Practice, not best practice
Posted by jnp2-cross in Leadership on Thu, 01/21/2010 - 13:36
When someone tells you that his method will save a huge amount of your training budget you may be forgiven for being sceptical. But when that person is Professor Henry Mintzberg, you are apt to listen. Mintzberg is one of the very big names in management theory and practice – author of seminal works on strategy and structures. Now he is talking a lot about his organisation Coaching Ourselves which, he says in his characteristically diffident way, “Looks like it might be right for the times. You can do more than you have ever done with a fraction of the budget. And aren’t you tired of sending people to programmes and coming back with little or nothing to show?”
Mike Levy talks exclusively to management thinker Henry Mintzberg.
When someone tells you that his method will save a huge amount of your training budget you may be forgiven for being sceptical. But when that person is Professor Henry Mintzberg, you are apt to listen. Mintzberg is one of the very big names in management theory and practice – author of seminal works on strategy and structures. Now he is talking a lot about his organisation Coaching Ourselves which, he says in his characteristically diffident way, “Looks like it might be right for the times. You can do more than you have ever done with a fraction of the budget. And aren’t you tired of sending people to programmes and coming back with little or nothing to show?”
Inspiration
Mintzberg’s big idea is to assemble small groups of managers meeting in their own time and place of work. They gather for around 90 minutes to do nothing but learn. What do they learn? “Each session is structured to follow conceptual material developed by leading thinkers such as David Ulrich and Michael Beer”. He could also have included himself, a passionate advocate for humanity in business – he is the author of ‘Managers, not MBAs’ after all.
"You can do more than you've ever done with a fraction of the budget."
Human scale is very important to this Canadian professor. “We don’t let the group come with laptops – everything has to be pen and paper. They discuss and reflect on how the topic impacts on them; they learn from each other and – most crucially – develop actions for their own workplace.” The bad news for readers is that the system does not need trainers, facilitators, coaches or any other intermediaries. – this is good, rather old-fashioned, self-directed action learning.
Community is key
Coaching Ourselves is exciting this prolific author who has a strong social conscience and a withering response to our current capitalist system. He has been the bête noire of the bankers and get-rich-quick business merchants who he sees as destroyers of real wealth. He believes there is nothing more human than a group of peers who have a common interest in learning and applying what they have learnt to their everyday work. His favourite word seems to be ‘community’. His aim is to encourage communities of learners who are all participants in thinking through new strategies where they are needed. I ask if the message is getting through – is he pushing against open doors? “I push against doors that are already open.”
It is so Mintzberg to democratise learning and eschew guru-dom and ‘best practice’ which he says, is simply the best practice for other people, not necessarily you. “We don’t encourage people to ask: ‘why can’t we do what they do. The key is the learning process itself – that helps develop ideas and practices which are right for your business.”
"The world is driven by financial greed and economic dogma- one controls the earth's resources and the others are its apologists."
The idea of a learning group of self-motivated peers sounds attractive but can it not lead to introspective navel gazing? “No, the materials bring in the outside world – the latest thinking on business and management. But the key is not to simply learn about cutting-edge concepts, but crucially, how those ideas can be put into practice there and then.”
The learning groups are meant to have a long shelf life: some have been going for over two years which is right because Mintzberg asserts that we never stop (nor should we stop) learning.
Problems and solutions within the business world
Excited by his coaching organisation, Mintzberg is never far away from being angry or frustrated about the world as it is. “People in Wall Street and the City have grabbed, even hijacked so much of the economy for their own benefit. This is terribly destructive. The building of communities is the way to enhance the lot of business people and especially in poor countries. There is a lot of work being done in Africa and I am hopeful it will bear fruit. As trainers and coaches we do bear some responsibility to help build a better future, one less dominated by greed. The world is driven by financial greed and economic dogma – one controls the earth’s resources and the others are its apologists. This attitude tries to destroy or negate human behaviour – we are being reduced to human resources or what some airlines call, ‘self-loading cargo’. Globalisation focuses on the economic and assumes that social benefits will follow obediently behind. All the evidence seems to point that it is the other way round – globalisation weakens our social structures – and undermines our democratic institutions. It is throwing our society off balance.”
Clearly a passionate advocate of stressing the H in HR, Mintzberg has recently published his book simply titled, “Managing”. Unlike many other management books that are either too folksy or dry, this work is full of passion for change through learning, the development of sustainable but human-scale structures and a plea to hear the individual’s voice in all the white noise of global trading. His methods may do more than save money; they may even help save the world.
For more on Mintzberg click here.
Mike Levy is a freelance journalist and copywriter with 20 years' experience. He is also a writing and presentations coach. He especially loves playwriting and creating resources for schools. Mike is director of Write Start. For more information go to: www.writestart.co.uk.
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Action Learning with a Twist?
It's a nice, neat concept, and I have a great deal of time for Mintzberg, but how does this really differ from an Action Learning Set (as I think is, to some extent, acknowledged within the article)? Certainly, the ALS projects I've been involved with have the flexibility and capacity to work with external prompts and ideas as well as addressing individual problems.
Mintzberg's comment on the "Coaching Ourselves" site about “Thoughtful reflection on natural experience, in the light of conceptual ideas is the most powerful tool we have for management learning.” is very similar to Reg Revans' principle around action being dependent on reflection that places programmed knowledge in context.
This approach to learning isn't new. However, if Mintzberg's support could serve to draw more attention to such informal approaches, that would be welcome.
One thing I would add is that, in my experience, getting such groups up and running - then keeping them running, effective and focused - does sometimes need some external support, so the facilitator isn't necessarily out of a job yet!
Motivating Continum Learning need some Fascilation
hi,
I am very pleased with this neat article, which reflect that, a management, strategy Pioneer Henry Mintzberg is stimulating people for their social responsibility. But according to me Self-Learner groups, formation is easy in an organization, if some body take the job of facilitator it is completley driven by his, interaction with the peers in organization. But the key here is how we can sustain that same zeal, inspiration and focus throughout time?
As, it is oftenly seen that, the interest of such group, started evaporizing after some period of time.
I would look forward to the Pioneer to provide us with guide lines how we can survive the
"Dilema of Discouragement, and grow gradually"
Re: Dilemma of Discouragement
Sorry for not providing the guru-answer you might hope for, but I will share some of my experience anyway.
In The Netherlands Dr.Sjoerd Romme did research and experiments with Learning Circles. In Groningen we adapted some of his ideas in our work-based (action) learning programmes for undergraduate students. They explore themes and later on in the curriculum actual "problems" in their organisations. Indeed, at startup the facilitator is present, to "chair" meetings. Later on the groupmembers have to conduct their own meeting and the facilitator is more distant, allthough still present. A smooth running group could do without the presence of an external person, but we found that, in some cases, the group process would slow down or stop. Strained by budget as we are, this led to the forming of digital fora. The external person (mentor/coach) should show himself here and intervene when necessary, deal with groupprocess, providing coaching or help understanding theories. In work based undergraduate programmes content of lectures (many schools keep seeing this as a basic instrument) could benefit from the experience of monitoring digital group-behavior.
(This way of working could have much more proliferation, but I found that many teachers/lecturers are very attached to fixed programmes/subjects/chapters and even assignments instead of relating their knowledge and experience to the situation a worker-student is actually in.)
I am senior lecturer at Hanze University Groningen, in The Netherlands. (www.linkedin.com/in/feddeharwig)
Mintzberg's "Coaching Ourselves"
I enjoyed this interview. There does seem a lot in common with Reg Revans' approach to Action Learning - peers learning together and so on. However my picture is that with Action Learning the starting point is each member's current challenge or "problem", whereas with Mintzberg it appears to be a concept or idea brought in from outside for members to explore its possible implications for action.
This sounds to me rather like some forms of so-called "Action Learning" that I have encountered which in all honesty have not been very action oriented - more a list of themes and then a discussion, but not much action and no continuing follow-through to subsequent meetings. I will buy "Managing" and see if there are examples therein showing how to engender action whilsy starting with a "content" topic.
I am also very intrigued - and attracted to - Mintzberg's views on the business world. Is there an inevitable link between being critical of current prctice and espousing the virtue of community learning? Or are they quite separate dimensions? That is, can community learning live easily in a conventional profit-oriented, competitive context? Or are these mutually exclusive - does competitive capitalism with its emphasis on survival of the individual or collective fittest hinder or even preclude community learning?
Re: tomboydell
It could be a problem in organisations, "learning together", I mean, if the system of being rewarded, or maybe even worse: promoted...(Peter principle), just focusses on the "getting" of individual hard targets. In such an environment, sharing with and helping others reflects negatively on the bonuschart.