Ben Compton wrote:
"In my career I have seen groups literally chase their manager away -- get
him/her fired, demoted, promoted, etc. -- thinking that their problems
were directly related to that person. When the group "enthrones" someone
whom they believe will solve their problems, they become startled when
that person makes decisions similar to -- if not identical -- to the
manager who was just removed.
"Out of this cycle comes a conviction deep in the heart of the group that
all managers are incompetent and cannot be trusted to do the right thing
at the right time (the team I am currently working with has accepted this
as an irrefutable fact). In reality, the manager has simply succumbed to
systemic forces. I think to a large degree this is what contributes to
"conspiratorial learning organizations" -- where the employees participate
in a rich learning environment which excludes their management (I too have
seen this dynamic, and have been disconcerted that it surfaces as
frequently and belligerently as it does)."
I work for the US Department of Labor's Empoyment and Training
Administration in Seattle. A little over a year ago we had the
opportunity to elect our new boss. This may seem a bit odd for a
33-member regional office of a federal agency, but several years of
quality learning in Seattle and tremendous support from our Assistant
Secretary in DC made it possible.
We recently reviewed our regional executive's first year in the position,
and used the review process to help him and to understand where we have
been falling down as an office. We criticized him for, among other
things, making "assignments" in what felt like the old boss-way of doing
business and for not listening closely to our concerns in a number of
areas. We realized in talking through solutions that the office as a
whole needed to change its self-image. We had not yet taken on the
responsibility required of us in a truly self-managed environment.
Although we have a leadership council (a consensus-based decision-making
body made up of a cross-section of the office), we had not become leaders
ourselves. In the couple of months since we acknowledged that the
solution was not in our elected regional executive but in ourselves, we
have become more accountable for what we do as a community, and have begun
to be more effective in taking individual and group responsibility.
Ben is absolutely right about the danger of a "conspiratorial learning
organization." We have had to fight that tendency; it takes a
self-consious effort to take full responsibility for our organization,
even if it means changing our own behavior so that the "boss" does the job
we elected him to do. The effort and discomfort are well worth it,
however.
Barak Rosenbloom
US Department of Labor
Employment and Training Administration, Seattle
rosenbloomb@doleta.gov
206-553-4543 x8030
--BARAK ROSENBLOOM <REGION#u#10.ETA.ROSENBLOOMB@DOLETA.GOV>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>