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Building an Organizational Brain

Building an Organizational Brain

Humans deal with complexity by interacting and learning with their environment. When working in groups, the same sort of principles apply. However, to learn effectively, the group must first learn how to learn as a group. Group learning is much more than practicing or training. It is a journey of creating, refining, and ultimately being able to apply a shared world model to solve new problems.

In this talk, we explore how organizational learning happens and dive into different challenges tech-driven organizations face when trying to become a learning organization.

We explore the enablers of this learning and provide several useful tips and heuristics for achieving organizational learning.

ℹ️ Kandddinsky 2024

Eduardo da Silva

October 31, 2024
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Transcript

  1. Always learning about learning and teaching about teaching Continuously learning

    & helping orgs to learn, design and decide more effectively Who are we? Eduardo da Silva Avraham Poupko
  2. Image & Credits: https://thecynefin.co/about-us/about-cynefin-framework Most modern orgs have a lot

    of activities here… “Best practices” and expert knowledge is not enough! We need to “probe > sense > respond” ⚠many organizations are using practices from these domains to work on their “Complex Domains”... ☹
  3. 9 stretching our teams/org & creating complex processes ⬇ (⚠Conway’s

    Law) increasingly messier social and technical systems ➡ more difficult to learn and respond to our environment Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change
  4. Understanding is the ability to apply • Recognize commonalities •

    Recognize inconsistencies • Ask/Answer questions • Re-word - explain to someone that does not share the same assumptions/knowledge • Find new applications and innovations
  5. The Organizational Brain • Read • Listen • Practice •

    Teach • Study • Experience • Discuss • Argue • Practice as a team • Play • Collaborate • Group Experience • Rehearse • Practice • Write • Databases • Culture • Code/Comments • Stories • Rules & Rituals Individual Organization Retain Learn/Understand 🧠 Org Brain
  6. Culture Challenges to Organizational Learning • Our leaders do not

    behave as though they value learning ◦ (It is hard for a culture to evolve against leadership examples) • Our incentives or motivators are misaligned ◦ (Lack of a common “story”) • We do not see or value ourselves as a “Learning Collective” ◦ (A culture of individuality) • We do not believe in the long term value of learning ◦ (A culture of ignorance) • We are more focused on avoiding blame than we are on doing the right thing ◦ (A culture of fear) • We do not feel that our knowledge can make a difference ◦ (A culture of indifference)
  7. 👥 Can you tell us a story or incident regarding

    how culture was a challenge to organizational learning?
  8. Org structure affects dynamics in the org Any organizational activity

    is affected by the organizational structure (formal and informal). Organizational learning is no different.
  9. Today many org structures are still management-oriented Divide org in

    departments working on their own, managed and optimized locally & often competing with each other
  10. Silos create friction to learning & effective value! …people end

    up having to go against the “functional silos” in order to learn and build what the customers truly need (value)
  11. We still incentivize for local control & learning Incentives to

    “staying in one’s silo” (“we vs them”) This leads to localized learning and optimization, which will be sub-optimal …it is not enough to have the best “DevOps teams” in “Tech”, if to learn and create the best value we need to work together with Product, Marketing, etc.
  12. Return on Investment (ROI) 1. Learning is an investment 2.

    Investment needs to be justified… ⚠Managers want ROI that is: • Quantifiable • Short-term • Local to their business unit ⚠ Learning is an investment that may take time to generate: • Financial return (Money) • Concrete value (improvement, business value, etc.)
  13. The need for Immediate Returns is a challenge for Learning

    Long term investments are always challenging
  14. • General Cultural Awareness ◦ People that “belong” - are

    interested in knowing more ◦ Encourage Group Identity (“We”) ◦ Stories about learning • Everyone should be able to learn (not just the senior or expert people) ◦ Lead by example - managers and leaders incentivize learning ◦ Admit to not knowing ◦ Trust other people’s knowledge ◦ Share lessons with other team members (e.g., retrospectives, learn from incidents, etc.) • Celebrate learning ◦ It is cool to know stuff ◦ Promote internal conferences and other means to promote learning together ◦ Express curiousness Culture of Learning
  15. • Retrospectives that focus on learning ◦ “What did you

    learn this week?” ◦ “Where did that come from?” Culture of Learning together
  16. • Make Learning a “first-class citizen” in the organization •

    Managers are incentivized to Learn and support Learning in their teams and across the organization ◦ DO NOT penalize people from learning and helping others learn • Helping others is a good thing Incentivize Learning together
  17. Organize for Learning not Management 🟢 understand what are the

    Structures you need to support effective learning that supports maximizing value exchange with customers 🔴 don’t organize for management and control or around functional silos
  18. Evolve structures to support effective learning 💡Team Topologies offers a

    great set of principles and language to sense and evolve organizations, with a specific interaction (“Facilitation)* focused on helping others on missing skills or capabilities * this is only possible if the structure, culture and incentives exist for teams to help each other
  19. Things change, and structures should evolve to support that time…

    …to better support learning and value creation, and with that respond to the needs in and around the org
  20. esilva.net Tech Arch Org (& Way of Work) Monoliths Products

    Tech Arch Org & Ways of Work Waterfall Agile Product Teams DevOps Teams (Micro)services ~30 ~100 ~10 ~600 ~50 Bol.com - 20 years of purposeful evolution Approach to Arch. Centralized (by Architects) Teams + Architects (anything around teams) Teams (+ Enabling Product Architects) Major Events
  21. esilva.net Tech Arch Org (& Way of Work) Monoliths Products

    Tech Arch Org & Ways of Work Waterfall Agile Product Teams DevOps Teams (Micro)services ~30 ~100 ~10 ~600 ~50 Bol.com - 20 years of purposeful evolution Approach to Arch. Centralized (by Architects) Teams + Architects (anything around teams) Teams (+ Enabling Product Architects) Major Events For this to happen we need incentives that allow for the purposeful evolution of the org structures…
  22. 🤝 Non-siloed learning and helping (allow people that know help

    who needs to know) 💡Learning as a fundamental and strategic investment that helps the org to be more effective
  23. Summary • A primary way to address increased complexity and

    rate of change is by organizational learning • A learning organization will be more effective and efficient • Learning is about much more than information flow
  24. Key Takeaways 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment Strive

    for a culture that appreciates and enables organizational learning Understand and assimilate how Organizational Learning increases value Strive for a structure that continuously supports organizational learning