What Have We Learned?

What Are Our Questions?

 

Participant Instructions
1. What are the key learnings for today?
2. What questions remain as a result of today's dialogue?
3. What are the themes that you have come up with?


Table 1

Structure. Hierarchies:
Example: Ricardo in Brazil at Semco. Most of us work in hierarchies. Charles and the Pizza Pie -- groups relating to each other. Circles is an important way to describe a group. Concentric circles with animators.
If I were a fern (ala Wheatley), I would hold on very very tight to being a fern.
Stewardship: Accountability and Responsibility
Web approach; we are stuck in the exercise of it.
Too many people in a decision; no longer a clear leader;first mong equals.We have not chosen strong leaders or we haven't trained them or we haven't explained their roles
Implementation Issues: Practical issues in the room today; Praxis -- how do we go out and do this? How do we put this into practice?
Language: Let's make a deal that we will use nickel words instead of dollar words and not try to impress each other with our language and our capital.
Case Studies: we want to hear stories and examples from the participants who have applied these ideas and learned from their mistakes and successes
Agenda: We have three days -- are we just going to fill it or do we have a purpose and an expectation of what we are going to accomplish?

Table 4

Key Learnings:

  • Leadership is key
  • Semantics and metaphors are impeding our understanding
  • Relationships and trust are critical for learning
  • Definition of terms is critical for the conversation to take place and be productive
  • Opened up new horizons of learning "new kinds of capital"
  • Valuation should be a separate topic of conversation


Questions:

  • How to transfer this new language into practice and the organization understands and buys into the concepts?
  • How do you tap the "whole" person's(work,family,community,etc.) knowledge potential in the available capital pool?

Themes:

  • How do you get a process to affect this transformation - process, tools, cultural changes?
  • Customer intimacy and walking the talk
  • Leadership
  • Measurement context

Language is an obstacle to understanding ie the questions and themes in this exercise!!!!

Table 5

  • How do you create catalysts for the knowledge era?
  • The effectivness of the knowledge turns model if understood properly.
  • Unleashing internal motivation
  • How do we go after the percent of capabilities that are not currently being utilized
  • Capabilities + Trust = Knowledge
  • Is "the knowledge era" the right term?
  • I feel we are in the "value era" knowledge is purely the vehicle. value is not intrinsic to knowledge in traditional terms and in human history. the end game that most people understand is "value". in everything we do this is the driving force.
  • Are we neglecting emotional capital. The human spirit?


Table 6

  • Leadership as core concern
  • Measurement as an issue is a downer; lost the "whole picture"
  • Contrariness during the measurement discussion showed an unwillingness to listen; devaluing without facilitator or self-monitoring to get the "whole" p icture first.
  • need more 360 degree listening
  • clearly, one person can make a difference; structure probbly less important than what individuals DO.....locus of control MUST be internal
  • INTEREST: HOW TO CREATE TRUST??.....LISTENING---SHARING---TRUST. MUST ALSO WALK THE TALK.
  • QUESTION: how to build and sustain trust in an organization?
  • Q: How to be aware if the culture, and then what are the transformational steps to begin the cultural shift?
  • CONSIDER THE BURNING PLATFORM!!
  • How does a company identify or select the values it needs to fulfill its stated purpose?
  • How are personal and corporate values aligned?


Table 7

  • Focusing on measurement may be a trap that inhibits the acknowledgement and valuing of intellectual capital.
  • We have some concern about the terminology: capital implies a store of accumulated wealth which seems inconsistent with the 'capability' definitions given for these components.
  • Today we fell into the trap of head learning while discussing a topic that is both head and heart.
  • Does a model (any model] impose a mechanistic, machine-like, static pattern on something that should be seen as more organic.
  • Trust from the top, even without any other structural change, would be one of the most important ways to transform an organization.
  • How trusting or distrustful we are may be conditioned by environmental and life experiences that have affected us very deeply and over which we may have little control -- and we'll carry those attributes into any organization we join -- so how do we change trust within an organization given these environmental factors?
  • Some of us worry about the connotations of 'manage' to imply command and control, which may be inimical to nurturing tacit knowledge (though it may be OK for explicit knowledge); maybe leading/mentoring/coaching ought to be words that replace managing.


Table 8

Learnings

  • Definitions of knowlege capital terms and concepts
  • Value is created by the interaction between the 3 components of intellectual capital. Improvements to the system can be made by examining the relationships between these 3 components and the intersection points.
  • Gain insight into the value that I'm creating and how I'm setting priorities in my life to achieve this.
  • Learned the enduring effect of the Industrial Model into our curent reality.


Questions:

  • What is the role of our need for control in blinding us to participating in more trust based, self-organizing work organizations.
  • Are these the only categories to the model. Are we leaving any out? The model appears somewhat arbitary. Example: Are we just appending the word "capital" at the end of each component.
  • Describe life in the knowledge era for an "average worker." Is this era going to be transparent to some levels of the organization?
  • How does the knowledge era relate to William Bridges model of a jobless society?
  • Technology has the potential both to free workers as well as to disenfranchise or control them. How can we shape a positive relationship here?


Table 9
Missing in action!

Table 10

Themes:

  • How do we get the CEOs and the rest of the corporate hierarchy to walk the walk and not just talk the talk?

Key Learning:

  • Too early to tell.