Team Manager

This is my blog on topics that I cover in my workshops on managerial excellence, leadership, group dynamics, team building, OD interventions etc. Check out details on www.mind-skills.com

Sunday, March 01, 2009

DOUBLE LOOP LEARNING

Double loop learning is as powerful a concept as it is a neglected one.
When we analyse an event in terms of what went wrong and consider the whole thing in terms of behaviour of the people involved, the learning that accrues from it is single loop learning. Usually, it results in fixing the blame on the final actor. For double loop learning, however, we need to focus not on behaviours of persons but the systems as such, which make people behave the way they do. The real question is not'what went wrong' but 'why did it go wrong'. That forces you to unravel the root cause of all that is going wrong.
Indian response to the Mumbai terror ( 26/11 ) is a classic case of single loop learning. On the surface, what went wrong? The hotel security was lax, the NSG move was delayed due to non availability of own aircraft, the police was ineffective and the lack of coordination between the navy and coast guard allowed the boat of the terrorists to go through them. So immediate action has been taken to make the hotel security strong, give the NSG its own aircraft, allot a few crores for police upgradation and declare the navy as incharge of maritime security.
But will this help till there is second loop learning?
Why do we not question why the existing security personnel do not take their responsibility seriously, why the powers that be never realized that a fast response national team without an aircraft if of no use, why the policemen do not even use their existing weaponry effectively and why there is no coordination between the navy and the coast guard. Even the existing hotel security could have given at least a reasonable warning, the NSG could still have been effective within minutes of arrival, the policemen could still have shot down the terrorists who were openly roaming around the railway platform for as much as an hour and even one conscientious patrol craft ( navy or coast guard ) could have stopped the terrorist boat to check their credentials.
Why did this not happen? If we do not fix this, we shall be wasting the money we spend on new acquisitions. We shall be putting a band aid on a festering wound. The same problems will recur with the new system, maybe in a new form though.
Why did the actors of this episode behave in such an irresponsible manner? Simply because the negligence and acts of omission by their predecessors too were never questioned. There is a national and cultural precedent of unaccountability. From the 'Guilty men of 62', through the Sikh genocide and the Gujarat massacre up to the attack on Indian parliament, we have never held anyone responsible. We are nice guys who do not ask difficult questions to our people. In the last 60 or so years, the only one person penalized for any omission of duties at all, was the army Brigadier in command of the Kargil brigade. Other than that one person, ours seems to be a nation of angels though having one catastrophe after another
So, you see, double loop learning can be as painful as it is important. Making an organisation a learning organisation is not a matter of tools & techniques but one of genuine intent to do so.
Actually, we did not do even single loop learning because we did not hold even the final actors accountable. What we did could be termed 'no loop learning' or simply, 'no learning'.

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Thursday, October 12, 2006

GROUP DYNAMICS/TEAM WORK/LEADERSHIP

  1. Most people do not really analyse how their team/group is different from some others that they use for comparison. Structures, hierarchies, interdependence etc make teams and groups unique. A basketball team requires great interdependence between members. There is an element of sacrifice involved, purely for the sake of others. On the other hand, members of a boxing team have no interdependence. Boxers of the same team, but representing different categories ( Flyweight, Bantam weight, Heavy weight etc ) have no interaction among themselves. There are absolutely no requirements of trust or sacrifice. Since the basketball and boxing teams operate in totally different environments, you can not copy the coaching style of one into another.

  1. Most team leaders maintain that since high spirit and morale are co-terminus with job success, developing these will ensure success on the job. While it may be true to a degree, mostly these conditions are the result of success rather than the causes of it. Explaining this concept here is difficult, but I stand by it. In my army command, I have seen too many units making the mistake of offering sops etc just to ‘increase morale’, in the hope of finally improving job performance. Smart units, however, take measures to ensure ‘initial success on the job’ to increase morale and they do it by ensuring individual accountability and systematically correcting the process. The movie ‘12 0’ Clock High’, which I screen in my programs, makes this point excellently.

INTERVIEWING SKILLS


  1. Preparation - Most interviewers jump too quickly to actual interviewing. They spend very little time in studying the CV, matching it with the job and looking for the focus areas for that specific candidate. On probing, their reasons for this comes out as one or more of the following –
    1. They just do not have the time.
    2. They see no need to ‘waste’ time on getting to know what to look for in the candidate. Isn’t the job profile, as handed over by the HR, good enough?
    3. No guidance is available to them to match a CV with a Job profile.

  1. Validity & Reliability - Most interviewers do not understand these essential requirements of a good interview. On these, they make the following errors –
    1. Validity – Many interviewers ask questions purely for the sake of asking, without considering whether or not it is a valid question. A valid question is one which actually checks the aspect whatever it is supposed to be check. Here, an important derivative of validity comes to mind. Not only should the question be checking what it is supposed to check, the aspect being checked should actually be contributing to job success. It is possible to end up asking questions which do check what they purport to check, but the aspects being checked have nothing or very little relation to job success. What a waste!
    2. Reliability – An interviewing process would be termed reliable if the evaluation ratings by two interviewers to the same response are not too different one from the other. Alternately, the same response given by two candidates separately to an interviewer must not get significantly different ratings. Reliability increases when the possible responses to a question are considered beforehand and graded on a scale. On first thoughts, such a system appears too mechanistic to many. When it happens in my sessions, I ask them a pointed question - How would they react to an interviewing process in which the result depended not so much on their own responses but on who ( Mr X or Mr Y ) happened to be the interviewer? Most people see the point immediately.

  1. Approaches to framing questions - Most interviewers do not understand the various approaches to framing questions. They just take up the CV and start a conversation. Actually, there are distinctly 3 approaches to framing questions, each having its own strengths & weaknesses for different interviewing scenarios-
    1. The TELL ME approach – Behavioural approach and the Situational approach.
    2. The biography/ behavioural signs approach
    3. The SHOW ME ( Job audition, job simulation ) approach.