Becoming a Learning Organization

A question I am often asked is what is the best approach to building learning organizations. While this can be non-trivial, here I draw attention to some of what Galaxiez has done to address this. Galaxiez focuses on leveraging systems thinking and modeling to address problems that tend not to go away. "Learning" has a lot to do with making problems go away, and here I access both macro and micro technologies employed by Galaxiez to assist with this.

Employing Macro-Technologies

The two macro-technologies I reference here are Causal-Loop Diagrams (CLD) and Agent-Based Modeling (ABM). CLDs can generally be created pretty quickly and provide insight into all the interactions that animate an area of focus. Typically a CLD will surface embedded patterns or 'archetypes' that tend to negatively affect the area, and becoming aware of these means that the organization has to un-learn default ways of operating and being that may have driven success in the past.

ABMs build on CLDs and allow dynamic simulations to be created. The power of ABMs is that they allow modeling of many different actors or stakeholders or processes with different views of the world and unique and different behaviors. When simulations are run it is possible to learn - given all the unique points of views exercised by unique entities - what may most benefit one's own organization, or how a change or strategy an organization is contemplating may actually play out.

Employing Micro-Technologies

While the insights surfaced by use of CLDs and ABMs point to the immediate possible, realizing these often requires objective coaching or some approach for teams to have their dynamics mirrored back to them. This can be achieved through the use of an EQ-based team development app. The app allows individual team members to anonymously record dynamics and feelings associated with an area of focus. The app will then aggregate these in different ways to show the team what is actually going on in that area of focus. The app also surfaces various mental models that may be driving the team in that area of focus.

The team has to collectively work through the range of patterns that surface and in the process learns to operate in a different way (re: The Power of EQ). Organizational metrics are automatically recalculated in real-time with even a single change or input into the app, and in this way the team(s) can clearly see how their dynamics may be changing.

Some Reference Forbes Articles

Over the years I have written some Forbes articles related to the work at Galaxiez. These introduce some baseline concepts to do with complexity:

1. Introduction to four key concepts instrumental to the creation of complexity: strange attractors, feedback loops, sensitivity to initial conditions and being far from equilibrium:??https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2021/11/22/how-hr-can-begin-to-reduce-an-organizations-complexity/?sh=5b4acaf81cc7
2. Introduction to three more factors that increase complexity -bifurcation, fractals and nonlinearity:??https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2021/12/13/how-hr-can-tame-the-complexity-dragon/?sh=667bb55446ef

For those interested in a simple overview of loops and the archetypes they create, these articles are helpful:

1. Introduction to embedded patterns/underlying structure formed by various loops that creates complexity - short-term solutions that fail, growth & deceleration:??https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2022/01/11/deciphering-the-underlying-structures-that-increase-complexity/?sh=30dcdda2455e
2. Concatenation of simple loops are important in affecting conditions for performance, whether of a person, team or company, and also create unnecessary complexity:??https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2022/02/02/the-role-of-complexity-in-obscuring-performance/?sh=2b5ea63b537d

For some ways to use complexity in positive ways, these articles are helpful:

1. Suggestions to reverse the subtle and unconscious negative patterns and archetypes already in place and to increase positive patterns that will truly allow an organization to thrive:??https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2022/03/09/general-approaches-to-increasing-positive-complexity-in-an-organization/?sh=14e1c9881e43
2. A look at variability of drivers of positive complexity—self-organization, interconnectedness, distributed control and feedback loops -? depending on the level of authenticity at the individual and team levels:??https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2022/04/14/the-importance-of-authenticity-in-driving-positive-complexity/?sh=1fa2a5f96f2f
3. Elaboration of a likely trajectory that results from increasing authenticity:?https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2022/06/14/the-power-of-sight/?sh=7af35aa8142e