Lilly Evans, after quoting my assertion that: "teams which set regular
time aside for reflection practices, communications practices, and
performance review practices benefit with both increased learning and
improved performance", asked: "What kind of evidence, or stories do we
know of collectively to back this assertion up?"
To be truthful, the "evidence" most alive in my mind is the story which
inspired my comment. This was the story spun by Fred Simon, who headed
the work on the development of the 95 Lincoln Continental. At a one-day
seminar led by Peter Senge, Simon told of how Innovation Associates was
brought into the picture, and then described a methodology which included
regular (monthly?) sessions to explore how LO concepts could help in their
process. Unless I misunderstood, these sessions were "practice" sessions,
and the facilitators from IA "coached" the teams in their practices.
These included the practices I mentioned. Simon described his "team" as
numbering about 300, swelling at times to 1,000. That the company was
willing to invest in these sessions on such a large scale indicates
something about the corporate environment which may have had as much
influence on the outcomes as the learnings in these sessions. Simon
described the content of some of these sessions, and the process could be
implied - for example, when two people in conflict exposed there
assumptions through comparison of their ladders of inference. The outputs
- as measured by Ford's internal indicators - were outstanding.
Perhaps Rick or someone else from Innovation Associates could comment
further.
-- Jack Hirschfeld Don't you know, you fool, you never can win? jack@his.com