AGILE LEARNING

The difference between bad and great organisations is generally the frequency, quality and management of feedback loops Ray Dalio

This is the fourth and final in a series of short outcome-focused articles on 'High Performance Under High Uncertainty', outlining some tools and approaches for dealing with the challenges of uncertainty, complexity and risk in a world still grappling with Covid-19 and its social, political and economic fallout. The background context was described in the scene setter which highlighted 3 main challenges:

The glue joining the articles together is agility. Previous articles covered agile thinking and agile execution. This post deals with agile learning, or more accurately, the essential role of a fast learning process in environments requiring agility.

CONTEXT

At the end of WWII, Japan's national infrastructure was all but destroyed. By the 1990s, it was the world's second largest economy. Its manufacturing sector was pivotal in that remarkable transformation. Having been rescued from bankruptcy by the state in 1949, in the mid-2000s, Toyota was the world's largest automotive manufacturer by production volume. It is a case study in manufacturing excellence.

At the heart of Toyota's success is a culture of continuous improvement, a concept introduced to Japan by US statistician and engineer, W. Edwards Deming. Deming might reasonably be considered to be one of the founding fathers of continual improvement, a concept with relevance far beyond the manufacturing production line, to any team or organisation looking to improve performance.

Deming's approach was largely underpinned by what might be called 'radical objectivity,' a disciplined application of evidence, logic, reason and growth mindset to understanding what really caused a performance outcome and what can be learnt from it. Make no mistake; a 'superior understanding of reality' is a source of competitive advantage. You see some combination of the traits above in many transformational high performers including Warren Buffet, John Boyd, the All Blacks and Amazon.

It is invariably possible to identify sources of feedback in order to analyse performance and drive continual improvement. The critical issue is whether the feedback loop is closed aka Dalio's quote. Long-term high-performance organisations are learning organisations. Without exception.

THE CURRENT PROBLEM

In the current climate of uncertainty, plans are even less likely to survive the collision with reality than in normal times. Agility is required. As well as requiring certain specific approaches in planning and execution (see previous posts - links above), it will be necessary to assess whether the assumptions made in planning were correct, and even if they were, unanticipated changes in the external environment may still mean that course corrections are still required or desirable.

We need to be able to react quickly to circumstances and the evidence of our efforts. To that end, we need a tool to facilitate that - this is the debrief. In human performance activities, the debrief is where 'rubber hits the road' for continual improvement and radical objectivity. The debrief is characterised by the ability self-analyse performance and extract learning outcomes that are quickly fed back into current and future activities.

TOOLS AND APPROACHES

The pre-requisites to continual improvement and debriefing are simple. You need clarity in:

1. What was the aim of the activity?
2. What were the measures of success?
3. What was the plan to achieve the desired outcome?
4. What was the outcome?

If you know those things, then you have everything you need for a feedback learning loop. You just need to make it happen. Some top tips:

1. Choose your target. If debriefs are not the current norm, choose your target carefully. You need to demonstrate value to get buy-in, so choose an activity with an obvious benefit in learning from the experience.
2. Put it in the diary. Reflection just isn't as much fun as doing stuff. Block the time in people's diaries in advance and make debriefing an essential part of the task.
3. Use a simple structured process. Debrief against your intent - how did things go versus what we wanted to happen, Start with the aim (success? or not?) and the plan. What went well and why? What went badly and why?
4. Focus on learning, not blaming, but with accountability. Invariably some individuals will need to action some changes. Watch out for accountability smearing. If no one is responsible for implementing any changes, nothing will happen.
5. Share the learning. There is a whole other subject area of knowledge management that is beyond the scope of this post but ask yourself: how inefficient is it for one team to go through the pain of learning from a mistake only to allow the next-door team or department to go through exactly the same painful learning experience?

CULTURAL / LEADERSHIP IMPLICATIONS

[People] occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened Winston Churchill

In Donald Wheeler's seminal introduction to data analytics, Making Sense of Data, prior to 350 pages of 'how to', he includes a few pivotal paragraphs where he identifies the biggest challenges in continuous improvement, which might be summed up as organisational bias - the impact of culture and leadership behaviour in disincentivising dealing in reality. The following is from Wheeler:

This endless game of 'making your numbers' leads to a 'cover your anatomy' mentality in which the need to survive the internal competition becomes dominant, taking precedence over the needs of the company and... the customer.

The easiest way to hit goals and targets is to massage the data... [This] has the disadvantage of coming back to haunt you later.

'Distort the data' and 'distort the system' approaches are so common that many people have come to think that the major purpose for collecting data is to hide the problems. We collect data to show how good things are, whether or not they are.

I have little to add to the above. As with most cultural issues, the levers to build a culture of radical objectivity are easily accessible to senior managers, through what they role model, reward and recognise, and to what extent they turn a blind eye to, or even encourage, the issues highlighted by Wheeler.

If you are a manager or team leader in any context, the person who will make the biggest difference in building a high-performance learning culture is looking at you in the mirror.