NODES model of conversational learning and social collaboration

It’s all about networks. Understanding networks that is. This is the shift our organizations, institutions, and society must make in order to thrive in an always-on, interconnected world.

This is a quote from Harold Jarche’s blogpost It’s all about networks in 2012.

What people like Harold Jarche are doing through their work is noticing what’s happening, taking seriously what it is they are noticing, thinking critically and sharing publicly.  This capacity to share learning and enrich both their thinking and others is of great value.  

Ubuntu

This capacity and willingness to share is connected to Ubuntu, from African culture, and roughly speaking translates as – my humanity is your humanity or I in you and you in me.  To have Ubuntu is to have a generosity of spirit that understands our interconnectedness and acts for the benefit of all.    

NODES model of conversational learning and social collaboration

I’ve developed the NODES learning model to help me make sense of how learning in networks happens. 

The model does not give preference to any particular method of learning per se.  What’s critical to learning in a networked world is participation; connecting ourselves and our individual ideas with our network.

Network 

In the model I am using the word network in two senses.  Firstly, network as a noun within which we participate as nodes, i.e. a central or connecting point at which lines or pathways intersect or branch.  Secondly, network as a verb in which the focus is on the work  of connecting and operating within a network.

So, participation is the key and the network as I see it is about:

• making connections between ideas and action.  To think critically, reflect and join the dots

• collaborating with others through free-flowing conversations and information sharing

• generating energy from making connections to people, ideas and information

• using feedback from actions to drive individual and social reflection and new ideas

Follow the link to a SlideShare presentation summary of the NODES model and its influencing ideas

NODES – beta version

This model is emergent and has evolved through my own learning interests. It is still a beta version despite several interactions already.  It has been deepened through a number of informal conversations with friends and colleagues, for which thanks.  It has been enriched by the generosity of spirit shown by those who have shared their ideas, many of whom I have never met.   This process continues and your comments and feedback are welcomed and encouraged.

The experience of learning from experience

As I've posted previously in a piece called Performance Development - moving away from the garage refit model, conversations about learning and development planning often focus on courses as primary sources of learning. 

It's all about experience - mine and others'

But with a little stimulation and encouragement, I have a sense in which paying attention to the experience of learning - what it is to learn, the sources of learning and the extent to which we have the ability to be in control - can and will shift the status quo.  My point is that when we experience and take seriously the learning that we get from experience, it will encourage us as learners to make new connections, to find new sources and pay rather less attention to traditional models like formal courses.

Two pieces that I've read recently pick up on what there is to be learned from experience.

Firstly, Euan Semple's succinct reflections in Life Lessons of the Keyboard provide a nicely articulated description of learning from his experiences of typing. As Semple reflects:

Staying calm keeps me in the moment. It helps me make less mistakes.

Maybe the same could be true of the rest of my life…

David Sudnow's book, Ways of the Hand (1978), does something similar in which he tells the story of how he learned to improvise jazz on the piano by, quite literally, noticing how his hands moved over the keyboard.  He took seriously his experience, noticed what was happening and wrote it down.

Secondly, Harvard Business Review's April 2013 edition, page 127 to 131 Reprint R1304L, Make yourself an expert describes the tools for learning from experience.  The pitch of the article is about how to go about learning from people with deep expertise, 'deep smarts', as they call them: people with business-critical expertise built up through years of experience. And the four steps that are described in the learning model to pull on this expertise are: Observation, Practice, Partner and Problem Solve, Take Responsibility.  What is being advocated is a simple action plan, informed by experience, and managed by the individual.

Clive Shepherd's work on top down-bottom up development planning, which he talks about in The New Learning Architect, describes a similar approach.  Learning is a process that revolves around a continuous cycle of reflecting,observing, exploring and experimenting, supported by peers, experts and teachers. 

Conclusion    

Given that we know that we learn most of what we know or can do from experience, it seems to me that we need to understand better the relationship between working and learning, with whom and how. Lurking in this is an issue to do with accountability for learning and how we might go about reframing the relationship between teacher and learning.   

The challenge of moving from being a position in a hierarchy to becoming a node in a network

I was with a group of a dozen managers recently to do some work with them on networking with a view to helping them make a shift towards becoming a node in a network as opposed to the more traditional role identity of a position in a hierarchy.

I told the group that I would write a blog about my reflections of working with them on this topic as I was interested in the range of reactions that I saw, felt and heard.

The context of the discussion was a half-day session that forms part of a larger programme of learning aimed at first-line leaders.  The workshop covered some personal reflections on 'who am I as a leader' using a psychometric instrument and then extended this self-reflection into questions and exercises about learning interests and the shape and size of each persons current network.

What I saw

I asked each person to produce a work-focused network diagram.  With one or two exceptions the extent of the networks were limited to their immediate hierarchy or horizontal links to related functions like quality control, risk management, finance or HR.  Suprisingly few had any links to external professional organisations or networking groups of any kind.  External networking tools like LinkedIn were being used by the minority.

What I heard

For the majority, there was a lack of awareness of the extent and growth of networks and the inexorable impact that this is and will have on hierarchies.  I heard many examples of resistance in one form or another towards the challenge being posed towards ways of working. 

Comments like these were typical:

'I don't want to be part of the future'

'I don't have time [to use this organisation's internal social media site]'  As I have commented in a previous blog about teams and collaboration, for some, more time spent networking means a binary choice between meeting or not meeting a work-based goal. 

'The people who are using the [internal social media platform] have got nothing else to do'

In stark constrast was a the lone voice of one manager who said 'the network is my safety blanket'; safety in the sense that it provided this individual with the means to taking control of their career and making their own choices about when and where to move roles.  It was very clear that this individual had little need for their line manager or a HR function to determine career paths; this notion was as moribund as semaphore is to communications.  Of interest was that this individual was a non-UK national who had had experience of working and studying in the USA and China and for whom the network had evolved as the only effective way of staying in touch with family, friends and business contacts. 

What I felt

As I listened to and reflected on what was being said I noticed several things:

The strength of identity that many people feel towards the hierarchy and their position in it. 

The challenge of breaking away from a role-based identity towards one that's centred on personal values and interests; quite literally, 'who am I' [as a person, as a leader, etc] and therefore what are my interests.  

Resistance versus openness to this shift isn't about age. 

 

Conclusion

Although we are living in the 'Facebook generation' with in excess of 1 billion active users on that platform alone, it doesn't follow, or not yet at least, that this same enthusiasm for making strong and loose ties with friends has yet had the same impact in the workplace.  

Oscar Berg's collaboration pyramid captures very well the distinctions between formal and informal collaboration.  And central to what this model is about is the idea that to be able to collaborate with each other we need to shift our thinking away from a subservience for what the boss wants or thinks towards taking seriously our experience, our ideas and our interests.  

I've been working on and developing a model of conversational learning and social collaboration that attempts to draw attention to the everyday interactional work between an individual and others to help shape the work in network.  I will follow up on this in a subsquent blog.  

'Learning leaders': DIY learning campfires

I want to say something here about a couple of instances that I've come across recently of managers doing things to build their own learning.  I'm not saying that this represents any kind of widespread trend, but I am noticing the fact that it is happening and therefore it's worth noting and sharing.

Both examples are from the same company. 

What is being done? - reading, analysing, discussing, acting

What's of interest is that this is a bottom-up approach kicked off by a manager, with an interest in the field of leadership and management, and dubbed 'learning leaders'.  This practice is now being followed and adapted by a colleague in the same business unit.

The group is meeting once a month for about an hour or two outside of the normal office hours.  There is a selected topic and book/video or podcast.  The group reviews, analyses and discusses the things of interest that arise from the reading.

There are several positive benefits of this approach.

Following personal interests rather than waiting for the prescriptions from the L&D department

I like the responsibility that's being taken to follow personal learning interests rather than waiting for L&D to decide what should be learned about.

Encouraging collaboration and learning

I like the collaborative and social learning process.  Sharing stories and insights is the equivalent of sitting around the campfire; it's enjoyable and the insights shared spark ideas and suggestions for action and further learning.    It's also encouraging managers in other teams to do something similar.

What are the other possible ways in which this kind of self-directed, practice-based development might be expanded?

Practice-based development done in situ and in the unique working context of a particular team offers lots of potential sources of learning.  Here are some ideas of ways it could be expanded

Breaking down hierarchies to become nodes in a network

As well as meeting to share insights and stories in, say, an operational and hierarchically organised team, it's also an opportunity to encourage each 'learning leader' to identify and follow their own learning interests; to become a node in a network of learners and to develop their own branching networks of interests that are independent of the operational team. 

Note taking via blogging and micro-blogging: capturing learning as it emerges

Writing is an extremly powerful learning tool and social tools like blogs and micro-blogs really do help capture the flow of learning, if not quite in real time, pretty close to it.  And the sharing of this flow of learning is very useful and helpful to others.  This includes those who might have been at the same meeting - it's always useful to read others' perspectives - and those who couldn't make it or weren't invited.  If it's useful, then why not share it?  

 

Recording the action

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's Situational Learning Theory showed how midwives and tailors, for example, learned their trade by what they termed legitimate peripheral participation, i.e. participating in the act of learning the skills of the trade.  Much of what managers do isn't so easily available for learning in this way because it takes place behind closed doors, e.g. in 1:1 or team meetings.  

I'd like to see much more use made of digital video recording and making this available as a piece of primary learning data in much the same way as, say, a formally designed learning video.  The benefit of this would be that a learning group could really focus on their specific in situ and in vivo learning.

My interests

As a foot note, a word about my interests.  The thread that runs through everything that I follow and write about is an interest in observing and understanding managerial practice.  Our management learning practices give priority to abstract knowledge over in situ everyday practice and my interest is in helping managers by:

• Looking closely at the situation specific facts as the basis for action and performance improvement
• Creating context-specific knowledge about how things get done: in this place, at this time, by these people, in these specific circumstances 
• Boosting self confidence by helping to affirm what it is they aleady know or are doing
• Providing a platform from which they can then develop and follow their learning interests. 

 Image from Deposit Photos

Blogs - creating shattering masterpieces or a foundation for creativity?

"All of us—the public, critics and composers themselves—spend far too much time worrying about whether a work is a shattering masterpiece. Let us not be so self-conscious. Maybe in 30 years’ time very few works that are well known today will still be played, but does that matter so much? Surely out of the works that are written some good will come, even if it is not now; and these will lead on to people who are better than ourselves."

 Benjamin Britten

This comment from the British composer Benjamin Britten affirms a truth for me about what is at stake in making a commitment to sharing expertise: it allows others to make their own connections and stimulate their own creativity...for composing read blogging.  

I was having a conversation with a colleague recently who was interested to know what value I had got from blogging.  For example, if it had generated business for my consultancy.  For him, it was a calculation as to whether the time investment was worth the effort.   And laying beneath the surface of the commercial value consideration was also a series of deeper questions and reflections like whether he had the self-discipline and commitment to keep it going - ‘how much time do you invest in your blog each week?’ 

The value question interested me; what value do I get from committing to making public my personal notes and thoughts? 

Sharing or not sharing both influence meaning making

There’s a word association game that you can play in a group.  The rules are one person starts with a randomly selected word and then other members follow the word either by adding another that is associated with it or, by deliberately breaking the association, choosing another word at random.  The process continues for as long as required.   

Two things will emerge: first, even though each team member can choose whatever word they want, it is in fact quite hard not to associate with the theme of the preceding words; or to put it another way others’ meaning making is stimulated by what others are saying and sharing.  The ordering can be broken but order returns quite quickly because we quite naturally reciprocate another’s thoughts and ideas.  Second, the flow of ideas is influenced not only by those who speak, but also by those who don’t.  The idea of silence making a contribution feels somewhat counter intuitive but this is exactly the effect that it has since it allows whatever word theme in play to continue uninterrupted. 

The implication for blogging is that unless we share what we are thinking, we leave a gap that prevents others from associating with or building on or stimulating their own ideas.

Free flowing conversation

One of the principal theoretical ideas that underpins my views about learning is the idea of free flowing conversation, which comes from the work of Ralph Stacey on complex responsive processes. 

Stacey is concerned with the communication of ideas and how meaning is created in a two-way process of free-flowing conversation.

What interests me here are the links and parallels to the act of blogging and sharing.  Although Stacey doesn’t write specifically about blogging as a complex responsive process, my sense is that it is simply another facet of communication and therefore part of the same concept.  The comments feature on blogs is akin to the naturally occurring processes of gesture and response in face-to-face conversation.  So the written medium provides a similar means for others to add their thoughts, which in turn stimulates further insights and creativity. 

    

Note taking on steroids

Writing things down helps me order my thoughts and I find the process the most important way of learning.  And by blogging it also provides me and others with a searchable database of knowledge.  My favourite blog on the value of social media and learning is by Donald Clark, or as he puts it 'note taking on steriods'.

 

Note taking in public  - creating masterpieces?

Britten touches something very important for me about a key blockage to any form of creative publication or presentation of one’s work -  ‘is my work worth publishing’, ‘is it good enough’, ‘if I spent longer on it, could I make it better?’

Like any other skill, my experience of blogging is that it gets easier and better with practice.  There is an art to writing something for others to read but in my mind this is less important.  We cannot know in advance whether what we have produced is a masterpiece or not.  Some posts seem to flow better than others, for sure, but what I do know, from what people tell me, is that they value the act of sharing.

  

Concluding thoughts

We all share our ideas quite naturally through conversation.  In the networked era of the 21C, social tools like blogs are opening up channels for us to share asynchronously what we know, have and think and to make connections with others who we may not know but who share an interest in our ideas.

Oscar Berg's collaboration pyramid creates a very succinct picture of the value creation opportunities of sharing.  I have learnt a great deal from reading others' blogs and it has encouraged me to reciprocate.

First and foremost value is being created for me and my learning.  The spin-off benefits of learning from others, connecting, creating commercial value are all possible but the first step is to share so that, to quote Britten, 'some good will come, even if it is not now'. 

Bibliography

Stacey, R.D. (2003) Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics: The Challenge of Complexity.  Harlow: Pearson

Image from Deposit Photos 

 

Coaching and management - like mixing oil and water?

Situational Leadership (SL) - Hersey and Blanchard

Capability/Motivation grid (AIT) - AIT Consulting Ltd (UK)

Coaching  and management - like mixing oil and water?

When I talk to managers about coaching what always strikes me is the diversity of how this concept is understood.  We are living in a time when the notion of coaching has seeped into our lexicon and is being applied in sport, business and personal development as a universal nostrum to cure all performance issues.  I think this is interesting.  My observation, particularly in the business domain, is that coaching is being used somewhat uncritically.  Its practices and skills are quite specific and, to some extent, are in contradiction of traditional notions of management concerned with the efficient control of resources.

There are surprisingly few formal programmes that take a critical look at the particular challenges of combining the roles of leader and coach.  More typically coaching programmes for managers focus quite narrowly on a single framework like GROW and attempt to develop questioning and listening skills only, often with actors and contrived role plays.  These produce short-lived results.

I've been thinking about this for some while, but the topic feels particularly relevant as I am right in the middle of two programmes of personal development about coaching: one looking at professional coaching practice and the other at the role of a coaching leader.  This post is a reflection of some of the things that I am noticing as I am learning.

     

Leader as coach - a shift from challenging leader to challenging coach

Coaching is just one of several roles that managers are being asked to adopt alongside that of leader, mentor, trainer and performance manager.  Doing any of these roles well requires a good awareness of the boundaries and this is especially important for coaching.  There is a kind of mental switch required to move from being a challenging leader to a challenging coach, the essence of which is about 'letting go'.  From what I am noticing about my own learning, this distinction is not something that can easily be taught.  To make sense of what's required it needs the manager to pay close attention to the experience of coaching in the context of three areas: 1) who they are as a leader 2) how they interact with others, especially with those that they are managing and 3) the culture of their workplace setting in which coaching is being applied.

Managers talk about coaching - what do they mean by this and what is it that they are doing?

From the many conversations I have had with managers about coaching my sense is that they have misappropriated its practices as a method to manage underperformance.   I have noticed how coaching type questions are being used frequently to facilitate and challenge areas of underperformance. The issue here is that if the questions used 'lead the witness' and are in the category of 'questions with a known answer' they can feel  disingenuous and manipulative.

The alternative approach and, in my view, the one that has stronger integrity, is to give direct feedback to highlight the underperformance.  I've met lots of managers who are quite uncomfortable with giving direct feedback.  Instead they are opting for a coaching style approach in the hope that  the underperformance will be self-correcting.  This is optimistic, at best. 

Capability/Motivation - Skill/Will matrix - when are we truly coaching vs doing something else?

I've overlaid two models designed to help sort out when and when not to coach.  In common, they both use the same skill/will dimensions.  The differences come in a) the labels used and b) in their understanding of when coaching is used.

The Situational Leadership (SL) model has been widely adopted worldwide and so is something that is familiar to managers through their training.  Of interest is the term 'coaching'.  In this model it is referring to a style of leadership that is both directive (tells, instructs) and supportive (asks questions) for dealing with 'followers' (the model's description of those being led) whose capability and motivation is below par.   In practice, this combination of 'pushing' and 'pulling' is complex and to be done well needs managers to have understood the differences in their own role as performance manager versus that of a coach. I think the term 'coaching' is misleading.

In contrast, AIT's Capability - Motivation grid makes a much clearer distinction between the management practices at each stage, which I think is much more helpful.  Instead of SL's Coaching, AIT use the term Under Performance.

I'm not trying to split hairs here.  What AIT is making clear is that coaching is an approach that should be reserved for high performers only, i.e. people who already have the skill and the will to stretch their own performance.  Everything else is about something else.  This should not and does not rule out the use of good questions and effective listening skills to manage underperformance, but what it is not is coaching.  

Contracting and the management of expectations

For me the absolute crux of the matter is about making a clear 'contract' with the individual or team as to whether a conversation is about the management of performance or whether it is about coaching.  The primary difference is about who is controlling the agenda.  The complexity in this for the manager is the need to stay alert to shifts in the boundaries within a conversation.  What may start out as a coaching conversation might shift to one about performance in which the manager has a legitimate right to direct. I talked about the ABC of managing expectations in my last blog.

Ongoing reflections

Coaching has become part of the management hegemony.  I think its practices, whilst useful and part of the day-to-day work of a manager, contain a number of distinctive qualities that do not sit easily with this role.  My sense is of a need for much greater emphasis on raising the critical awareness of managers to work out for themselves how, when and in what ways coaching might be applied in their context.  To focus solely on the skills of coaching, within a simple framework like GROW, and brushing up on questioning and listening skills is not unhelpful, but is also glosses over, or misses completely, the complexities of combining the roles of performance manager and coach.