Team Learning

Senge: Chapter 12
THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE
The Potential of Wisdom Teams
 Bill Russell’s Experience of Alignment
and Synergism
– His play would rise to a new level
– He would be in the white heat of
competition, yet not feel competitive
– Every fake, cut and pass would be
surprising, yet nothing could surprise me
– Like we were playing in slow motion

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Alignment
 A necessary condition for
EMPOWERMENT
– Empowering non-aligned individuals
worsens the chaos and makes managing
the team even more difficult
 For Jazz musicians, it is called “being in
the groove”

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Alignment and Synergism
 Meetings will last for hours, yet fly by
 No one remembers who said what, but
knowing we had really come to a
shared understanding
 Of never having to vote

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Team Learning: A definition
 The process of aligning and developing the
capacity of a team to create the results its
members truly desire
 It builds on the capacity of shared vision
 It also builds on personal mastery
 Knowing how to play together
 Teams are the key learning unit in
organizations
19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns
The Discipline of Team Learning
 The team’s accomplishments can set
the tone and establish a standard for
learning together for the larger
organization
 Has three critical dimensions

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Three critical dimensions
 First, there is a need to think insightfully about complex
issues
– Teams must learn how to tap the potential for many minds to
be more intelligent than one mind
 Second, there is a need for innovative, coordinated
action
 Third, there is the role of team members on other teams
– A learning team fosters other learning teams through
inculcating the practices and skills of team learning

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 The discipline of team learning
 Is a collective one
 It is meaningless to say that “I,” as an
individual, am mastering the discipline of
team learning
– In the same sense that it is meaningless to say “I
am mastering the practice of being a great jazz
ensemble.”
 Involves mastering the practices of dialogue
and discussion

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Dialogue and Discussion
 Are potentially complementary, but most teams
lack the ability to distinguish between the two
 Teams must learn how to deal creatively with
the powerful forces opposing productive
dialogue and discussion
– Argyris: defensive routines--ways of interacting
that protect us from threat or embarrassment, but
which also prevent us from learning

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Skills!!

Dialogue Discussion

Inquiry Reflection

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Defensive postures
 Systems thinking is especially prone to
evoking defensiveness because of its
central message, that our actions
create our reality
 The problems we perceive are caused
by our actions, not by external,
exogenous forces outside of us

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Practice
 The discipline of team learning requires
practice
 Teams do not practice enough, generally
 A great play or great orchestra does not
happen without practice
 Neither does a great sports team
 Such teams learn by continual movement
between performance and practice

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 The State of Team Learning
 TL is poorly understood
 We cannot describe the phenomenon
well--no measures
 There are no overarching theories
 We cannot distinguish team learning from
groupthink
 There are few reliable methods for building
team learning
19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns
 Need for Team Learning
 Has never been greater
 Complexity of today’s problems
demands it
 Actions of teams must be innovative
and coordinated

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

Skills Underlying Team Learning
Team Learning

Personal Shared Systems

Mastery Vision Thinking

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Werner Heisenberg
 Science is rooted in conversations
 Cooperation of different people may
culminate in scientific results of the
utmost importance
 Collectively, we can be more insightful,
more intelligent than we can possibly be
individually

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 David Bohm
 A leading quantum theorist
 Developed a theory and method of
“dialogue” when a group “becomes
open to the flow of a larger intelligence
 Quantum theory implies that the
universe is basically an indivisible whole

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Bohm’s recent research on
dialogue
 A unique synthesis of the two major
intellectual currents
– systems or holistic view of nature
– interactions between our internal models and our
perceptions and actions
 Reminiscent of systems thinking which calls
attention to how behavior is often the
consequence of our own actions as guided
by our perceptions

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Bohm on the PURPOSE OF
SCIENCE
 not the accumulation of knowledge,
since all scientific theories are
eventually proved false
 Rather, the creation of mental maps that
guide and shape our perception and
action, bringing about a constant
“mutual participation between nature
and consciousness”
19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns
Bohm’s most distinctive contribution
 Thought is “largely a collective
phenomenon”
 Analogy between the collective
properties of electrons vs. way our
thoughts work
 Leads to an understanding of the general
counter productiveness of thought

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Bohm’s contribution, continued
 “our thought is incoherent… and the
resulting counter-productiveness lies at
the root of the world’s problems”

Prepared by James R. Burns

 More Bohm
 As electrons, we must look on thought
as a systemic phenomena arising from
how we interact and discourse with one
another

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Dialogue and Discussion
 Suspending assumptions
 Seeing each other as colleagues
 A Facilitator Who Holds the Context of
Dialogue
 Balancing Dialogue and Discussion
 Reflection, Inquiry and Dialogue

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Dialogue and Discussion
 Their power lies in their synergy
 No synergy without an understanding of their
distinctions
 DISCUSSION--like a ping/pong game where
the topic gets hit around
– subject is analyzed and diagnosed from many
points of view
 Emphasis is on winning--having one’s view
accepted by the group

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 More Dialogue and Discussion
 A sustained emphasis on winning is not
compatible with giving first priority to
coherence and truth
 To bring about a change of priorities
from “winning” to “pursuit of the truth”, a
dialogue is necessary

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Dialogue
 From the Greek, it means “through the
meaning”; “meaning passing or moving
through”
 Through dialogue, a group accesses a
larger “pool of common meaning” which
cannot be accessed individually.
 “The whole organizes the parts”

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 More Dialogue
 Purpose is not to win, but to go beyond any
one individual’s understanding
 In dialogue, individuals gain insights that
simply could not be gained individually
 In dialogue, individuals explore difficult,
complex issues from many points of view
 Dialogue reveals the incoherence in our
thought

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 The Purpose of Dialogue
 To reveal the incoherence in our thought--three
types of incoherence
 Thought denies that it is participative
 Thought stops tracking reality and just goes, like
a program
 We misperceive the thoughts as our own, because we fail
to see the stream of collective thinking from which they
arise
 Thought establishes its own standard of
reference for fixing problems

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Incoherent thought
 Thought stands in front of us and pretends that
it does not represent
 We become trapped in the theater of our
thoughts
 Dialogue is a way of helping people to “see the
representative and participative nature of
thought”
 In dialogue, people become observers of their
own thinking

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Suspending Assumptions
 [HOLDING THEM IN FRONT OF YOU]
 Difficult because thought deludes us
into a view that this is the way it is

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

Seeing each other as Colleagues
 Necessary because thought is
participative
 Necessary to establish a positive tone
and offset the vulnerability that dialogue
brings
 Does not mean that you need to agree
or share the same views

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Dialogue, Colleagues, and
Hierarchy
 Choosing to view “adversaries” as
“colleagues with different views” has the
greatest benefits
 Hierarchy is antithetical to dialogue, yet
is difficult to escape in organizations

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Dialogue, Colleagues, and
Hierarchy
 People who are used to holding the
prevailing view because of their senior
position, must surrender that privilege in
dialogue, AND CONVERSELY
 Dialogue must be playful--playing with
the ideas, evaluating and testing them

Prepared by James R. Burns

 A Facilitator Who “Holds the
Context” of Dialogue
 In the absence of a skilled facilitator, our
habits pull us toward discussion and
away from dialogue
 Carries out many of the basic duties of
a good “process facilitator”

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 A Facilitator, Continued
 But the facilitator is allowed to influence
the flow of development simply through
participating
 As teams develop skill in dialogue, the
role of the facilitator becomes less
crucial

Prepared by James R. Burns

 Balancing Dialogue and
Discussion
 Discussion is the necessary counterpart of
dialogue
 In discussion different views are presented
and defended, which may provide a useful
analysis of the whole situation
 In dialogue, different views are presented
as a means toward discovering a new view

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Dialog Vs. Discussion
 Dialogue established the view that leads
to courses of action
 Discussion leads to new courses of
action without establishing that new view
 Teams that dialogue regularly develop a
deep trust that cannot help but carry
over to discussion

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

Dealing with “Current Reality”:
Conflict, and Defensive Routines
 An overbearing, charismatic, and
intimidating posture
 Craig Bean: his experiences at TI and
why TI does not today own any share in
the huge personal computer business
 Is there a conflict between alignment
and being open to dialogue???

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

Great Teams vs. Mediocre Teams
 A team that is continually learning is the
visible conflict of ideas
 In great teams, conflict becomes productive,
inducing the need for ongoing dialogue
 Argyris: the difference between great teams
and mediocre teams lies in how they face
conflict and deal with the defensiveness that
invariably surrounds conflict

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Defensive Routines
 Entrenched habits we use to protect
ourselves from the embarrassment and
threat that come with exposing our
thinking.
 Form a protective shell around our
deepest assumptions
 Forceful, articulate, intimidating CEO’s
 Cannot be seen
19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns
 Defensive Routines
 In some organizations, to have incomplete or
faulty understanding is a sign of weakness or
incompetence
 IT IS SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE FOR
MANAGERS TO ACT AS THOUGH THEY DO
NOT KNOW WHAT IS CAUSING A PROBLEM
 To protect their belief, managers must close
themselves to alternative views and make
themselves uninfluenceable

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Defensive Routines
 Defensive becomes an accepted part of
organizational culture
 We are the carriers of defensive
routines and organizations are the hosts
 Defensive routines block the flow of
energy in a team that might otherwise
contribute toward a common vision

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 A Shifting the Burden Archetype
Defensive Routines

Perceived need for new understanding and behavior THREAT

Learning Gap

Current Understanding and behavior Need for Inquiry and change

Delay

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 The Missing Link: Practice
 Team learning is a team skill
 A group of talented learners will not
necessarily produce a learning team
 Learning teams learn how to learn together
 Team skills are more challenging to
develop than individual skills
 Learning teams need practice fields

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Learning How to Practice
 Two distinct practice fields are developing
 1) Practicing dialogue
 so that a team can begin to develop its joint skill
in fostering a team IQ
 2) Creating learning laboratories and
microworlds
 computer supported environments where team
learning confronts the dynamics of complex
business realities

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Necessary conditions for
Dialogue Sessions
 Have all members of the team come
together
 Explain the ground rules of dialogue

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Necessary conditions, cont’d
 Enforce those ground rules
– if anyone is not able to suspend his
assumptions, the team acknowledges that
is now discussing and not dialoguing
 Make it possible for team members to
raise the most difficult, subtle and
conflictual issues essential to the team’s
work

Prepared by James R. Burns

 John MacCarthy’s Example
Memo
 Session is the first in a series of
DIALOGUES
– to help clarify assumptions, programs,
responsibilities
– not to make decisions as much as to
examine directions and the assumptions
underlying them
– to be together as colleagues

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 The conflict between R&D and
Marketing
 New Product Development
 Two different strategies--make or buy
– R&D took the MAKE view
– Marketing took the BUY view
– No meeting of the minds

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Results of the DataQuest
Dialogue
 A 30-year first was healed
 The end-run that marketing had been
doing to augment product lines was no
longer necessary
 R&D and Marketing learned that they
really wanted to work together, under
one coordinated new-product
development plan
19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns
 Team Learning and the Fifth
Discipline
 All of the tasks of management teams
involve wrestling with enormous
complexity
– developing strategy, shaping visions,
designing policy and organizational structures
 Too often, however, teams confront this
dynamic complexity with a language
designed for simple, static problems

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Team Learning and the FD,
Continued
 This accounts for why managers are so
drawn to low-leverage interventions
 We see the world in simple obvious
terms and implement simple, obvious
solutions

Prepared by James R. Burns

 Solution
 A new language for describing
complexity
 Traditional languages--financial
accounting, competitive analysis, total
quality, and Shell’s scenario methods
– None of these deals with dynamic
complexity very well at all

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Solution, continued
 Instead, consider the systems
archetypes
– These offer a potentially powerful basis for
a language by which management teams
can deal productively with complexity

Prepared by James R. Burns

 System Archetypes
 When used in conversations about
complex, conflictual issues, the objectify
the conversation
 The focus in on the structure, the
systemic forces at plan, not on
personalities or leadership styles

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 System Archetypes, Continued

 Makes it easier to discuss complex

issues objectively and dispassionately
 Without a shared language for dealing
with complexity, team learning is limited

Prepared by James R. Burns

 Benefits of using the System
Archetypes
 Common understanding of possible
structural causes
 A way to easily communicate structure
and behavior

19 February, 2000 Prepared by James R. Burns

 Copyright C 2000 by James R.
Burns
 All rights reserved world-wide. CLEAR
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