I always associated SMART goals with positive things, such as sound corporate governance. Never in my life I would have thought that SMART would be threat to the people I work with. But things have changed and they continue to change.

When my team has to reach a certain goal, I chunk that goal into manageable parts and plans. Next, individuals commit to the plan. Eventually – if I want them to perform well against the plan – I assign them SMART goals.

SMART is one of those management acronyms that are taken for granted by everyone. It stands for:
S   – Specific, meaning: unambiguous, clear goals
M   – Measurable, meaning: ’if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’
A   – Attainable, meaning: a little stretch is OK
R   – Relevant, meaning: ’important to me’
T   – Traceable by setting a journey of interim goals

Table Soccer

That is what managers and consultants learn at business schools and it is what I have been proclaiming ever since graduating. No need to shoot holes in a concept that works, is there? Everyone understands it, shepherds love it and sheep flock eagerly on SMART meadows.

Hmmm… and that’s exactly where the problem is: rather than fueling or accelerating their performance, SMART goals are numbing very bit of initiative and creativity out of people. Rather than empowering people, with SMART goals I am putting a fence around them. I’m domesticating them with function descriptions and herding them within the fences of the status quo. As you can guess: that fence an illusion of security that makes people stop thinking.

A few weeks ago Jef Staes told me that it is better to start looking at SMART goals as the worst symptom of atrophy. Once you consistently need SMART goals for your organization to perform this means that your people have lost all of their self-propelling capacity. People have become sheep and the organization has lost all of its agility. You are playing table soccer with your people.

Houston

Why are SMART top-down controlled organizations with diligent employees in trouble? They’ve worked splendid in an environment where the amount of information was fixed. The manager receives the information, interprets and processes it and then hands out the instructions. In fact, this has been the secret of growth in our economy over the past decades.

But now a shift is happening: the amount of information is overwhelming and most people, teams and companies are paralyzed by the flood of information. Information has become the new element. We are overwhelmed by something we can’t get enough of. The result for SMART corporate decision-making is painstaking: as a central commander you need to process even more information faster. No matter how hard you try, you will always be too late in this new information-driven economy.

Go Dumb or stay Numb?

If you are a leader, the key to staying on top is to stop trying to stay on top. That’s right, the advice for decision makers is to get dumber by empowering their people. That way they stop being the single information processing bottleneck. By the way, isn’t it a coincidence that the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle?

Getting dumber will reduce the bottleneck in two ways:

1. Distributing the intelligence across their organization; turning the sheep into passionate knowledge hunters. And it’s still Ok to stay on top of decision-making. But continuing to be the single information-processing hub is paralyzing your organization.

2. Redefining intelligence. In reality intelligence is the social skill to work together in a network of experts. Joseph Chilton Pearce defines intelligence as the ability to interact. Knowledge is a social thing. Take the people away and you end up on ground zero.

The New SMART

In the old days looking forward was a good way to plan ahead. There was no ambiguous fog of information. Now the challenge is to look through the information clutter, visualizing a goal that is not yet visible. Some call it intuition, others call it gut-feeling. I call it the single most needed competence of today’s leaders: the skill to get out of their minds and into their senses.

For employees the transformation from a sheep to knowledge hunters will come as an electro-shock. After all, empowerment means taking responsibility above and beyond any fence that has been set up by them or their boss.

There are no fences. And soccer is no longer a table game.

Strange things happen on my way to work and they lead to awkward insights. For example: last week on the train to Brussels – my regular itinerary for the past two years – my computer bag got stolen. In case you would wonder: I suffer no trauma and no harm was done. Moreover: the police officer who took note of my claim told me that I was his 4th theft that day – and it was 8 am!

The stolen bag and the annoyances that it brought forth were as time consuming as I expected them to be, except for one observation: the way I recovered all of the data, information and knowledge that I lost. I am a management consultant, so my portable computer and my paper notebook are vital work instruments.

The way I got a hold on the stuff that I lost was fairly simple:

- trace back the ’sent’ and ‘received’ emails on the email server

- ask people to send me back one or other document that I sent them earlier on

- go to a network drive, document management system or any other web-based platform where I previously shared, published or distributed documents and files

I have to say that this way of recycling got me astonishingly far into reconstructing what I considered ‘my knowledge base’. And that’s when it hit me: my computer and my notebook may contain far more data and information than the parts that I recollected, but the important bits that make up my knowledge had been shared, distributed, copied or discussed with others.

Getting my computer bag stolen is a strange way to confirm that knowledge is a social fabric. Along the lines of the thinking of John Seely Brown, my hard earned evidence demonstrates that knowledge is a social thing. It exists in action, participation with the world, participation with problems and participation with other people, i.e., practices. All of my knowledge came into being through the practices of the people and the environment I’m working in.

To summarize I would like to use a quote that is generally attributed to Aristotle and modify it in order to make sense of my insight:

1. Aristotle once said:
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."
2. A management consultant now says:
"We know what we repeatedly share. Knowledge therefore, does not reside in individuals, but in communities."

Last week the manager of a plant involved in a major organizational change project claimed that the return-on-training of his classroom training courses was disappointingly low. Over the past weeks they have been switching over to SAP, by far the most popular platform in the segment of so-called ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software.

We have been preparing the users of his plant by means of extensive classroom trainings, both on process knowledge and systems skills. From his gut feeling he told me that his people demonstrated at best 10 to 15 percent return (i.e.: what they effectively remember and use in their jobs).

Training is the smallest part of Learning

I will not argue about the percentages. The point is that I obviously did not create the right expectations: he should be looking for the return-on-learning instead of the return-on-training! On this same blog I already announced the end of teaching and I also proclaimed that teaching is placebo. I even painted a picture about it in order to demonstrate what this means for SAP implementations specifically.

In retrospect the 10 to 15 percent reported by the plant manager is fairly high compared to what I always have been saying: 99% of what ‘Learning’ really is occurs outside of the classroom. The bottom-line is that training alone is not enough in order to make an organizational change happen. Increasing the quality of your training sessions will not leverage the return-on-training to the same extent. At the very best it is a starting point. From there on you will need to coach your way to the future state. The drawing below is taken from John Seely Brown (again!) and clearly depicts how learning really occurs

Now back to the return-on-training question. What could be the best way to increase that return? The answer is simple: this return can only increase if workplace learning has already occurred BEFORE the training session (in action, action through participation, participation with the world, participation with the problem and participation with other people, i.e., practices). Involvement, participation and ownership are key. 

The concept of Time-to-task is another way to look at it. Normally we use that term to describe that the training should occur as closely as possible to the task at hand. The only way return-on-training can increase is when time-to-task is negative. In plain English this means: people will get more out of a classroom training when they have been frustrated by real-life problems form the task at hand; they will posses an enormous learning pull and they will ask for and absorb every detail that is needed for the job at hand.

Here is a quote from David Maister to support that view:
"A good test for the timing of training would be as follows. If the training was entirely optional and elective, and only available in a remote village accessible only by a mule, but people still came to the training because they were saying to themselves, “I have got to learn this – it’s going to be critical for my future,” then, and ONLY then, you will know you have timed your training well. Anything less than that, and you are doing the training too soon."

Rethinking Knowledge Management

Participation, involvement and enculturation (i.e.: "belonging to") lies at the heart of learning. It also lies at the heart of knowing. Knowing has as much to do with picking up the genres of that particular sub-profession as it does with its conceptual framework. For example, how do you recognize whether a problem is an important problem, or a solution an elegant solution, or even what constitutes a solution in the first place?

Jerome Bruner made a brilliant observation some time ago when he said that we can teach people about a subject matter, for example, physics. That is, we can teach them the concepts, conceptual frameworks and facts of physics – the explicit knowledge of physics. But that does not make the student a physicist. To be a physicist he must also learn the practices of this profession. As he continues:
"We teach a subject not to produce little living libraries on that subject, but rather to get a student to think mathematically for himself, to consider matters as an historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge-getting."

So here we are. Now what? All the evidence tells us that learning is a social thing. It exists in action, participation with the world, participation with the problem and participation with other people, i.e., practices. A lot of the knowledge comes into being through the practices of the people and the environment you’re working in. The return-on-learning question reveals the challenge we face today for rethinking knowledge management:

1. shift our mindset from "pushing knowledge to people" (authority based and explicit) to "supporting people to participate in their productive inquiry" (situational based and on-the-fly)

2. Shift from tools to increase the individual knowledge stock to tools which support relationships and interaction. 

3. Shift rigid structures from managing an academy (where knowledge gathers dust) to facilitating an ecology of different communities-of-practice (where knowledge lives and evolves).

4. Do everything we possibly can in order to introduce Web 2.0 thinking in the boardroom. Think: collaboration and moments of truth instead of teaching!

Talking about organizational change management… there is work to do!

Unexpected – like innovation itself – another perspective that I’d like to add to this series: the newest insights on biodiversity. Some time ago, Jef Staes introduced the concept of a red monkey. According to Jef, the concept started to develop during his seminars when participants asked him where to start with very confrontational change projects.

At that moment, he just learned about the origin of the rich biodiversity in a rain forest. According to the latest insights in biodiversity, new species do not start in the middle of a forest but at the edge. At the edge! – where different species from different ecosystems ‘meet’. That’s when Jef created a metaphor of a brown monkey from the jungle who meets a red fish from the sea (an adjacent ecosystem). Through their conversation a new confrontational idea is born: a red monkey.

What would happen if that confrontational idea would be dropped in the middle of the jungle? It would be killed immediately. Jef notes that the same happens with confrontational ideas that are ‘dropped’ in the middle of an organization … they get killed as well. Innovation ‘never’ starts in the middle of an organization but on the edge, where ecosystems meet. In the below video you can see Jef explaining the concept.

In the long run, red monkeys are key if organizations are to survive.  A red monkey disturbs the balance in people, teams and organisations – it tilts the stability of an ecosystem, and therefore it will get killed if there is no ‘critical mass big enough to survive.

Innovation is the result of a red monkey that has managed to survive the initial conflict between these two opposing points of view. And that is why we need all that stuff about organizational change management: to get from the edge to the middle!  No need to mention that Jef is passionate about the subject; he even designed a bumper sticker:

For those of you who wonder how this red monkey metaphor relates to the previous articles in this small "conflict" series have a look at where I pasted the bumper sticker.

You will immediately note that it will take a serious amount of conflict before you can introduce the red monkey on the right hand side of that chasm. As I have written earlier: this is a step-by-step process and it requires a different view on resistance. Thanks to Jef it is now crystal clear that you should start at the edge and move to the middle – gradually as you implement all the stuff I’ve been blogging about over the past 2 years.

Bonus material for Dutch-speaking readers: Jef Staes talking about the next generation of young employees on a symposium about leadership in education organizations. You will note that Jef’s ideas have a lot in common with John Seely Brown when talking about the social life of information (aka: knowledge Management) and the gap / conflict / clash (whatever you want to name it) between generations.

Click here for part 1 of "Jongeren zijn anders"
Click here for part 2 of "Jongeren zijn anders"

This was just a thought that came to my mind while we were discussing the priority of a key user during the delivery phase of an ERP program: should it be classroom training attendance or acceptance testing? One would say: for the sake of the quality of the system it should be attendance to the testing session; and for the sake of learning the key user should attend the training session. I say: NO WAY – testing is the main event for both quality assurance AND learning!

As I mentioned earlier, teaching is placebo in order for learning to occur. A Classroom training is at best a moment of truth in which the participants flip over the decision switch that says: "as of now I will be capable".  Learning occurs AS OF that pivotal moment – not ‘during’ and not ‘before’.

On the other hand: in testing you want to find something out or get something done. As John Seely Brown notes: it is about doing stuff; and then getting stuck while you’re trying to do something generates the passion to find out more about it. In testing you don’t get to build up an inventory of knowledge and skills. Learning happens on the fly, but you have to be willing to be confused, you have to be willing to make errors.

And there is more news: the digital divide between generations that we once thought of as being isolated to a group of nutcase computer engineers, introvert and pale skinned; has now gotten mainstream. Young employees, average IQ’ed moms and pops and even early adopters of the grey-haired generation are now subscribing to this new world of learning.

The Web 2.0 has a side effect on learning  and it’s a big one: throw away those expensive manuals and get out of that classroom! John Seely Brown refers to it as Learning 2.0 – day by day classrooms are becoming obsolete and social spaces – most of them virtual spaces – are finally being recognized as learning environments. In the below drawing I have taken a slide of John Seely Brown and fitted in where I think ‘Classroom Training’ and ‘Acceptance Testing’ belong.

Each day it is getting clearer that learning is social and that knowledge is a social thing. It exists in action, participation with the world, participation with the problem and participation with other people, i.e., practices. A lot of the knowing comes into being through the practices of the people and the environment you’re working in. When I say "the end of teaching", I mean: the end of a paradigm where we believe in knowledge as an inventory of stock – eventually gathering dust.

People often ask me why I always refer to ‘Learning’ instead of ‘Training’ when we discuss the Organizational Change Management portfolio. That is because 99% of what ‘Learning’ really is occurs outside of the classroom. In a previous article on Miffy I have argued that training alone is not enough in order to make an organizational change happen. At the very best it is a starting point. From there on you will need to coach your way to the future state.

Teaching is Placebo

Any healthy person holding an MBA degree will wonder: ‘If 99% of the learning return occurs outside of the classroom, then why are we investing such a large amount of time, money and manpower into classroom training?‘ That is because classroom training is mainly an investment in attention and the effect on learning is accidental rather than linear, just like the Hawthorne effect.

I am convinced that in large scale organizational change programs the strategy and advertising around and about the classroom trainings is at least as important as the content taught. Most of the times a classroom training is the first tangible contact with the future state for the target audience. Anthropologically speaking, the classroom training serves as a ritual in which participants allow learning to start (and implicitly ‘not to learn’ before that event takes place). Mentally speaking, the participants flip their learning switch ’on’. In medical terms we would rather call this a placebo effect: a treatment with (almost) no therapeutic activity for the condition but which has a healing effect nevertheless.

We could have endless discussions on the cause-and-effect of classroom training on learning but the evidence is clear: classroom training is necessary to get people started but it is far from sufficient in order for people to be ‘ready’ because the major part of ‘knowing’ resides outside of the classroom. The drawing above depicts the view on ‘organizational knowing’ from John Seely Brown. You can easily see that classroom training at best accounts for the top left-hand corner.

Consequences for Organizational Change Management Practitioners

No matter how obvious this insight may seem there are serious consequences for the way you set up your activities as a change manager. Here are 5 TIB’s (*) in this regard:

1. Hire teachers with EQ, maturity and hands-on experience rather than IQ, technical seniority and expertise. Most of what the teachers will be confronted with is anxiety, anger, and cynism (i.e. hidden sadness). Technical expertise won’t get you very far in those circumstances. Listening skills, simplicity and a disciplined follow-up on the other hand will prove to be success factors. The primary job of a teacher is to make learning possible as soon as the participants leave the classroom.

2. Recruit teachers from your target audience, in other words: practice involvement. Both participants and teachers should be able to surf, link, lurk, watch and try to do some things of your organizational change program themselves. Previously I have argued that the deliverables of your project should be planned in such a way that people can participate and accelerate your project. Classroom training is a big deliverable on your path, so from this perspective home-grown teachers are always a bigger hit than smart consultants.  

3. Build communities of knowledge and facilitate knowledge sharing. Knowing that 99% of the learning occurs outside of the classroom, it is worth investing in those 99%. This comes down to increasing your investment in local transition teams and a user friendly website of your project. You should also pay attention to events and workshops that allow change agents and key users of your project to share their learning so far.

4. Evaluate learning on all possible levels. Now that you know that learning occurs largely outside of the classroom you should not restrict the measurement of our return on investment to that very space and time. Basically this comes down to measuring Kirkpatrick’s four levels as far as you possibly can.

5. Allow people to localize your materials. Although I am a big fan of maintaining rigid guidelines and standards for the creation of materials, learning objects and templates, there is one thing I believe most: the execution of your change travels at the speed of making sense. That is: the more people are able to make sense of your materials by adding information and adapting your stuff, cutting and pasting, etc; the faster they will absorb the content.

So don’t get me wrong when I say that teaching is a placebo or a ritual; because as much as it fakes knowledge transfer, to the same extent it makes learning possible.

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(*) TIB = Things I Believe.