and knowledge
creation later. But in the theory of organizational
knowledge creation, we have to go through all fourmodes dynamically. It seems to me that organizational

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

Conversation with Ikujiro Nonaka

Another difference is that information is something passive. When I switch on a TV,
information comes, regardless of my commitment. But knowledge comes from my belief, so it’s more proactive.
I emphasize the nature of knowledge as “justified belief and skill.” I consider knowledge to be a dynamic human process of justifying personal belief toward the truth. More
broadly, knowledge has to do with goodness, beauty, and truth. I found this aspect of knowledge while studying the innovation process. When you look into the innovation process, itreally has to do with developing a justified true belief. The innovation process is not simply
information creation, but starts from our beliefs and aspirations and is finally crystallized
within and between organizations through collaboration.
In the West, there is a long history of philosophicalinquiry into knowledge or epistemology, from Plato to
Descartes to Michael Polanyi. Drawing especially on
Polanyi, I conceptualized knowledge in terms of two
types, tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit
knowledge is personal, context-specific, and therefore
hard to formalize and communicate. Explicit knowledge, on the other hand, is transmittable in formal, systematic language.
Tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge are not totally separate but are mutuallycomplementary entities. Without experience, we cannot truly understand. But unless wetry to convert tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, we cannot reflect upon and shareit organizationally. Through this dynamic interaction between the two types of knowledge, personal knowledge becomes organizational knowledge. And the knowledge or intellectual infrastructure of an organization encourages its individual members to develop
new knowledge through new experiences.
This dynamic process is the key to organizational knowledge creation. The interaction
between the two types of knowledge brings about what I call four modes of knowledge conversion, that is, socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization (figure 1).
Socialization is a process of creating common tacit knowledge through shared experiences. For socialization, we need to build a field of interaction, where individuals shareexperiences and space at the same time, thereby creating common unarticulated beliefs
or embodied skills.
Externalization is a process of articulating tacit knowledge into such explicit knowledge as concepts and/or diagrams, often using metaphors, analogies, and/or sketches.
This mode is triggered by a dialogue intended to create concepts from tacit knowledge.
Creating a new product concept is a good example.
Combination is a process of assembling new and existing explicit knowledge into asystemic knowledge, such as a set of specifications for a new product prototype. Often,
a newly created concept should be combined with existing knowledge to make it materialize it into something tangible.
Internalization is a process of embodying explicit knowledge into tacit, operational
knowledge such as know-how. “Learning by doing or using” triggers this mode. Explicit
knowledge documented into text, sound, or video formats facilitates the internalization
process. Therefore, manuals, a quintessential example of
explicit knowledge, are widely used for internalization.

25

Figure 1 Four modes of knowledge
creation.

SCHARMERConversation with Ikujiro Nonaka

learning theories do not comprehend this whole dynamic process. I limit learning to internalization alone, namely, conversion from explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge.
Learning theories cannot explain the innovation process or the total process of organizational knowledge creation.
COS: From what I know about the work of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL),
I would say that Peter Senge’s concept of generative learning is essentially about the process of creating. It starts with what people want to create and focuses on the creative tension between aspiration, on the one hand, and current reality, on the other. So his whole
notion of personal mastery is based on the methodology of the creative arts. I would liketo focus on your work and on the architecture of your theory first, and then discuss howthat relates to learning theories and SoL. I think SoL’s work is in tune with your theory.
In middle-up-down management, there is a differentiation between roles, and people
have only one role. There is a functional differentiation, where different people play different roles and come together in a team for knowledge creation. In the hypertext organization, there is another type of differentiation, and the people participate in all three roles.
As I see it, the hypertext organization is much more related to twenty-first century
thought than middle-up-down management, which is more traditional, in my view, because you are saying there are three roles and different people play different roles. So
my questions are: How does middle-up-down management relate to the hypertext organization? How do the three levels integrate? What is the integration between the threestructural levels and between the three roles?
Ikujiro Nonaka: First of all, I emphasize the positive roles of middle managers. In the US,
middle managers are denigrated as cancer. The Japanese see middle managers as key tofacilitating the process of organizational knowledge creation. They serve as the strategic
knot that binds top management with front-line managers. They are a bridge between thevisionary ideals of the top and the often chaotic realities of business confronted by frontline workers. They are the true “knowledge engineers” of the knowledge-creating company.
In the middle-up-down model, top management creates a vision or a dream, while
middle management develops more concrete concepts that front-line employees canunderstand and implement. Middle managers try to solve contradictions between what
top management hopes to create and what actually exists. In other words, top
management’s role is to create a grand theory, while middle management tries to create
a mid-range theory that it can test empirically within the company with the help of frontline employees. The middle-up-down model is not an either-or approach; it is an interactive process of both top-down and bottom-up.

26

COS: Middle managers have to integrate the whole system, right?
Ikujiro Nonaka: Yes. So to promote integration structurally, the hypertext organization
comes in. It is the dynamic synthesis of the bureaucratic structure and the task-force
structure, and it reaps benefits from both. The bureaucratic structure efficiently implements, exploits, and accumulates new knowledge through combination and internalization, while the task force is indispensable for creating new knowledge throughsocialization and externalization. The efficiency and stability of the bureaucratic structure are combined with the effectiveness and dynamism of the task force in a hypertext
organization. Moreover, another layer, the knowledge base, serves as a clearinghouse forthe new knowledge generated in the bureaucratic structure and the task force.
COS: I think I understand this. But what is much less clear to me is the knowledge-baselayer. Sometimes you call it the corporate university and sometimes the knowledge base.
Ikujiro Nonaka: The knowledge-base layer includes such intellectual capital as corporate
vision, organizational culture, databases, and individual knowledge. Once the cross-functional team completes its task, team members move down to the knowledge-base layer
and make an inventory of newly created knowledge. Then team members return to thebusiness layer for routine operations until called to another project.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSSCHARMERConversation with Ikujiro Nonaka

Figure 2 The hypertext organization.
Source: Ikujiro Nonaka and
Hirotaka Takeuchi, The KnowledgeCreating Company, Oxford
University Press, 1995, p. 169;
reprinted with permission of the
publisher.

COS: So it would not include, for instance, space for reflection? You suggested institutionalizing reflection in action. Would that be a part of the corporate university?
Ikujiro Nonaka: Before going into that, let me add what I call “enabling conditions” fororganizational knowledge creation. There are five enabling conditions in my theory—intention; autonomy; fluctuation or creative chaos; redundancy; and, finally, requisite variety. Intention is embodied in an organizational vision. Autonomy increases the chance ofserendipity. Fluctuation and creative chaos stimulate interaction between organizations.
The benefits of creative chaos are possible only if members can reflect on their actions;otherwise, chaos leads to destruction. Redundancy includes intentional overlapping of
information about business activities, management responsibilities, and the company.
Requisite variety means a minimum internal variety for the purpose of organizational integration and a maximum internal variety for an effective adaptation to the environment.
Organizational information and knowledge must match the external complexity.
COS: Different levels of knowledge may require different infrastructures and methods?
Ikujiro Nonaka: A hypertext organization is a structural device that incorporates theseenabling conditions. What is unique about a hypertext organization is that three totallydifferent layers or contexts coexist within the same organization (figure 2).
COS: I am wondering if you would agree to my putting this in different terms. The firstrow is about knowledge creation. The second row is about knowledge application. And
the third row is about knowledge dissemination.
Ikujiro Nonaka: Yes, so the three layers are interactive.
COS: In that sense, wouldn’t the corporate university, because it’s dealing with dissemination, include all the infrastructures dealing with capacity building and creating new
capabilities? I would have drawn that the other way around. Knowledge creation, knowledge application, and, in between, knowledge dissemination. Because the basic dialectic
is between these two, and the other is in between. That, in a way, is a major innovation
conceptually, because the task force level has been thought about before.
Ikujiro Nonaka: You may be right. That’s an interesting idea and good suggestion.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

27

SCHARMER
Conversation with Ikujiro NonakaCOS: Concerning your five stages or model of organizational knowledge creation, from theview of Western companies, the most crucial ones are steps one and five (figure 3). In yourwritings and based on your experience, you are focusing mostly on externalization, whichis also very important. But I think steps one and five are even more important.
Ikujiro Nonaka: Socialization, right?
COS: Yes, because you have the infrastructure in place in Japanese companies, whereas
the infrastructure is missing in US and European companies. In the US, there are different conditions. How could you create such an infrastructure to give a point of departure
for the whole process?
Ikujiro Nonaka: First, I’ll answer your question about organizational structure. I wrote aJapanese-language book on the US Marine Corps. The Marine Corps has a unique organizational system called the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF). The idea is to keep
the air, land, and logistical elements together as an integrated team.
COS: . . . fractal structure, right?
Ikujiro Nonaka: Yes. It moved very quickly from a group to an organization without losing the basic functions of an organization. Without a fractal configuration, the organization has to dissolve.
Most cross-functional teams in Japanese companies consist of 10 to 30 members withdiverse backgrounds, and there are 4 to 5 core members, each with multiple functional
backgrounds. Is socialization crucial? Yes, but companies like 3M or Hewlett-Packard arevery team-oriented and individual-oriented. Organizationally, Japanese companies enforce the formation of cross-functional teams, but in 3M’s case, it’s more voluntary, spontaneous, or autonomous. But the difference is a matter of degree, not kind.
I have to admit that socialization is difficult to achieve in the US because of its individualism and incentive systems. The Japanese incentive system is more team-oriented,
and, in principle, we don’t lay off people. Consequently, it is relatively easy to share experiences at Japanese companies. I admit there are infrastructural differences, but nonetheless, socialization is possible in the US. With socialization, American teams arestronger than Japanese ones, because Americans are strong individuals. Strong individuals and a strong team are complementary. Japanese teams may not necessarily be so.
To institutionalize team-oriented spirit, however, US organizations may need strong
corporate cultures, such as those at 3M, HP, or the Marine Corps. For the Japanese, it’s
relatively easy to do that without strong organizational cultures.

28

Figure 3 Five-phase model of theorganizational knowledge-creation
process.
Source: Ikujiro Nonaka and
Hirotaka Takeuchi, The KnowledgeCreating Company, Oxford
University Press, 1995, p. 84;
reprinted with permission of the
publisher.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONS

Ikujiro Nonaka: Again, fractal or holographic structures help.
COS: What exactly does fractal mean in terms of different functions or different hierarchical levels?
Ikujiro Nonaka: Both are related. Autonomous individuals function as part of the fractal
or holographic structure, in which the whole and each part share the same informationand knowledge. Original ideas emanate from autonomous individuals, diffuse within theteam, and then become organizational ideas. In this respect, the self-organizing individual assumes a position that is analogous to the core of nested Russian dolls. From theviewpoint of knowledge creation, an organization is more likely to maintain greater flexibility in moving from an individual to a group, to a department, a division, and corporation, and again back to the individual.
What we call the hypertext organization is made up of interconnected layers or contexts: the business system, the project team, and theknowledge base. In the case of Sharp, the Urgent Project
System gives its members, who could be recruited fromany section or department, the same “gold badge” authority as corporate directors during the project period.
Once the team develops a concept and a prototype, they
are quickly transferred to the relevant divisions for crystallization. In the hypertext organization, you have tohave strong support from top management to form this type of team.

SCHARMERConversation with Ikujiro Nonaka

COS: In the process model, is cross-leveling really a fifth phase, or is it a higher level ofthe previous four? SoL has had success in some projects, but in organizationwide dissemination of learnings and results, the whole corporate system reacts. The dissemination
process does not work right.

. . . the self-organizing individualassumes a position that is analogous
to the core of nested Russian dolls.

COS: You sometimes define a hypertext organization as the ideal situation in which its
members can switch to the context they need. But in your examples, it’s not that flexible. If I’m appointed by the president to a top-priority team, that doesn’t mean that I canswitch the context whenever I choose. I haven’t seen this instant switch in your examples. I have seen it only in your definition.
Ikujiro Nonaka: Of course, changing the context within the company is constrained bymanagement. But the friction among individuals and groups in setting their task boundaries is greater and more dynamic in the hypertext organization. Once top management
approves the members of the Urgent Project Team, they are empowered to do whatever
they like to complete the project within a limited time. Also, they closely interact with
top management. The roles and functions of top, middle, and lower-level managers may
rotate depending on the context within this compressed process. For example, a project
leader may take the role of a top manager, and a CEO can be below him or her, depending on the phase of the project.
Why knowledge creation? The most fundamental idea is that we can synthesize various theories and methods from the perspective of knowledge or knowledge creation. In
neoclassical economics, the market is conceptualized as the place for competition,
mainly in terms of price. What has not been explored so far is that the market can beviewed as a reservoir of knowledge. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out, the most criticalknowledge in the market is contextual, namely, tacit knowledge.
How to build a system to convert tacit knowledge in the market to explicit knowledge and finally crystallize it into a product is an organization’s fundamental function.
Organization design can be conceptualized totally from the perspective of knowledge
creation.
We can also reconceptualize business strategy from the knowledge-creation perspective, that is, how to capture, create, leverage, disseminate, and retain intellectual capital or
knowledge. Leadership processes are also conceptualized from the perspective of initiating,

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

29

SCHARMER
Conversation with Ikujiro Nonakapromoting, and maintaining the four modes of knowledge
creation. Knowledge engineering is the key process of leadership behavior. Corporate culture is further conceived fromthe perspective of shared experiences of acquiring, creating,
exploiting, and retaining knowledge. Furthermore, it may bepossible to construct basic disciplines of knowledge creation, such as the economics, sociology, or psychology ofknowledge creation.
COS: Your criticism of Western theoreticians such as Peter
Senge is that they lack theory. So you’re using an argument that Western folks usually use against, for instance,
Japanese approaches.

© Gene Beyt

Ikujiro Nonaka: The learning model is rooted in the Skinnerian behavioral paradigm, but our theory is rooted in
epistemology.
COS: I agree that learning concepts are about combination and internalization. But thework at SoL includes the externalization piece. For instance, dialogue plays a critical rolein SoL’s work. Dialogue, based on the work of David Bohm, is understood as collective
inquiry into underlying assumptions and shared mental models. For Bill Isaacs, the director of the Dialogue Project, developing a theory of dialogue is essential. This is a field
theory, so it describes the factors that determine the quality of the field. This is, especiallyfor US and European companies, crucial because that’s where the problem is in manycases.
For instance, there was a highly successful project at Ford, but the larger system resisted, so the dissemination process was not successful. Research has found that one
leverage to improve quality and team learning is to improve the level of trust among
team members. In SoL’s work, I see all four angles that you describe in your work. However, your criticism may also shed some new light on what SoL is doing.

30

Ikujiro Nonaka: Since the introduction of our theory, I have seen a number of papers
from the learning school incorporating the four modes of knowledge creation with different labels. I have two criticisms of learning perspectives:
First, they have not developed any comprehensive theory. They lack a view on thefundamentals of epistemology: what is knowledge, what is the nature of knowledge, andwhat constitutes learning. They are not clear about how the knowledge is captured, created, leveraged, and disseminated. They tend to focus on methods and tools of internalization. They are focused on the relationship between individuals and groups, but are
not clear about the relationships between individuals, groups, organizations, andinterorganizations.
Second, they generally consider learning to be an adaptive process. They are trappedin the behavioralistic concept of stimulus-response. They lack an active stance toward
the environment. They view “double loop learning” as a special task.
COS: I agree with your criticism of the learning school, but I think that you are referring to
only one part of the learning field. I see four paradigms of learning. One reason I was so intrigued by your work is because of your basic dimensions with ontological and epistemological distinctions. I also used those distinctions in my dissertation thesis, but in a different way.
In my thesis, the epistemological axis is the distinction between idea and experience.
The ontological axis is the distinction between materialism and spiritualism, which could
be called simple modernity and reflective modernity. Then you have four paradigms: therationalistic view, the adaptive concept of learning, the emergent concept of learning, andthe generative concept of learning. Senge’s approach would be the latter in my view. And
the Skinnerian approach is the adaptive approach. It is experienced-based or actual behavior, but only in the mode of simple modernity. So it is only the materialistic, externalview, not the spiritualistic, internal view.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONS

Ikujiro Nonaka: In our framework, learning is internalization.
COS: Would you agree that there is a need for deeper theoretical reflection? The main
focus of SoL’s work is not to create consistent theory, but to create a new . . .
Ikujiro Nonaka: . . . practice.

SCHARMERConversation with Ikujiro Nonaka

Your criticism of Senge is that the emergent type of learning is less emphasized andthe main emphasis is on the generative concept of learning. But that concept also includes knowledge creation. You imply that Senge does not take into account the embodiment and unity of mind and body. Some of the new writings shed light on practicalexperiences. In The Fifth Discipline Field Book, Senge and others show that there is a lotof collective inquiry, to use your terminology, in the externalization mode.

COS: Yes. To cooperate with real companies. To create a group of companies that haspractical experiences in projects. In other words, to generate data that could generate a
new theory.
Ikujiro Nonaka: American pragmatism is fine. Everything is packaged. That’s somethingthat is a fundamental difference between pragmatism and epistemology. We have to go
back to Plato and Descartes.
COS: I agree. But the American contribution may come from a philosophical tradition thatis primarily based on pragmatism and an action orientation.
Ikujiro Nonaka: Yes.
COS: There may be other contributions from Japan and Europe that could develop the
epistemological foundation on a global scale.
Ikujiro Nonaka: You may be right, and I understand that Dr. Senge has a more profoundphilosophy behind the developed techniques.
COS: There are also many other approaches toward organizational development and learning. Russ Ackoff makes the following distinction: First, there is data, then information, thenknowledge. So information is about know what, and knowledge is about know how. The
next level in his terminology is understanding, or know why. To transfer knowledge, you
use training; to disseminate understanding, you use education. Would you agree withAckoff’s distinction between knowledge and understanding?
Ikujiro Nonaka: Understanding is built in knowledge. In our dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation, know how is acquired mainly in socialization, know why is inexternalization and combination, and understanding is achieved after internalization.
Through one cycle of the knowledge spiral, we truly understand. We view knowledge as adynamic human process of justifying personal belief toward the truth. The complete cycle
across four modes is a transcendental process in which individual knowledge becomesgroup, organizational, and interorganizational knowledge, and then back to the individual.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

31

FEATURE

Sharing Knowledge in
Heterogeneous Environments
Natalia LevinaOn October 8 and 9, 1999, the first SoL Research Greenhouse brought together about
75 researchers, practitioners, and consultants to share ideas on leadership, organizational learning, and change. The exchange of ideas took several forms, including informal and formal conversations (“germination sessions”), poster and paper sessions, andpanel debates.
As the conference organizers Karen Ayas (SoL) and John Carroll (MIT Sloan School)emphasized the importance of reflecting on the Greenhouse, this paper is a summary of
my reflections based on my experience, memories, available research papers, and session tapes and notes. I center on the topic of knowledge sharing across boundaries—afocus of the Greenhouse’s discourse and a subject of my own research.

Natalia Levina
Doctoral candidate
Information Technologies GroupMIT Sloan School of Management

32

The Community of Communities
In setting the stage for the Greenhouse, John Carroll stated that one goal of the event was
to build relationships and nurture research in and around the SoL community. But the notion of “community” calls for a closer examination. Is SoL a single community? Karen Ayas
noted that SoL unites researchers, consultants, and practitioners. These are three very different communities. Moreover, members of SoL belong to different national cultures, organizations, professions, and even research fields—all constituting communities in their own
right. The realization that we live in a world of multiple communities is not new. However,in the past decade, research on learning has focused on homogeneous communities using
a “communities of practice” lens (Brown and Duguid, 1991). The Greenhouse underscoreda need to consider the heterogeneity within a community and its larger social context.
Dvora Yanow (California State University at Hayward) led one germination sessionin which 15 researchers discussed situated learning, knowledge, and knowledge transfer. The most prominent questions raised were: How does local knowledge connect to the collective knowledge in a productive way?
 What skills are necessary to achieve such connections?
 What are the limits to what we, as outside researchers, can learn about local practices?
With these questions as a base, presenters at the Greenhouse discussed how to successfully share knowledge across boundaries. They also talked about the leader’s role andqualities in facilitating learning activities in heterogeneous environments as well as methodologies of studying learning.
In this paper, I pull together common themes from some of the case studies discussed and identify prominent success factors as a way to share academic knowledge
with consultants and practitioners.

Reflecting on Case Studies© 2000 by the Society for Organizational Learning and theMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

Most of the case studies focused on sharing knowledge across different boundaries inside heterogeneous groups and across different groups. I have found it useful in my own
research to identify specific boundaries posing barriers to knowledge sharing. In the next

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONS

Selected Case Studies
Next I briefly summarize the case studies in the order of presentation. I indicate thegroups in the collaboration, their goals, and the boundaries to knowledge sharing thatthey encountered.

Silicon Alley
Theresa Lant (New York University) studied the formation of Silicon Alley, a new community
delivering Internet content, located in New York City. This new economic agglomeration spanning many organizations came together through converging boundaries of previously separate communities—traditional publishers, film-makers, broadcasters, journalists, graphic
artists, entrepreneurs, and technologists. Different communities gathered to create a new
single community with a unique identity. The boundaries to knowledge sharing, according to
my classifications, were relationship, spatial/temporal, inter-organizational, and professional.

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section, I classify types of boundaries relevant to the case studies, give an overview, anddiscuss their success factors.
Different types of boundaries pose distinct barriers to knowledge sharing (table 1).
Some boundaries overlap (for example, status and relationship boundaries, and organizational and spatial/temporal boundaries), but each poses different challenges. For example, it is possible to have a relationship boundary characterized by a low level of trust
between people who are in the same organizational unit, practice the same profession,
have the same organizational status, and are collocated in time and space.

Xerox PARC
Sim Sitkin (Duke University) reported on his study of Xerox PARC projects conducted withJohn Seely Brown (Xerox PARC). They examined collaborations among artists, scientists,
engineers, and designers or marketers. These cross-disciplinary collaborations were created in order to enhance innovation opportunities among individual specialists, while
maintaining the separate goals and identities of the communities involved. The boundaries
I identified were relationship, inter-organizational, intra-organizational, and professional.
Surgical Teams
Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School) studied the introduction of new technology
into surgical teams, highlighting the importance of knowledge sharing between physicians and nurses and across various medical care settings (for example, intensive careunit and primary care physicians). The goal was to adopt new medical technology as efficiently as possible into an already diverse community. The boundaries were relationship, spatial/temporal, inter-organizational, intra-organizational, professional, and status.
MIT-Visteon
Janice Klein (MIT Sloan School) studied the effectiveness of virtual teams by reflecting
on lessons learned in the research collaboration between MIT and Visteon Automotive
Systems, a parts supplier for Ford. The distributed team was located in several countries
in Europe and the United States. The goal of the collaboration was to create a jointly defined research agenda and process. The boundaries were relationship, spatial/temporal,inter-organizational, professional, and national.
World Bank and Detroit Edison
Joyce Fletcher (Simmons College) and Katrin Kaeufer (MIT Sloan School) studied characteristics of distributed leadership in large organizations. At the World Bank, they lookedat the effort to move the organization closer to clients in the field. At Detroit Edison, theyexamined the effort to address work/family issues. The boundaries to knowledge sharing here were spatial/temporal, inter-organizational, intra-organizational, and national.
The Natural Step
Hilary Bradbury (Case Western Reserve University) studied how change was achieved in
The Natural Step trans-sectorial initiative on sustainable development. The initiative in-

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Type of Boundary

Boundary between

Major Barriers to Knowledge Sharing

RelationshipPeople who had no history or poor
history of prior interaction.

Low level of trust

Spatial/Temporal

People distributed in time and space.

Lack of contextual clues or details
Memory loss
Discontinuity in progress toward goals

Inter-organizational

People who belong to different
organizations.

Differences in organizational cultures and goals

Intra-organizational

People who belong to different
organizational units or groups.

Differences in:
Unit sub-cultures
Unit goals
Local problem constraints

Professional

People with different professional
backgrounds and training.

Differences in:Professional cultures
Professional goals
Specialized languages and methodologies

National

People belonging to different national
cultures or ethnic subcultures.

Different national cultures and natural languages

StatusPeople who occupy different levels in
the organizational hierarchy.

Inability to voice relevant knowledge
Unwillingness to listen

Sharing Knowledge in Heterogeneous Environments



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Table 1 Classifying Boundaries.

cluded both scientific and business communities. The goal of the collaboration was tocreate and implement sustainable development initiatives. The boundaries were relationship, spatial/temporal, inter-organizational, professional, and national.

Total Quality Management (TQM) Studies
Nelson Repenning (MIT Sloan School) studied TQM and other process improvement techniques in various manufacturing organizations. These techniques were used to aggregate
the knowledge of local unit operations into a model of a collective production system. The
goal was to improve operational efficiency, for example, to reduce the number of production defects. The major boundary was intra-organizational.
34

Shell
Bill Brenneman (Shell, Texaco, Aramco’s Equiva Services, LLC) and his colleagues useddeep root cause analysis of major failures to move managers from a local focus to macrosystems thinking. (Root cause analysis is a technique designed to use systems thinking
for analyzing problems.) The goal for senior managers was to recognize which existing
global structures were unsuitable for achieving performance, learning, and change in local organizational units. The boundaries were intra-organizational and status.
Nuclear Power Plants
John Carroll (MIT Sloan School) studied the implementation of root cause analysis techniques for major accidents in nuclear power plants. His goal was to share knowledge
across organizational unit boundaries to understand what caused an industrial accident
and make improvements. Instead, the approach was used for minute criticism on the local level, rather than for achieving understanding on a larger scale. The boundaries were
spatial/temporal, intra-organizational, and status.
Ford
Nancy Dixon (George Washington University) studied how 37 Ford plants shared explicit
knowledge on frequent, routine tasks among groups with prior related professional

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSTeachers’ Empowerment GroupJohn Meyer and Jean Bartunek (both from Boston College) studied the processes for developing and maintaining memory in a teachers’ group with frequent turnover of members. The
goal was to create programs to empower teachers. The boundary was spatial/temporal.

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Sharing Knowledge in Heterogeneous Environments

British Petroleum (BP)Nancy Dixon studied the Peer Assist program at BP, whichshared site exploration expertise across different sites. At BP,
unlike Ford, there was a need for sharing tacit knowledge of
non-routine tasks among teams from somewhat different
backgrounds. The goal was a successful site exploration.
The boundaries were spatial/temporal and intra-organizational.

knowledge. 1 Each plant’s goal was to increase productivity
by 5% a year. The boundaries were spatial/temporal andintra-organizational.

Network Technicians
Alessandro Narduzzo (University of Trento) conducted an ethnographic study of how
network technicians installed wireless networks for customers across wide geographicalareas. The goal was to improve the quality and efficiency of the installations. The boundaries were spatial/temporal, inter-organizational, and intra-organizational.
Community Organizers
Dvora Yanow discussed her field study of Israeli community organizers who were sent
by a government agency to remote locations.2 The goal was to organize local communities and to learn about their needs. The boundaries were spatial/temporal, intra-organizational, and status.

Success Factors
Although the case studies occurred in different settings and crossed various boundaries,
many had common success factors in facilitating knowledge sharing. When researchers
analyzed the data, they found the following 12 factors critical to successful knowledge
sharing. I pull these factors together across case studies, provide my commentary on theeffectiveness of a given factor in overcoming certain boundaries to knowledge sharing,and illustrate each factor with a few prominent examples.

1. Networks
Networking is important for overcoming relationship boundaries because it builds a historyof positive interactions. In the Silicon Alley case, the ability to network and form relationships with actors from different backgrounds was critical in establishing a new communityand pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities. In the surgical teams case, boundary spanning,which included networking with referring physicians and intensive care unit physicians, wasthe strongest predictor that the organization would adopt the new technology.

2. Tolerance for Mistakes
Having tolerance for mistakes gives groups time to build a relationship for long-term benefits despite a history of poor results, helping them overcome relationship boundaries. In
the Silicon Alley case, a high risk tolerance among community participants meant that
entrepreneurs and even established firms would rather make errors of commission thanerrors of omission. At Xerox PARC, managers believed in the value of learning from mistakes. They perceived that a lack of failures by collaboration teams indicated missed innovation opportunities. In the surgical teams case, psychological safety, described as“openness about mistakes,” predicted successful technology implementation.

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LEVINA

3. Group Stability

Sharing Knowledge in Heterogeneous EnvironmentsGroup stability helps overcome relationship boundaries by giving people time to establish
trust through multiple interactions. It also helps people cross spatial/temporal boundaries
by developing the group’s memory and facilitating continuous progress toward goals. In
the formation of Silicon Alley, the repeated interaction between community members wasa crucial element in legitimizing the community. In the surgical teams case, team stability
was the strongest predictor of a team’s efficiency in adopting the new technology. On theother hand, the lack of stability in the teachers’ empowerment group, which had regularmembership turnover, meant that lessons learned in earlier interactions were forgotten.

4. Structures for Interaction
Many Greenhouse presenters emphasized the value of structures in facilitating heterogeneous interaction. Structures help overcome relationship boundaries: some, such as formal
selection processes, elevate levels of initial trust, while others create formal agreements for
dealing with problematic relationships. Structures also help overcome spatial/temporalboundaries by building group memory and establishing processes for reaching goals.
In the Silicon Alley case and in the MIT-Visteon collaboration, physical infrastructures (for example, computer networks, meeting spaces, video-conferencing equipment)
as well as scheduled repeated interactions among group members were important structures for organizing. Xerox PARC institutionalized the process of selecting candidates forthe collaboration and created other structures for sustaining the effort and dealing withproblems. Ford used several structures to institutionalize the transfer process: a computer information system, organizational routines for knowledge contributions and responses to the system, and measures of outcomes.

5. Shared Narratives
Narratives are a critical mechanism for overcoming spatial/temporal boundaries because
they express a group’s memories and describe contextual details. Members of the teachers’ empowerment group relayed stories to share knowledge not readily available in atangible form. The network technicians also shared narratives face-to-face and over thephone to convey procedural and historical knowledge.

6. Shared Artifacts
Shared artifacts are practical for overcoming many boundaries and were present in mostof the case studies. As part of social structures, they inherit various roles that structures© Emily Sper

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Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSShared artifacts help crossrelationship boundaries by providing
tangible results.

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play in overcoming barriers to knowledge sharing. In addition, shared artifacts help crossrelationship boundaries by providing tangible results of work, capturing agreements between parties, and representing common investments. They help overcome spatial/temporal boundaries by allowing group members to see tangible steps in their progress toward
a goal, building memories, and forcing members to be more explicit about contextual details. Shared artifacts are helpful in overcoming inter- and intra-organizational, professional, and national boundaries as they can facilitate the creation of common cultures,
goals, languages, methodologies, and problem descriptions.
At Xerox PARC, images as diverse as network graphs,
art collages, photographs, and Escher drawings conveyedideas. In the surgical teams case, new, minimally invasive
surgery created a challenge to provide effective illustrations and communicate ideas through images. The humanbody could not be used, which necessitated using lessvivid, technology-based representations. This created significant communication problems: poor representations meant that team members had
to learn to communicate verbally about things that were best described visually or
through other senses. In The Natural Step and BP cases, experts involved in knowledge
sharing relied heavily on charts and drawings on blackboards and walls. Finally, thenetwork technicians used “official” artifacts (for example, an installation manual) and“unofficial” tools (for example, a temperature simulation tool) to aid their work.

7. Boundary Spanners
Boundary spanners often play the role of trusted agents for multiple parties. They know
the details of different contexts and have memories of dispersed interactions, which helps
them cross spatial/temporal boundaries. They aid in overcoming inter- and intra-organizational, professional, and national boundaries by belonging to multiple cultures, speaking many languages, sharing different goals or acting impartially, and understanding
different methodologies and problem constraints.
In The Natural Step initiative, the leader of the effort was a boundary spanner between scientists and businesspeople. Shell senior managers integrated knowledge frommany local business units. Network technicians working for the supplier company
bridged the gap between the supplier and customers’ organizations. Yanow’s community
organizers helped managers learn about local needs.

8. Common Language
Like shared artifacts, a common language is a joint investment that helps cross relationship boundaries. It overcomes differences in culture and languages in order to cross interand intra-organizational, professional, and national boundaries.
Silicon Alley needed a shared language that would also help establish a new, unique
identity. The result was a language full of jargon. Xerox PARC’s common language was amajor accomplishment in aiding cross-disciplinary collaborations. Unlike Silicon Alley’s
specialized language, Xerox’s was widely accessible to a large community of diverse individuals. In the MIT-Visteon collaboration, establishing English as the common language helped communication in a globally dispersed team. In The Natural Step initiative,
not only was there a necessity for a common language, but participants had to perceive
the language as neutral. The language of science served this purpose.

9. Using Process Improvement Techniques
Process improvement techniques both create structures for interaction and encompass
shared artifacts. In addition, they are powerful tools for integrating constraints encountered in different local contexts, facilitating knowledge sharing across intra-organizationalboundaries. They also help overcome status boundaries by allowing low-status organizational members (for example, line managers) to share their knowledge.
In the TQM studies, process improvement methods were used to aggregate knowl-

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edge from various local contexts into a comprehensive systems model. Similarly, at Shell,root cause analysis techniques helped managers understand how global structures constrain local action. However, in the nuclear power plants case, root cause analysis methods were not used to share knowledge, but rather to punish individuals.

10. Goal Alignment
Goal alignment, marked by shared and individual, non-conflicting goals, is a direct
mechanism for dealing with differences in goals created by inter- and intra-organizational
and professional boundaries.
For the MIT-Visteon collaboration, a key lesson related to the misalignment of goals
between academics and practitioners: a long-term academic focus versus a short-term
industry focus. In The Natural Step initiative, self-interests needed to connect to common interests to effect change. For example, IKEA, a participating organization, wanted
to appeal to a well-educated European market by implementing good environmental
policies. Participating scientists wanted to both publicize their ideas about environmental issues and collaborate with other scientists.

11. Norms of Reciprocity
Reciprocity is a mechanism for dealing with differences in goals without achieving alignment. It helps share knowledge across inter- and intra-organizational and professionalboundaries by facilitating collaboration based on mutual help.
Each Ford plant had to increase productivity by 5% a year. This incentive made allplant managers look for ways to improve processes. Reciprocal behavior occurred because
each manager had to contribute ideas to the system, while their implementation was voluntary. At BP, the success of site exploration was a performance criteria for the teams:
getting valuable advice from others was key to enabling success. Knowledge exchange wasbased on the norms of reciprocity. Since there was a need for outside expertise at manysites, it was common for one site to support another without any monetary compensation.

12. Small Scale

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Starting small is important for overcoming all types of boundaries because sharing knowledge on a large scale is difficult. Starting small mitigates the risks associated with failure
and allows participants to learn through experiments in overcoming various barriers.
Xerox PARC initiated the interdisciplinary collaboration projects on a small scale by carefully handpicking a group of scientists and local artists to work together. In the surgical teams
case, the new technology was introduced in a few procedures, with adoption rates changing
depending on the success of initial trials. Participants in the MIT-Visteon collaboration decided
to start their virtual interaction in only three locations. In The Natural Step initiative, theproject started from several conversations involving some scientists and later a few corporations. Ford began its effort in a face-to-face exchange of process improvement ideas between
two plant managers and then moved to a formalized technology-supported exchange. At BP,
the initial exchanges began with a few teams asking for help.
To summarize, networks, tolerance for mistakes, group stability, structures for interaction, shared artifacts, boundary spanners, and a common language (factors 1–4, 6–8)
all played a role in dealing with relationship boundaries. Group stability, structures forinteraction, shared narratives, shared artifacts, and boundary spanners (factors 3–7)
were important for crossing spatial/temporal boundaries. Shared artifacts, boundary
spanners, a common language, process improvement techniques, goal alignment, andnorms of reciprocity (factors 6–11) were useful in overcoming inter- and intra-organizational, professional, and national boundaries. Process improvement techniques (factor9) were also important for overcoming status boundaries. Finally, a small scale (factor12) appears to play a role in overcoming all types of boundaries in knowledge sharing.
While I have given only a few illustrations, I suspect that these success factors wereapplicable across most of the Greenhouse case studies.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSLEVINA

Starting small is important forovercoming all types of boundaries
because sharing knowledge on alarge scale is difficult.



A few presenters reflected on the role and qualities of leaders in their case studies, someof which I list below. I then comment on how these qualities help overcome various barriers to knowledge sharing.
In the surgical teams case, the role of team leaders (surgeons) was critical for implementing procedures successfully. The surgeons’ behavior included carefully selecting
team members and coaching them on creating an open environment, leading discussions, nurturing trust, and focusing on teamwork.
At the World Bank and Detroit Edison, leaders wereable to speak from experience, voice what was going onaround them, and deal with conflicting situations. In these
two organizations, leaders who wanted to share local
learning with the larger collective often had to struggle
with the fact that their roles were invisible and that theiractions provided only an opportunity for change—the actual change had to happen
through the collective actions of others.
In The Natural Step initiative, the leader had to play the role of a boundary spanner
between scientists and businesspeople. He had symbolic power (in this case, the powerof science) and economic disinterestedness.
At Shell, a key role of senior managers was to understand the interrelationship between many local settings. Such understanding allowed for more effective strategy development and an ability to enrich local settings by introducing collective knowledge.
In reflecting on the distributed leadership qualities shown in the case studies, I thinkthat the effective leaders were responding to various knowledge-sharing barriers (table1). Clearly, many leaders were boundary spanners. In addition, most leadership qualities included fostering relationships, reconciling conflicting goals, and creating structures
to enable collaboration. The leaders played crucial roles in overcoming status boundaries. They used their power to voice others’ concerns and create open environments.
The effective leaders in heterogeneous environments were instrumental in designing andimplementing various success factors in practice.

Sharing Knowledge in Heterogeneous Environments

Leadership Role and Qualities

Methodological Issues
Can researchers, as outsiders, study local knowledge? Most of the Greenhouse researchers collaborated with insiders, were insiders themselves, or became “partial insiders”
through the use of ethnographic methods. For example, Sim Sitkin conducted his researchwith John Seely Brown, the head of Xerox PARC, while Amy Edmondson collaborated
with a medical doctor and a technology and operations researcher. Bill Brenneman was
an insider in the corporation that he studied. Alessandro Narduzzo spent seven months
studying the work of network technicians using ethnographic methods. Many other researchers demonstrated that collaborating with insiders or becoming insiders is necessary
to study local knowledge.
Greenhouse researchers often played the role of boundary spanners themselves. They
had to cross all types of boundaries to share knowledge with their study participants. They
had to establish trust, learn new languages, create shared artifacts, provide structures forcollaboration, define shared goals, and often start their research on a small scale.

Conclusion
Telling stories, discussing what worked, building theories, and reflecting on methods was
how SoL researchers shared their heterogeneous experiences. While I have attempted toconsolidate some common themes, it is clear that 12 success factors are hard to track
and implement in practice. The multitude of factors indicates that knowledge sharing
across boundaries is difficult. Here I have analyzed what made various factors effective—that is, they helped people overcome specific barriers to knowledge sharing.

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Sharing Knowledge in Heterogeneous Environments



Identifying the barriers to knowledge sharing in a given context and then designing
strategies for overcoming them is a practical way to address knowledge-sharing challenges. The Greenhouse provided a repertoire of useful strategies, some more useful thanothers in certain environments. For example, sharing artifacts is often more practicalthan engaging boundary spanners because of the psychological stresses that boundary
spanners have to overcome and their limited availability (Star and Griesemer, 1989).
Also, some success factors described here may have wider applicability than was apparent from the Greenhouse cases. For example, a study of an emergency room found thata white board—a shared artifact—helped deal with status boundaries by giving nurses
a place to express their knowledge (Østerlund, 2000). Some success factors that are applicable in one situation may not work at all in another. For example, sharing narratives
is extremely effective for overcoming spatial/temporal boundaries (Brown and Duguid,1991); however, if there is a difference in natural or professional languages due to thepresence of other boundaries, sharing narratives may be impractical.
For the SoL community, the Greenhouse represented ba—a shared space that provided a platform for advancing individual and collective knowledge. I find this concept,
borrowed by Nonaka and Konno (1998) from the Japanese philosophy of existentialism,
useful in describing a meeting place for a community of communities. We all have bas
inside our communities and organizations. SoL can be seen as a basho—a collection ofresearchers’, consultants’, and practitioners’ bas. The discovery of similarities in analyzing the same phenomenon from different angles during the Greenhouse is an invitation
to use this basho for further collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas.

Notes
1. Nancy Dixon reported on the work from Common Knowledge (Boston, MA: Harvard Business
School Press, 2000). She used examples of Ford and BP to illustrate different knowledge-sharing needs and transfer mechanisms. Her book contains many studies of intra-organizational
knowledge sharing.
2. Dvora Yanow gave several examples of various organizations using or failing to use biculturaltranslators—people capable of translating local knowledge into a larger context. I highlight only
one example based on Yanow’s research.

References
Brown, J.S. and P. Duguid. “Organizational Learning and Communities of Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation.” Organization Science 2 (1991): 40-57.
Nonaka, I. and N. Konno. “The Concept of ba: Building a Foundation for Knowledge Creation.” California Management Review 40 (1998): 40-54.
Østerlund, C. “Into the Black Box of the Whiteboard: Boundary Objects and the Politics of Knowledge Sharing” (Toronto, Canada: Academy of Management Meeting, August 2000).
Star, S.L. and J.R. Griesemer. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs
and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology 1907-39.” Social Studies of Science 19 (1989): 387-420.

40

Commentaryby John S. Carroll and Karen Ayas

John S. Carroll
Professor of Behavioral and Policy
Sciences
MIT Sloan School of Management

Natalia Levina provides us with a provocative report on some of the discussions held at the SoL Research Greenhouse. We organized the Greenhouse to stimulate conversations and relationships
among researchers, consultants, and practitioners in the SoL community. We also invited participants from outside SoL. The multiple communities within and across constituencies offered eachother different ways of thinking about research, learning, and change. Levina captures the excitement of a diverse group sharing their experiences as researchers and participants in the creative
process within and between organizations. She gives us a glimpse of the stories that were told andthe themes that were explored. She uses the theme of knowledge sharing across boundaries topresent both the commonalities among the different cases and the richness of each individualVolume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSRuthann Prange (consultant member from US)
The Greenhouse attracted great research talent, and the design encouraged rich sharing of work,
questions, dilemmas, and possibilities. The genuine interest by researchers in sharing their knowledge and inviting comment, input, and collaboration—and their desire to be truly relevant—wasvery unlike the stereotypes of “academics.” The gathering provided a chance for researchers frommany institutions to connect with one another in fruitful ways. I believe partnerships with researchers can be very powerful in pursuing our SoL objectives.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

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Karen Ayas
Associate Editor
Reflections

Sharing Knowledge in Heterogeneous Environments

case. By identifying kinds of boundaries and the factors critical to crossing those boundaries, sheoffers helpful typologies and concepts for researchers and practitioners interested in knowledge
and learning.
As Levina summarizes succinctly, a lot of ground was covered in two days at the Greenhouse.
Participants explored new and emergent topics and cultivated connections across and within communities. Yet, the Greenhouse also showed how difficult it is to assemble researchers, consultants,
and practitioners into common research pursuits, that is, to move from idea exchange to action
projects. The Greenhouse featured “germination” sessions in which small groups met informally todevelop research collaborations or explore topics. Our hope for the Greenhouse—and, in particular,
for the germination sessions—was to cultivate research projects that would involve participationfrom the practitioner, consultant, and researcher communities. The Greenhouse was a first step inthat direction: the conversations and connections laid the foundation for research that can crossboundaries and bridge different communities of practice.
By sharing her paper with the readers of Reflections, Levina continues and extends the work of
the Greenhouse to build connections and generate new ideas and research activities. We were
stimulated to push our own thinking in two directions. First, what nascent theory of knowledge
sharing across boundaries is struggling to emerge? Second, how is the research process itself an example of boundary spanning and boundary reshaping?
Knowledge sharing is one of the central philosophical and practical problems of human society.
How can one person’s knowledge be given to another? How can an organization or a community
accumulate and use the knowledge of its individual members? By analyzing discussions of numerous examples at the Greenhouse, Levina offers a typology of boundaries, barriers, and critical success factors. Typologies are a great analytical tool for comparison and simplification. They help us
to see the connections among different examples and how the examples apply to our own work.
From the typologies, additional questions emerge because the typologies have cleared away somuch of the undergrowth: Is knowledge really being “shared” in the sense that the same knowledge
is appearing in multiple times and places, or is knowledge being “socially reproduced” to create“progeny knowledge” that embodies its heritage in new combinations embedded in new contexts?
Underlying the lists of barriers and success factors, is there a contingency theory or a system mapthat could offer new insights with a more interactive and dynamic flavor? Can we analyze the barriers and success factors to reveal concepts such as “emotional connection” (group stability, tolerance for mistakes, networks, goal alignment, norms of reciprocity, and so on) and “informational
connection” (common language, shared narratives, shared artifacts, structures for interaction, process improvement techniques, and so on) and then understand the details of how combinations ofbarriers have to be addressed in particular contexts?
The research process itself, at its best, is a great example of knowledge sharing across boundaries. Researchers seek to collect and classify, compare and contrast, juxtapose and differentiate, inways that build a cumulative knowledge base for all humankind. Research is a systematic and disciplined inquiry process that depends on researchers’ personal commitment to deep values (truth,
sharing) as well as their playfulness with ideas and possibilities. At its worst, research becomes adoctrinal technique authorized by professional elites who control access to journal space, tenure
positions, and social status. What keeps research vibrant and productive is the constant interaction
across boundaries: between fields, between generations of researchers, between researchers andpractitioners, and between accepted reality and imaginative possibility.
Levina closes her paper with a wonderful metaphor from Japanese philosophy, describing theshared space for advancing knowledge (ba) and the meeting place for building a community ofcommunities (basho). We designed the Greenhouse to be such a space. SoL is intended to be acommunity of communities. We believe that research can help us generate and share knowledge
and that research can become a more central part of the reflective practice of the SoL community.
Some comments from participants:

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Sharing Knowledge in Heterogeneous Environments

Alessia Contu (researcher from Italy)
We had the opportunity to exchange ideas and reflect together on what we really value and on themeaning of our practice.
Peter Schutte (consultant member from Netherlands)
It was good to see that some good, serious research is developing and coming together. Organizational learning beyond metaphors!
Shigehisa Tsuchiya (researcher from Japan)
The two days were so inspiring and stimulating that I felt as if I had spent two weeks interactively
learning with participants.
Becky Smith (research member from US)
The Greenhouse was a hotbed of brain power and vision. It was an opportunity to have meaningfulexchanges with people from other cultures with common concern about our world and human issues.
dt ogilvie (researcher from US)
My germination sessions were helpful to my thinking about my topic and teaching. Although some
don’t appreciate organizational learning, I think many of the participants are on to something thatcan make a difference.
Stella Humphries (research member from US)
SoL has a unique and ambiguous role within the research community, which is both the good news
and the bad news. So it is a challenge to envision what a good research event could be—it depends on
your vantage. “Pure” academics have more formal expectations of form of communication and rigor
of ideas and their presentation. “Action researchers” or practitioners expect to have applied value,
more informal exchanges, and more social connection and engagement in exploration of possibility.
We should consider: What is research in the current reality of the workplace? How can research
and work become more seamless? How can we be helpful to the practitioners and produce researchthat has useful application?
Chris Unger (research member from US)
What actions will come of all this? I have a great interest in inquiry groups, seven to ten people
with similar questions and interests. These could be generated from a larger event, like the SoL
Greenhouse. This kind of activity could be a worthwhile experiment within SoL.

42

Hilary Bradbury (research member from US)
Balancing the facilitation between scholars and practitioners might be helpful—and having the roleof a discussant be shared among them too (much as Reflections does).
Peter Senge (SoL chair)
I would like to get people excited about the possibilities of achieving significant change, beyond
just the intellectual excitement of new ideas. Academics are often sadly isolated from the pulse andpassion of deep change, and if they were only a little closer to it, it would fire their intellectual
imaginations as well. This does not mean that skepticism should be thrown out in favor of passion.
The two can co-exist, and are both desperately needed.
The spark of SoL comes, I believe, when the best thinkers and the most talented practitioners
meet and when significant new ideas lead to significant results and people begin to feel viscerally
the types of extraordinary innovation that are possible, and desperately needed.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSBusiness Evolution:
A Manager’s Reflection

FEATURE

Barbara B. LawtonT

his story is about an internal consulting group formed to support a company’s purposeful transformation of its business model. The CEO recruited me to design andmanage this group. Our efforts reflect the best knowledge my colleagues and I had in theareas of organizational development, organizational learning, knowledge management,
process reengineering, and total quality management.
I wish I could say that our efforts were highly successful, but they were not. But
neither were they complete failures, as I had often felt when I first left the company. Ourtime at the company was tumultuous and rich in experience. My goal here is to sharewhat we learned through this effort.
I begin with a description of the company and its challenges. I describe my goals andassumptions and the design of our consulting efforts. Next I briefly discuss our failuresand successes and, finally, review our key learnings.

The Company
Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek ®) is a manufacturer of electronic data storage devices (tape, disk, and tape libraries). The company has had a bumpy history overits nearly 30 years of existence. At one point, it was among the fastest growing companies in the US, and at another, it filed for bankruptcy protection. Throughout the nineties, it had a leadership position in mainframe tape and tape libraries.
With the Internet and the explosive growth of digital data in the nineties, the data storage industry is experiencing 20% to 50% growth rates. This growth, however, is primarily
in the open-systems storage market rather than in mainframe data storage. To benefit fromthis growth, StorageTek needed to leverage quickly its success with mainframe data storage into the open-systems market. While there are numerous technical challenges in thischange, the organizational and cultural challenges are at the heart of this case study.
The company’s culture is complex, influenced greatly by the perceived source of its
success, namely, the technical superiority of its products and the repercussions of its
repeated layoffs for poor financial performance. At the risk of gross oversimplification,
the culture valued technical ingenuity that fueled a “not invented here” (NIH) syndrome.
The use of leading-edge technology often created significant delays in the development
and delivery of new products, which in turn hurt the company’s financial performance.
The turnaround CEO who brought the company out of bankruptcy and led StorageTek
until the mid-1990s had a strong, top-down management approach. His style was reflected in the company’s highly centralized organizational structure and employees’“don’t rock the boat” mentality.
When I joined in June 1997, the company was in transition. Its revenues from its
legacy business lines were at an all-time high, and there was real optimism throughout thecompany about the new CEO’s ability to lead the needed business transformation. The
CEO quickly broke the centralized structure by creating independent business groups anddissolving most corporate functions. The goal was speed through local decision making
and action. He hired new talent for the organization’s leadership positions and began
working with the leadership team to crystallize the company’s core purpose and values.
REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

Barbara B. Lawton
Knowledge Strategist
TIS Worldwide

43© 2000 by the Society for Organizational Learning and theMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

LAWTON
Business EvolutionBecause of the company’s sensitivity to poor product quality, a contributing factor toits earlier bankruptcy, corporate quality was one of the few corporate functions that had notbeen dissolved. Yet this function was outdated. I joined StorageTek to take over the corporate quality function and to reconceive its role, given thecompany’s goals and challenges.
Corporate quality’s domain included business processes fundamental to the company’s future success,namely, the development of new products (that is, the PMPor program management process) and the marketing of new
products and services. While we could not “own” these processes, especially in a decentralized environment, we could
act as stewards for their health and evolution. By default,
we owned the definition and maintenance of the company’s
corporate quality systems. And we were asked to investigate knowledge management with
our partners in HRD (human resources development) and to begin to introduce it to thecompany. HRD had the explicit charter to guide the company’s business transformation.
Neither group had a charter to make StorageTek a learning organization.
As a student and veteran of several change efforts, I was satisfied with our challenge
and opportunity. In my experience, it has been more effective to change an organization
through its work—for example, working on the core PMP and marketing processes—thanthrough programmatic change, such as implementing total quality.

In my experience, it has been more
effective to change an organization
through its work . . . than throughprogrammatic change. . . .

Goals and Assumptions
The cultural and organizational changes StorageTek needed to be successful in the opensystems market were transformational. The open-systems arena was a relatively immature market space where first entrants had the ability to rapidly develop dominantpositions and create de facto standards. In this environment, players soon sort out into
one of two categories—the quick and the dead. StorageTek rapidly needed to become
quick and agile, almost a direct antithesis to its current state.
My goal as head of corporate quality was to develop the company’s capability to
evolve rapidly, particularly in our areas of responsibility. This seemed the most important contribution we could make to the company’s success, and any alternatives, suchas an expert content model or centralization of core processes, were completely untenable under the circumstances.
Evolution is a process of ongoing learning and adaptation. It involves sensingchanges in the environment (internal and external), interpreting those changes, creating a model or theory for action, and then acting accordingly. I’ll list my beliefs on evolutionary speed, as they shaped the fundamental design of my group. You’ll likely notice
the resemblance to the human brain, which has the most advanced learning capability
in evolutionary history.

44

 Distributed intelligence, that is, local sensing, interpreting, and acting, is of the essence.
Each individual can see different parts of the environment, because of both what they
have access to and what they are sensitive to. As changes in the environment affecttheir work, they are also in the best position to develop locally adaptive responses.
 The intelligence within the group must be connected through a fine-grained web ofinteraction. The degree of connectivity certainly determines the speed at whichlearning in one part of the organization can be accessed by other parts of the organization. Beyond this most basic function, it also represents the organization’s potential for sensing and interpreting complex signals and for developing new andcohesive responses. For example, the fine-grained connectivity between individual
brain cells creates the learning prowess of the human brain.
 The group must then have the capacity to act on new ideas and directions. First andforemost this requires leadership. Second is the know-how to make an organization
change.
Based on these assumptions, we redesigned the corporate quality group to (1) develop
connectivity within the organization to accelerate learning and sharing of core business

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSLAWTON

Concrete, Specific Concepts

Finding Strengths to Build on
We began with an informal search to find effective practices for sensing change and collective learning within the company that we could build on. We found in several professional groups (for example, service engineering, reliability test, organizational
development, software development), CoPs (active communities of practice)—informal
gatherings of people who work in similar professions that come together to share information, experiences, and questions and to help one another along the way.
The most active, sophisticated group came from the software development community. The group members were connected through numerous channels, each devised for
different purposes. They created a seminar series to share work and introduce ideas fromoutside the company. A subset of the community formed, with professional assistance, acurriculum to support development of new levels of expertise. Discussion groups, e-maillists, and web sites were among their other communication vehicles.
We believe that this connectivity made sensing and learning within the community
highly effective and efficient. Connectivity broadens the information base accessible toeveryone. Individuals within the community have some information sources that theyshare and many others that are unique. The network is efficient in that individual members act as information filters and signal enhancers, reducing the time it takes for any
single person to find useful information. The interpretation that members add to information, based on their own experience, enhances its value. Perhaps most importantly,
the ongoing interaction between community members supports development of the common understanding and commitment necessary to take action for change.
The software community began when software development was a centralized corporate function. The community members are now dispersed among the different business groups. The CoP, however, continues to adapt and thrive to meet the needs of its
members. (In my mind, I visualize it as an amoeba, changing shape in response to its
environment.) The one part-time person who supports this community by organizing
meetings, locating speakers, and so on, has been funded by various people who haverecognized the CoP’s value.
We also looked for effective process improvement and change efforts within the corporation. Here there were many, ranging from ROS (rapid organizational start-ups) supported by the internal organizational development group, to major process reengineering
associated with implementation of an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system and active process improvement in manufacturing to reduce defects.
There were a few obvious factors common to each success, such as active leadershipand a common understanding of the business reasons for change. We made two other observations that shaped the design of BQP. First, people had a high level of comfort withand acceptance of process and change work within the company. Second, they expectedthat a very qualified person would facilitate (that is, consultants) and lead the change
process. Employees did not believe that they should know how to do that themselves.
Based on our assessment of StorageTek’s strengths, we developed a concrete, specificdesign for our group. We adopted the CoP model as the primary way to enhance learning and share through connectivity. Second, we adopted the process consultant model as
the primary means for enhancing the change capability and capacity within the company.

Selecting Communities of PracticeThe software community became our role model for an effective CoP. By profiling the roleand duties of the person supporting the software CoP and some external benchmarking, we
created the role of practice manager. A practice manager position was then set up for eachof the three core processes we were expected to support—marketing, program management,
and quality—and a fourth part-time position to give a permanent home to the de facto soft-

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

Business Evolution

processes, and (2) increase its capacity to change systematically at the local level, as required by the business needs. We renamed the group Business & Quality Processes (BQP).

45

LAWTON
Business Evolutionware practice manager. Where possible, we hired the practice managers from inside the community, and members of
the community interviewed the candidates for this position.
An external consultant specializing in CoPs provided initialtraining to the incumbents, and an internal organizational
learning specialist provided ongoing support.

Creating Change Capability© Emily Sper

We believed that the leadership for business process change
had to come from the business groups, where there wasneed for performance improvement. Only the general managers or their designees had the authority to sponsor andlead such a change within a business group.
We chose to establish a business process consulting
group with expertise in process innovation and improvement, as well as organizational
development. The senior hires in this group, called business unit consultants, had MBAs
and significant consulting experience outside of StorageTek. They had a dotted-line reporting relationship to the general managers of each business group and were to help
them prioritize and drive change, as well as facilitate specific change efforts.

BQP’s Timeline
I dissolved the old corporate quality group in fall 1997 and formed BQP. During that winter, we staffed the new group and, in the early spring, provided training and coaching inorganizational learning and systems thinking. One year later, corporate headquarters had
an eye-opening ISO 9000 audit of its quality systems. The quality systems that were oncea great strength were in jeopardy from benign neglect. BQP’s primary focus became thedevelopment of quality systems within the new business groups and the renewal of systems within the legacy businesses. During the course of the same year, the company’s
stock price fell from a high of $50 per share to less than $20. As the work and priorities of
the group changed with time and events, I and many of my staff felt that this was nolonger the work we came to do. When the company offered a voluntary separation program in spring 1999, most of the BQP group took advantage of the program, including me.
The two years we worked at StorageTek were tumultuous and rich. In the following
sections, I describe our failures and our successes during this time and what we learned.

Our Failures
46

We failed to accomplish any of our major goals, namely:
 Establishing CoPs based on the software CoP role model in marketing and program
management.
 Facilitating the development of core processes (program management and marketing) with performance competitive in the open-systems market.

Our Successes
Successes were hard to recognize while we were at StorageTek. Our goals were so large
and the disappointments so regular that it was often difficult to see what change we didengender. Our most significant successes included the following.

Connectivity for Sharing Ideas
Connectivity happened, but not as we intended. Our model was to grow “fine-grained”
connectivity between individuals within specific communities that would support the
rapid sharing and adoption of new ideas. Instead, the practice managers and process consultants became accepted community hubs that acted as matchmakers, linking thoseseeking to learn and adapt with those who had experience. It was our hope that as theVolume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSLAWTON

Changed Culture

StorageTek started with a culture of NIH or reject new ideas that were “not invented
here.” After the ISO 9000 audit in 1998, the pressure to develop internal processes quickly
escalated. The groundwork we laid to establish CoPs created a climate in which it wasokay to see what other business groups had in place. Those who sought ideas from theother business groups were pleasantly surprised as the practices found in another area
could, with modification, be adopted in theirs. Seeking and sharing became routine
within certain groups. We feel this turned the corner toward creating a culture of SIS or“steal ideas shamelessly.”

Business Evolution

number of successful linkages grew, a network of relationships would develop among thecommunity members themselves.

Scenario Thinking
Senior managers were concerned about the possible effects of Y2K on the company’s economic performance. We were able to propose and lead scenario thinking across the corporation. After creating scenarios for potential changes in customer buying patterns, weinvolved key people across the company’s value chain to examine the effects of thesechanges and develop potential response scenarios. This was perhaps our most effective
intervention in terms of introducing new ways of dealing with uncertainty and in developing a consensus and state of readiness throughout the company.

Productive Conversation Skills
Our close relationship with the organizational development group enabled us to recommend a speaker for the company’s biannual leadership conference. We brought in a renowned, extremely effective consultant who led the group through several exercises in
productive conversation. Based on participant survey results, this event was one of the
top two at the conference. This consultant continued work with the senior managers, andover time, several key leaders changed their behavior.

New Quality System
The extremely poor ISO 9000 audit in 1998 brought the need for process infrastructure to
the forefront of managers’ consciousness. Business managers now had to devote time andresources to retain the company’s ISO 9000 registration. Our role was to lead and coordinate the creation and maintenance of a process infrastructure across the corporation. We
used this opportunity to present process as a means for capturing knowledge andratcheting up organizational performance. We also promoted a policy of enabling employees and learning through process rather than one of control. The relatively short timeframe for this work promoted sharing, and the community responsible for making it happen rapidly formed an active CoP.

Our Learnings
Tapping the Company’s Energy
So much of our model did not work at first. We designed a system based on our highlevel assessment that, in essence, would work everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Establishing a new CoP turned out to be an almost impossible task for the practice managers for various reasons. Our model’s key assumption was that professionals would be motivated to become involved in a CoP by their desire to continue learning about their field andto network with others doing similar work. We had not accounted for their much greater needto “survive,” that is, complete their extremely heavy workloads under very tight schedules.
The general managers of the legacy businesses were not interested in change. They
too were driven by more immediate business needs, such as the timely completion of
product projects underway. This is a vicious cycle. Without improving their core processes,
they will always be late. If late, they will never have time to improve their processes.
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LAWTONBusiness Evolution

The heads of the new businesses did not want consultants. These groups werechronically understaffed, and they wanted people who would do the work of process development and documentation rather than facilitate it.
With anxiety about failure driving our learning, we found that success depended on
our ability to:
1. Sense where the energy (that is, pain or desire) in the company existed.
2. Be opportunistic in finding ways simultaneously to address our clients’ immediateneeds and fulfill our goals.
When we stopped forcing our model to work and started listening, we not only
found opportunities to contribute, such as the scenario planning, but also found ways
to evolve and adapt for joint success.
Program managers within one of the new business groups quickly saw the benefitof meeting with each other to discuss difficulties they were personally facing and togather insight or information from others. Once this group coalesced, the members began inviting people from other business groups who had similar interests. Starting small
allowed the CoP to grow in a natural, sustainable fashion.
Program managers in other business groups, while not interested in spending timein community discussion groups, were very interested in having the practice manager
participate in all their meetings and thus be the conduit for information flow within andacross business groups. While this was not the original plan, it did fulfill our goal of creating a greater level of connectivity than previously.
Using the energy already in the system, we chose to drive process development andimprovement through projects that focused on specific products. We identified the potential business failure modes for the business groups’ most important upcoming products.
From there, we helped each identify the processes most critical to near-term product success. In one business group, this analysis led to a focused effort to define the product launch
process in preparation for an upcoming product launch. In another, it drove improvementof the software test process to reduce the time it would take to test an upcoming product.

The Foundation

48

Developing the capability to rapidly learn and change or evolve is, in many ways, an extension and enlargement of the ideas and methods of total quality and continuous improvement. Certainly, the domain expands from continuous to discontinuous change andrequires another level of human skill in learning. What is important here is that the earlier excellence through quality effort at StorageTek created a foundational belief and skill
set that is an important stepping stone to organizational learning. The program developed
the skills for process improvement, created a customer focus within the organization, andreinforced the importance of collaboration and teamwork. It also drove the creation of ahealthy process infrastructure necessary for the predictable operation of all but the smallest companies. This was a hard-won success for the corporation.
When I joined StorageTek, I felt that the underlying quality culture was secure, so weput all our resources and energy into taking the next steps forward. But with the formation of new business groups that had no process structure, and the hiring of hundreds of
new people each year into the corporation, the quality foundation was diluted and eventually lost. This was a serious oversight. Without that common cultural and technicalfoundation and an effective process backbone, we could not engage the corporation inorganizational learning and knowledge management. Several groups within the corporation actually lost ground during this time.
All advances build on previous gains. I now believe that the plan for any advanceshould include the conscious streamlining and maintenance of the foundation.

Evolution
There are many possible titles for this last learning point. It could also be called, “Capability is grown, not assembled,” or “You can only learn on so many fronts at any one
time.” While I describe this point in terms of BQP’s experience, it is also very true forthe whole corporation.
Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSLAWTONBusiness Evolution

BQP was never able to perform to its full potential. Assembling a disparate group of
highly talented people is not enough to deliver on a high-level vision. It takes time todevelop a team and for people to get to know each other and feel comfortable working
together. It takes even longer to develop a common vision and goals, to develop a common conceptual framework (that is, understanding organizational learning and its rolein evolution), and to build new skill sets such as dialogue and systems thinking. This
growth and development work requires a significant investment of time and energy.
Beyond this, the group members had only the most basic job description as a starting point. The positions we created did not exist in the corporation before, and no one
had held jobs just like these before. Each person had to define his or her own role in theclient organizations, the work, and how it was done. This job ambiguity, the struggle tofind appropriate work in the client organization, and the need to demonstrate our ability to create value generated a great deal of stress for everyone. Lastly, we had to create
our own organizational structure—how did we find work, how do we communicate andmake decisions, what are our work processes?
At times, the sum total was overwhelming. And often, just as capabilities developed
and connections became clear, there would be shocks to the system (for example, amandate to go to zero-based budgeting within six weeks) that would alter the direction
and undermine any confidence gained. The end result was a general failure to thrive
within the group.
The upshot is that the course of development and evolution (learning and adaptation) takes time. Just as with an infant’s brain, all the components (cells) are there. The
connectivity that yields intelligence, however, is developed over time through use: sense,
interpret, act, or adapt in a supportive environment.

Leadership
The BQP group set out to make significant change in a large company. Leadership forchange, from the CEO and the business managers, is probably the most fundamental,
critical ingredient for success. Unfortunately, there was an acute business downturn soonafter our group formed that took management’s focus away from the chronic problems
at the root. The general atmosphere became one of living through today so that we havea future to worry about tomorrow. We consultants did what we could to fill that leadership void by building and maintaining some momentum for change. Regrettably, muchof the company became trapped in doing the same old thing harder, further reducing thetime available to change. Only leadership can break that vicious cycle.

ClosureBQP is still a viable group within StorageTek, though now reporting through the COO
rather than the CEO. Since the ISO 9000 audit in August 1998, its primary charter is theredevelopment of the quality system and the rebuilding of the corporation’s quality foundation. This includes support for the development of core business processes, as requested by the business groups.
Many seeds we planted continue to grow. The quality CoP, which involves people
from all across the corporation, continues to strengthen and grow. An organizational effectiveness CoP grew from the remnants of the CoP for BQP consultants and practicemanagers. This new CoP connects all the internal consultants at StorageTek (for example, from BQP, organizational development, education) and helps them learn fromand support one another in their work. The corporation’s quality framework is shapedby and infused with the ideas and values we brought to the company. Some other ideas
we introduced, such as scenario thinking and dialogue, are sprouting in various little
ways throughout the corporation.
We in the BQP group learned a lot through this experience. Our hope and belief isthat we’ve added something to the company’s capability to evolve and thrive in a rapidly changing environment.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 249

LAWTON

Commentary

Business Evolution

by Nancy M. Dixon

Nancy M. Dixon
Associate Professor of
Administration Sciences
The George Washington University

I applaud Barbara Lawton for writing an article about what did not work. We need more understanding of why change interventions fail when they do, and only when people have the courage
to talk about them in this public way, can we hope to learn. At the same time, I found I did notlearn much from Lawton’s experience.
Lawton’s article resembles what Argyris, in his latest book, calls flawed advice. Flawed not in thesense that it is incorrect, but in the sense that we as readers cannot do much with the advice because we do not know whether we would agree with her conclusions, and if we did agree, we do
not know how to carry them out.
For us to learn from Lawton’s advice, we have to know, for example, what she said when she talked to
the CEO about the difficulties the Business & Quality Processes (BQP) group faced; and if she did not raisethese issues with the CEO, we need to understand her reasoning for not doing so. In a sense, Lawton is
asking us to learn from the conclusions she has drawn from her experience (for example, that, in achange effort, the organization’s leadership is essential; that change takes time; that change agents needto find where the energy is and take advantage of it; and that it is important to maintain a conceptual
foundation) but has not given us enough data to determine if we would draw the same conclusions.
Moreover, we do not know how to follow her advice if we find ourselves in a similar situation.
What would we do or say differently to accomplish what Lawton could not? How would we, for example, deal with the general managers of the legacy businesses who were not interested in change?
Lawton explains that her purpose in writing the article is to “share what we learned through this effort,” but the article does not accomplish that for me because the advice that she gives is not actionable.
For me, as reader, to learn from efforts such as Lawton’s, the article would have to be written quite differently—outside the standard format of a journal article. And that is what I want to advocate here, that
we seriously consider altering how we present the experiences from which we hope others might learn.
Employing Argyris’ concepts, and using Lawton’s experience as an illustration, such a presentation might include:
1. Framing the dilemmas she faced when working with managers and giving examples of the dialogue in which she tried to address those dilemmas with the managers. What did she say? What
did they say?
2. Helping us understand the dilemmas that her client groups faced and how she talked with them
about those dilemmas or how she now thinks she should have talked with them.
3. Examples of the dialogue she had or would have that would lead to better or different results.

50

As a community we need to learn from what courageous people like Lawton do in their daily
practice. But to do so, we have to make substantial changes in how we present our conclusions tothe community.

Responseby Barbara B. Lawton
As the title of the article states, this is a personal reflection and nothing more.
It is not meant to be “advice,” but rather a story—a sharing of experiences, thoughts, and reflections, akin to a conversation overheard at the water cooler. As humans, most of our learning is notfrom objective sources. Beyond our personal experiences, we listen to and learn from people wetrust. While the audience for this article has no basis for trust, they may relate to my situation, assumptions, and thoughts. My personal learning may become someone else’s hypothesis or may help
him or her see the situation in a different light.
As a former academic, I appreciate Nancy’s call for more data, but even a complete recounting of actual dialogue would be incomplete data. The nuances of movement, facial expression, and tone, and thecontext and history are at least as important to the meaning of a conversation as the dialogue itself.
So my hope is still that this article is of some value to others. I would be personally satisfied if it
spurs them to think and consider different alternatives, and if it also serves as motivation, encouragement, and support.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSLeveraging Change:
The Power of Systems
Thinking in Action

FEATUREPeter David StrohM

any years ago, Digital’s telecom director asked a colleague and me to improve theeffectiveness of his worldwide organization, which consisted of a corporate groupand field personnel, approximately 800 people. He indicated that the corporate and field
staffs were not working well together and asked us first to assess the situation.
We knew that the managers who sponsor such assessments typically face several
challenges in applying the findings. The first is to make sense of the frequently bewildering amount of data produced. The second is to develop a focused, effective action
plan. The third is to motivate people to implement the plan.
Most assessments are presented as themes, clusters of strengths and weaknesses, ormodels that explain what is going on in the organization without really explaining why.
Recommendations are typically lists of actions that are neither prioritized nor sequenced.
As a result, managers often assume that the different issues represent separate, equallyimportant problems and sponsor several independent improvement projects to solve
them. This tends to create confusion, to diminish required coordination, and to slow
implementation. Consequently, the motivation to change often erodes as well.
To help the managers in this case better understand the data and develop a targeted
action plan, we organized our findings differently. I had begun teaching systems thinking
at the time and was impressed by the ability of “causal loop diagrams” to translate complex data into simple, yet compelling explanations of not only what was happening, butalso why.1 The “why” that systems thinking explains is typically a set of non-obvious interdependencies between factors such as:Peter David Stroh
Founding Partner
Innovation Associates
Former Principal
Arthur D. Little51

 Different units in the organization
 Corresponding actions taken by the organization and its customers or competitors
 Quantitative variables (such as revenue growth) and qualitative ones (such as burnout or how people think) The short- and long-term consequences of managerial decisions
Once managers understand these interdependencies, they can use the principle ofleverage to target a few critical relationships to change in sequence so the whole system
can perform more effectively. Focusing on these few key areas reduces the number ofchanges they must direct at any one time and provides a compelling rationale for making them. It also reduces confusion and the dispersal of limited resources.
We decided to organize the telecom function’s data into a collection of themes anda few causal loop diagrams that showed the connections between the themes. We offered
the diagrams to explain why several particularly frustrating problems persisted despite
people’s best efforts to solve them. The diagrams illuminated such questions as: Why does field effectiveness keep declining despite so many corporate-sponsored
improvement projects?
 Why do we keep putting out individual fires and never feel that performance is really improving?

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2© 2000 by the Society for Organizational Learning and theMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

STROH
Leveraging Change Why do we have to keep justifying our unit’s value-added even after we respond to
management’s requests to make certain changes?
 Why does our workload keep increasing despite our best efforts to delegate morework to subordinates?
When people saw the findings this way, the results were astonishing. As we anticipated, the diagrams made sense of people’s frustrating experiences and indicated a few
high-leverage changes they could make. What we didn’t expect were the deep feelings ofacceptance and readiness for change that people expressed after our explanation.
For example, when we presented the diagram of the relationships between corporate staff and field staff, the senior managers of both groups said, “This is us!” And it
was not a pretty picture. Each group had acted to improve field effectiveness in a waythat made it more difficult for both itself and the other group to be successful. Moreover,both groups had conveniently found ways to blame their failures on each other.
Each group now acknowledged its own responsibility for the situation. Specifically,in seeking to be helpful by initiating many improvement projects, the corporate staff had
made it more difficult for the field staff to shape and then implement any of the projects.
The field in turn had reacted to corporate’s ineffectiveness by using limited resources tocreate its own solutions, each isolated from the others, which then required corporate todevelop yet another project to integrate them.
It was as if we held up a mirror that communicated a clear, undeniable picture of
reality. People saw their own roles in producing the problem and how the whole system
operated. Each group understood the words of Pogo, “We
have met the enemy, and it is [all of] us.” Because all parties could see how their actions were inextricably linked,
each could acknowledge the futility of simply blaming
others for their frustration and recognize how they (andothers) needed to change to improve performance. We discovered that systems thinking not only increased understanding and focused problem solving, but also generated
motivation for people to change and stimulated collaboration instead of blame.
The outcome in this case was that both the corporate
and field groups made several changes. The corporate
staff agreed to shift some of its own resources from project development to helping fieldgroups with project implementation. This decreased the number of projects under development at one time and increased the likelihood that the projects under way would
be implemented. It also reduced the delay in getting new improvements from corporate
staff to the field staff. The field groups in turn agreed to wait out the shortened delay.
Moreover, both groups decided on development standards that field groups could adopt
in more urgent cases. This ensured that short-term solutions to meet a particular customer need were implemented so that they did not undermine the overall integrity of thecompany’s telecom architecture.
Since this experience, my colleagues and I have used systems thinking to help managers make sense of complex data, make better decisions, and create sustainable change
in a variety of situations. We have learned that:

It was as if we held up a mirror that
communicated a clear, undeniable
picture of reality. People saw theirown roles in producing the problem
and how the whole system operated.

52

1. There are not only common problems but also common ineffective solutions to these
problems that show up in a wide variety of organizations. Understanding both accelerates sound decision making and sustainable problem solving.
2. Systems thinking helps managers meet four challenges to achieving effective
change: motivating people to change, generating collaboration among groups thatblame each other for the current situation, focusing limited change resources, andensuring continuous learning once the decision to change is made.
3. A reliable, repeatable process for applying systems thinking can benefit organizations in the short run to achieve breakthroughs on particular intractable issues. Systems thinking can also become a competence that produces long-term competitive
advantage for those who master it.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSSTROH

Developing Effective Responses to Common Problems

Leveraging Change

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge describes several system archetypes, typical structuresthat recur in both our organizational and personal lives.2 These structures depict different ways that people act to improve performance or reduce pressure in the short run, only
to create long-term stagnation or decline. This occurs because: We are not aware that the same action can produce opposite results over time.
 There are many ways to make things better in the short run that seduce us into
thinking that we are making sustainable progress.
 Negative consequences of our actions are often manifest first in another part of theorganization, and we are aware neither of their impact nor of our own role in producing them.
 Even patterns of successful growth will eventually reach a limit and have to be regenerated.
Understanding these archetypes enables managers to develop more effective solutions to typical organizational problems. Each archetype has a recognizable story line,
is manifest as a series of recurring problems, and suggests ways to deal with the situation once it appears. An even more powerful benefit of familiarity with the archetypes isthat managers can use them to anticipate and avoid a wide range of problems.
I’ll elaborate on one archetype, “fixes that backfire,” because it occurs frequently.
This archetype describes people’s tendency to apply a quick fix to a problem that is effective in the short run, but produces unintended consequences that make the problem
worse in the long run. Some ways in which this plays out in organizations are:
 Making many separate changes at once temporarily improves performance in a few
areas, but only creates more confusion and slows down system-wide performance
improvement over time.
 Increasing the number of product variations or stock-keeping units reverses declining profits in the short run, but only leads to both increased costs and reduced revenues in the long run.
 Consolidating suppliers to improve bargaining terms
works initially, but only leads to increased supplierleverage and a weaker bargaining position later.

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53© Emily Sper

Let’s look at the first two examples in more detail. Several years ago, a consumer products company asked me tohelp make sense of its business process reengineering effort.
The company had initiated reengineering to increase bothcost competitiveness and the success of new product introductions. The consulting firm it worked with had organized
seven reengineering teams to redesign seven major businessprocesses simultaneously. Overwhelmed by details, the participants in these design teams were concerned that they
were losing sight of the forest for the trees. They did not understand which steps were most important to change in any
one process, much less how the changes across multiple
business processes would then be integrated.
Several members of the management team thoughtthat systems thinking might help design team members toprioritize their work and ensure more coordinated solutions across the seven processes. They convened the supply chain redesign team because the company’s supply
chain costs were especially high, according to industry
benchmarks. At the same time, they brought in representatives from the other six teams to work with the supply
chain team to ensure that its recommendations would be
integrated in all seven major processes.

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After introducing the principles of systems thinking and some basic archetypes, including fixes that backfire, I asked the participants to identify the most frequent recurring problems they faced in managing the supply chain. Members of the supply chain team talked
about high inventories and order management costs. Attendees from the sales and marketing teams referred to the growing unreliability of shipments; it was difficult for them to maketimely and complete deliveries to all their customers. The
customer service representative noted that shipment problems had led to increasing customer complaints. All threeunits—sales, marketing, and customer service—assumed thatthe shipment problems stemmed from breakdowns in the
supply chain. In addition, the information systems representative said that it had become more difficult to forecast sales
accurately, a problem that the sales and manufacturing
people affirmed and were expecting the information systems
redesign team to fix. How people thought about the problems was as revealing as what theydescribed. This thinking is very typical in organizations and can be characterized as:

How people thought about the
problem was as revealing as what
they described.

 We have many different problems to address.
 The sources of these problems are obvious.
 Certain units, other than my own, need to make changes in how they operate inorder to solve them.
 We have tried to solve these problems before and have been unsuccessful, either because we haven’t been able to influence the offending units or because they aresomehow not capable of changing.
I encouraged them to consider different assumptions:
1. The problems they experience might be connected.
2. The relationship between problems and their causes is often indirect and not obvious; furthermore, everyone is likely to see part of the situation clearly, and no one islikely to see how the whole system operates to produce the behavior they describe.
3. We unwittingly create many of our own problems.
4. Effective solutions usually lie in improving relationships among different parts of theorganization.
5. Only a few key coordinated changes sustained over time will produce large systems
change.

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I then asked the participants to break into small groups to address the problems they
saw as most important. Despite their assumptions about where the problems occurred
and what should be done about them, they all acknowledged their lack of success insolving them. So I challenged them to experiment with the new assumptions and spend
90% of their time understanding why the problem occurred. I asked them to tell the storyof the issue from their respective viewpoints, listen for a few key variables embedded in
all their stories, and then trace how these variables changed over time. This served toboth legitimize each participant’s experience and begin to draw out commonalities. I
then asked them to probe for cause-effect relationships between the variables that could
produce the behavior they described and to bring these together in a causal loop diagram, using one of the basic archetypes as a starting point if it made sense. The small
groups then presented their findings to each other.
They discovered not only that their “independent” problems were related, but also thatproblems in the supply chain were symptomatic of decisions made in other parts of the organization. Actions that sales and marketing took to improve their performance, actions thatmade perfect sense given their perspective, had created problems elsewhere. Over time,those same actions had even made life more difficult for sales and marketing. When we put
the small groups’ diagrams together, we saw an example of fixes that backfire (figure 1).
In order to reverse declining profits and increase revenues, the sales and marketinggroups had developed a policy of “selling everything to everybody.” The increased productmix had in fact increased revenues and profits in the short run (fix for growth in figure 1).
However, it had also produced several unintended consequences that undermined other partsof the company and ultimately the performance of the sales and marketing organizations.

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One unintended result of a high product mix was thatit led directly to higher raw materials inventory and subsequently greater order management and production costs(inventory implications). Another consequence was that it
became difficult to forecast demand accurately, a problem
that the sales, marketing, and information system groups
had commented on. The decline in sales forecast accuracy
led manufacturing to pad inventories even higher (forecast
implications). Finally, the expanded product mix reduced
the ability of the distribution organization to make timely
and complete deliveries to all customers. The shipping
problem, raised initially by the sales and marketing andcustomer service groups, eroded both customer satisfaction and revenues over time and put renewed pressure on profits (revenue implications).
The ultimate irony, typical of a fix that backfires, is that the sales and marketing groups
responded to the long-term decline in profits by increasing the product mix further,
thereby starting the same ineffective cycles again.
The meeting had three major benefits. First, from a business perspective, it became
clear that redesigning the supply chain made little sense without first addressing thesales and marketing commitment to a wide product mix. As a result of these insights,
senior management rationalized the company’s product portfolio and was able simultaneously to address problem symptoms associated with high supply chain costs, inaccurate sales forecasts, and declining customer satisfaction. Second, from both business andorganizational perspectives, the ability to focus on high-leverage actions and link theseven redesign initiatives meant that the company’s limited resources could be reallocated to focus on the most influential changes. Third, from an organizational perspective, relationships among all the participating units improved because each could seethat they and others had good intentions, but had limited awareness and understandingof the full impact of their actions.
Becoming familiar with fixes that backfire and the other system archetypes enables
managers to identify more effective solutions to a range of common business and organizational problems and prevent them. Combining the archetypes with other tools suchas engaging diverse stakeholders, encouraging a viewpoint of personal responsibility,
shared visioning, and facilitating productive conversations also helps people manage
complex change more effectively. 3

Figure 1 Reengineering the supply
chain.

Meeting the Challenges of Complex Change
Consider the example of RetailCo, a major retailer that needed to develop and implement
a new strategy to be competitive. The company’s chairman brought in a new managing
director with strong strategic credentials to change a culture that historically was driven
by operations. In addition, there was extensive mistrust among the management team,in part because the managing director’s predecessors had managed team members oneon-one and discouraged collaboration. RetailCo was managed by a subset of senior executives, supported by some of their direct reports, who used their informal ties andpower as department heads to get things done. The dominance of a few key executives
led others to spend extensive time lobbying for support, suppressed potentially constructive conflict, made cross-functional work impossible, and prompted the departure ofmany good people. Moreover, an intense focus on weekly operational results produced afirefighting mentality that displaced time spent on strategic initiatives.
The company had hired a well-known consulting firm to identify strategic options, but
the managing director was concerned that his team would be unable to agree on the newstrategy or implement it. He asked us to work along with the other firm and “breathe life”
into the strategic planning process. He wanted us to align his team around a new vision andmission so that they could agree on a sound strategy and then to assist with implementation.
We have learned that aligning people around a shared vision and mission is notenough to make the alignment stick. People also need to have a shared picture of reality
and to understand their contribution to the existing situation. Without this picture,

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people can’t agree on how to get where they want to go because they can’t agree on
where they are. Furthermore, they resist acting differently because they do not feel responsible for their current circumstances. They tend toblame others or forces beyond their control and believethat others must change first.
Therefore, before the first retreat with the management
team, we assessed how the organization was functioning.
The goal was to learn about existing opportunities and challenges and to sketch a picture of current reality that might
integrate the perspectives of all members of the management team. We first used a tool called “unwritten rules of
the game” to identify the motivators, enablers, and incentives that guided the current behavior of the team and their direct reports.4 We then developed a causal loop diagram that described how people currently worked and how thosesame behaviors would undermine their ability to implement any new direction and strategy.
We presented this assessment at the beginning of the retreat to ground the visionary
and strategic development. We showed the relationship between how people worked now
and the strategic approach RetailCo’s chairman and the new managing director expected.
We stated that developing a vision and strategy without also addressing how they currently worked would be a waste of time. Some team members, those who were not part ofthe inner network, readily understood this message. The few dominant executives heldback, understandably reluctant to give up their power. It was important to affirm their contribution, and we showed how their strengths in making informal deals and managing
crises had kept the company going until now. However, we also pointed out that the same
approach would not produce the step-level performance improvement that was expected
and would block any strategic path they chose.
In fact, everyone acknowledged that the few strategic initiatives they had attemptedin the past had failed and that they had little confidence of being successful in implementing new ones. Competition was growing. Members of the inner network were overwhelmed by their indispensability, and the other management team members werefrustrated at being underutilized. The managing director seemed to be more team-oriented, and the potential for collaboration was at least worth considering. The team members began to accept that, if they were going to become more competitive, they would
have to make different choices, learn new skills, and support others to do the same. A
causal loop diagram became an anchor point for the team’s move forward (figure 2).
The strong initial emphasis on current reality, including subjects that had been
undiscussable, signaled that whatever followed would be equally candid. We worked extensively during this first retreat to clarify a vision and mission for the company to which
all management team members could commit. It took the team members three attempts
to develop consensus on a mission statement, in part because they had never tried to makedecisions by consensus before, and in part because they had trouble identifying what they
could genuinely commit to. Having set a precedent of being authentic, we challenged themto speak from their hearts and come back to the mission until it had meaning for all. The
mission statement that finally emerged was powerful: it focused on being at the heart ofthe communities where they operated and making every day special for their customers.
It went well beyond a focus on financial performance, and this too was essential.
The combination of a meaningful shared vision and mission with a deep, shared understanding of current reality established the creative tension that propelled the team forward. Supported by the new managing director, the team agreed to a new way of working.
In keeping with the idea of leverage, they worked intensively on three areas:

People also need to have a sharedpicture of reality and to understandtheir contribution to the existing
solution.

1. Valuing and engaging each other fully to break the dependence on informal networking among a few members.
2. Focusing on long-term direction as well as operations to shift the balance from
firefighting to an increased focus on strategic initiatives.
3. Involving others in the organization to reinforce the executives’ commitments tocross-functional strategic work at lower levels.

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These three foci led to several actions. In order tovalue and engage each other more fully, the team members learned to give each other feedback, mostly positive
and only selectively negative, to begin to dissolve the mistrust between them. They established and monitored
ground rules to shape their behavior. Sparked by thebridges they were building, and without facilitation advice
or support, they took time during subsequent retreats tohave personal conversations, sharing, for example, photographs and pieces of music that evoked particularly meaningful times in their lives. In so doing, they further broke
down the status, class, and cultural differences that had
kept them apart. They moved from blaming each other toholding each other accountable and raised disagreementswith each other in team meetings so that they could effectively resolve problems together.
In order to focus on long-term direction and operations, the team members established five strategic initiatives and committed cross-functional teams to achieving
them. They had their direct reports and those below themfocus significant time to flesh out and achieve the initiatives and supported their teamwork
within and across their respective functions. They also had regular reviews of the initiatives as a way to stop micromanaging. Finally, they involved all 30,000 employees in small
group sessions to reflect on what the new company mission meant to each individual.
The change did not always proceed smoothly. An ambitious plan to bring the leaders and members of the five strategic initiative teams together regularly was shelved because of the time required. Furthermore, despite an agreement to focus on a few strategic
initiatives, other initiatives were not dropped, and new ones continued to be introduced
as the year unfolded. Efforts to prioritize these additional projects failed. In the middleof the year, the market turned downward, and the company had to focus more attention
on delivering operational results. To the senior management team’s credit, it insisted thatthe strategic work would continue simultaneously, but this created additional stress.
Despite some good progress, people began to burn out by the end of the year. Somekey staff left, and there was serious doubt about how long every one could continue atthe same pace. The senior management team requested an end-of-year audit to explore
how they and their direct reports had changed their way of working. They particularly
wanted to understand why people were so overworked and why new initiatives kept proliferating despite their own well-intended efforts to establish and maintain priorities.
Using systems thinking, we uncovered the root cause of these problems. Despite theircomplaints about workload and lack of time, people at all levels consistently chose to create new initiatives because this gave them visibility and importance. Finishing projects,
by contrast, was less valued. People were faced with a choice: continue to experience highlevels of stress or create alternate ways to feel challenged and respected. Understanding
the negative consequences of their own actions more fully, they determined to satisfy theirmotivations differently. As a result, the company finally prioritized all existing initiatives
and has begun to reward people for focusing on and meeting those commitments.
A year after the initial retreat, RetailCo had its best year. It had developed a new mission and strategy, made significant progress on five strategic initiatives, and engaged all
30,000 employees in reflection on the meaning of the mission. One person remarked, “Themission has had a huge impact on people. You can rally around it, and it has given us clear
understanding.” The senior management team members continued to become closer toeach other and more effective. Another person noted, “The executive team has shown
enormous leadership in working more collaboratively.” The direct reports acknowledged
the shifts they had to make in their own behavior as a result. One observed, “There ismore honesty, encouragement to challenge, more acceptance of challenge.” The result wassignificant improvement in the quality of cross-functional teamwork. A fourth employee
noted, “The ‘Way We Work’ team has tackled some big issues. I can see some deliverables:

Figure 2 An anchor point forchange.

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Figure 3 Using systems thinking tomeet four challenges of change.

the mission, rules, organization structure, new roles, and responsibilities.” Furthermore,
the company accomplished all this while still improving its operational performance. It
outpaced competitors and achieved its highest revenues and profits ever in a depressedmarket. An audit at the end of the year and subsequent decisions to act on the findings
prepared the company to achieve its goals more easily the following year.
In conclusion, we have found that systems thinking is a powerful way to stimulatea change process because it makes the consequences of people’s current choices very
real. More specifically, systems thinking:58

1. Respects why people don’t believe they need to change (they are usually able toachieve their goals in the short run).
2. Demonstrates why change might be in their best interest (their behavior is making
their own lives more difficult over time, and it is undermining the effectiveness ofothers and the organization as a whole).
3. Explains how people’s thinking and behavior interacts with others’ to produce thedynamics they all experience (it doesn’t make sense to blame each other because
we’re all in the same boat).
4. Suggests what each party can do differently to improve his or her own performance,others’, and that of the entire organization (we have alternatives).
This case further demonstrates how systems thinking helps organizations meet four challenges of managing complex change over time. Figure 3 summarizes the challenges, typical responses, and the particular benefits of using systems thinking to leverage change.

What You Can Do to Put It All Together
How can you take advantage of systems thinking in strengthening your own problemsolving and change management skills? I have found seven steps to follow.

1. Look for Opportunities
Consider applying systems thinking when you want to make sense of a messy or confusing situation; solve a chronic problem about which people have very different views; orincrease the motivation, collaboration, and focus required to manage effective change.

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3. Generate Data
Data about the current situation is crucial because people often have strong assumptions
about what is wrong, who else needs to change, and in what ways to fix it. Because of
the inherent complexity of systems as well as people’s natural biases, these assumptions
are usually incomplete and inaccurate. Careful data gathering helps everyone involved
alter his or her assumptions. Consider that each stakeholder correctly sees part of thesystem and that no one stakeholder sees how the whole system functions.

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Determine who appears to contribute to the current situation or is affected by it. Engage
them in the process as soon as possible, get their viewpoint on what is happening, andalign them around a shared vision of the desired outcome.

Leveraging Change

2. Align People around the End Result

4. Make Systemic Sense of the Data
A systemic assessment legitimizes and integrates multiple perspectives. A portfolio oftechniques can make sense of complex, often contradictory data, ranging from certain
basic questions and simple causal loops to more complex loop diagrams and computermodels. Whatever technique(s) you choose, verify the analysis by ensuring it validates
people’s good intentions and unexplained frustrations.

5. Building Understanding and Commitment
Seeing a confusing, often contradictory reality reflected in a way that reveals its underlying coherence usually leads people to new, more productive conversations. They can recognize their responsibility for the problem and accept that others are also acting inwell-intended but self-defeating ways. It is also effective to use such facilitation approaches
as dialogue and skillful discussion to support people’s increased openness and help them
adopt different assumptions.5 Finally, have people consider the benefits of the existing system, not just its costs, before they commit to redesigning it.

6. Identify Interventions
Actual systems change occurs at multiple levels, beginning with people’s initial intent toaddress a complex problem systemically and by clarifying the end result around which
they are aligned. It continues when you engage people in contributing to, understanding,and building commitment to the systemic analysis. The next step is to identify and sequence the few ways in which the current systems structure can be “rewired” or redesigned to create a new chain of cause-and-effect relationships.

7. Follow-throughFollow-through involves engaging additional key stakeholders in the problem-solving process; building short-term momentum by implementing a few key changes in organizational policies, processes, procedures, and/or perceptions; and continuing to deepen
people’s understanding about the system as changes are made. Whenever possible, involve additional stakeholders by first helping them develop their own insights about why
the system functions as it does, and encouraging them to clarify what they want to create.

Summary
Systems thinking can catalyze new change efforts and increase the leverage of existing ones.
It can be used to change how managers think about their business, improve organization
effectiveness, or both. Systems thinking strengthens people’s abilities to make sense of complex data, identify more effective solutions to chronic problems, and make decisions thatprevent potential problems from occurring. Because organizations have a growing need to

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establish more effective connections both within and across their boundaries, developing
capacity in systems thinking can ensure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

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Notes
1. While there are many approaches to systems thinking, this article uses the one made popular byPeter Senge. See P. Senge, The Fifth Discipline (New York: Doubleday, 1990). A causal loop diagram shows the cause-effect feedback relationships between two or more variables. Two examples of these diagrams are included later in this article.
2. System archetypes explain non-obvious interdependencies between what Kurt Lewin describedas the forces pushing for and against change. See K. Lewin, “Frontiers in Group Dynamics, part
1,” Human Relations 1 (1947a):5–41. While this section focuses on systems archetypes as a wayof identifying ineffective solutions to common organizational problems, there are many otheruseful approaches. For example, Barry Oshry describes the pitfalls experienced by people at different organizational levels: top, middle, and bottom. See B. Oshry, Seeing Systems (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1996). Stafford Beer identifies how an overemphasis on operations at theexpense of development and control at the expense of coordination reduces the viability of an
entire system. See S. Beer, The Heart of the Enterprise (New York: John Wiley, 1995). Bill Isaacs,
building on the work of David Kantor, has written about common “structural traps” that organizations fall into. See W. Isaacs, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together (New York: Doubleday,
1999). Perhaps the most challenging trap is when the traps themselves cannot be discussed, aproblem addressed by Chris Argyris in his groundbreaking work on how to surface and resolve
this bind. See C. Argyris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1990).
3. The art and tools of managing complex change, including the importance of clearly distinguishing the present and desired states of the system, were strongly influenced by the pioneering workof Richard Beckhard. See R. Beckhard and R. Harris, Organizational Transitions (Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 1977).
4. This approach is described by Peter Scott-Morgan. See P. Scott-Morgan, The Unwritten Rules of
the Game (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994).
5. For these and other productive conversation tools, see P. Senge et al., The Fifth Discipline
Fieldbook (New York: Doubleday, 1994).

Commentary
by Nelson P. Repenning60

Nelson P. Repenning
Assistant Professor of Management
MIT Sloan School of Management

I’ve had a stormy relationship with the “systems archetype.” When I first was introduced to the fieldof system dynamics and its more popular offspring, systems thinking, I found the feedback view incredibly exciting and looked for loops wherever I went. When I read The Fifth Discipline, I was
equally enthralled by the set of system archetypes that Peter Senge presented. I often fantasizedabout someday discovering one of my own. 1 Unfortunately, this euphoria was short-lived.
Studying system dynamics and experimental psychology suggested that people’s ability to infer
the behavior that a dynamic system might generate is exceedingly limited, thus implying thatcausal loop diagrams, unaided by formal models, offer relatively little insight into how systems really work. Similarly, it didn’t take much study of the broader trends in social science to realize thatreality is a pretty slippery concept, and any method that claimed to help people understand it was
subject to a number of fairly serious criticisms. Compounding these intellectual challenges was thefact that I was a graduate student desperately trying to absorb a set of technical modeling tools,
while new consultant-converts seemed to be earning big bucks by just drawing pretty pictures
without using the formal tools I was working so hard to acquire. Thus, I entered a period in which I
was rabidly against causal loops in any form, and the archetypes became Exhibit A in my prosecution of them. Now that I’m on the other side of the classroom, I use and teach causal loops extensively and even resort to the occasional archetype to make a point.
I was reminded of this somewhat sordid history while reading Peter Stroh’s paper. Stroh makes
significant use of the systems archetypes and provides compelling evidence that they are powerfultools for inducing change in organizations. While I am strongly sympathetic to the main messageof this paper—it is always nice to know that the tools one teaches actually work on occasion—it

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also serves as a powerful reminder of the dangers in building an intervention practice around thearchetypes. In what follows, I’ll try to explain my main objections, not as criticism of Stroh’s arguments or practice, but as a direction for future work and research in the field.
Analyzing a problem using causal loop diagrams is harder than it looks. My visits to the various
systems thinking and system dynamics conferences suggest that there are relatively few people
with the skills required to do a thorough analysis using these tools and even fewer with sufficient
skill to use such diagrams as a facilitation tool in real time. In contrast, the systems archetypes aremuch more accessible. Most people find it relatively straightforward to start with a template andthen change the variable names as needed to map their personal situation into the given story. Further, they dramatically simplify the facilitator’s job. Rather than working from a blank sheet of paper to create an original diagram that emerges from the conversation, the facilitator can begin
with the various templates and work from there. Thus, it should come as little surprise that many
within the field, including some of its most famous practitioners, have gravitated toward the archetypes as the primary manifestation of the systems thinking perspective.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure this is a good thing. It seems well accepted that the value of modeling of
any type lies primarily in helping people forge a tighter connection between their mental models andthe underlying structure of the systems in which they reside. Further, as any skilled practitioner can attest, doing this well is hard work. In the process of using the systems thinking perspective, people must
confront their own flawed mental models and often come to accept that many of the difficulties they
face are of their own creation. My fear is that extensive use of the archetypes defeats this objective.
Stories based on structures like the “fixes that backfire” are easy to tell, they are typically compelling, and they often make a lot of sense. Why? My own hypothesis is that they provide an easy
way to connect the structure of complicated systems with personal experience. We’ve all probably
had the experience of staying up a little too late to finish some project, only to see the quality of
our work slip the next day due to fatigue, thus necessitating another late night. With this experience in hand, it is easy to understand how an organization can become mired in a similar trap. But
within the utility of this approach lie at least two grave dangers.
First, there is little reason to believe that our experiences as individuals will regularly help us understand the experience and performance of organizations. A central tenet of the systems thinking
movement is that one cannot understand the performance of the whole by analyzing the individual
parts. Thus, if one takes this view seriously, any tool that helps us understand organizational performance by building directly on our individual experience may miss a good chunk of what’s important.
A frequently asked question in organizational theory is, “Is this phenomenon isomorphic across levelsof analysis?” which roughly translates to, “Does this concept/construct/theory usefully describe what
is happening when analyzing both specific individuals or groups and entire organizations?” The answer to this question is usually not particularly obvious and is often highly controversial. This suggests, to me at least, that practitioners face an important trade-off when choosing their approach tointervening in groups. To the extent that things like the archetypes help people map intuition developed as individuals to understand organizational issues, people will probably proceed more rapidly
and feel more confident about their resulting analysis. However, there is also an increased likelihoodthat many of the dynamics that arise only at the organizational level will be missed.
A second danger is that, independent of any issues with the level of analysis, the ease withwhich one can use the archetypes may prove to be an impediment to the deep examination necessary for success. The goal of a systems thinking intervention, at least as I understand it, is tochallenge and improve how the group in question understands and creates its environment. Doing
this well is often difficult work. The ease with which the archetypes allow users to create new stories that resonate with their own experience suggests that, in some cases, users may not be improving their understanding of the system, but simply swapping one strongly held, uncontested
mental model for another. When this happens, I’m not sure anybody has learned anything particularly useful. Further, despite having failed to challenge any deeply held assumptions, participants
may feel that they have made a major breakthrough. In such situations, the true source of theorganization’s difficulties remains unidentified so the chance that the intervention will produce
significant results is slim.
This creates a big dilemma for both teachers and consultants. On the one hand, the more people
struggle, the deeper they dig into their own mental models and the more they confront their own
limitations. This dramatically increases the likelihood that the intervention, if it is followed throughto completion, will produce dramatic results. On the other hand, struggling, digging, and confront-

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ing are all hard work. The more the process requires these activities, the more people are likely toabandon it. Practitioners and teachers want to produce dramatic results, but a necessary prerequisite for this success is that people use the methods that they offer.
My personal view is that archetypes are akin to the common themes found repeatedly in thegreat works of literature. A story like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet repeats itself in forms ranging
from musicals to recent film adaptations because, despite the dramatic changes in society, itsthemes of love and familial conflict continue to resonate in modern society. Similarly, the dynamics
first identified in Forrester’s classic “market growth” paper remain as relevant in today’s world of
dot.coms and aggressive growth strategies as it was when it was written almost 40 years ago.2 Despite these similarities, however, I don’t think any English teacher would ever ask a student to create a story by simply erasing the character names in Romeo and Juliet and substituting those of
the student’s choosing (although it does appear that some movie scripts are created this way). Unfortunately, current approaches to systems thinking using the archetypes amount to little morethan this fill-in-the-blanks approach. While students of systems thinking should be deeply familiar
with the archetypes and the stories that underlie them, in my view, they do not constitute a usefulor appropriate starting point for an intervention.
It is worth noting that I am far from unbiased on this topic. I’ve invested a lot of time and energy in acquiring the full set of system dynamics tools, and both my research and teaching focus
on using them in their full glory. Thus, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that I am promoting theiruse at the expense of the simpler but more accessible tools like the archetypes. What’s reallyneeded here is some careful research on how the various tools influence what happens in the organizations that use them. In the past 10 years, I’ve probably seen at least 100 papers or conference
presentations that aim to do exactly what Stroh’s paper does so well: report the outcome of one ormore successful systems thinking interventions. Unfortunately, to sort out issues like those raised
here, more is needed. I suspect that some readers will react negatively to my characterization of thearchetypes, and I’ll be happy to listen to their objections. I’ll be much happier, however, when errors
in my thinking are revealed via data rather than debate.
Testimonials are useful, but at this point, I’m not sure that we are learning much from them. I
am certainly willing to grant that, on occasion, using systems thinking tools like the archetypes
makes groups feel good about what they are doing and that these episodes are sometimes followed
by improved performance. I am not, however, willing to accept the assertion that these were thebest tools for the issue at hand or that there is necessarily a causal linkage between the intervention and the improved results. These linkages can be established only by research that moves beyond single, best practice cases to comparative studies of multiple interventions that carefully
document the state of the system before and after the intervention.
Unfortunately, I fear that academia will be slow in picking up this charge. For a variety of reasons, none of which are worth discussing here, this topic doesn’t fit the constraints typically imposed by the university setting. Thus, it is largely up to communities like SoL to build thefoundations of their own practice. I can think of few better places to start than improving the understanding of the utility and efficacy of the oft-used but little studied systems archetypes.

Notes

1. Senge, P. The Fifth Discipline (New York: Currency/Doubleday, 1990).
2. Forrester, J. “Market Growth as Influenced by Capital Investment.” Industrial Management Review 9(1968): 83–105.

Response
by Peter David StrohI share Nelson Repenning’s concerns about depending exclusively on archetypes when applying
systems thinking in organizations. They are a good way to introduce systemic concepts, and that is
why I emphasize them here. At the same time, both in teaching systems thinking and applying it,
identifying archetypes can become an overly simplistic process of forcing easily understood solutions onto realistically messy problems.
The seven steps described toward the end of the article are an effort to summarize the actual
process that my colleagues and I use. While introducing the archetypes typically employs deductive

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Leveraging Changereasoning (moving from the general case to specific examples), both consulting and true capacity
building use inductive reasoning (let’s describe the problem first and then consider the archetypes
as possible lenses through which to develop insight about why it occurs). In practice, the archetypes often serve as departure points for an analysis, although they are not always the end point of
a complete explanation.
The utility of the archetypes ultimately depends on two factors. First, the final analysis explains
the pattern of behavior that people seek to understand and is recognized by them as accurate(through what usually proves to be a visceral response of recognition). Sometimes, this can be accomplished only with a more formal model, and I agree with Repenning’s recommendation that further research be done on the comparative effectiveness of various systems thinking tools. Second,people commit to changing because they see that their current actions, however well-intended andeven immediately rewarding, are not producing the long-term results they want, and that alternatives do exist. This commitment frequently requires the kind of struggle that Repenning refers to andis facilitated by illuminating issues of mental models, personal responsibility, and underlying purpose.

Commentary
by Linda Booth Sweeney
My sincere thanks to Peter Stroh for his candor and discipline in putting together this article. It is
one thing to talk conceptually about the implementation of systems thinking and its related disciplines, and another to describe the successes and failures of real-life implementation experiences.
Stroh has done the latter in a way that has created a provocative, practical learning tool. Those in
the position of utilizing systems thinking tools and related concepts in their own organizations willfind this article invaluable.
It is obvious that the people Stroh consulted with were all intelligent, perceptive, and hard-working.
As I read the article, I was left to wonder: What led them to believe they did not have the capacity toaddress the complex, chronic issues that challenged the effectiveness of their organization worldwide?
I believe part of the answer lies in the nexus of our educational systems and the changing faceof today’s work world. Nearly a decade ago, I was introduced to several systems thinking concepts—
that is, circular “feedback loops” and stock and flow relationships—in a five-day workshop. I foundthe concepts to be tremendously useful as a way to understand the dynamics that I observed in myprofessional work. Yet these concepts were not part of my academic training and are, in fact, conspicuously missing from most education today. The curriculum taught in grades K through 12 andin US higher education is typically reduced to a set of separate, disconnected parts; literature istaught in one class, math in another, history in another, and never the twain shall meet. Russell
Ackoff calls this “machine age education” (Ackoff, 1974). In such an environment, it’s difficult toconsider the interdisciplinary and interconnected nature of real-life problems and to look at problems from multiple viewpoints. Both these skills are useful when attempting to understand the behavior of dynamic systems such as the impact of oil spills on the environment, boom and bustcycles in the marketplace, or the dynamics of burn-out in an organization.
Add to this the emergence of a new work environment—called the knowledge-based economy,
the new work order, the new capitalism, among other labels. In this new environment, new information technology, more accessible media, and shrinking global borders collide to create an increasingly interconnected landscape. We’re left with the overwhelming sensation that everything,
everywhere, is connected to everything else.
Anyone working today knows that the nature of professional work is changing. To thrive in thisnew environment, today’s practitioner needs to be deliberately more reflective, attuned to complex
causality, and able to recognize oversimplified models of the world. These demands on the cognitive capacities of the modern adult beg the question: How can present and future professionals—
whether in industry, government, healthcare, education, or nonprofit organizations—learn toaddress the dynamic complexity generated by an increasingly interconnected world?
This is not a new question. Business leaders, educators, environmentalists, social scientists, andgovernment leaders have recognized, albeit separately, the need for improved systemic reasoning 1
or the ability to:

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

Linda Booth Sweeney
Doctoral Candidate
Harvard Graduate School of
Education

63

STROH
Leveraging Change Represent and assess dynamic complexity (for example, behavior that arises from the interactionof a system’s agents over time), both textually and graphically (Booth Sweeney and Sterman,
2000).
 See patterns of interdependence and mutual causality (for example, feedback).
 Understand how a system’s behavior arises from the interaction of its agents over time.
 Challenge the boundaries of mental models.
 Select appropriate time horizons for understanding systems of interest.
 Recognize delays (temporal, informational, material) and understand their impact.
 Complement analysis with synthesis.
As a researcher and consultant interested in revealing and developing systemic reasoning capacity, I
have witnessed a dramatic increase in the application of a family of systems thinking frameworks2 toorganizational and social system problems. Under the leadership of many educators, particularly thoseat The Water’s Foundation and system dynamicist Jay Forrester,3 there is now some integration of systemic reasoning tools and concepts in K-12 curriculum around the country. However, there has been
little systemic research in understanding how systemic reasoning skills are best taught and learned. 4
My curiosity led me to investigate whether the development of systemic thinking skills—perhaps
under the guise of “problem solving” or “critical thinking”—had been investigated by other researchers. I found that studies of problem solving in professional practice have been a fixture on the educational research agenda since the 1920s in the writings of Eduard Lindeman (1926) and John Dewey(1934). In fact, many fields in the social sciences have sought to improve adult problem-solving skills(Brookfield, 1987; Kuhn, 1962; Lewin, 1948; Polya, 1957; Polyani, 1958). However, the lion’s share of
problem solving in professional practice today—whether in schools, industry, government agencies,
hospitals, or nonprofit organizations—remains deeply influenced by the classical scientific technique;for example, take apart the problem and then seek to understand it by studying the characteristics of
its parts. The legitimacies of “technical rationality,” in Schon’s (1983) words, are notable and numerous, that is, the discovery of atoms, chemical elements, and basic needs.
However, as we all know, analysis-reliant frameworks historically have not measured up when
faced with the messy, ill-structured problems found within nonlinear, dynamical systems. Many social
scientists (Boulding, 1988; Gee et al., 1996; Churchman, 1971; Schon, 1983; Waddington, 1977) havenoted the limitations of the technical rational approach. These include a disregard for problem settings, treatment of problems as independent of each other, dependency on agreement about ends, no
explicit framework for exploring conflicting paradigms, lack of ethical vigilance, and little awarenessfor the emergent nature of many problems. In fact, many adults today who went to school 10, 30, or
50 years ago probably suspected that much of what they were taught about “problem solving” wasessentially static and linear in its perspective: the world stood still while we analyzed it.5
My conclusions? First, it’s not their fault. When we want people to be systems thinkers after athree-day systems thinking course, we have to remember that:64

 They are being asked to learn new language—one that talks of mutual causality, feedback, stocks
and flows, and so on—which takes time.
 Thinking systemically requires consideration of the long-term consequences of actions, yet there
are enormous forces in our society that drive us to a short-term focus, including the media, thepolitical system, the stock market, interest rates, and so on.
 Surfacing, testing, and mapping mental models requires time, skill, and patience. As stated before, much of our educational and professional training emphasizes analysis and fragmentation.
It will take time to rebuild atrophied systems-thinking muscle.
 Organizational settings don’t always support the use of systems thinking approaches. There is
still a great deal to be learned about the cultural conditions necessary to develop and apply systemic thinking tools and concepts. Edgar Schein, for example, advises that a learning culture
must be “built on the assumption that the world is intrinsically complex, nonlinear, and overdetermined” (Schein, 1992). What is the role of the leader who seeks to foster a learning environment? According to Schein, one task of learning leaders is to develop their own personal insights about the nature of the complex and interdependent world around them and to help
others achieve these insights as well.
Second, I couldn’t agree with Stroh’s statement:“Systems thinking can [my addition] strengthen people’s abilities to make sense of complex data,
can help them identify more effective solutions to chronic problems, and can help them make deci-

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSSTROH
Leveraging Changesions that prevent potential problems from occurring.” Yet we have to first understand the barriers tothinking systemically, that is, how people, when faced with complex problems, make sense of those
problems and why they choose the solutions they choose. Thanks to the work of John Sterman andother researchers looking into misconceptions about a variety of complex science concepts, we are
beginning to understand the cognitive and affective bottlenecks that make it difficult to “learn inand about complex systems” (Sterman, 1994). In order to support practitioners’, educators’, and consultants’ faith in the efficacy of systems thinking concepts and tools, we must make understanding
the development of systemic reasoning a high priority on our collective research agendas.

Notes

1. The term “systems thinking” has been used for more than 30 years. English social scientist Frederick
Emery edited a book, Systems Thinking, in 1969, Peter Checkland wrote Systems Thinking, Systems
Practice in 1981, and Peter Senge brought the term to mainstream organizational audiences withThe Fifth Discipline in 1990. I use the term “systemic reasoning” to suggest a set of higher orderreasoning skills that are synthesized from a variety of systemic problem-solving methods. For otherwritings related to systems thinking, see the works of these authors in the reference section:
Ackoff, 1974/1985; Oshry, 1996; Banathy, 1991; Brown and Campione, 1990; Forrester, 1994;
Gould, 1993; Grotzer, 1993; Mandinach and Cline, 1994; Roberts, 1983; Richmond, 1993; Boulding,1988; Capra, 1996; Gore, 1996; Havel and Wilson, 1997; and Churchman, 1968.
2. During the past three decades, a distinctive “family” of systems-based approaches to understanding
dynamic complexity has emerged. These include approaches that (1) seek primarily to understandand explain a system’s behavior (that is, chaos theory, complexity theory, and decentralized thinking [Resnick, 1995], as described by Mitchel Resnick of MIT’s Media Lab), (2) seek to improve decision making and policy creation (that is, systems thinking as a discipline of organizational learningand system dynamics), and (3) seek to create idealized design of systems, for example, schools, organizations, and communities (that is, interactive planning, as described by Russell Ackoff).
3. The Water’s Foundation founded the Creative Learning Exchange (CLE) to serve as a networking
hub for K-12 educators interested in using system dynamics in schools. The CLE website address is:www.clexchange.org. The system dynamics in education project (SDEP) is run under the tutelage of
Jay Forrester and guidance of Nan Lux and can be found at Sysdyn.mit.edu.
4. Several exceptions here can be found in the ongoing assessment-related research conducted by The
Water’s Foundation, as well as in the work of Gunther Ossimitz and colleagues in Bonn, Germany.
5. The McKinsey Quarterly (1995) makes a similar argument in an article about the use of system dynamics.
6. The exceptions here include the work of Bakken et al. (1992), Cavaleri and Sterman (1995), andMandinach and Cline (1994).

References

Ackoff, R. Redesigning the Future: A Systems Approach to Societal Problems (New York: Wiley, 1974).
Ackoff, R. and J. Gharajedaghi. “Toward Systemic Education of Systems Scientists.” Systems Research 2(1985): 21–27.
Bakken, B.E., J.M. Gould et al. “Experimentation in Learning Organizations: A Management Flight Simulator Approach.” European Journal of Operations Research 59 (1992): 167–182.
Banathy, B. Systems Design of Education: A Journey to Create the Future (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications, 1991).
Boulding, E. Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent World (New York: Teacher’sCollege Press, 1988).
Brookfield, S. Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking
and Acting (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1987).
Brown, A. and J. Campione. “Interactive Learning Environments and the Teaching of Science and Mathematics in Toward a Scientific Practice of Science Education, eds. M. Gardner et al. (Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., 1990): 111–140.
Capra, F. The Web of Life (New York: Doubleday, 1996).
Cavaleri, S. and J.D. Sterman, Towards Evaluation of Systems Thinking Interventions: A Case Study (Tokyo, Japan: Proceedings of the 1995 Conference of the International System Dynamics Society,1995): 398–407.
Checkland, P.B. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (Chichester: Wiley, 1981).
Churchman, C.W. The Systems Approach (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1968).
Churchman, C.W. The Design of Inquiring Systems: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organizations (NewYork: Basic Books, 1971).
Dewey, J. Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1934).
Emery, F. Systems Thinking: Selected Readings (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1969).
Forrester, J. “Learning Through System Dynamics as Preparation for the 21st Century” (Concord, MA: Keynote address for Systems Thinking and Dynamic Modeling Conference, 1994).
Gee, J., G. Hull, and C. Lankshear. The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism (St.
Leonards, New South Wales: Allen & Unwin, 1996).
Gore, A. “Prepared Remarks: Commencement Exercises” (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, June 7, 1996).

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Leveraging Change

Gould, J. “Systems Thinking in Education,” System Dynamics Review (special issue) 9 (1993).
Grotzer, T. “Children’s Understanding of Complex Causal Relationships in Natural Systems” (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1993).
Havel, V. and P. Wilson. The Art of the Impossible: Politics As Morality in Practice; Speeches and Writings, 1990–1996 (New York: Knopf, 1997).
Kuhn, T. Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
Lewin, K. Resolving Social Conflicts: Selected Papers on Group Dynamics (1935–1946), ed. G.W. Lewin(New York: Harper, 1948).
Lindeman, E.C. The Meaning of Adult Education (New York: The New Republic, Inc., 1926/1961).
Mandinach, E. and H. Cline. Classroom Dynamics: Implementing a Technology-Based Learning Environment (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994).
McKinsey Quarterly. “The Beginning of System Dynamics” 4 (1995): 3–16.
Oshry, B. Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life (San Francisco, CA: BerrettKoehler, 1996).
Ossimitz, G. “The Development of Systems Thinking” (Bonn, Germany: Institute of Educational Research,
paper, 1996).
Polya, G. How to Solve It (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).
Polyani, M. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1958).
Resnick, M. Termites, Turtles and Traffic Jam: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1995).
Richmond, B. “Systems Thinking: Critical Thinking Skills for the 1990s and Beyond.” System Dynamics
Review 9 (1993): 113–134.
Roberts, N. “Testing the World with Simulations: When the Computer is the Laboratory, the Subject Can
be Almost Anything.” Classroom Computer News 28 (1983): 28–31; 76.
Schein, E. Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992).
Schon, D.A. The Reflective Practitioner (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
Senge, P. The Fifth Discipline (New York: Doubleday, 1990).
Sterman, J. “Learning in and about Complex Systems.” Systems Dynamics Review 10 (1994): 291–330.
Sweeney, L.B. and J. Sterman. “Bathtub Dynamics: Preliminary Results of a Systems Thinking Inventory”(Bergen, Norway: 2000 International System Dynamics Conference, paper, 2000).
Waddington, C.H. Tools for Thought (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977).

Response
by Peter David Stroh66

I agree with Linda Booth Sweeney’s observation that systems thinking is not applied as much as it
could be in organizations. Building on her own excellent observations, I believe there are two broad
challenges, one concerning motivation and the second involving capacity building, and that it ispossible to meet both of them.
People are not motivated to apply systems thinking in part because they are not aware that theiractions have unintended consequences. A client who was recently exposed to the idea of unintended consequences has enthusiastically adopted it as a new and important one for managing thebusiness. Moreover, organizations focus primarily on the success of their individual units andstruggle with how to reward cross-boundary performance. Another factor that discourages the useof systems thinking is that it challenges managers to think strategically, not just act operationally,in an environment that places a premium on short-term results.
Developing the ability to apply systems thinking effectively takes commitment and time. One client
just completed 10 days of training and project work for 20 internal change agents, and understands
that the organization is at the beginning of the learning curve. The change agents appreciate that systems thinking is a discipline and that the discipline implies not only practice with a set of tools but also
cultivation of a certain life orientation. For example, they understand that effective application depends as much on compassion and courage as on sound analysis. They recognize that a system changes
gradually and that there is power in using the tools over time to both track and influence how it
evolves.
I hope articles like this one that describe successes and also explain why the approach is effective will increase management’s motivation to use systems thinking. In addition, combining realproject work with skill building is likely to build the business case for systems thinking further,while providing fertile learning for new practitioners.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSThe Interlevel Dynamics
of Systemic Learning
and Change

FEATUREDavid CoghlanLevels of analysis are rarely used as levels of aggregation to understand how individual
learning becomes organizational learning (Kim, 1993; Argyris and Schon, 1996; Roth,
1996; Coghlan, 1997). In this article, I explore how organizational learning and change
comprise individual, team, and interdepartmental group learning, and how levels of aggregation work as a recursive system. I present a case story and examine the change process in the light of systemic learning and change as a complex iteration of individual andteam learning.

The Thoul Plant
A pharmaceutical supplies company plant was working through a five-year transformation program. In many ways, the plant was a product of the traditional industrial model
inherited from the 1950s and before. Several trade unions competed for members. Therewas strict demarcation of job and role. The managers’ style, particularly that of front-line
supervisors, tended to focus on control and discipline. The plant itself was inefficient andlosing money, but corporate managers did not want to close it because to do so would
have been costly. So they installed a new plant manager with a directive to turn the plantaround and make it profitable in five years. The new plant manager initiated a total quality management (TQM) program. As the TQM program developed and took root, espoused attitudes changed. The future success of the plant depended not only on changed
output, structures, and behaviors, but also on attitudes and central assumptions about
what working in the plant meant, how work was done, and how people worked together.
The plant manager decided that the plant needed organization development (OD) interventions to support the TQM program and other changes he had initiated.
Over 18 months, I worked with the plant management team, the production teams’
supervisors, the quality control team, and the administrative services team, respectively,in day-long off-site meetings. The goal was to instill team thinking, and practice andbuild team skills. Each meeting focused on (1) the team’s goals, what they were, andhow they were decided, (2) procedures for allocating work to achieve goals, (3) processes for communicating information, conducting meetings, solving problems, making
decisions, managing conflict, and (4) the relationships between the team members(Beckhard, 1972). We also focused on relationships and work-flow issues with otherteams.
For some teams, these meetings were the first time the members could discuss andreview company and team-based issues off-site. I worked in a process consultation mode
(Schein, 1999); that is, I sat in on the meetings while the teams planned and reviewed
work, and I made process observations and led inquiry into how the teams dealt withtask and relational issues. In the initial sessions, team members tended to generate engineering hit lists or production issues they needed to resolve, and slipped easily into

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

David Coghlan
University of Dublin
Ireland67© 2000 by the Society for Organizational Learning and theMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

COGHLANThe Interlevel Dynamics of Systemic Learning and Change

Figure 1 Systemic interlevelchange.

68

discussing them. Through my process interventions, they
began to learn how to develop a sense of teamwork. They
reviewed procedures for problem identification and resolution, and set up processes whereby they could review
procedures and roles. They examined their perceptions of
their roles as team members and as supervisors of others.
They began to realize that as supervisors themselves, theyneeded to initiate building a sense of teamwork with theirown shift teams by rethinking their roles. Some teams set
goals that they did not reach and, through review, learned
to ask why things did not get done.
In these team meetings, we identified several areas oflearning. First, the team discussion and review of process issues gave the members, who
had little prior exposure to an emphasis on process, a learning experience of working ona team. Second, members could apply learning how to work with their supervisors andpeers on management teams to working with their subordinates on their own teams.
Third, the adaptive learning of applying a team model to their own working situation led
to generative learning about the nature of the supervisor’s role. In one session, a supervisor asked, “Does this mean I have to ask my people how they are? I have never donethat before.” He realized that his assumptions about his role were transforming before
his eyes. His manager replied that he himself had never done it until a few months before when he had brought that same supervisor into his office, sat him down, and asked
how he was. What was happening here was that the individual supervisor’s assumptions
about his role were changing through his participation in the team process. This supervisor, and others like him, then enacted his newly understood role with his own subordinates in his own production team (figure 1).
This learning did not happen easily or in a single session. Over time, through senior
management’s approach and actions and the reinforcement of team meetings, many frontline supervisors began to understand the need for cultural change and its implications fortheir own roles and operating assumptions. The team dynamics provided a time to question individual assumptions and opened the possibility of generative learning.
As I reflect on the case, I see two important learning points. First, the organization
was going through generative change. The behavioral changes arising from the TQM
program drove attitude changes. Many attitudes and observable behaviors, which werechallenged in the new situation, were embedded in the groups with which they wereidentified: the professional occupational community, such as electricians and fitters; thefront-line supervisory group; the managerial group; and the trade union. Second, thechange process worked through interlevel dynamics, on which I now elaborate.

Dynamics of Organizational Levels
Managing people requires that dynamic relationships between an individual and the organization, effective functioning of teams, coordination of interfunctional departments, andcompetitive strategy of the organization be viewed as a behavioral system. One approachto understanding the behavioral dynamics in systemic terms is through the construct oflevels of organizational behavior. While we use levels to describe positions in a hierarchy(supervisor, manager, senior manager, and so on), we also use levels to describe increasing complexity—individual, team, interdepartmental group, organization, industry sector,
and so on. These are levels of complexity because an industry sector is made up of companies, in turn made up of multiple departments and functions, which themselves compriseteams of individuals.
Rashford and Coghlan (1994) link levels of how people participate in organizations
to provide a useful tool for managers, consultants, and teachers of organizational behavior. In their framework, the least complex approach, from the viewpoint of the individual,is the bonding relationship that a person has with the organization, in which he or she
uses membership and participation in the group to meet personal life goals. A more complex approach to participation is the establishment of effective working relationships ina face-to-face team. An even more complex involvement is the interdepartmental group

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSCOGHLANThe Interlevel Dynamics of Systemic Learning and Changeor divisional interface in which teams must be coordinated to do complicated tasks andmaintain a balance of power among competing groups. Finally, the most complex, fromthe viewpoint of the individual, is the relationship of the whole organization to the external environment in which others are competing for scarce resources to produce similar products or services. These four levels, which are evident in the Thoul plant case,provide a useful view of complex organizational realities.
At the Thoul plant, I worked with people to develop skills—the individual level. The
managers and supervisors wanted to make the change initiative work so the plant would
not close down. These were critical bonding issues for them while they struggled to unlearn their traditional roles. At the team level, members worked on developing team process skills, thereby unlearning a traditional focus on the individual. At theinterdepartmental group level, the teams reviewed interfunctional relations in work process flow and consolidation of quality standards. At the organizational level, which was
not part of my work with the plant, were issues of the plant’s survival and strategic positioning in a business plan.

Systemic Relationships
Viewing organizations through levels of analysis is only one part of the picture. The otherpart is the dynamic relationship each level has with each of the others. This relationshipis grounded in systems dynamics, whereby each of the four levels has a systemic relationship with the other three, with feedback loops forming a complex pattern(McCaughan and Palmer, 1994; Senge, 1990). Dysfunctions at any level can cause dysfunctions at any of the other three levels. A person on the team may express stress as
dysfunctional behavior and affect the team’s ability to work effectively, which in turnaffects the person’s ability to cope and ultimately his or her bonding with the organization. A team that is working ineffectively can hinder the interdepartmental group, which
may depend on the quality and timeliness of information, resources, and partially completed work from that team. If the interdepartmental group’s multiple activities are notcoordinated, the organization’s ability to compete may be affected. In systemic terms,
each of the four levels affects each of the other three.
Viewing organizational levels as simply levels of analysis, without consideringinterlevel dynamics, misses the systemic relationship the individual has with the team,the team with the interdepartmental group, the group with the organization, and eachwith the other. A dynamic systemic relationship exists among individual bonding, teamfunctioning, intergroup coordination, and organizational adaptation.
Interlevel dynamics were central to the change process at the Thoul plant (Coghlan,
1997). Individuals’ change and learning were stimulated and reinforced by the teams.
The teams’ change and learning interacted with individual learning and change and thatof other teams. In the long term, change occurred in the whole plant, and the Thoul plantsurvived and developed.

69

For a large system to change, individuals have to unfreeze
and change, team members have to apply themselves to thechange agenda, the interdepartmental group must generalize
the change, and the organization must adapt to its externalmarkets. The change process involves reactions by individuals, teams, and groups; information sharing, problem solving,and decision making by individuals and groups; andinterfunctional teams negotiating for resources from the interdepartmental group to renew the organization. Accordingly,
the change process comprises a series of movements acrossthe four levels as individuals and teams deal with the change
issues and negotiate them with other people and teams.
In viewing how the change initiative moved through theThoul plant, we can see that the plant manager initiated it.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2© Linda Cooper

Interlevel Dynamics in Organizational Change

COGHLANThe Interlevel Dynamics of Systemic Learning and ChangeHe brought to the management team assumptions of needed changes, both attitudinal andbehavioral, to achieve the desired productivity and survival. In time, the management teammembers understood those assumptions and took them to their respective teams. Within the
production teams, the process helped the front-line supervisors understand what they needed
to do, which in turn reinforced the processes of their production teams and the senior management team. In this manner, the change agenda, which significantly altered assumptions,
moved through the hierarchy, from senior individual to management team to middle managers to middle-level teams, and so on. At the same time, in terms of complexity levels, thechange process moved to and fro, from individual to team, reinforced by team and back toindividual, so that the progress to organizational change was a complex iteration of individual and team learning and change, with each being a cause and effect of the other.

Phases and Levels of Change

Figure 2 Phases and levels ofchange.

70

Rashford and Coghlan’s (1994) four psychological reactions to change—denying, dodging, doing, and sustaining—map the sequences whereby learning and change move fromthe first person to the whole organization. In a domino effect, the hierarchy of the organization, after recognizing the need for change, intervenes in the change process. People
confront the data, assess it, and respond to it, perhaps by first denying and then dodging. At the doing stage, they take the information to the team for analysis and acceptance.
Team members, confronted with the information, may also deny and dodge before accepting the need for change and taking the issue to the wider interdepartmental group for acceptance and action. Reaction at the interdepartmental group level leads to intergroupnegotiation on what to change, how, to whose benefit, and what subsystems are affected.
When the change has been initiated at the interdepartmental group level and is affecting
products or services in the external market, the key individual goes into a sustaining
mode and looks for ways to maintain the change in the company’s structure. That person also critiques the adequacy of the change in meeting the original or emergent needs.
Denying and dodging are explicit, specific reactions in the unfreezing process as
people experience anxiety (Schein, 1996). Because change involves a movement fromthe familiar and accepted, it is usually threatening and stressful. Therefore, the initial
reaction is that change is unnecessary; such a reaction typically shifts to avoidance or
dodging. As Schein (1996) points out, the critical issue for movement is the creation of
psychological safety to minimize paralyzing anxiety. The doing and changing stages arecomplementary, as are the refreezing and sustaining stages. Schein’s notion of relational
refreezing can be understood in terms of the four organizational levels in systemic harmony, sustaining a change and making it work.
In summary, the phases of change through the four levels provide a framework for determining one clear fact rarely considered in the literature;
namely, that in organizational change, people learn andchange at different paces. Because they have access to information, CEOs are likely to sense the need for change before others lower in the echelon. A sales team may realize
the need for change from interaction with customers andthen have to persuade the top management team. Rashford
and Coghlan’s (1994) seven-phase change sequence illustrates that when one person is aware of the need for change
and begins initiating it, another person may be caught unaware and typically responds by denying and dodging. As
Bridges (1991) points out, managing the time lag as change
moves through an organization is critical. A snapshot taken
at a specific point in a change process would typically showthat some groups are actively promoting the change agenda,
some groups are beginning to feel the impact of the change,others are tentatively responding to it, and others are not yet
touched by the change (figure 2).
Toward the end of the 18 months, the Thoul plant manager casually commented on how contented he was that theVolume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSCOGHLANThe Interlevel Dynamics of Systemic Learning and Changechange process was now well established. He said that a year before he had been giving agreat deal of time and energy to moving the change process along—coming in early andleaving late. Now he felt that he didn’t have to do that; in his view, the change agenda waswell embedded and there was no going back. Spontaneously, his team turned on him andretorted that they were now the ones who were coming in early and leaving late, puttingenergy into getting the change process moving and uncertain about the outcome.
The plant manager’s comments showed that he had switched from doing to sustaining, while his team was at the doing stage, with many parts of the system denying anddodging as the change was only beginning to affect them. The supervisor who found hisrole changing before his eyes expressed denial in his incredulity.
The interrelationship and interdependence of the four levels is highlighted in thecontext of systemic organizational change, whereby an organization attempts to adapt
to changing environmental demands. Adaptation requires the interdepartmental groupto reconfigure its relationships—the reallocation of resources, access to information, collective bargaining between management and unions, and interteam politics. Each levelhas its own purpose—bonding, creating a functioning team, coordination among the interdepartmental groups, and adaptation by the organization—that requires managementof the interrelationships. Accordingly, interventions need to focus on alignment andmutual support (Schein, 1997).

Conclusion
This article has taken the traditional construct of levels of analysis beyond its usual application to focus on levels of aggregation as the systemic interdependence and interrelationship of the individual, the team, the interdepartmental group, and the organization.
The Thoul Plant case illustrates the important role of aggregation levels in the process oflearning and change. The interlevel dynamics from individual to team and back, and fromteam to team and back, brought out both the current mental models in individuals andthe groups with which they identified (supervisors, senior managers, and so on) andhelped shape changes which were required in that thinking. On the individual level,mental models were named and challenged in the team setting. As process consultant, I
contributed to unfreezing assumptions of individuals, teams, and the interdepartmentalgroup and the movement toward change.
Levels of aggregation and interlevel dynamics form recursive behavioral systems at
the core of systemic learning and change processes. Such interlevel processes do not receive explicit attention in the change and learning literature. My aim has been to sharesome OD action research work so that the systemic nature of interlevel dynamics can befurther explored.

References
Argyris, C. and D. Schon. Organizational Learning II (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996).
Beckhard, R. “Optimizing Team Building Efforts.” Journal of Contemporary Business 1 (1972): 23–32.
Bridges, W. Managing Transitions (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991).
Coghlan, D. “Organizational Learning as a Dynamic Interlevel Process” in Current Topics in Management, eds. R.A. Rahim, R.T. Golembiewski, and L.E. Pate (Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1997): 27–44.
Kim, D.H. “The Link between Individual and Organizational Learning.” Sloan Management Review
Fall (1993): 37–50.
McCaughan, N. and B. Palmer. Systems Thinking for Harassed Managers (London: Karnac, 1994).
Rashford, N.S. and D. Coghlan. The Dynamics of Organizational Levels: A Change Framework forManagers and Consultants (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994).
Roth, G. “From Individual and Team Learning to Systems Learning” in Managing Organizations That
Learn, eds. S. Cavaleri and D. Fearon (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996): 224–245.
Schein, E.H. “Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes toward a Modelof Managed Learning.” Systems Practice 9 (1996): 27–48.
Schein, E.H. “Organization Development and the Organization of the Future.” Organization Development Journal 15 (1997): 11–19.
Schein, E.H. Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship (Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 1999).
Senge, P. The Fifth Discipline (New York: Doubleday, 1990).

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COGHLAN

Commentary

The Interlevel Dynamics of Systemic Learning and Changeby C. Sherry Immediato72

C. Sherry Immediato
President
Heaven & Earth Incorporated
Co-chair
SoL Council of Trustees

The Thoul plant experience reminded me of four sets of contributions to organizational behavior
literature and practice that I have come to take for granted and that can be better integrated into
our models of collective learning.
First, if the Thoul’s plant’s case had occurred 20 to 30 years ago, the plant manager would probably have initiated a socio-technical work redesign project rather than total quality management(TQM). At a time when technology was catalyzing dramatic transformation of the workplace, there
was a great need to take a systemic view of this change. Application of socio-technical design principles provides many examples of doing this effectively. From my own practice, I always experienced the theory as more timeless and far-reaching than its name suggests, addressing issues ofmultilevel design integrity in many ways. In addition, more general models including the existence
and relationship of organizational sub-systems, such as those articulated by Katz and Kahn in The
Social Psychology of Organizations, at least provide a strong foundation to answer Coghlan’s challenge. 1 We would do well to better document and appreciate our intellectual history, returning tosome of the early work of Emery and Trist, and later contributions of Walton, Lawler, Passmore, andothers, lest we persist in reinventing the wheel. 2 In retrospect, how have these models shown up inpractice? What can we learn from efforts to actively apply them? Perhaps Reflections can be a forum for sharing and integrating our various theoretical and practical roots, and learnings.
Still, the need for more attention in theory and practice to simultaneously managing the different levels remains. Walton’s study of the Topeka plant is a classic example of very effective local
change rejected by the larger organization (with thanks to Arie de Geus for helping us recognizeorganizational immune responses). We are all aware of other examples where formal reorganization
is not accompanied by any change at the individual level, with the possible exception of increased
cynicism and distrust.
Second, Kantor’s multilevel “hour glass” model of individual and organizational dynamics, coauthored by Ober and Yanowitz, is one specific contemporary tool that directly responds to Coghlan’schallenge. 3 One way it connects the levels is by noting the dominant models of organizing (open,
closed, random; as mental models and as practice) that affect an individual’s relationship with thecollective, the functioning in and between teams, and the ability of the organization to effectively
accomplish key business imperatives. I especially value this thoughtful holographic conception of
dynamics within and between levels, and realize that I can use it even more explicitly in my workthan I do now.
Third, in imagining how one works effectively with the abstraction of organization levels, I was
reminded of the reality that all these interactions occur on the human plane, as individuals attempt
to work at these different levels. The contribution of Oshry and the simulation, “The Organization
Game,” have helped thousands of people to experience the power of organizational structure andits effect on both task and process, by asking people to adopt artificially simple roles and play themout. 4 Coghlan’s supervisors learned this in real life. One conclusion recurs: “We (as humans) can dobetter than this!”
Finally, Coghlan’s reflections on the Thoul plant experience illustrate a process for creating andrefining models of theory and practice. As a consultant, I find that I am more likely to engage in areview process with colleagues and/or clients that focuses on how to improve practice and results
without explicit reference to the underlying change model in use. I can see that my work would
improve, and the body of knowledge among us would increase, with a more explicit statement ofresearch agendas and methodologies.
While I can enumerate the factors that discourage me from more actively engaging in research, I
also recognize that this is a community issue. There are three things I’d like to propose to facilitate
research in our community: (1) clarification of the distinction between reflection and research; (2)development of some simple methodologies that encourage practitioners and consultants to engage effectively in research; and (3) active study of organizational learning pathology.
First, I wonder if we’ve come to mistake reflection for research. There’s no question that good research requires reflection, but I don’t see all reflection as research. In particular, I’m interested indefining what good clinical research is in this field. Can consultants and practitioners also be researchers? I hope so, but this requires clear guidance about how to be both an actor and an ob-

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSNotes

1. Katz, D. and R.L. Kahn. The Social Psychology of Organizations, second edition (New York: Wiley, 1978).
2. For an extensive discussion on the contribution of Emery and Trist to an “open systems” understanding of organizations, see Weisbord, M. Productive Workplaces: Organizing and Managing for Dignity,
Meaning, and Community (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1987), especially chapters 7 and 8.
For many years, Walton’s work focused on building high commitment. Two representative pieces
that mention the Topeka experience are: Walton, R.E. “From Control to Commitment in the Workplace.”
Harvard Business Review, March-April (1985): 77–84; and Walton, R.E. “The Topeka Work System: Optimistic Visions, Pessimistic Hypotheses, and Reality” in The Innovative Organization: Productivity Programs in Action, eds. R. Zager and M. P. Rosow (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982): 260–287.
Walton gives a variety of plausible explanations for the rejection of the Topeka experiment byGeneral Foods. I find that I now use the concept of the organizational immune system as part of
my change framework. This concept is described in de Geus, A. The Living Company (Boston:
Harvard Business School Press, 1997): chapter 9.
As a complement to Walton, Passmore and Lawler have focused more on high-performing andhigh-involvement organizations, respectively: Passmore, W. Creating Strategic Change: Designing
the Flexible, High-Performing Organization (New York: Wiley, 1994); Lawler, E. High-Involvement
Management (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1986).
3. For the links between individual psychology, group dynamics, organizational design and the external environment, see: Ober, S., J. Yanowitz, and D. Kantor. “Creating Business Results through Team
Learning.” The Systems Thinker 6 (June-July 1995): 1–5.
4. Oshry, B. Seeing Systems (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 1995). Also: http://
www.fastcompany.com/online/10/camp.html for Fast Company article on Oshry’s “Power Camp.”

Responseby David Coghlan
I used the Thoul case to make the point that levels of aggregation are rarely given explicit attention. I selected the dynamics of change and learning to reflect on how the systemic relationship ofindividual, team, interdepartmental group, and organization are central to how change moves into
and through an organization. That same point can be made with respect to other dynamic processes in organizations.
Socio-technical systems contain an interlevel dynamic. We see this in the studies of Trist andBamforth, Rice, Miller, Emery, and others.1 In these studies, individuals’ engagement in their task has
an impact on the work of teams and groups and then creates a wider impact on shifts and the interrelationships across shifts, functions, and disciplines. The technical demands of the task and thesocial demands of working relationships apply to individuals working, teams working, inter-teamcoordination, and, ultimately, organizational effectiveness. This is common across the wide varietyof organizations that are featured in socio-technical case studies. I think that an interlevel perspec-

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COGHLANThe Interlevel Dynamics of Systemic Learning and Change

server. At a minimum, I think we need to establish a basic framework for clinical research that includes research objectives prior to the intervention and clear agreement with our human “researchsubjects” that an experiment is in process, parallel to practice in other related disciplines.
Second, if we want to increase research, we need to help those who have access to the opportunities to use them. I suspect that both practitioners and consultants need to be educated about thebasic tenets of research, and to share in the discussion about a common learning agenda. From thisconversation, I suspect we could generate a number of ways to increase clinical research. This has
been one of SoL’s promises that we have yet to fully realize.
Finally, we need to learn from our mistakes. We have a natural tendency to tell our success stories, but if we don’t include the failures, we can’t really establish good tests of our causal models.
It’s too easy to dispense with these cases by saying that there was some personal flaw of the leader
or consultant. What do they say about our models?
In closing, Coghlan challenges us to continue to identify key dynamics within and between levels
in our organizations. I believe that as we do this, we create more opportunities for all of us to “playour parts well” toward common goals. It is something equivalent to a theory of music: design integrity, personal engagement, and masterful interactions are key ingredients to classical majesty
and contemporary improvisation. The field of organizational learning may be one of the best places
to articulate this tacit knowledge so that the high commitment we value can find more consistentexpression in high-performing systems.

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COGHLANThe Interlevel Dynamics of Systemic Learning and Change

tive for both understanding what is occurring and making interventions is useful and critical withregard to socio-technical systems, total quality management (TQM), business process reengineering,organizational learning, the management of information technology (IT), and IT-enabled change. 2
The reference to action research was in passing. I could elaborate on how, within the multiple
approaches that constitute the action research family, clinical inquiry provides an important frame
for conceptualizing how organization development consultants are researchers.3 Ed Schein has provided a more thorough account of the notion of clinical inquiry. 4 The main tenets are that clinicalresearchers are in the organization at its behest because it wants help and is likely to reveal important data. Second, clinical researchers are hired to intervene, which allows further data to surface.
Third, the richness of the data allows clinical researchers to develop insights into the client systemand so develop good theory about what really goes on in organizations.
The underlying assumption behind my account of the Thoul case is that because I was hired tohelp, I had access to the ongoing struggle to learn and change that I found to be a complex processof individual, team, and inter-team iterations. My presence and interventions in Thoul both helped
its members learn and change, and enabled me to understand how learning and change get intoand move through a system. So from a clinical inquiry perspective, I was helpful to the client system as a process consultant and articulated some relevant theory as a researcher.

Notes

1. Trist, E. and H. Murray. The Social Engagement of Social Science. A Tavistock Anthology. Volume II:
The Socio-Technical Perspective (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).
2. Coghlan, D. “The Interlevel Dynamics of Information Technology.” Journal of Information Technology 13 (1998): 139–149
3. Gummesson, E. Qualitative Methods in Management Research, second edition (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 2000); McDonagh, J. and D. Coghlan. “The Art of Clinical Inquiry in Information TechnologyRelated Research” in Handbook of Action Research, P. Reason and H. Bradbury, eds. (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000): 372–378.
4. Schein, E.H. The Clinical Perspective in Fieldwork (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1987); Trist, E. and H.
Murray. The Social Engagement of Social Science. A Tavistock Anthology. Volume II: The SocioTechnical Perspective (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).

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Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSThe Call of the TimeFEATURE

Judy Rodgers

The Brahma Kumaris, a spiritual and educational organization based in Mt. Abu, in thestate of Rajasthan, India, sponsored the dialogue recounted here. The group has general consultative status with the Social and Economic Council of the United Nations and works incooperation with a number of social sector and interfaith organizations throughout theworld. A jewelry merchant in Karachi founded the Brahma Kumaris in 1937. He believed
women were best suited to introduce the new teachings and practices of the Brahma
Kumaris, so he specified that women would administer the organization, an extraordinarily
radical move in India in the 1940s. The organization includes both men and women; thesenior women in the administration say that they consult with the men. There are regional
offices in London and New York City and more than 3,500 centers in over 70 countries.

At Mt. Abu sits the Brahma Kumaris’ Academy for a Better World, atop a mountainplateau. This complex is entirely self-sustaining with wind- and solar-powered generators and a self-contained water purification plant. What makes this especially remarkable is that, due to the remoteness of Mt. Abu, the entire campus was built without thebenefit of even a crane. Here, from October to May, the Brahma Kumaris offer classes in
Raja Yoga, and they feed and house more than 1,200 students, offering simultaneoustranslation of all classes in 16 languages.
Occasionally, the Brahma Kumaris also invite those people whom they feel are engaged in significant areas of world service to convene on the campus in Mt. Abu to talkand reflect together. These initiatives are born of their belief that now is a special time inwhich a new era of peace is unfolding. The Brahma Kumaris teach that, as each individual translates this new awareness into her life or his life, the old world evolves, andold institutions are replaced with new ones that reflect a more elevated view of the world.
For four days in September 1999, some 30 men and women from every continent
came to Mt. Abu to participate in “The Call of the Time” dialogue. The Brahma Kumaris
met attendees at the Ahmedabad airport and personally escorted them to Mt. Abu. The
participants were housed and fed at the academy so that they could be unfettered to consider the subject, what is time calling us to do?
After a welcome dinner on the first night, the group reconvened the next morning.
The dialogue immediately began to unfold, beginning with a “check in” by everyone.
Thomas Odhiambo, honorary president of the African Academy of Sciences, said he wasinterested in how people use science to improve human life, and that he was searchingfor reasons why scientists are unhappy. He commented, “The kind of science we havedone for the last 250 years urges us to think that truth is to be found in the material
world. It prevents scientists from advancing beyond the material world.”
Alfredo Sfeir-Younis, special representative of the World Bank to the UN, remarked,“I am looking for an alliance with others who are like-minded in political science. We
are failing: 1.5 billion people in the world earn less than $1 a day. One-half of the world
doesn’t have drinking water. One child dies every second from diseases with knowncures. We have a huge challenge, and the tools we were taught in material science andmaterial economics are a waste.”John Williams, general manager at Pacific Power International in Australia, said,“I’ve decided that business is mad. Everyone I meet in business is afraid. There is nolove. It manifests in a range of exhausting behaviors.”

REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

Judy Rodgers
President
Communication Architecture
Group

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© 2000 by the Society for Organizational Learning and theMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

RODGERS© Raphael Bustin

The Call of the Time76

And so on around the room—an architect from Wales, a businessman from Nairobi,
a former senator from the Philippines, a political writer from Kuala Lumpur, a woman
newly hired to run a leadership program at MIT.
Finally, after all the guests had checked in, Dadi Prakashmani, chief of the Brahma
Kumaris and a senior yogi, spoke: “We come together and join in one collective thought.
We want to bring benefit and improve this world. . . . We are using nature, but we havelost the connection with the master of nature, the supreme soul. We should give cooperation in the form of mind, body, and wealth to support those who are doing good. Our
future is very beautiful and very divine—one world, one kingdom. Unity. So today weare sitting here from different groups. We will create oneness.”
But oneness wasn’t the next order of the day. Participants took turns listing thedaunting challenges they face and extreme injustices they are struggling against. Uner
Kirdar, special adviser to the administrator of the UN Development Program, suggested
that the respect for the individual needs to be central—that his or her education andawareness are the key to transformation. Someone rejoined that cynicism is the enemy:“We have all become cynical or helpless or both.” There were long speeches about thestate of affairs in India and about the political corruption in Kuala Lumpur. Someone
from a Third World country insisted that governments that control the world have to be
responsible. Someone else commented on the devastating effects of colonialism.
As the day wore on, a mood of growing tension and helplessness developed. The
microcosm was mirroring the macrocosm. The group was recreating the emotional statethat dominates much of the world. At the end of the afternoon, a phone call came from
London. It was another senior yogi, Dadi Janki, who had first suggested convening thegroup. She was too sick to travel, but was thinking about the group and wanted to share
her thoughts: “First we have to have faith in ourselves. I have to be able to see the wonder of God’s plan for me. . . . We must not worry about problems. The solution to problems comes through silence. Then we don’t see problems. . . . We see what we are meant
to do. . . . What we need to do is to keep stability in our consciousness and turn ourconsciousness inward so other souls can see peace and love through us.”Some began to wonder if those who saw the world through a strictly spiritual lens
were going to be able to have a meaningful conversation with those who were looking
at political injustice, starving children, and greedy business practices. After all, where is
the intersection of the spiritual and material worlds?
Later on, after dinner, people settled into seats in the huge auditorium for a classical Indian dance program. Meanwhile, the design team was meeting to reflect on theVolume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSRODGERSThe Call of the Time

conversation. Time was passing quickly, and the team was concerned that the conversation had not yet begun to focus on what might be created and how that creation might
happen. Still, the dialogue had to unfold according to its own pace.
The next morning, the participants were asked to pair up and interview each otherabout their personal callings and the experiences and epiphanies that had brought themto their vocations. They scattered and reconvened after morning tea. The facilitator instructed that, in the next 15 or 20 minutes, a few people could tell the stories they had
heard from the person they had interviewed. The 15 minutes turned into an hour andthen two hours as each person raised a hand to tell a story. The stories were inspired
and inspiring. Clearly, everyone was moved.
Afterward, another senior yogi shared her thoughts: “Negative attitudes are theseeds of problems. When you look at problems with an attitude of brotherhood, they aresolvable. . . .”As the group prepared to break for lunch, it was clear that a sense of urgency had filled
the room. The program was scheduled to finish at lunchtime the next day and the participants had yet to discuss what they might do together. Uner Kidar suggested that they meetagain after lunch to continue the conversation. The Brahma Kumaris arranged for buses totransport the group to a “Peace Park” about 20 minutes
away. After lunch, the skies opened and released a monsoon, but soon everyone poured onto the buses, and as
they wended their way toward the park, wind blew theclouds away to reveal a beautiful blue sky.
As the guests stepped off the buses at Peace Park, aBrahma Kumari gave each a rose and led them to a large
circular gazebo where tureens of tea and pastries were
waiting. Peter Senge, cofacilitator of the dialogue, opened the discussion by inviting theparticipants to present their thoughts on one question: “What is the call of the time?” To
minimize the speeches and ensure that everyone was heard from, there were two rules:
no one could talk more than two minutes, and no one could talk twice before everyone
had spoken once. Alfredo Sfeir-Younis would keep time.
As the members began to speak, a theme emerged. Someone said, “We have beenusing science to dominate the Earth; now we have to use it to make the Earth sacred.”Someone else asked, “What is the best of the twentieth century that we want to takeforward to the twenty-first century?” He answered his own question, “The supremacyof human beings—human rights and human responsibility. Human security versus state
security. We need to establish a more human governance.” Another said, “The great men
and great women of our time are lost in the pursuit of greater wealth.” Someone else remarked, “Until we bring a spiritual dimension to economics, forget it.”Each contribution seemed to add a piece to the puzzle and to clarify a new, emerging consciousness that subordinates science, economics, and politics, and puts them inservice of life—a new consciousness that considers wealth to be assessed by the wellbeing of people and the health of the Earth. It eschews a competitive dynamic in favorof cooperation and presumes abundance instead of scarcity. The new consciousness isvalues-based and springs from a feeling of unity. When the participants spoke of spirituality, they were speaking of a need to see people not in terms of the physical attributes
and languages that separate them from one another, but in terms of the invisible but
enduring qualities that bind people together as part of a larger whole.
When the participants spoke of this new emergent consciousness in conversations
at home or at work, it had often seemed implausible, but here, in the special context
created for this dialogue, they began to see the strength in their collective vision. They
began to believe that not only was it possible to imagine a world living in this consciousness, but also it was hard to imagine a future without it.
By the next morning, everyone had packed suitcases before coming to the morning session. Cars would head down the mountain right after lunch. The most pressing concern
seemed to be: How do we continue the conversation? How and when do we meet again?
There were plans made for virtual communication and talk of future meetings. The Brahma
Kumaris offered their academy and other retreat sites around the world for future gatherings.
Finally, before lunch, someone summed up the dialogue in a few sentences.

Each contribution seemed to add apiece to the puzzle and to clarify anew, emerging consciousness.

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RODGERS“We believe in the importance of individual transformation to a consciousness ofbrotherhood. And in the transformation of institutions to that same consciousness. To
that end, we commit to:

The Call of the Time Be a resource to one another on our own fields of service.
 To reconvene periodically.”
People clustered together, exchanging phone numbers and making plans to stay intouch. It was clear that bonds were beginning to form and friendships were emerging.
Those who had commented on the first day that they were looking for an alliance withother like-minded people had found what they were looking for.
On the plane from New Delhi to London, I read The Art of the Impossible, a collection of speeches by Vaclav Havel. Here he elucidated the dichotomous worldviews thegroup had been struggling to reconcile: the vast multicultural material world that wehave understood to be “the truth,” and a morality-based, values-based world that seems
to be our best hope for the future:“It is clearly necessary to invent organizational structure appropriate to the present
multicultural age. But such efforts are doomed to failure if they do not grow out of something deeper, out of generally held values.” (Philadelphia, 4 July 1994)“We still don’t know how to put morality ahead of politics, science, and economics. We arestill incapable of understanding that the only genuine core of all our actions—if they are to
be moral—is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country,
my firm, my success.” (Speech to the joint session of the US Congress, 21 February 1990)

It’s no surprise that Havel, an artist living and working in the political arena, would
be able to articulate the situation so beautifully. However, it’s one thing to understandwhere we have to go. It’s something else to go there—to shift the world’s major scientific, political, and economic institutions.
As I reflected further, it seemed that the only real way for such a transformation tohappen is just the way we were all going about it: speech by speech, book by book, dialogue by dialogue. As one of the yogis had said:“If we can transform ourselves, we can transform the world. . . . All of us have a
specialty. We have the power of thoughts. This affects the quality of our speech and actions. So if we can set right the power of thoughts, all things are set right.”

Commentary78

by Peter M. Senge

Peter M. Senge
Senior Lecturer, MIT
Chairperson, Council of Trustees
Society for Organizational Learning

As a participant, I have vivid and powerful memories of the Call of the Time dialogue at Mt. Abu.
The diverse group (all six continents were represented). The depth of feeling and commitment underlying the work of the attendees. The pain of the first day’s acknowledgement of the conditions
in today’s world. The clarity of where we finally arrived. The extraordinary beauty, simplicity, andtranquility of Madhuban, the founding site of the Brahma Kumaris order. I felt very privileged to be
included in this gathering.
It is impossible to account for the changes that take place in oneself from such a time. As I lookback today, a few simple thoughts come to mind, none of which do justice to the experience. Firstwas realizing the aim of integrating meditation into a dialogue, something I have wanted to do formany years. In the session, we not only stopped periodically for meditation during working sessions; almost all the participants took additional time for meditation, including even the Brahma
Kumaris’ 4 AM session, Amrit Vela. Because dialogue is, at its essence, about a deep listening towhat is trying to emerge, it can benefit significantly from being more disciplined in quieting themind. I think we saw that clearly at Mt. Abu.

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSRODGERSThe Call of the Time

Second was the challenge presented by the diversity of the group, which was due, surprisingly,
not to ethnicity, nationality, religion, or gender but to profession. The group was about equally divided among people from business, government, and NGOs and community organizations. It
seemed to me that those from government struggled the most with the dialogic process. Many
seemed ill at ease with the lack of formality. Several were slow to join in the candor and reflectiveness that the others seemed to welcome. Several were prone to five- and ten-minute (and sometimes longer) speeches. As I look back on it now, this was a powerful reminder of the world of low
trust and high public scrutiny in which government and elected officials live.
But, most of all, Judy’s account brought back the pathway traced by the dialogue itself, startingwith the somber reflections of the first day. Living in America today, especially amidst the media
hype around the New Economy and all the fabulous wealth being produced, it is easy to forget that
only a very small fraction of the world’s people are actually benefiting from this economic boom.
Gaps between “haves” and “have nots” are generally increasing, not decreasing. Americans havenever been especially well informed about conditions in the world. We are still a young “teenage
culture,” inclined to see the world in our own image. Our technological prowess reinforces this illusion. This naiveté fades quickly when confronted with the realities of life for people in India, Malaysia, central Africa, or Colombia. When one also hears first-hand of the continuing destruction of
the natural environment and the effects this is having on how people must live, the picture looks
bleaker still. Yet, somehow, out of this bleakness, it became obvious that a spiritual revolution was
all but inevitable.
Looking back, it still seems a bit mysterious to me how this conclusion became so matter of fact tous. I cannot explain it fully. Judy’s account describes some of what happened, starting with the second day. But I have been part of other groups that became similarly inspired by one another’s commitments, without reaching such a conclusion. I can only say that among this diverse, pragmatic,
non-denominational group of managers, writers, activists, and officials, it became self-evident thatan awakening of heart and mind must occur. It was like describing the wall. Given not only thepresent state of the world, but the direction and momentum of change, there seemed no other real
path forward. By the conclusion of our gathering, this tacit awareness had become the common
thread that connected us all, even though many had been unaware of it before arriving at Mt. Abu.
I am, of course, speaking personally. Perhaps, a year after the meeting, others do not feel as I do.
But it left an indelible mark on me.

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REFLECTIONS, Volume 2, Number 2

VIEWS

From the Chair“The network is the knowledge.”

TPeter M. Senge
Lecturer, MIT
Chairperson, Council of Trustees
Society for Organizational Learning80

his beguilingly simple statement opens up a host of deeper questions and puzzles at
the heart of how we think about knowledge and learning, issues fitting to an issue on“connections.”
As a Westerner, I belong to a culture where we inherit an individualized notion ofknowledge. We tend to think automatically of knowledge as something we, as individuals, either “have” or “lack.” We “acquire” it in places like school or training sessions.
We “retain it,” or perhaps “lose it.” We “share it” with others, or “keep it” to ourselves.
But this misses critical aspects of knowing and learning. “All knowing is doing; alldoing is knowing,” according to biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela.1
What if we accepted this idea, that knowing is always connected to our capacity for effective action? We would accept that real knowing is more about “know how” than “knowabout.” We would accept that learning differs from acquiring new information, that learning is actually a process of enhancing our capacity for effective action, no matter how
subtle. We might acquire lots of information in a classroom, but learning occurs only when
we find that we can do something we could not do before, whether it is to solve an algebra problem or articulate an insight in a way that it impacts another. In the workplace, wewould not confuse knowledge with data or information, and we would always assess our
knowing by what we were able to achieve, rather than how bright or clever we were.
Most importantly, to see all knowing as doing reveals the social nature of knowing.
In virtually any social setting, we do not act alone. Our “doing” is collective, often moreso than we see. For example, I may drive my own car, but I am not alone on the highway.
My individual competence is of little good if other drivers are incompetent. I may follow
the “rules of the road,” but the operating rules are not in some automobile code book ona shelf somewhere; they are being enacted by all the drivers behind the steering wheelsof all the cars I pass as I motor along. In this way, driving an automobile is an instructive
example. The private car stands as a sort of metaphor for Western individualism. Yet, even
here, behind the wheel of my own car, going where I choose to go, when I choose to go
there, each day I place my life literally in the hands of strangers. All knowing is doing, andall effective doing in a social domain is collective. Therefore, knowledge is collective.
One particularly useful implication: in any work setting, knowledge may be regarded
as capacity to coordinate effective action. Just as the drivers on the highway coordinate
their actions to produce safe highways, whether consciously or not, so too do productdevelopment and manufacturing coordinate to produce products, just as marketers andsalespeople coordinate to sell products, and producers and customers coordinate to create viable marketplaces. This doesn’t mean we coordinate as well as we might, but wecoordinate well enough to establish a domain of effective acting. So, in any social setting, enhancing coordination capability enhances knowledge. Enhancing shared understanding and shared meaning enhances coordination capability. Enhancing genuine
communication enhances shared understanding. And, enabling connections enhances
communication—and thereby knowledge. Ergo, the network is the knowledge.
Unfortunately, such logic is a weak substitute for experience. A few sentences likethose above might challenge the premise that knowledge is something “I have.” But, nomatter how compelling, they will not change things. The strategic question is, “How do
we foster the direct experience that new connections can produce new knowledge?”
Three new initiatives within SoL may help.
First, ongoing improvement of the SoL web site is a strategic priority. Since SoL is acommunity of people working globally, enabling communication and information ex-

Volume 2, Number 2, REFLECTIONSSENGE
From the Chairchange at a distance is crucial to our connecting. A new website was launched in June
2000: SoLonline.org. A group of people, literally from around the world, are now working together on the next-generation website.
Second, Ed Schein and the Reflections editorial team are initiating a new feature
whereby SoL member companies can pose questions with which they are wrestling andinvite responses. These queries and ensuing conversation will be printed in a special section of Reflections. It will give us all an opportunity to read the issues that engage leading practitioners, consultants, and researchers, and participate in exploring these issues.
Lastly, SoL and Reflections have initiated a new and exciting venture, SoL Connections, which will enable anyone interested in SoL’s work to connect with like-mindedpeople, including SoL members. For $100 per year, an individual will receive Reflections
quarterly (a normal subscription costs $50) and have access to a special area of the SoL
website to converse with other Connections affiliates, participate in discussion groups,
and co-create gatherings, both virtual and face-to-face. Connections is patterned after thehighly successful “Company of Friends” that has driven the number of subscribers for
Fast Company to a level almost equal to Fortune’s, only five years after start-up. According to Fast Company editor Alan Webber, the web offers the possibility of a fundamental
shift in journalism: “The readers are no longer just ‘an audience’ but co-creators of the
product.” Our hope is that Connections will do that as well.
In the coming months, we will all be learning how these new ventures are working.
We invite you to be part of the process, to join in the web of connections that will unfold.
Peter M. Senge

Note
1. Maturana, H. and F. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, revised edition (Boston and London: Shambala Press, 1998): 27.

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