Building an Organizational Brain

by Eduardo da Silva

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Building an Organizational Brain Eduardo da Silva Avraham Poupko KDDD 2024

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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

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Why are we talking about “Organizational Brain” It all started when:

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Why we need better Organizational Brains …or improved Organizational Learning?

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5 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change

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6 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change + Cloud + AI + …

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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”... ☹

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8 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change

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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

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10 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change

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11 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change

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12 Inspired by: Reflections: Sociotechnical Systems Design and Organization Change

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Organizational Learning

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The three gifts 🎯 Motivation 🤝 Cooperation ⭐ Imagination

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The greatest inventions of all time

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Breaking it down: Organizational Learning > Organization + Learning

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What is learning? What is understanding?

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Learning is about closing the gap

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Understanding is the ability to apply

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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

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From Information to Understanding Information Learning Understanding Knowledge Contemplation Practice Discussion Experimentation

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Addressing complexity with the organization Cooperation Shared Understanding Shared Knowledge Enables Enables

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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

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Challenges & Good Practices 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment

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Challenges

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Challenges / Culture 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment

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Culture

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Culture is the main justification for using the word “we”

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We can influence culture, but we can’t control or shape it

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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)

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👥 Can you tell us a story or incident regarding how culture was a challenge to organizational learning?

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Challenges / Structure 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment

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Org structure affects dynamics in the org Any organizational activity is affected by the organizational structure (formal and informal). Organizational learning is no different.

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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

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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)

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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.

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Challenges / Return on Investment (ROI) 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment

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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.)

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The need for Immediate Returns is a challenge for Learning Long term investments are always challenging

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Good Practices

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Good Practices / Culture 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment

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● 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

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● Retrospectives that focus on learning ○ “What did you learn this week?” ○ “Where did that come from?” Culture of Learning together

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● 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

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Good Practices / Structures 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Good Practices / Return on Investment (ROI) 3 angles Structure Culture Return on Investment

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Nurture a more sustainable “ROI mindset” that embraces learning as a core principle

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💰Funding and Management models that embrace Learning Credits: Bjarte Bogsnes https://bogsnesadvisory.com

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🤝 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

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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

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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

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Building an Organizational Brain Eduardo da Silva esilva.net linkedin.com/in/emgsilva Avraham Poupko @apoupko linkedin.com/in/avrahampoupko