Surviving in the 21st Century

By Nigel Paine

In 1992 Chris Argyris, the former Harvard Professor, wrote an extraordinary book called On Organizational Learning. It was a topic he had written about in one guise or other throughout his career as part of his belief that faster organizational renewal was required at a time of massive technological, economic, and social change. He put forward the idea that,

“Twenty-first-century corporations will find it hard to survive, let alone flourish, unless they get better work from their employees. This does not necessarily mean harder work or more work.  What it does necessarily mean is employees who’ve learned to take active responsibility for their own behavior, develop and share first-rate information about their jobs, and make good use of genuine empowerment to shape lasting solutions to fundamental problems.” (Argyris 1992: 229)

His belief was that better work was often collective work, not individual work, and the nature of the problems being confronted in organizations required diverse groups to work together who were motivated and committed and willing to take ‘active responsibility’. This was especially true when the focus was on, what were considered to be, ’wicked’ problems. Wicked problems are challenges that have no one, correct answer or approach, and tend to morph before your eyes as soon as you try to get your hands around them. These problems are not solved by consulting an ‘expert’, neither can a great CEO, however brilliant, dream up the answer.  The best way to tackle these challenges is to work on them together, and share ‘first-rate information,’ different perspectives. and options and then feel ‘genuinely empowered’ to make the best choice available at the time.  You also require the humility to adapt that decision in the light of emerging practice.

His vision was for flexible and agile organizations able to adapt at the pace that the external environment was changing, fueled by staff willing to readily share expertise and relinquish ownership of processes or workflows when the current best practice was being challenged. He believed that the “more effective organizations are at learning, the more likely they will be at being innovative or knowing the limits of their innovation.” (Argyris 1992). So, for Argyris organizational learning was not simply about error correction in the present but rebuilding and rethinking organizations for the future. Learning was about getting fast answers to immediate challenges; but it was also about stimulating better conversations in order to improve workflows and processes. It was, therefore, about building for the future; remaking, remodeling and rethinking the fundamentals. He saw learning as a boundary spanning activity that unlocked creativity and created engaged and excited team members.

If we fast forward into the present and consider the California-based company ServiceNow and its CEO Bill McDermott we can get a glimpse of this philosophy coming to life. In a Grit podcast in January 2023, he makes the simple assertion that “if you treat people with dignity and respect and show them the love, they will give it back to you tenfold.” And his software aims to be a unifying platform that connects the tissue of an organization by stitching together the various workflows and procedures into a single platform of platforms. This facilitates connection, collective action, and efficient communication.

The company’s CIO Chris Bedi echoes this philosophy is an earlier New York Times article in March 2019. In it he claims that next generation technology cannot succeed without putting employees at the center of the strategy. Because,

“Employees won’t just go home one night and step into new roles in the morning. And you can’t change a culture by writing code. Successful change requires investment in communication and training, because you need great people and a great culture to execute any digital business strategy.” (NYT 14th March 2019)

Essentially you have a silicon valley tech company, arguing that tech works best if you have a culture that embraces learning and empowerment for staff. Motivated and connected staff, willing to take ‘active responsibility’ are able to embrace change and deal with challenges in a way that demotivated and disempowered staff simply cannot.

ServiceNow is all about more efficient workflows leading to more productive work. That is exactly what Argyris was arguing for in his 1992 book. All organizations need to adjust to the more complex reality that Argyris and McDermott are alluding to.  Work requires efficient workflows and controls.  But that should offer scope, opportunity, and challenge to an empowered workforce.  It would appear that Argyris and McDermott are thinking holistically: what motivates a human being to willingly offer up discretionary effort? And how do you build a successful organization that is able to flourish in dramatically uncertain times?  It is never about technology on its own, as a magic bullet, but increasingly it is not about people working in isolation wresting with their KPIs, unable to ask for help, in a lonely struggle to meet ridiculous demands on their time with little sense of connection with their fellow workers or the purpose of the organization.

There is also, a bigger challenge: helping staff bring their whole selves to work where they can buy in to the purpose and wider social impact of the organization. It is employees working willingly with customers and suppliers and helping make a positive impact inside their respective communities.  Attempting to make meaning and success in that more complex environment will take all our energies and require cooperation at the most profound level. You cannot change a culture by writing code. You cannot change an organization by focusing on individual talent or build workflows that annoy and alienate. Equally you cannot be successful if your customers are not delighted with the experience of working with you, and you cannot delight customers if you fail to understand the impact that you are making on the wider community in which you exist.

Knowledge builds layer upon layer of insight that makes an organization self-conscious and helps it cope with the complexities of its existence. What an individual does to succeed must be increasingly seen as something that benefits the whole community.  A focus on continuous learning is a profound and holistic approach to organizational development; individual empowerment, and the building and sustaining of the wider community. Surely, in today’s context this all makes perfect sense.