INNOVATIONS IN INFRASTRUCTURE
Infrastructure is the means through which an organization makes available resources to support people in their work. Just as an architect and contractor of a house must develop mechanisms to get the right building materials and bring them to the site, builders of learning organizations must develop and improve infrastructural mechanisms so that people have the resources they need: time, management support, money, information, ready contact with colleagues, and more.
Organizations seeking to enhance learning have experimented with diverse innovations in infrastructure. For example, in Japan quality management led to organizing front line workers in "quality circles" and setting up various management councils to support quality improvement. The innovations in infrastructure that will support emerging learning organizations encompass a broad range of changes in "social architecture" including changes in organizational structures (such as self-managing work teams), new designs for work processes, new reward systems, information networks, and much more.
In his classic book Out of the Crisis, the eminent quality pioneer W. Edwards Deming suggested his own example of an innovation in infrastructure: "Efforts and methods for improvement of quality and productivity in most companies and in most government agencies are fragmented, with no overall competent guidance, no integrated system for continual improvement." He proposed a general "organization for quality" including a "leader for statistical methodology" reporting directly to top management and local counterparts throughout the organization, "with authority from top management to be a participant in any activity that in his judgment is worthy of his pursuit." The purpose of this leader would not be to dictate the quality techniques, but to make sure that people throughout the organization learned and understood them-such an important task, in Deming's view, that it took precedence over conventional line management.
I first discovered the importance of infrastructure for learning through my experiences with the "group planning" office at Royal Dutch/Shell. Over the past twenty years, there has been a steady evolution of "planning as learning" throughout Shell's worldwide group of 150 operating companies. This evolution has encompassed a broad array of tools and methods, such as scenario analysis and systems modeling. But, more importantly, it has also led to a new understanding of the role of planning as an infrastructure to enhance learning throughout the organization. Planning is no longer primarily a staff function for coming up with the proper "answer" which managers must then implement, but a process "whereby management teams," says former planning head Arie de Geus, "change their shared mental models of their company, their markets, and their competitors."
During the past twenty-five years, Shell has steadily risen from one of the weakest to probably the strongest of the largest world oil companies. Throughout this period, the planning as learning approach has had first-order impacts on how the company recognized and responded to the turbulent, unpredictable world oil market. For example, Shell responded in a qualitatively different manner from other oil companies to the first round of OPEC oil-price shocks in the early 1970s. It rapidly decentralized operations while other oil companies were centralizing, and it worked hard to make refineries and trading operations more flexible, so that they could more quickly respond to changing availabilities. In the mid-1980s, Group Planning developed a "fictitious'' case study involving a sudden drop in the world oil price, and managers throughout the world wrestled with how they would manage under such a change. Mental models that had adjusted to a world of twenty-eight dollars a barrel oil were challenged, and new assumptions had to be explored. As a result, Shell accelerated development of several key technologies to reduce cost in off-shore drilling, technologies which subsequently proved critical when oil prices fell to ten dollars a barrel in 1986 and stayed low in ensuing years.
Because learning is integral to planning, and because planning is inescapable to management, you cannot escape learning at Shell. It is not a marginal activity to be engaged in when one has spare time. In the Shell operating companies that participate, learning is no longer a concern of a handful of "experts" isolated from the mainstream of the business.
This contrasts sharply with many companies which attempt to drive learning through the training and education departments. While ongoing training and education are important, they are less integral to most business operations than planning is. Even though line managers may believe that an initiative pushed by training or human resources is worthwhile, in a world where people are already overcommitted and budgets are rarely abundant, what is not integral to the business often does not get done.
Other examples of learning integrated with the main work of the organization are beginning to emerge. When the Saturn division of General Motors developed its manufacturing facilities in Springhill, Tennessee, one of its first significant innovations was a "learning laboratory'' adjacent to the manufacturing line. Called the Workplace Development Center, it was a complete mockup of an assembly line, where engineers and assembly line team members could try out new processes together with videotape cameras, so people could study their own movements and relationship with the line. Said Saturn President Richard ("Skip") LeFauve: "Teams from the plant solve problems in simulated working conditions. We're passing on to employees design tools for assembly, manufacturing and synchronous operations. Traditionally, these tools were the property of management and were applied through an industrial engineering department. But at Saturn, they are common property."
At AT&T, Chairman Bob Allen has established a variety of "forums'' at different levels within the organization to encourage reflection and conversation about issues shaping the business's long-term health and vitality. This includes a "Chairman's Strategy Forum," which draws together the top 150 managers worldwide several times a year to examine key issues driving the business. In explaining the reason for the forums. Allen says, "We have plenty of infrastructure for decision making within AT&T. What we lack is infrastructure for learning."
These infrastructure innovations are not limited to the largest companies. At a home furnishings manufacturing firm, American Woodmark, the training department has been reshaped so that line managers are the principal trainers, and the content of the training is partly determined by conversations about the future of the organization.
The most important innovations in infrastructure for learning organizations will enable people to develop capabilities like systems thinking and collaborative inquiry within the context of their jobs. It matters little if we are masterful at inquiry in training sessions, but can only pontificate in real management meetings; or if we are accomplished in system thinking exercises but cannot apply them to real work settings. Until people can make their "work space'' a learning space, learning will always be a "nice idea" peripheral, not central.
