Category Archives: Systems Thinking

Formal learning ‘on the job’ a success

Much of our tertiary education system involves a separation of theory from practice. Recently, however, a new experiment to bring a fresh stream of talented people into the teaching profession has shifted from the traditional approach.

The Teach For Australia initiative selected 45 top university graduate students from 750 applicants across a wide range of course backgrounds. Despite wide criticism of the program, these students were then placed into an intensive 6-week teacher education program at Melbourne University.

The students were then sent to ‘Associate’ teaching positions in Victoria’s toughest schools.

Throughout their practical teaching experience the students continue to study and undergo a formal mentoring program. In many ways this initiative mimics the style of training and development established in the vocational education system. The bottom line is that the students are learning by doing, supported by continued development of their knowledge of theory.

After the first year of the program, 95% percent of the students are continuing into the second year of teaching which is an outstanding achievement and highlights the value of mixing theory with practice.

As a qualified teacher myself (my first degree was a Bachelor of Education majoring in Physical Education) I have often thought that the ‘apprenticeship’ style of formal education might be better suited to the development of teachers. I have often thought the same about management development.

One of the great challenges for management development is the separation between theory and practice. When you are the only manager from your area completing a graduate management program it is very difficult to apply what you are learning in the workplace. It is even more difficult to discuss with colleagues why you are doing what you are doing. It is for this reason that formal corporate education programs where teams of people from the same company receive formal management training as a cohort have the potential to significantly enhance the transfer of theory into practice.

Looking back at the education example cited above, let’s consider some of the reasons why this program has been successful despite it being highly criticised when it was introduced. I will take a Systems Thinking perspective on my analysis.

  1. The system required that the students who applied for the program had to be graduating from their current courses with high grades. This meant that the system was attracting students with a proven capacity to learn in a university environment.
  2. The students were aware from the outset that the program required them to teach in ‘difficult’ schools and that this commitment was for a two year period. In other words the students were highly aware of the ‘big picture’ into which they were enrolling.
  3. The students would be paid $45 per year for being in the program. This is a reasonable wage for a graduating student and what better way to receive a formal education than to be paid for doing it!
  4. The factors listed above meant that you had highly self-motivated people enrolling into the program.
  5. When only 45 positions were available and 750 applications were received the intrinsic value of the system was in evidence by the sheer numbers of applicants – students could see the long term value of the system.
  6. Continuing the formal teaching education after the initial six week university program meant that students could discuss and reflect ‘in class’ on real teaching situations. Theory and practice had become one.
  7. The formal mentoring system meant that the students were ‘not alone’ on this journey – while they may have been alone in the classroom, help was never far away.

It is heartening to see such a modern approach to formal education and my hope is that more university courses follow this approach, and management is a particular area that could benefit from tightening the relationship between theory and practice.

You can read more about the Teach For Australia program here.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Reacting to a redundancy

A magnificent two part article has just been released on the Pegasus Communications Blog. Chris Abbey wonderfully articulates his own experience of receiving what he terms a ‘warn letter’. In Australia we might refer to being ‘offered a redundancy’. On that point, I “chose to accept a redundancy” a number of years ago. I often hear people say that they were “made redundant”. When queried, people usually say that, in the end, they chose to take the ‘package’ rather than stay. I then suggest that they were an active participate in the process that they experienced, and while they may not have liked the experience, they were still an active participant, versus being a passive participant who had a redundancy ‘done to them’. While a subtle shift in self-talk, it is my view that the difference can have a massive impact on an individual’s capacity to work their way through the seven stages of grief. (listed below)

1. Shock and denial
2. Pain and guilt
3. Anger and bargaining
4. Depression, reflection, and loneliness
5. The Upward Turn
6. Reconstruction and working through
7. Acceptance and hope

Once again Chris Abbey articulates his experience over two articles (Part One & Part Two). They are worth reading irrespective of the stage of your career and his insights about using the experience to help you to become even better are powerful. He certainly describes what my experience has been!

Please feel free to comment on this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

How goals, structure and patience combine to create the results you desire

Gary uses the experience of his five year old son learning how to ride a bicycle as a metaphor for leaders. Goals, strcutures and patience can combine to create the success that you desire.

Learning to ride a bicycle acts as a metaphor for leaders

“You’re doing it, you’re doing it! Well done son, you can ride your two-wheel bike. Woo hoo!”, I called with delight.

“Yeah! I can go for a run with you now Dad!”, called back my five year old son.

My son has had a goal to ride his bike without its training wheels so that he would be able to go on a run with me. For nearly his entire life his older brother and then his older sister have been going for a run with me (they ride their bikes while I run). Since he was three my five year old son has asked, “Can I come too?”. “Yes, when you can ride on two wheels” has been my response.

Achieving this goal has required re-enforcement, a clear structure and patience. The re-enforcement of the goal has occurred everytime my son asked if he could come on the run with me. The structure has been the rule that in order to ride his bike while I go running, he must be able to ride on two wheels.

Patience has been present while I have waited for him to want to practice riding on two wheels.
After he would ask if he could come on a run with me I would ask, “Would you like to practice now? I’m happy to practice with you before I go on my run.”

Honestly, I don’t know how many times I asked that question over the past two years only to hear, “Hmmm, not really. Maybe another day.”

I would always respond with a re-enforcement of his goal. “That’s okay. Just remember that if you want to come on a run with Daddy, then you have to be able to ride your bike without your training wheels.”

I had learnt with his two older siblings that as soon as they were the ones motivated to want to practice, then five days in a row of practice would guarantee success. I regularly reminded my son about this structure as well. “When you decide that you are ready, we just need five days in a row of practice and you’ll be able to ride your bike!”

As it happened he only needed three days! He was the one who said to me, “Come on Dad, I want to be able to ride my bike. I really want to go on a run with you!”. Broom stick in hand (which is a tool that I jam in behind the bike seat so that I can walk behind the bicycle and assist with balance), pedals off (turning the bicycle into a scooter which makes it easier and safer to learn how to balance) we went out into our street to practice. About 15 minutes each day was all that was required.

The goal and structures were easy to create. Maintaining patience was the most challenging part of this process. Not from his perspective, but from mine!

Relating this experience to leadership in the workplace
This is very similar to what often occurs in the workplace. Many leaders expect that the new structures that they implement will produce immediate results. Time delays are inevitable when change takes place. Performance may not improve, yet ‘time is ticking’. Unfortunately this results in many leaders not persisting with good programs and structures. Instead, they declare that the current structure ‘obviously doesn’t work’, so they switch to something else. This creates a cycle of changing structures that produce no measurable performance improvements over time.

A simple example of this relates to the concept of using conversation starters (see How to stimulate conversations that matter) to create ‘conversations that matter’. The goal may be to create a strong sense of the organisation’s values on a day to day level at work. The structure may be that the leader provides an example of the values in action as a hand-out to read before a team meeting. The meeting agenda may also include a section on ‘Our values’.

When the first meeting is held the leader asks, “What were your responses to the story in the hand-out?”. Silence. The leader shifts uncomfortably in their seat. The silence continues. So the leader quickly moves on to another agenda item.

After the meeting the leader declares, “Well, that conversation starter stuff certainly didn’t work! I’ll never do that again.” Leaders often do the same thing when it comes to creating team ground rules for the first time. Sound familiar?

Just because a new structure doesn’t produce immediate results when you try it, doesn’t mean that it won’t work. The important aspects to consider are:
1) Does the structure align with the goals that you are trying to create?
2) What leadership skills are necessary to support the structure?
3) How will those skills be developed?
4) What was learned each time the structure was practiced?

As you develop your leadership skills and learn which structures are most likely to produce the results that you desire, it is amazing how you can also learn how to combine goals, structures and patience to maintain focus even when performance doesn’t appear to be improving. But when it all comes together, the performance improvement can be exponential, just like the seemingly fast performance improvement that my son displayed when he finally started to ride his two-wheel bike. While it seemed fast, the final performance improvement occurred as a result of patience over a long period of time, a clear goal and structures to support that goal becoming a reality.

When you understand the interplay between these variables you discover that, ‘slower is faster’. Maintaining patience in the face of zero performance improvement can eventually create a performance improvement that otherwise is unlikely to occur. Many leaders can become seduced by the ‘sense of speed’ that often comes with trying something new, which is why they keep changing structures without giving them the proper time to be successful. Your challenge is to be clear about what you want to create, to develop structures to support your goals, to be patient and to never stop learning.While it may seem slow, this process is often a faster way to achieve performance improvement.

What are your examples where goals, structures and patience have combined to create the results that you desire?

Please feel free to ask questions and to make comments on this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Learn How Structures Support Development – an example from karate

One of our close friends had invited our family to watch their 10 year old son Joshua complete his grading for his Black Belt in karate. Having been training in karate since he was six years old this was a ‘Big Occasion’ for him.

A crowd of over 200 people had assembled in the local karate club’s hall to support children from the age of nine through to 14 complete the requirements for their various Black Belt or First Dan assessments. The formworks and kata were performed to perfection to the delight of everyone. This was followed by various fighting stick assessments, jumping and tumbling kicks & strikes, a nun-chuka formwork and finally wood breaking strikes. Considering the ages of the children their performances were very, very impressive!

Finally, six of the boys and girls who were also being assessed for a special leadership award (which is specific to this club) took it in turns to perform a speech about leadership. As each child gave their speech on their own in the middle of the gymnasium floor, no notes in hand, a structure for their speeches became apparent. The structure was:
1) Introduce yourself and your age
2) Identify your favourite karate activity
3) Name a high profile leader of your choice
4) Provide a ‘key-point’ history of your leader
5) Share a quote created by the leader
6) Explain how the quote relates to your own personal circumstances
7) Thank your parents for their support
8) Thank the audience

While I had been highly impressed by the various karate demonstrations, I was astounded by the performances of these six children. It was clear that they all had different personalities yet each of them was able to stand up in front of a crowd of predominantly adults and provide their speeches. One of the children spoke about Ghandi and provided great detail as he shared an accurate account (including dates) of Ghandi’s life. This boy was nine years old!

It was also interesting to watch each of the children stumble at some point in their speeches. When this happened, each of them drew a long slow breath, gathered their thoughts and then continued with their speech. Imagine the pressure that could have been mounting and the ‘self-talk’ that could have been going on in their heads. Yet they remained focussed and completed the task at hand. It seemed to me that the children had been well taught with regard to the structure that they should follow in providing their speeches, including what to do when they lost their train of thought. It really was a delight to watch.

To me the high level of performance that the children were able to achieve was due to a clear structure that they had been provided in preparing for their speeches. No doubt each of the children had also practiced and practiced this structure, much like they had practiced their kata and formworks. Imagine the confidence that these children will have in their lives going forward. Many adults would run away as fast as possible rather than provide a speech in front of 200 hundred people. Yet these children did it and did it well. They will have that experience to draw on for the rest of their lives. As each child finished their speech the applause sounded like it was coming from 1,000 people and not just 200. It really was extraordinary to witness!

This experience once again highlights the power of having structures to support the outcomes that you desire. While the structures that the children used for their speeches may appear simple on the surface, their importance is no less valuable. What similar examples do you have where a clear structure has supported your own or someone else’s development? What stories are you willing to share with our community? What key lesson stood out for you from your experience?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Russell Ackoff – Systems Thinker Passes Away Suddenly on October 29th

Professor Russell Ackoff, a prolific student and teacher of Systems Thinking, passed away suddenly on Thursday 29th October as a result of complications arising from hip replacement surgery. He was 90 years old.

If you would like to see some of Professor Ackoff’s work, watch his video.

A full obituary can be read from his website.

My own understanding of Systems Thinking was heavily influenced by a video presentation of his titled, “From Mechanistic to Social Systemic Thinking.” I have to admit that I only understood half of it when I first watched it, but I was entranced by the different perspective regarding how the world works that Professor Ackoff was presenting. Many years later his teaching has continued to strongly influence my own thinking.

One of my favourite quotes from Professor Ackoff is:

“All of our social problems arise out of doing the wrong thing righter. The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter! If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better.” Magnificent!

Professor Russell Ackoff, rest in peace.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com