Building an Organizational Brain

Humans deal with complexity by interacting and learning with their environment. When working in groups, the same sort of principles apply. However, to learn effectively, the group must first learn how to learn as a group. Group learning is much more than practicing or training. It is a journey of creating, refining, and ultimately being able to apply a shared world model to solve new problems.

In this talk, we explore how organizational learning happens and dive into different challenges tech-driven organizations face when trying to become a learning organization.

We explore the enablers of this learning and provide several useful tips and heuristics for achieving organizational learning.

ℹ️ Kandddinsky 2024

Transcript

1. Building an Organizational Brain Eduardo da Silva Avraham Poupko KDDD 2024
2. Always learning about learning and teaching about teaching Continuously learning & helping orgs to learn, design and decide more effectively Who are we? Eduardo da Silva Avraham Poupko
3. Why are we talking about “Organizational Brain” It all started when:
4. Why we need better Organizational Brains …or improved Organizational Learning?
5. 5 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change
6. 6 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change + Cloud + AI + …
7. Image & Credits: https://thecynefin.co/about-us/about-cynefin-framework Most modern orgs have a lot of activities here… “Best practices” and expert knowledge is not enough! We need to “probe > sense > respond” ⚠many organizations are using practices from these domains to work on their “Complex Domains”... ☹
8. 8 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change
9. 9 stretching our teams/org & creating complex processes ⬇ (⚠Conway’s Law) increasingly messier social and technical systems ➡ more difficult to learn and respond to our environment Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change
10. 10 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change
11. 11 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change
12. 12 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change
13. Organizational Learning
15. The three gifts 🎯 Motivation 🤝 Cooperation ⭐ Imagination
16. The greatest inventions of all time
17. Breaking it down: Organizational Learning > Organization + Learning
18. What is learning? What is understanding?
19. Learning is about closing the gap
20. Understanding is the ability to apply
21. Understanding is the ability to apply • Recognize commonalities • Recognize inconsistencies • Ask/Answer questions • Re-word - explain to someone that does not share the same assumptions/knowledge • Find new applications and innovations
22. From Information to Understanding Information Learning Understanding Knowledge Contemplation Practice Discussion Experimentation
23. Addressing complexity with the organization Cooperation Shared Understanding Shared Knowledge Enables Enables
24. The Organizational Brain • Read • Listen • Practice • Teach • Study • Experience • Discuss • Argue • Practice as a team • Play • Collaborate • Group Experience • Rehearse • Practice • Write • Databases • Culture • Code/Comments • Stories • Rules & Rituals Individual Organization Retain Learn/Understand 🧠 Org Brain
25. Challenges & Good Practices 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment
26. Challenges
27. Challenges / Culture 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment
28. Culture
29. Culture is the main justification for using the word “we”
30. We can influence culture, but we can’t control or shape it
31. Culture Challenges to Organizational Learning • Our leaders do not behave as though they value learning ◦ (It is hard for a culture to evolve against leadership examples) • Our incentives or motivators are misaligned ◦ (Lack of a common “story”) • We do not see or value ourselves as a “Learning Collective” ◦ (A culture of individuality) • We do not believe in the long term value of learning ◦ (A culture of ignorance) • We are more focused on avoiding blame than we are on doing the right thing ◦ (A culture of fear) • We do not feel that our knowledge can make a difference ◦ (A culture of indifference)
32. 👥 Can you tell us a story or incident regarding how culture was a challenge to organizational learning?
33. Challenges / Structure 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment
34. Org structure affects dynamics in the org Any organizational activity is affected by the organizational structure (formal and informal). Organizational learning is no different.
35. Today many org structures are still management-oriented Divide org in departments working on their own, managed and optimized locally & often competing with each other
36. Silos create friction to learning & effective value! …people end up having to go against the “functional silos” in order to learn and build what the customers truly need (value)
37. We still incentivize for local control & learning Incentives to “staying in one’s silo” (“we vs them”) This leads to localized learning and optimization, which will be sub-optimal …it is not enough to have the best “DevOps teams” in “Tech”, if to learn and create the best value we need to work together with Product, Marketing, etc.
38. Challenges / Return on Investment (ROI) 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment
39. Return on Investment (ROI) 1. Learning is an investment 2. Investment needs to be justified… ⚠Managers want ROI that is: • Quantifiable • Short-term • Local to their business unit ⚠ Learning is an investment that may take time to generate: • Financial return (Money) • Concrete value (improvement, business value, etc.)
40. The need for Immediate Returns is a challenge for Learning Long term investments are always challenging
41. Good Practices
42. Good Practices / Culture 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment
43. • General Cultural Awareness ◦ People that “belong” - are interested in knowing more ◦ Encourage Group Identity (“We”) ◦ Stories about learning • Everyone should be able to learn (not just the senior or expert people) ◦ Lead by example - managers and leaders incentivize learning ◦ Admit to not knowing ◦ Trust other people’s knowledge ◦ Share lessons with other team members (e.g., retrospectives, learn from incidents, etc.) • Celebrate learning ◦ It is cool to know stuff ◦ Promote internal conferences and other means to promote learning together ◦ Express curiousness Culture of Learning
44. • Retrospectives that focus on learning ◦ “What did you learn this week?” ◦ “Where did that come from?” Culture of Learning together
45. • Make Learning a “first-class citizen” in the organization • Managers are incentivized to Learn and support Learning in their teams and across the organization ◦ DO NOT penalize people from learning and helping others learn • Helping others is a good thing Incentivize Learning together
46. Good Practices / Structures 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment
47. Organize for Learning not Management 🟢 understand what are the Structures you need to support effective learning that supports maximizing value exchange with customers 🔴 don’t organize for management and control or around functional silos
48. Evolve structures to support effective learning 💡Team Topologies offers a great set of principles and language to sense and evolve organizations, with a specific interaction (“Facilitation)* focused on helping others on missing skills or capabilities * this is only possible if the structure, culture and incentives exist for teams to help each other
49. Things change, and structures should evolve to support that time… …to better support learning and value creation, and with that respond to the needs in and around the org
50. esilva.net Tech Arch Org (& Way of Work) Monoliths Products Tech Arch Org & Ways of Work Waterfall Agile Product Teams DevOps Teams (Micro)services ~30 ~100 ~10 ~600 ~50 Bol.com - 20 years of purposeful evolution Approach to Arch. Centralized (by Architects) Teams + Architects (anything around teams) Teams (+ Enabling Product Architects) Major Events
51. esilva.net Tech Arch Org (& Way of Work) Monoliths Products Tech Arch Org & Ways of Work Waterfall Agile Product Teams DevOps Teams (Micro)services ~30 ~100 ~10 ~600 ~50 Bol.com - 20 years of purposeful evolution Approach to Arch. Centralized (by Architects) Teams + Architects (anything around teams) Teams (+ Enabling Product Architects) Major Events For this to happen we need incentives that allow for the purposeful evolution of the org structures…
52. Good Practices / Return on Investment (ROI) 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment
53. Nurture a more sustainable “ROI mindset” that embraces learning as a core principle
54. 💰Funding and Management models that embrace Learning Credits: Bjarte Bogsnes https://bogsnesadvisory.com
55. 🤝 Non-siloed learning and helping (allow people that know help who needs to know) 💡Learning as a fundamental and strategic investment that helps the org to be more effective
57. Summary • A primary way to address increased complexity and rate of change is by organizational learning • A learning organization will be more effective and efficient • Learning is about much more than information flow
58. Key Takeaways 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment Strive for a culture that appreciates and enables organizational learning Understand and assimilate how Organizational Learning increases value Strive for a structure that continuously supports organizational learning
59. Building an Organizational Brain Eduardo da Silva esilva.net linkedin.com/in/emgsilva Avraham Poupko @apoupko linkedin.com/in/avrahampoupko