From Individual and Team Learning to Organizational Capability

Jocelyn Phelps,Program Director, Leadership and OrganizationDevelopment, SocieteGenerale

Jocelyn Phelps,Program Director, Leadership and OrganizationDevelopment, SocieteGenerale

I recently walked into my kitchen and saw it had been invaded by ants.A week-long battle ensued: each day, I tried a new way to frustrate the ants. The next day, the ants would be back. I finally got advice to prevent the ants’ getting into the building. For now, they have vanished.

How is this related to organizational learning?  First, in the short term individuals learn faster than groups.Second,survival of the group depends on adapting as a group. Third, this kind of collectiveadaptive learning – to step back and try to improve based on feedback– seems like a luxuryin a short-term-focused environment. Furthermore, our short termtoday ischaracterized by anxiety about safety and survival. (This undermines the psychological safety we need to learn individually or collaboratively.)

So how are our organizations performing, versus the ants?

Despite the stress, individuals and teamshave adapted at incredible rates. Organizations, too, have “learned” new ways of functioning. One can feel corporate values shifting and bringing new behaviors in their wake: timeis even more precious, so meetings have become places forconcise decision-making; as we acknowledge the importance of caring for others, managers block timeto check how people are doing; we have gainedempathy and intimacy as we see each other’s children or pets wandering through video meetings; and teams now find it normal to discuss their purpose: “If we meet in person, we need to do something valuable.”

Yet these experiences of intimacy, care, and focus don’t ensure that we actually build newcapabilities. When we could compare notes at the water cooler, new experiences and insightsgradually spread through our organizations. Today the transformative skill for our collective learningis our capacity to pause and reflect: on ourselves,our exceptional circumstances, and how we have responded. It is our capacity to harness the wealth of individual and team experience to generate organizational learning – new approaches to the complex, wicked challenges we face.

How to help busy managers find time for reflection and a space conducive to it?

I have testedpractices to foster this ability, with individuals and teams and beyond. They are not new, but today we can reconsider their impact and scope in a world where travel and even local gatherings have become rarerwhile technology makes remote contact seem simple:

Groups focused on problem-solving (action learning): These start with groups of six to eight participants with enough in common (type of job, level, language) to highlight shared interests and enough differences (businesses, reporting lines, and geographies) to encourage divergent perspectives. Participantsselectissues they want to address. The purpose is to share knowledge and develop insights about a challenge, such as remote management or team engagement: the “problem” is the focus, and participants contribute their knowledge and expertise to address it.

These problem-solving groups satisfy the most fundamental criteria for organizational learning: they bring multiple perspectives to situations for which there is no obvious response, and they specifically connect theory to practice, action to learning. As Reg Revans pointed out, “There can be no learning without action and no (sober and deliberate) action without learning”.

Peer-coaching (or co-development) groups:These groups are composed like problem-solving groups, so they offer the same comfort of being “outside” each participant’s immediate organization and the sensation of discovering the broader organization.

The difference lies in the focus of the group’s work. Participants bring their own live cases and expect to be challenged to find new ways of viewing their situation (and themselves in relation to it). The learning achieved here moves in two directions, pushing deeper inside individuals and across the organization, as participants discover their capacity to work together and create shared understanding despite the group’s heterogeneity.

The impact of both practices is augmented when an organization runs multiple groups across its various entities and locations. Technology has made this easier.

Groups dedicated to “supervision”: This approach offers amore varied approach (rooted in 19^th-century “case work”). If the organization can adapt the framework appropriately, supervision can be used within teams (to explore how each teamresponds to its challenges); within a job family (e.g. internal coaches or HR leaders); or with groups representing a certain level of responsibility, for example senior executives. 

How does supervision of a group generate organizational capability? The concept emphasizes developing capacity for support and relationship. Thanks to its broad toolkit, it creates a miniature model of how organizations work and learn: participants cultivate a head-heart-hands approach to the group’s work, and draw from and contribute to all members of the group. Over time, participants realize that:

• their own emotions and those of others are a resource;
• together they leverage multiple sources of knowledge and experience;
• they must care for the energy circulating in a group;
• the framework that underpins the group is a tool, not a constraint.

This type of supervision creates a“sandbox” where participants experiment with material and attitudes they can transferelsewhere in the organization.

Whatever approach you choose for your organization, you will be offeringthe participants an opportunity to stop, reflect, and recharge –as you support your organization’s capacity to learn, adapt, and grow.