Self-Esteem as Focus of Action

In the late, 1990s, and I do not recall which specific summer it was –the heat of the road was scorching dry near the Kshipra river, as I braved the industrial fumes of a factory in whose precincts we were attempting to foray an Organization Development intervention. I was interviewing a workman on the shop-floor of a soya mill in Indore’s industrial hills. In trying to understand how the workman made emotional reserve for the workplace environment, I was curious as to how the respondent would perceive the health benefits facilitated by the employer. Given the wage limits determining coverage under the Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), I was keen on knowing how their services were accessed and consumed.

From the more direct and forthright portrayal of his employer’s orientation to health benefits, he was now coming to the zone of interface between the firm and its environment. He was beginning to get comfortable in responding, but looked distraught enough to warrant my curiosity. I asked point-blank in youthful bravado, if it was to do with harassment for bribes at the ESIC. Even more relieved, he was coming to the poignant zenith of disclosure.  In chaste Hindi he quipped “Saab, ab yeh mat puchiye hamein, ki machli kitna paani me – ya paani kitna, machli mein”. (“Don’t ask me how much of the fish is in the water – or how much of water is in the fish”).  The rustic diplomacy that descended from the man stumped me, and had me in a long pause of the interaction there.

He was at once acknowledging the phenomenon of corruption, and also pushing back on the enquirer in me to hold my reserve enough to hold up the workman’s dignity. Such conversational brilliance seldom befalls me from the dust and grime of India these days. The respondent now strikes me as having self-esteem expressed with a poise that is unlikely to have been achieved without reflective oscillations between tempest and salvation in the struggle to stay employable in an economically unforgiving social context.

In the recent months gone by, I have come to a certain insight during the curation of data. My clients who take up assessments before they determine their development goals, come from managerial cadres, and find the transitioning to leadership a platform on which a lifetime’s effort is met with a decisive crossroads. Here are some trends below. Indeed, they are to do with self-esteem, but its correlates are not also linear or entirely generalizable. Nonetheless, they may represent a sliver from which we may infer many possibilities.

Let me begin first by acknowledging the root inspiration for this piece of writing. I have had several people talk about self-esteem as being a unidirectional trait – that it is either low or high, but have also classified it as a human psychological need that requires fulfillment. On the other hand, Nathaniel Branden who first extolled the virtues of self-esteem has also made allowance for it to be treated as an accomplishment or an act of achievement.  Some treat it as an inner dynamic of the person, while others are open to the influence of the person’s external environment in playing a role in the nurture or development of self-esteem. So let me quote Nathaniel Branden himself here :

Self-Esteem is

1. Confidence in our ability to think, confidence in our ability to cope with the basic challenges of life and

2. Confidence in our right to be successful and happy, the feeling of being worthy, deserving, entitled to assert our needs and wants, achieve our values, and enjoy the fruits of our efforts.

For purposes of reflection, here are a few of my insights, or let’s say formative hypotheses from immersive engagements with professionals in Indian work contexts, that have sprung up from self-esteem confines.

1.       Gender has a role, but it is a social bias more than a personal bias to begin with  – and it’s effect at the workplace is likely to be in a continued state of flux. I have in the recent past seen two kinds of effects with regard to self-esteem among women coachees. The first one is the more difficult to address via coaching in the workplace. Due to social gender stereotyping, as in a barrage of media through rite, ritual and unquestioned convention, women tend to develop low self-acceptance. In fallacious extension of physical might of the male, they surrender even psychologically to the will of the male. They try to overcompensate with a striving to self-correct as if, their concept of self will be decided on norms set by the male. This leads to approval seeking at the workplace too decades after receiving gender discriminating signals, when in fact, mastery over an instrumental skill may be more important. Self-esteem eludes them for not being able to accept one’s imperfections without hating oneself. The other ‘syndrome’ at work is about women with self-esteem developing an uncritical socialisation style of the more dominant male gender. This includes an unassailable forthrightness to the point of being curt and at times appearing exploitative for lack of empathy with others.  Even after women become aware of the roots of their behavior, coping with their realities has often been a struggle to stay the distance, due to long years of operant conditioning.

     

     For women who have self-esteem, that is a dynamic balance between self-acceptance and self-improvement, exerting their interpersonal power in emotionally congruent ways has been easier, especially when organizations structure opportunities suited to their career pursuits. It has been more of an unspoken nightmare otherwise, despite their social facility in implementing task demands in less benign opportunity structures.

2.        Social Intelligence has a role – and it’s role in learning about human preferences and effectiveness is enlightening us due to insights from neurosciences and social psychology both. For example, Baron-Cohen has a theory of extreme male and extreme female brains, that speak to laser logic for the male and adroit empathy for the female prototype. In a biological frame, it is known that boys are ten times more likely to develop Asperger’s syndrome and four times more likely to develop autism symptoms than girls. While this may lead to some needless stereotyping, the language of making the journey from shallow feminine to deep feminine and further to shallow masculine and deep masculine is also known (Richard Rohr’s work for example).  

The sad news is that we do not design organisations yet on this principle of wholeness, as the norm is to yet pass around numbers that speak to gender ratios, barely scratching at the surface of deep tensions society presents. It has already embedded within it through its social mores, rites of passage and rituals of dysfunctional control.

Goleman accedes thus in his book on Social Intelligence “ Neuroscience has discovered that our brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn to an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person. That neural bridge lets us affect the brain – and so the body – of everyone we interact with, just as they do us.”

In the multiple interactions we have in social milieu we’re part of, the effervescence of connecting with other people, transpire deep connect, even subliminally. At the same time, we’re bombarded with information highways that causes us to disconnect with others, despite symbols of connectivity that surreptitiously compound social, emotional and possibly economic costs as well. I often surmise for fellow professionals, that one of the most silent epidemics among cadres I coach is that of maladapted masculinity – of being unable to get to the point of vulnerability or authentic change potential, in growth hungry corporate settings – where appearing to be weak is seen as taboo. Humility is a underrated strength.

3.       Empathy is a divisible compound – Several years ago, when I was being trained to be a developmental coach, I was introduced to a competency known as Accurate Empathy. In experiential learning of the theme, we were impressed upon to listen in for data in conversations that were of intent, feeling and content nature. While that may still be useful in listening deeply, empathy itself runs through neural circuits that signify the following forms from top-down to the bottom-up brain circuits

a.        Cognitive Empathy – the ability to focus on what other people experience without losing touch with one’s own emotions

b.       Emotional Empathy – the spontaneous attunement to others’ feelings in bodily resonance

c.        Compassion/Concern Empathy – the proximal action oriented care and concern for others

So what’s that do with self-esteem you may ask? In my experience in dealing with professionals across sectors, it is astounding to note that one can be mind blind – that is impervious to empathetic concerns even as one’s self-esteem is intact! This is a trigger for sparking off structured opportunities in interactive variety. On the other hand, it is also possible to have the female brain of Baron-Cohen extremes in the male, with low assertiveness of personal power or poor self-acceptance in frank, planful, and organized males. This makes for challenging coaching conversations and indeed creative exploration of possibilities in empowering the present for meaningful futures.

4.       Systems Thinking draws more from inner intuition and is yet more data-intensive : - I go back to the shop-floor worker who summoned to my attention his immersive experience in his social context. With faculties available to him, and without a handheld device to support his data processing, he curated that moment between us in a communicative finesse that makes for the roots of effective decision making, strategic engagement and forthright diplomacy. He analysed his data, reviewed its shortcomings, risked an opinion in the face of social class divides, and made no compromise with the truth. In creative embedding through metaphor, he swelled his chest at the zenith of disclosing his dilemma from the zone of human values, with no sign of dogma or inane open-endedness. He vulnerably embraced an opportunity for his own development with an unabashed pride, making his self-esteem a product of apparently irreconcilable self-improvement and self-acceptance. His leaders were grappling with larger system cognition assuming that internal systems of human resource management were sufficiently dealt with. He had his theory of everything he experienced with laws of general nature implicit in the norms of his phenomenal world; including of course the permeability between social systems. Today’s challenges that afflict modern managers are not only about resiliently navigating ambiguity – but also in specifying the data slices from which to prune insights as a curator of ever burgeoning big-data, even to do with disease outbreak lead signals.

As I round off this piece, am reminded of a few talismans in intervention practice. One is that of working on the system, rather than on units within it per se. So, when organisational malaise is detected at a systemic level, one may believe that individuals at the level of units, or professional systems at the level of groups may self-govern in autopoetic abundance. When dealing with individuals as in some examples from which this piece is inspired, one sees organisations and systems of the past creeping in on the present in unkempt and unresolved tensions, so much so that system levels of the present may perpetuate if not precipitate similar individual malaise if left festering in the present. Do we have much choice but to deal at both ends of the whole together? In closing, perhaps, just as it is self-acceptance and self-improvement for self-esteem, organisation sponsors may have to consider the individual and the larger system, and not merely a specific symptomatic part. What’s been your experience on this frontier?

Double-Loop Learning Requirements in Indian Organisations

More than a decade ago, an OD interventionist was asked to look into the possibility of addressing a large industrial organisation’s effectiveness. The call from the scion came in the wake of a successful turnaround the consultant facilitated at one of its sick units with no capital intensive machinery or import of manufacturing process. That was the method of behavioral science applied for sure. However, at the company’s parent unit, profit and relative health hid many a malaise. On first visit to the campus township, the consultant was given a walk through its plant layout and production process. The perceptive consultant brought two symptomatic features among many to do the top management’s attention. Both were to with the concern for quality.

1.       Heaps of foundry sand were lying in the yard. On asking work supervisors as to what purpose the sand served within, there was no ready response. On the orders of the enthused leadership, the sand was ordered to be removed, and lo and behold tons of molten scrap which could be reused in the plant’s foundry were recovered. The work-in-process inventory was actually lying in the yard, covered in sand. Later it turned out, that six months of purchase of foundry material were saved in this ‘surprise detection’.

2.       Going through the machining sections, the consultant observed that go and no-go gauges used to check thickness of the machined part were not at the work-station. On gentle enquiry, the workman conceded that they were stashed away in his work locker. He brought the incomplete set of gauges to demonstrate safe-keeping (albeit incomplete). On checking for thickness with the available ones, the machined part was found to be deviant from productions standard. The workman’s habit went ceremoniously unchecked, and ‘visual’ quality inspection was now the de-facto empowerment when in fact cost of repair and rework went unaccounted, in the demand to fulfillment cycle.

Today, the above can be said to be rationalized as the creeping effects of unchecked work habits. The only difference was that when the phenomenon was investigated deeper, the root cause was traced to a curious syndrome of a dysfunctional social hierarchy that juxtaposed power relations and access to a parallel economy. Influential supervisors made sure that rework jobs were outsourced to small scale units where private wealth of regular managers at the plant was reaping from the inefficiencies of the main plant. An ethical fallout of such a political minefield was waiting to explode. Like the Abilene paradox, the risk of avoiding the obvious truth became greater than the risk of stating the obvious at the workplace.

At another location, again involving a sick-unit, I was myself witness to a socially mind-blind take-over. While the acquirer went about reconditioning the sick-plant for production, the original workforces of the local unit were being re-inducted in staggered manner. Two of them took me aside and said they were accounting the inventory in stock for over two months without being paid despite an appointment order. They attributed this to the absence of a Personnel Officer from the parent company during the take-over phase. On bringing this to the notice of the ‘covenanted’ Plant Manager, he was aghast and ordered immediate payment of the salaries in cash! The staff members lay prostrate at my feet in an unforgettable sight for me. They then invited me over to their personal homes for tea, in what I witnessed as the powerlessness of a community robbed of dignity and honor by an unethical and unscrupulous former management who allegedly milked their company finances and decamped to their havens in a stealth operation of hideous texture. A sheer look at the abandoned air-strip, colonial trappings of the residential colony and the fine crockery that the local cooks and servants preserved, was a sheer undercurrent of exploitative capitalism.

Both of the above stories are true. Masking the identities of these organisations, does not obfuscate the truth. The purpose of narrating them is to drive home the usefulness of understanding how phenomena such as these go unchecked and undetected in organisational routine, before they blow-up with damaging consequences to not only the exploiters, but those who are the survivors of such seemingly incomprehensible ‘dharam-sankats’. Let us assume for a moment, that such dilemmas exist in your own organisations. What can you do about them? Here’s what you could do to make the undiscussables discussable.

1.       Encourage the parties involved to examine the inconsistencies and gaps that underlie the reasoning behind their actions.

2.       Make explicit the rules that ‘must’ be in their reasoning to produce the actions they subscribe to

3.       If any shock or surprise is expressed in this process, use this as observable data to surface the validity of what is being learned by the members

4.       Produce opportunities to practice stating the truth and designing for actions that enhance internal commitment to mutually beneficial goals.

a.       From being systematically unaware of the consequences of their actions, they become aware in a non-threatening way of how they affect the organisational system

b.      Enable them with education in thinking (cognition) and action (behavior) that enhances perceptiveness of unawareness

c.       Develop maps of defensive routines that produce unintended consequences and socialise the nature of single-loop and double-loop learning

5.       Develop a learning case as in the example below from the manufacturing plant that led to deep reflection of how the worker community learnt at the workplace.

In the short example below, I have brought to you episodic illustrations of phenomena you may quickly identify with in your day job. Leaders now confronted with a knowledge workforce cannot use unassailable power and position to ‘drive’ their points of view as though no other views exist.

Leaders who face ongoing patterns of blockages and ‘stuck’ issues need to look at the governing issues of their situation. Leaders are often unaware in India of their theories in use, due to the deep hierarchy that goes unquestioned and untested for its relevance to order and effectiveness. They are slow to get feedback.

Table 1  : Excerpt from Conversation between the Stores supervisor and the Plant Manager

Thoughts and Feelings Not Communicated	Actual Conversation
He is not going to like this topic and he will take offence to my bringing it up as part of my work	SS : Sir, I have checked to valve components in stock. We have two dozen in stock for the sluices on the effluent pipes, but most of them have rusted and not likely to be effective. Plant Manager : I am glad you made this list. When can we have the complete list?
I had better go slow. Let me slow down the pace of my disclosures.	SS : In the past the valves in stock were ineffective because of poor quality. The chances are that even these in stock will be rejected by the Maintenance department. My fear is that the Materials Department will have a difficult time sourcing the right valves from the local market. Plant Manager : I don’t understand. Tell me more
Like hell you don’t understand. You are exploiting me like our previous management. How can I be more gentle with you?	SS : sir, I’m sure you are aware of the reasons ( and explains a bit…) Plant Manager : No, I do not see it that way. It is my production and engineers who are key to the future…
There he goes again, thinking as a ‘corporate’ officer, just because he is in charge	SS : Sir, let us wait and see when production begins..

Models of theories-in-use

The construction Argyris developed in order to explain theories-in-use is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.  Model explaining the process of developing theories-in use.

Governing variables are values which the person is trying to keep within some acceptable range.  We have many governing variables.  Any action will likely impact upon a number of these variables.  Therefore any situation may trigger a trade-off among governing variables.

Action strategies are strategies used by the person to keep their governing values within the acceptable range.

These strategies will have consequences which are both intended -- those the actor believes will result -- and unintended.

An example may help to illustrate this process.  A person may have a governing variable of suppressing conflict, and one of being competent.  In any given situation he or she will design action strategies to keep both these governing variables within acceptable limits.  For instance, in a conflict situation he or she might avoid the discussion of the conflict situation and say as little as possible.  This avoidance may (he or she hopes) suppress the conflict, yet allow her or him to appear competent because he or she at least hasn't said anything wrong.  This strategy will have various consequences both for her or him and the others involved.  An intended consequence might be that the other parties will eventually give up the discussion, thereby successfully suppressing the conflict.  As he or she has said little, he or she may feel he or she has not left herself open to being seen as incompetent.  An unintended consequence might be that the he or she thinks the situation has been left unresolved and therefore likely to recur, and feels dissatisfied. To sum up, we can see that there are a number of elements to Argyris’  model which help explain how we link our thoughts and actions.  These elements are:

1.       Governing Variables (or values)

2.       Action Strategies

3.       Intended and unintended Consequences for self

4.       Intended and unintended Consequences for others

5.       Action strategy effectiveness.

Another possible response would be to examine and change the governing values themselves.  For example, the person might choose to critically examine the governing value of suppressing conflict.  This may lead to discarding this value and substituting a new value such as open inquiry.  The associated action strategy might be to discuss the issue openly.  Therefore in this case both the governing variable and the action strategy have changed.  This would constitute double-loop learning.  See Figure 2.

Figure 2.  Single and double-loop learning

Conclusion : Human Resource Leaders have reached a point of heightened strategic relevance. Their rising up to this occasion would imply mastering the art of facilitating outcomes in productive learning environments, which may run counter to exigent conditions of productive performance climates at first instance. Large organisations, are especially prone to experience the dysfunctions and defensive routines that creep through the untested climates of status quo aided by time and deceptive comfort in face-saving behaviors. Debate and challenge to status quo are paradoxical attributes of effective organisations. Else blow-ups and scandals will permeate the timescapes of our skilled slumber while unconsciously learning incompetent modes of organisational response.

References:

Argyris C (1990) Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning, Allyn and Bacon.

Gestalt Therapy – Past Pains and Current Relief

Am biased in a view that holds NLP as a phase transition from Gestalt Therapy. History records that Fritz Perls revived action pieces from a theory that may have died without practice. Martin Shepard records wilful encounters that accounted for this in interactions between Perls, Karen Horney and Wilhelm Reich.  

I particularly note the anchoring effect Dick McHugh chooses when he brings on the 'mindfulness' of contemplative practices to heighten the potential of the unused right-brain. The conjunction between 'use of self' and the 'here and now' experience is realized in the distinction that non-judgmental awareness is different from an evaluative introspection. Awareness increases chances for responsibility and ownership. Introspection can lead us to explain away things, and words fail us to 'experience' our feelings. This is the part of process for facilitators in groups to discern.

The mystical mind plunges each moment towards, Truth, God, Love,  and such depths whose mysteries are not to be 'solved' the way we address anxieties that block our awareness. In fact, approaching emotional intelligence through an empirical basis of neurology, may be an inefficient way of reaching a truth about our human essence that mystics have accessed for centuries. This is why I wished to know or learn from Masters as to how this dimension played out in the founding of Organisation Development (OD).

Dick’s delight in ‘feelings’ is in my opinion overindulged, for it does not offer the cognitive balance required to make headway in intervention. The meta-model of 'get out of your mind, and get into your senses' is possibly the reason for this. My inference comes from what I sensed as his selective neglect of the following in his approach. There have been topics that were not schematically laid out. They are to do with the levels of neurosis, as also the classification of blockages or avoidance. 

The introjection that participants are likely to have experienced would preclude their projections and their consequent transferences left unobserved and unattended during practice sessions. That boundaries get violated in ways that precipitate Confluence.  Retroflection  and even Deflection are anathema to those who would have gone solely by witnessing experiential learning, for it requires a discerning observer to be present and observe how the client holds up feelings in the moment.

In OD, Gestalt can easily be seen as co-evolution as opposed to traditional ‘diagnosis’ or the pathology of the organisational system. When reviewing the deeper purpose of 'competence' and 'commitment' that Argyris speaks about, I was fascinated that the wheel within the wheels that Gestalt’s grist for the mill grinds, is its stubborn anti-intellectualism. In Argyris’ analysis of dysfunction in organisations, reasoning about our behaviors is core.  Experiencing 'authenticity' may have been unfairly labelled as too 'touchy-feely' to be 'analysed' in learning loops. In fact, hard-nosed, result oriented expectations may have suppressed the expression of truth. I wonder often if this is what precipitated the pretence on which the pursuit of profits was made legitimate. 

Increasing our capacity to think critically about behaviors is in fact a way of reaching greater awareness. Introjection reduces awareness, evenas an overdose of curiosity may take away from the moment's splendor. Contact is an associated state of feelings that the body can signal, either as a twitch of a muscle, a tension in the calves or a vascular headache.

There are 21 books referred to us for reading beyond the Dick McHugh course experience. These include the works of Polster, Passons, Shepherd, John O Stevens, Simkin, Perls, Zinker, Nevis, Carl Rogers and Barry Stevens.

In terms of how the work is affecting me, I am currently reviewing my skills of discernment, presence and giving! Am also open to range of choices in consultative style - confrontation, elicitation, modeling and direct provocations, that may be useful in the moment, within a larger intervention process!



Am most taken on the by instrumentality of polarities for the figure and ground probabilities that they present for leadership transformations. The grey zone for me is this : The numbness of modern capitalist enterprise could easily be generalized as intellectual riff-raff of the left brain, when Gestaltists encourage losing the mind and coming to one's senses. In an age of awareness of plasticity of the brain, what categories can be easily retained as left and right brain in a working language that we can rely on?

In a human process intervention, whose Goal is it anyway?

One day, my boss posed me a great question. "Whose goal should we be seen to endorse when asked for an intervention?" I realised then that he asked me that question to know what the fate of a relationship with a peer would be post intervention. That boss in the line organisation is a different one, motivated differently than a developmental professional. Fundamentally, he was asking me - what should be the goal of facilitation itself? Should the goal be biased towards the goals of the developmental professional or towards the line organisation boss, who seems to be on top of the power balance? Typically a classical dilemma for the 'internal' consultant.

Here're my views to such a dynamic.
1. Qualify your contract : Get the sponsor to understand, that the process that both enter into is mutual and requires authenticity from both sides. Any covert act of malafide intent will defeat the purpose in the course of time. Set expectations as to what the facilitator and the sponsor as leader would do to build and secure the commitment to the process.
2. Set Protocols : When in doubt, keep place for an arbitrator.  Both facilitator and sponsor agree that this arbitrator commands respect for independence in opinion. Legalize the arbitrator role and identity within the contract, if the sponsor is a symbol of risk. A healthy contract is more psychological and built on trust anyway.
3. Respect Dynamism in Groups : When done effectively, facilitation encourages disclosure which begets confrontation. Facilitate constructive confrontation of reality. Encourage courage in expression, and that will beget health in the group. Prospects that the group will face will sharply diverge in flashes that catch both sponsor and participant unawares. Respect that dynamism, go with the flow there and watch the thinking that is set in motion. Your goal is to surface the repressed unconscious of the group.

4. Value Closure : Movement towards credible lines of action is a great source of strength. Anchoring the closure of the facilitation with responsibilities that emerged from the process is great as a finshing act. Voluntary ownership is great, but watch out for impulsive acts of bravado in the euphoria of process. Distinguish the mature accountability of voluntarism from the juvenile breaking through from constraints.  Help with facilitative questions that encourage participants to deal with their unfinished business. Closure should inspire confidence, not merely to be remembered for the shock value or surprise from process. That is not where it ends in any case.
5. Wrap-Up with Sponsor : Get the sponsor(s) to verbalize what he or she or they experienced. Their reflections have a generative capacity beyond their presence in the group's process. It is a closure beyond the group that furthers the magic in the process. Choose in context, whether such is better done in private. This is super-ordinate process that ratifies your goal in the process. If both you and the sponsor meet your places of inner knowing in new ways, a deeper transformation will have taken place for both. Of course, it matters most for the artist in you that the client experiences and acknowledges transformation if you have led the facilitation effectively.

Irrespective of us deciding therefore, the line organisation client has a goal anyway. Facilitation is value added when the climate for spontaneous expression is made available through conversations. These cut through the messiness of face-saving tendencies, learnt helplessness and untested doubts. Happy to hear from facilitators of process work. Interventions have such a myriad hue. Love to learn from you.

Learning and Development in India - at a distance

Introduction

In February 2011, I was at a national seminar organized for Administrators, Deans, Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Departments of institutions for Higher Education in India. I was asked to speak on frameworks and models for Human Resource Development in such institutions. The host institution’s faculty had an average tenure of about a decade. At least one Faculty member in this institution had just secured a grant of a million Rupees for a significant longitudinal research in the behavioral sciences from its own Board of Research Studies. What struck me in these apparent coincidences were the lack of pomp, gaiety or false confidence and the sheer commitment to the institution’s main purpose. No, this was not an Ivy League college. Yet, to have supported a climate in which such processes were being cherished without precedent is a sign of things to come. The so called ‘next’ processes could come from unexpected places, I thought to myself. Are we open to such possibilities?

What may drive such Next practices?

There was a time after the book “In Search of Excellence” when ‘excellence’ as a word became a catch-all hook for phenomena that could be ill explained, and yet aspired for. In Search of Excellence is an international bestselling book written by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. [1]. The fall from fame for companies featured in that book did not help reverse usage of the term ‘excellence’ either. Leaders began languaging a control over processes without necessarily having to demonstrate such ‘excellence’ in their own conduct – especially when it came to learning and development. The fear of loss of control led to being choosy in narrow areas of comfort. What it means to be a learner in an organisation has received lesser attention than what the organisation represented for agencies like supply-chains, stock markets, recruitment houses and investment analysts outside it (Dierkes M, Berthoin Antal A, Child J & Nonaka I, 2001). There is a dearth of understanding in research terms of what learning and change has meant for human beings inside organisations.

Outside business organisations, the signs are not as enthusing either. The Union database of Theses on Inflibnet of the University Grants Commission[2] covers the bibliographic Metadata of Doctoral Theses submitted to 238 Universities/Institutes in India. It has over 2, 32, 599 unique records from all subject areas. Theses titles therein are more suggestive of summer projects and a sense of entitlement rather than accomplishment and furtherance of methodical enquiry and authoritative explanation. If so, what’s next for learning and development? 

Drivers in Learning and development phenomena in India

1.       Scientific Temperament amidst Challenging Demographic structures: A demographic understanding of India is important to the conception and facilitation of learning and development. India will witness a 36% increase in population growth in the decade 2010-20, releasing a workforce of 602 million people, next only to China (847 mn) [3]. We have a flood of youth in the decades ahead, who need to be gainfully employed, and stay employable into the decades ahead for interlocked institutions to yield any good.  Within such a demographic trend are worrying factors we need to address –

a.        quality of education and continuous education beyond formal entry qualifications,

b.       quality of research especially with regard to fidelity to the scientific method, and

c.        the depth of practice or application that will differentiate competence of content-value from aspirations of face-value.

The resources required for high-quality research processes and outcomes will continue to be constrained, given the gestation period it takes to build the intellectual capital and the academic leadership that should nourish talent of the future. We are not only up against a lack of precedence in such services to match world-class standards. Neglecting the appropriateness of context specific applications would also mean insufficient concern and innovation for the price-sensitivities of Indians. The prospect of commercial interests adulterating research activity is just as much threat to ethics. The opportunity for academy-industry collaboration is open, possibly holding up promise eventually for the rest of the world. The discipline of enquiry and reporting of findings eventually have to be tempered by the method of science – across the demographic complexity of India. Patience born of persistence will typify the commitment to science in this regard.

2.       Technological Factors Shaping Civil Life: The technologies of hunting and then ‘cooking’ of raw food to increase the calorific value via the digestive system are known to have gifted our brains with evolutionary prowess. Technology as we know it today affects our lifestyles. Banking, travel, taxation, retail and telecom are some of the sectors that we in urban India have experienced differently due to technology. In the demographic spread as we are witnesses to in India, technology cuts and slices livelihoods unequally in a society unequal in its economic dividend. The embededness of technology in warfare led to the sticky metaphors of ‘smart’ missiles and ‘intelligent’ bombs. Our understanding of the creeping effects of technology in food-processing, sickness-care and agricultural sectors is lessened by the system that forces us, at times, to consume without sufficient awareness of the ecological considerations in such choices. (Goleman, 2009).

Social lags in comprehending such dimensions of technology imply a sensitive appraisal of market-oriented business models, so that development is deemed equitable in the economic sense and justiciable in the social sense. Workforce practices such as leadership development and followership would have to withstand and surpass such appraisals with successes unparalleled in human history.

3.       Conception of viable boundaries for Learning and Development: The boundaries of the organisation are getting redrawn due to varying physical stations of the learner – home, project location, and base location for example. This blurring may imply that ‘developmental’ processes – whether for career, for training or organisational development, will mean newer kinds of recognition of learning needs and corresponding intervention. It requires greater and not lesser investment in understanding of what works in the context of the evolving learner – from the nouveau-urbanite, and the tele-commuting kind to the aspiring shopfloor apprentice or the assertive front-office sales agent. These dynamics of learning and development scenarios need observation, especially because information is impoverished if the learner has no means of justifying contexts for its particular use.

Patenting of proprietary Learning technologies and licensing of host platforms will see shrinking time horizons, given the sheer rate at which the shelf-life of useful information diminishes. The boundaries within which learning and development becomes strategic to a firm or a learner will be more determined by the perception of the firm’s market value. Within these boundaries of strategic impact, competitive advantage will assume inimitable form. Beyond these boundaries, related and yet distinct information could flow free and unrestricted, often emerging from proprietary content of a recent or distant past. The contours of L&D will thus take unprecedented form.

4.       Social Media as extension of personal identities: Social Networking technologies known more by brand names today like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like are to be understood differently by L&D professionals. These media affect job crafting options. The commitment of professionals evidenced on such media is to be aligned with the interests of the organisation. Such media are fast with the young, or at least the young-at-heart. Youth are increasingly displaying their private selves in public domains. However, if that is where the digital natives begin, the journeys they take will be different in the information processing they accomplish, and in the affective dimensions they will demonstrate in their personal and professional roles. In India, lower ages can aid expression on social networks only if socio-economic coincidences – like privileges through parental income; access to formal education and internet infrastructure are present together. Firms that create appropriate infrastructure to enable employees to experience continuity to their identities via social media will represent an openness and willingness to accommodate the effects of evolving personal identities. Firms inept in responding to social media implications will learn from firms who will have struck the new balance without damage to their reputations. 

5.       Learning Motives in Knowledge Economies: While strategizing for differences made by human capital through learning and development, leadership needs to manage two dominant learner motivations.

a.        Consumptive knowledge motives – wherein learners learn or consume learning only if they anticipate application from effort made in learning (leading largely to single loop learning[4]) AND

b.       Declarative knowledge motives - wherein learners learn for the sake of or joy of learning new facts (likely to be leading to double-loop learning or openness to governing causes[5]).

There will be scarcer advantages going into the future by suppressing either of such motives. E.g. it is one matter to complain of lack of patenting and innovation amongst firms in India, if fundamental research is isolated only to be neglected. Deep specialists in particular subject areas cannot ignore the complementarities their expertise will have to bear with other specialists and generalists. Role based interfaces and behavioral interventions amongst such diverse talent will call for new learning design and implementation knowledge. Learning and development facilitators will also need dynamic connect with people involved with strategy making and implementation to be able to align services. Facilitating leadership to facilitate learning is core to the progress of knowledge economies.

6.       Coepitition and Cooperation amongst firms: Business deals are now marked more by the post competitive collaboration required to service the ultimate customer. Bidders for the same contract may find that one of them ‘X’ wins and asks others Y and Z to aid them implement the contract on less attractive, yet maintainable terms. Such contingencies or arrangements of business convenience are not well studied for its implications on learning and development of strategic relationships. While this may today be viewed as the province of strategy and large business deals, there may also be the case of rapid learning and maturing of consistent Ys and Zs who progress to take on more enduring and superior relationships with the ultimate client due to their systematic learning from the nature of relationship between X and the client.  Firms in innovative eco-systems will co-evolve together if they complement their learning and development processes, beyond identification of markets, positional assets such as goodwill and geographic scope, technological levers and legal safeguards to patents and proprietary knowledge. E.g. Health-care and information technology may combine to provide new services like tele-medicine from locations in and around Bangalore.

7.       Neuro-Sciences, the Human Brain and Learning: This point I make is to do with the model of the human being as we know it! What began as forays in the affective domain through Emotional Intelligence is now more about the social nature of our brains and alternate neural pathways that can lead to new habit formation and more successful behaviors. Recently, while at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, doctors shared with me the case of a patient who after suffering a stroke lost the ability to speak, but started singing a hymn when his wife at his bedside took to singing it herself in the hospital ward. How exactly the neural connections bypass speech areas and allow for singing are still being studied. From area-specific intelligences of the brain, we are now confronted with emerging knowledge of the plasticity of the brain and positive modeling of success behaviors. This adds to the ‘wholeness’ perspective or the meaningful relatedness to the whole. Unlike the distinct intelligences of spatial, speech, emotional, math and the like, we are now coming to recognize the holistic nature of man’s essential being. It is the model of the human being in all of this which will be the point of interest to learning and development professionals. 

Philosophically speaking, we are coming close to recognizing the responsibility of business in the holistic development of human resources. We should therefore look forward to unconventional themes like IIM (B)’s forthcoming January 2012 seminar “The Spiritual Challenge in Management: What is to be done?” with as much awe as humility[6], for such may mean revisiting or reprogramming paradigms about human potential.  Perhaps we need to be acknowledging the potential of our subconscious minds more than we did in formal organisations. Less said about certainty and uncertainty in this piece the better, I assume.

8.       Social Commitment and Development: Social learning is achieved through the interactions among people, behavior, and the environment. The individual learns behaviors by observing and imitating others. The rates at which individuals learn and respond will require mature understanding from professionals who engage in learning and development services. Firms that demonstrate commitment to social causes will do so through consistency in their espoused causes and the depth to which their commitment is fulfilled. If such causes do not involve the people being affected, development does not leave the experiential touchstone on which a firm’s identity is imprinted. Communities keep richer memories of institutional impact than what even the organized sector has managed to via its knowledge management systems in India. Symbolic processes, self-control, and self-efficacy are all important in social learning. Hence, reputation that involves brand – traditionally a responsibility of Marketing and Quality, identity – traditionally a responsibility of Leadership; and social responsibility – traditionally associated with Founder Membership – all will need newer coalescence merely to appear coherent with an organization’s stakeholders. Such newer loops in learning have to be mapped for organisational effectiveness.

9.       Measurement Issues: Learning and development efficacy will be highlighted when deficits and benefits to organisational performance are identified in the design of organisations. Professionals in L&D will be required to distinguish deficit cycles from benefit cycles in their organization’s history.  Deficits arising from patterned losses in organisational routine (of downturns in organisational performance that are systematically bypassed due to reasons such as fear of embarrassment or critique), are different from benefit cycles marked by successful improvements to signal performance upturns that are enabled by appropriate learning mechanisms which reduce defensiveness and detachment from issues of vital significance to the organization’s effectiveness.  Hence I foresee outcome oriented evaluation frameworks give way to comprehensive feedback into design of learning and development systems per se. That is as exciting a place to be as it is challenging. L&D leaders have a professional development opportunity in surpassing such challenge.

10.    Development as Value, Information is for Free: Value dynamics in learning and development commence, when a market emerges for developmental processes. Free services mark the abundantly available information byte. Simply put, we are likely to witness more and more entitlement to free information. The threshold departures in willingness to pay for valuable developmental processes will accompany the fulfillment of the learner’s Identity. Those services will be paid for increasingly where human interfaces will provide for experiential value. Innovation in reaching out to the learner ‘out there’ will make for business friendly developmental processes. Offerings from self-awareness processes to interpersonal contribution will stage a comeback, first with individuals through coaching, counseling and mentoring. Group and organisational awareness will follow. Such were abruptly disrupted by the delusional expectations caused by the march of the effortless keyboards and pretentious touch-screens. These offerings will be recalled with mixed feelings at varying degrees of acceptance by different generations. Boundaries of acceptance, offering and contribution to development will see unprecedented stretch.

Conclusion

Thus, what we have is a challenge of drivers on multiple fronts. Oversimplifications could deny us the reality we need to engage with. In closing, I come to that point of historical interest. It is about excellence. I came across the quote “Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude." An accomplished academic from a US business school summarized in December 2010 what his wise students feel when they visit India on study-visits year after year “Indian business success is premised on short-term deal-making. They’re not thinking beyond 2-3 years. If you notice, everyone wants to exploit you as if tomorrow would never come. The porter, the shop-keeper, the cab-driver, the agent..." Do we really wish to excel in short-term deal-making? There's a lot about what management consulting and management 'practices' have done to diminish learning in organizations (Argyris, 1999). As Argyris puts it - it's down to our 'face-saving' tendencies - we do not wish as professionals to show ourselves up as feeling embarrassed, guilty or defensive. Alongside comes newer understanding of the domains of paradox, polarities, covert processes and shadow-cultures of firms that host individual and organisational learning patterns. We wish to avoid the 'blow-ups' that guilt so skillfully ‘covers up’ when our initiatives don’t seem to be producing the intended results.

It is tempting to assume that what got us here will take us into the future as well. We also need to be watchful for descriptions of ‘flexibility’ in the immediate-term that actually mask compromises in the goals and methods of learning and development. I bet most of us who think short-term, rarely reflect on such issues. Conscious leadership is probably the reset awaiting us into the future. Institutions that engage in second and third-order learning will have the edge. In recent times, the language of 'authenticity, 'vulnerability' and 'compassion' are doing the rounds on virtual networks. Surely, they've 'real' origins. What can we do to learn about this and make those insights actionable? Will not the future judge our current actions by those considerations? If we have the courage to examine near-death possibilities of inaction in contemporary India, will we not look at options more responsibly as did the seminar organizers on the need for HRD in institutions of higher education?

References:

1.        Argyris A (1999) On Organizational Learning, Blackwell Publishing, MA

2.        Goleman D (2009) Ecological Intelligence, Penguin, London.

3.        Dierkes M, Berthoin Antal A, Child J & Nonaka I ( 2001) Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge, Oxford.

4.        Peters, Thomas J., and Jr. Waterman, Robert H. (1984) In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers

5.        EIU (2010) Global firms in 2020: The next decade of change for organisations and workers - A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (sponsored by SHRM).

[1]First published in 1982 it is one of the biggest selling and most widely read business books ever, selling 3 million copies in its first four years, and being the most widely held library book in the United States from 1989 to 2006.

[2]IndCat: Online Union Catalogue of Indian Universities is unified Online Library Catalogues of books, theses and journals available in major university libraries in India. The union database contains bibliographic description, location and holdings information for books, journals and theses in all subject areas available in more than 123 university libraries across the country http://indcat.inflibnet.ac.in/indcat/

[3] Global firms in 2020: The next decade of change for organisations and workers is an Economist Intelligence Unit report, sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted the survey and analysis and wrote the report

[4] The single loop action strategy for learning is self-centric. The strategy is to design and manage the environment so that the actor is in control over factors relevant to self.

[5] The governing variables in double-loop learning are valid information, free choice and internal commitment.

[6] The conference will address and question a key issue of our times: the adequacy of the current paradigms of management for the future of mankind and our planet. http://www.iimb.ernet.in/hi/international-spirituality-conference

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