The Management Theory Toolbox
Imagine boldly navigating the complex world of management with a broad range of management theories at your disposal. The Management Theory Toolbox promises you a mind-expanding experience. Prepare to think, rethink, and discover the theory that underlies management practices.
This isn't your typical management podcast. Yes, there are plenty of resources out there that will give you the ABCs of how to run a meeting, hire someone, or even how to fake a sick day without getting caught, but here we like to talk about the behind-the-scenes topics, those concepts and ideas which transcend specific management practices, the ideas which give birth to good management and business practices, rather than simply restate them. We aren’t going to give you specific tips and tricks for becoming an effective manager. Here at The Management Theory Toolbox, we’re interested in the why behind it all, the discoveries of behavioral science, psychology, business, and economics that will open our eyes to what’s happening behind the scenes.
If you're a manager, team leader, aspiring entrepreneur, business student or simply someone toying around with the idea of starting a business and you’re interested in a scientifically rooted discussion of management and business, one which systematically discusses the ideas behind the specific practices you’ve probably already heard a lot about, then this podcast is for you. One thing you’ll be able to count on in this podcast is that every statement is supported by research, and you’ll be able to download the show notes for each episode to find links and references to the source material for everything taught in each episode.
The Management Theory Toolbox
Episode 9: Merging Minds—The Dance of Individual and Organizational Learning (Part 1) with Dr. Ryan Smerek
Unlock the secrets of a thriving workplace where innovation flourishes and competitive edges are sharpened. Join us as we sit down with cognitive science aficionado Dr. Ryan Smerek to dissect the fascinating parallels between individual development and organizational evolution. We delve into the neural networks that define human learning and mirror the sophisticated adaptive systems within top-tier companies. Drawing from Dr. Smerek's expertise, we decode the cognitive science metaphors shaping our understanding of learning, from the conceptual mind as a computer to the intricate dance of intuitive and reflective thinking. This episode is your ticket to unraveling the complexities that drive both personal growth and large-scale organizational change.
Dr. Ryan Smerek [Guest] is an Associate Professor & Associate Director of Academic Affairs at Master of Science in Learning & Organizational Change at Northwestern University where he teaches classes on learning and development, organizational learning, design thinking, cognitive design, and people analytics. He is the author of “Speaking Up at Work: Leading Change as an Independent Thinker,” and “Organizational Learning and Performance: The Science and Practice of Building a Learning Culture." Both books integrate compelling stories with scientific research about how to make a positive difference in organizations.
Travis C. Mallett [Host], received the Masters of Liberal Arts (ALM) in Management from Harvard University Extension School, where he has also earned Professional Graduate Certificates in both Organizational Behavior and Strategic Management. Travis previously received undergraduate degrees in Electrical Engineering, General Mathematics, and Music from Washington State University. He also served as an Engineering Manager at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, where he led a team responsible for developing and maintaining SEL's highest-selling product line. An innovative force in engineering, Travis holds numerous patents and has authored papers and books across diverse subjects. His passion for continuous learning and organizational excellence propels him to explore and illuminate the intricacies of management theories. Through his podcast, "The Management Theory Toolbox", he offers valuable insights on effective leadership, business innovation, and strategic methodologies.
That balancing of having some exploratory learning experiences, where you're breaking out of that doing things cheaper, faster, more lively, but you're looking at what might be possible or how can we develop and learn and grow as individuals.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Management Theory Toolbox, your top destination for uncovering the why behind the management and business concepts. If you're a business owner, management consultant, executive, business student or someone simply toying around with the idea of starting a business, then you want to know the behind-the-scenes management theory, rooted in the latest and most robust management research, then you're in the right place. I'm your host, travis Mallett, and today we're venturing into our very first organizational behavior topic, learning. Let's review our journey so far. We began in episode one by exploring the concept of emergence in nature, which led us to think of organizations as dynamic living systems. We found in episode two that this living system idea is described by a technical term complex adaptive systems. And what's a complex adaptive system that we're all familiar with? That's right, the human brain. In fact, organizations and businesses mirror many of the features of the neural networks we find in our brains, and we took that analogy a bit too literally in episode seven to uncover the ideas behind high involvement management, a powerful set of management practices that have captured the attention of researchers over the past couple decades. So what's next? Let's continue to use this analogy of organizations as neural networks to fuel our journey.
Speaker 2:What's one of the most important and striking features of the human brain. What's that? You say Consciousness. Well, okay, that's probably the correct answer, but we're not ready to open that can of philosophical worms just yet. So what's the next most important feature of the human brain? That's right, the ability to learn. That's the adaptive part of complex adaptive systems. Aside from consciousness, the ability to learn, or the ability for the brain to reorganize itself and its connections, to adapt, retain information and create new mental models, is one of the main features we think of. That makes us different from machines. Even today, with all the advances in machine learning, the human brain is still far superior at adapting to a variety of scenarios than even the most sophisticated machine learning algorithm. So here's where it gets interesting. In the human brain we have all these neurons and synapses happening connections, getting stronger, weaker, adapting as we learn and change our behavior. Meanwhile, organizations are also like neural networks. When an organization encounters a business problem, teams often get reorganized, new processes are developed and people interact with different members of the organization. The result Organizations themselves can learn and adapt, creating new connections and pathways for information flow in much the same way as our brains.
Speaker 2:But as has become our refrain on this show, and as we discussed at length in episode eight, learning is more complicated than you think. The people making up an organization are also learning and adapting. Sometimes they're learning from the organization. Other times the organization is learning from individuals who influence changes within the organization. Both are always happening simultaneously. Sometimes it's hard to know where individual learning begins and organizational learning ends.
Speaker 2:It's the emerging of minds, the dance of individual and organizational learning, which is the title of this episode. Why is this important? Learning, both individual and organizational learning is the bedrock of innovation, research and development and improving operational efficiency. But perhaps even more importantly, learning is a key part of developing and maintaining competitive advantage. But that's why we're going to be spending several episodes unpacking this concept. To help us better understand this issue. We're joined by Dr Ryan Smerick, who has authored several books on the topics of individual and organizational learning. Hi, ryan, and welcome to the show Next when you travel. So before we get started, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and work.
Speaker 1:Sure, I am Ryan Smerick. I'm an associate professor and associate director at Northwest University in the master's and learning organizational change program and I teach a lot of different topics learning and development, individual learning and development, organizational learning. I teach a class on cognitive design that human biases and waves overcome, that. I teach people analytics. And I've published two books one organizational learning performance that dives into individual learning and how to build learning culture, and then a recent book about speaking up at work, leading change as an independent thinker that looks at individual stories of speaking up at work and being a lone voice and what that experience is like and what individuals learned in that process and what management psychology literature teaches us about being a dissenter and speaking up.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Thank you for joining us. So in today's episode we're exploring the relationship between individual and organizational learning, and in your book organizational learning and performance you talk about these three metaphors of learning as an individual, the mind is a computer, the mind is an author, and then also intuitive and reflective minds. Can you walk us through what those three metaphors are and give us an explanation?
Speaker 1:Sure In some context for the chapter. Really, the field of organizational learning had basically one dominant way of looking at it was Chris Argers' work on single loop and double loop learning. And single loop is making small iterations. Now you think about a topic. Double loop is deeper underlying assumptions and it was a very popular way to look at it. But there's a lot of learning scientists and if you were to talk to a cognitive scientist about single and double loop learning they wouldn't know what you're talking about. And my intent with the chapter was to synthesize some of the cognitive science of learning and additional fields to ground the science of learning and organization. So I use those three metaphors to synthesize three different bodies of work.
Speaker 1:The mind as a computer is typically what we think of. What do you think about encoding, storing, retrieving information and that kind of gradual accumulation of facts? And especially, this is really salient when you're new to an organization. I did a research project of new college presidents that were outsiders to the organization and one president said it took me about six months before anything made sense because the people would be talking about different names and places and people and they'd have no idea what they were talking about. And that's the mind as a computer synthesizes all that research, as you think about your explicit factual information about the world or an organization. The second one the mind as a developing author builds on a lot of different fields, but one of them is constructive developmental theory. How do we construct meaning so tibley out of some sort of disoriental dilemma? Something happens that's confusing, surprising, and we have to make sense out of it and interpret it. And so it synthesizes.
Speaker 1:The research in that area looks at informational versus transformational learning. When we have these transformational experiences, that just our way of thinking and in larger qualitative ways. One example of this is if you get a bad performance review. That's really confusing. It's out of the blue. There's lots of different ways you can interpret that. You can interpret it in a real defensive way and maybe that would be your automatic move to blame your boss or the organization. And there's other ways you can interpret it, how you can take the feedback and learn from it. Maybe it's transformational, maybe not. It could just be an impactful learning experience. But that whole metaphor is about when you have those disorienting dilemmas, how do you make sense out of them? What does research say about that process?
Speaker 1:The last one is the intuitive and reflective mind, and this was trying to make sense and articulate that we do pick up all these different, partly unconsciously, but this implicit learning, when we're absorbed in activity and an organization, we just want to pick up the norms and ways of being and ways of seeing. And so I talk about two different and the intuitive and reflective minds top down learning and bottom up learning. And top down learning is mostly things that start real explicitly and then they become implicit. There are simple things like learning how it drives that. You have to really be consciously thinking about everything and then over time it's top down learning becomes an intuitive reaction and bottom up learning is we're absorbing all these implicit messages all the time and bottom up learning is trying to reflect on that implicit knowledge and why I think the way I say.
Speaker 1:One example might be an intuitive and reflective mind. And a work example being a skilled presenter. If you're trying to work on your presentation skills, you maybe you have some very explicit rules like, okay, I need to make eye contact with the audience very explicitly, and so you're thinking about a very top down learning way. You have all these explicit rules in your mind. The more practice you get that becomes intuitive. You know how to respond quickly. At the same time, maybe you have some bottom up learning of your intuitive expertise, like why didn't this presentation go as well as I thought it did, or I got some feedback here that was surprising. That would be the kind of bottom up learning of your intuitive expertise. So that area also synthesizes all the literature that talks about and how we become very fast, automatic. You can think about games like chess and everything where a pattern recognition is super fast but automatic, and so that final metaphor synthesizes that field study.
Speaker 2:Going back to the mind as an author, I'm wondering if there's some overlap with the computer analogy. I think it was Socrates who emphasized discovery of innate knowledge. You can learn the Pythagorean theorem just by thinking about it, no empiricism needed. That's what I'm getting as a sense from the mind as an author. We have this experience, but then it triggers lots of self-reflection and recategorizing previous information that we already have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd say there would be overlap here. The one way I distinguish all of that is the mind as a computer. Emotions are not really central in that process, whereas the mind as a developing author at least there's making sense of our emotions, is more central in that area. But also trying to build on the cognitive science as a whole that was studying and learning, at least in the 1970s, 80s or so, was a very kind of cool non-emotional process and that's the field that's building on. And then the mind as a developing author at least, usually qualitative scholars that are looking at these big life events where you change how you view the world based on some sort of big emotional experience that you have. So I agree there can be a lot of overlap in the metaphors.
Speaker 2:Also on the intuitive mind. Can you talk just a little bit about the conscious versus unconscious aspect of that? Sometimes we're consciously observing people. I want to do what Sean is doing. I'm going to do it the way he's doing it, but there's also a lot of times where we just do that subconsciously and don't even realize it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have an image in the book on the intuitive and reflective mind to help, because we are absorbing different things, especially language per se. We don't set out explicitly to learn it, but we pick up all these grammatical reads. That's just how it's said. If you're trying to explain it to a foreign international student, it's very hard. That's just the way it is. We pick up all these readings in a more intuitive way, on the implicit level. We can reflect on those and make them.
Speaker 1:I hesitate to use unconscious and conscious. I usually use the system one, system two, daniel Kahneman language, because unconscious can connote that it's this ineffable Freudian notion that I can't really gain access to, which wouldn't really be true per se. Intuitive would be this sort of automatic reaction. It builds on the common work and key standards of its work on system one and system two, with the prototypical example being the expertise literature that really looks at chess, for example. You have these thousands of hours of practice and it just becomes this automatic reaction, automatic pattern recognition, but at the same time a lot of it you can turn into explicit language. That makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:All right, now that we have a better understanding of individual learning, how does that relate to organizational learning and maybe you can talk about how we build a learning culture in an organization?
Speaker 1:Sure, I think it fumes the foundation of creating a learning culture and the organizational learning setting. In this book I talk about five different organizations that I would categorize that have a learning culture and I think there's lots of different social norms that support that. One of them that's predominant in organizational learning literature is that balance of exploration and exploitation, or you can say learning and execution. But, as I talked about in the book, I used WD-40 of the story to talk about building a learning culture and Gary Ridge, the CEO there, and really try to build a learning culture, a learning organization, and they were what you call a tight-foon zone, meaning they just did the same thing over cheaper, faster, more reliably and were caught in these real execution-focused mindset which is very important at certain points of lifecycle in any organization. But it's that balancing of having some exploratory learning experiences where you're breaking out of that doing things cheaper, faster, more reliably, but you're looking at what might be possible or how can we develop and learning grow as individuals. I try to use that to make the point that it's not just all about exploration, all learning. It's not like organizations should become like graduate school seminars, but there's a balance and tension instead of 100% of our time in these sort of executions, making things cheaper, faster, more lively. We do some exploration that helps us adapt in the future.
Speaker 1:That was the case for WD-40 because they had the one product. It was in over 90% of households and they were having some existential threats from competitors that were starting to make similar products and they needed to move to this more exploration, learning culture to help them envision a new future that would help them survive and grow. That story is also told among even this exploration exploitation trade-off. People talk about different animals and how they might exploit one food source and not explore other areas, and it threatens their ability to adapt long-term. That's one norm. There's lots of others I talk about in the book, about fostering some kind of transparency and psychological safety on your team to help employees share insights. Psychological safety is a key one that helps de-risk your experience to engage in these kind of more exploratory behaviors, exploratory actions.
Speaker 2:As those individuals learn, it's clear that the organization of which they comprise also learns. But are there instances where an individual is not strictly speaking learning but still can or should incite some sort of change in learning in the organization?
Speaker 1:One of the distinctions that I often draw on and mention in classes here is the learning in versus learning by an organization. Learning in an organization is what you typically think of. I learned something new, some kind of new skill. When I leave the organization it goes with me, it resides within my mind. Learning by an organization would be say I implement some kind of new routine, process, new structure and what we use. That's still the way things are done in the organization. That would be the learning by an organization that you have a new routine, a new structure, a new process. That stays with the organization.
Speaker 2:So you also talk about cultivating a capacity for independent thinking, and I'm curious when should we conform to the structures and processes and beliefs of the organization, and what are some clues for us to know how to pick our battles?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question. So this is the Speaking Up at Work book, but as I think about cultivating capacity for independent thinking, I explore the critical thinking, building expertise, following your curiosity, taking a scientific mindset, value and reason and truth. It could be speaking up about maintaining integrity to professional norms as well. So those are almost always a good, but you don't always want to be a naysayer and you could certainly be wrong as well. I interviewed 50 people about their experience speaking up about different issues. Sometimes it might be an automatic reaction. I just think this is a bad move. I didn't really necessarily consciously deliberate that I was going to pick this battle, but it just came up out of nowhere and I needed to say something. Other times I may have a chance to think about whether this is worse speaking up about, and there'll be lots of different things. One of them is perceived sense of advocacy or fertility. It's not going to matter if I say anything. Everybody's already decided but there can be a certain value expressive worse of at least saying your piece, at least sharing your perspective on whether you think a strategy is a good idea or not. If you're in the deliberation phase, maybe it's 10 people all going for yes votes were doing this In that deliberation phase, it's worth saying I hesitated. For these reasons I think this might be a bad move In that moment. It would be a good thing to share that, just to induce a conversation about things. But it's obviously when you go into a mutation phase. We decided we're doing it. At that point it doesn't make sense to keep making a nace there. But it could be.
Speaker 1:If you're, say, a whistleblower I had some examples of whistleblowers in the book and that is not really for the good of the organization per se. But if the hearing is just a larger set of hyper norms whether it's human rights or non-projural ethical activity that you're hearing to this higher level. One example was a whistleblower in South Africa. He was asked to illegally transfer funds overseas that she knew was unethical and against the law. As she spoke up about that, she was fired for that.
Speaker 1:It had a difficult time rebuilding her life, but in that case she wasn't hearing it. Some of it was a repersonal conscience and what she would tell her own kids. Yes, this blew up into a scandal and she was doing these unethical activities. Some of it was also for the benefit of the South African economy that she knew that offshoring $50 million way beyond the legal limit it would hurt the larger economy. So there's also that broader concern of whistleblowers. It's not necessarily for the benefit of the organization per se, but the hearing does some sort of larger ethical set of norms. I've been thinking about it.
Speaker 2:You mentioned picking your battles in connection with your values. That makes a lot of sense to me. One of my longtime managers he was very clear that one of his primary values was the people on his team. It was his number one priority, the thing that he valued the most. So I did have a few conversations with him about how do you pick your battles on some of these things, which is I started going into management and he said what I've always done is, if it's going to negatively affect my people, that is when I speak up, that is when I fight tooth and nail for my people, and so what you just said made a lot of sense to me in just connecting it. Oh, that's why you did that. It makes a lot of sense connecting with his values, yeah, and that relates to one of the stories I tell him.
Speaker 1:That Chapter, on cultivating a capacity for independent thinking, was a manager who he was. An organization that had a force ranking system. All of his employees were all good to great performers, but a few people, because of the force ranking, were going to be forced into this lower category. He thought that was really unfair. He spoke up at a big meeting. He was not even on the table, he was in a backseat, a junior in an organization, but he really wanted to speak up. But he thought this policy was unfair, not for now.
Speaker 1:One of his employees would have a quote black mark on their record and he was paternalistically scolding. Spoken down to that. All organizations do this, don't you know that? But the organization was a social service organization that would help people in need and he really thought that's his word about. I should be helping one of my employees that are going to be unfairly treated like this. So it was a battle he chose to pick, but he eventually was successful in not having that person rank lowly. But they didn't clearly articulate that we're going to deviate from this policy, but he was able to be successful. You need to have a lot of in the sort of descent literature and some of the key studies. Having this healthy sense of self worth that you can do that and take the risk of looking stupid and being spoken down to is a challenge.
Speaker 2:So now on cultivating a capacity for independent learning. I think some listeners might immediately think when they hear that phrase, think of that coworker who is just my way, or the highway I've got to figure it out. I'm going my own direction, nobody's going to tell me what to do. I'm sure you have a lot more nuance than that and maybe this is leading. The question too much hinges on that capacity, or you're developing your capacity and you're not always exercising it. But maybe tell us a little bit, flesh that out. What is this capacity for independent thinking?
Speaker 1:Sure, I talk about the ash line judgment studies, where they have one line at six inches long and then you've got another card and it says A, b and C. One of those lines is six inches, the other is like 12 inches, the other is like two inches. It's really obvious which line it's and you're in the experiment and the night people before you all say that the two inch line is the same length as the six inch line and you're befuddled and I just don't see it that way. The six inch line is the same as the six inch line. One of the examples I use in the first chapter is a board kind of rushing to approve a $30 million capital campaign. One person thinks wait a minute, this is a bad idea. We don't have anywhere near the funds for this. It could change the whole mission of our school race, tuition et cetera. And she speaks up about that to delay things and get more assurances about how we're going to be able to do this.
Speaker 1:Being one out of 30 or so to speak up, you really put yourself at the center of the spotlight there. You can be despised. It depends how you do it. If you do it in a very arrogant kind of scolding way, you'll be more despised. But you can certainly do it in a way that's expressing your values, in a way that induces a conversation about some of the risks that you see. But I think you could be wrong if you're one out of 30, or you could be right In her case. There were other people that shared her concern but did not want to speak up because they were afraid of the headmaster there. So you're likely to help break that conformity or group thinking away.
Speaker 1:I remind you of Chris Ardress's work. He has a well-known HBR article Teaching Scouts People how to Learn, where he makes similar points at the individual level. But there's that distortion of reality in a lot of ways Not in a various way, but to not really see reality clearly. And that always came home to me, chris Ardress. I read a story about his professional life. He was so dominant in this field of organizational learning and he had a professional role before he moved into more academic roles and when he left they gave him this beautiful party and said how wonderful he was and how much they're going to miss him. And he said he went back a few years later to the organization and they said oh, we're so happy you left, we all couldn't stand. We couldn't stand you as a manager or management style. He's like why didn't you ever tell me any of this and you could see that sort of formed a lot of his work.
Speaker 1:That's had a big impact on the field of organizational learning. But it can be hard to get good information, good feedback, and which makes it really hard to learn. That's mostly at the individual level and organizational level. That would be true as well. But there's also a at the organizational level getting that accurate reality feedback about how a product is doing or what are the trends. There's a real survival value of knowing, getting an accurate picture of things. So back in the picture of the market.
Speaker 2:All right, let's go ahead and wrap this up. Thank you for joining us and before we sign off, can you tell our listeners how they can find you and your work? Sure.
Speaker 1:You can find me on LinkedIn, the Northwestern University faculty website, my website wwwryansmerrickcom. The two books, organizational learning and speaking up to work, are both on Amazon as well. All right, thank you, sure. Yeah, no, happy to have you talk.
Speaker 2:So, just to summarize, learning, both individual and organizational, is the cornerstone of growth and adaptability into today's dynamic business landscape. As individuals, we navigate various metaphors of learning from the mind as a computer and coding, and retrieving information to the mind as an author, crafting meaning from our experiences, balancing intuition and reflection. We absorb implicit knowledge while consciously developing expertise. Within organizations, fostering a learning culture is essential. This involves striking a balance between exploration and exploitation, encouraging transparency and psychological safety, and valuing independent thinking. However, picking our battles wisely, aligning with our values and knowing when to conform or challenge norms are crucial aspects of cultivating our capacity for independent thinking. Ultimately, whether at the individual or organizational level, learning fuels innovation, resilience and success. It's not just about accumulating knowledge, but about continuously evolving, adapting and pushing boundaries.
Speaker 2:This week, maybe take some time to examine these different levels and types of learning in your team and workplace. Are there some processes that are stuck in old ways of doing things that need to adapt or learn from the in-visit environment? Are you creating a two-way learning channel between the organization and your employees? Are they receiving training useful for their jobs and for integration into the larger organization? Have you developed enough psychological safety for employees to speak up at work and thus teach the organization a thing or two.
Speaker 2:As usual, we don't have the answers to these questions in this podcast. They are unique to you and your situation, and it's your responsibility to take this management theory and grapple with it in your individual context. So together, let's embrace the dance of learning, both within ourselves and our organizations, and watch as it propels us forward towards greater heights of achievement and fulfillment. So with that, thank you for tuning in to the Management Theory Toolbox, your top destination for the behind-the-scenes of management and business theory. In our next episode, we're going to continue our exploration of individual and organizational learning in part two. In the meantime, keep learning, keep growing and keep building your management theory toolbox.
