Fast Company article #4 by Susan Jarosak "Learning For a Change" by Alan M. Webber, May 1999

If you have ever been a part of a large-scale change effort, you know how challenging and frustrating it can be. This article is about a new way of thinking about change in organizations. The author interviewed Peter Senge, a leading thinker on change and learning in organizations. Ten years ago Senge's book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization rattled traditional views by presenting new, exciting possibilities for workplaces. Senge introduced the term "learning organizations" -companies where learning-both individual and organizational-are the center of the work. This concept was, and still is, a big leap for many. Learning? At work?

I confess, I was one of 1,000 people in a huge hotel ballroom three years ago anxiously waiting for Peter Senge to come on stage. Pen in hand, notebook ready, I was there to listen and learn. I was not disappointed. His quiet demeanor and passionate voice drew me in with his philosophy on the possibilities of organizations and the universal challenges to improve our workplaces. I was energized by his ideas and came back to work with a new outlook on how Extension could be and my role in it.

Senge believes that large-scale change efforts are usually unsuccessful because of major flaws in our thinking. First, we must start to see systems (organizations) not as machines, but as living organisms in nature. If we see our organization through a mechanistic lens, we tend to focus on making money, taking control, managing people, and forcing change. Senge says we bring in mechanics to fix the machine when it is broken, but what we really need are gardeners. Gardeners, says Senge, cultivate change, not drive it. Like nature, growth starts from small seeds and, if nurtured and in the right environment, they grow. All seeds have the potential for growth and can bud anywhere and can even be spread by "seed carriers," informal leaders who build relationships across the organization. Eventually, these new ideas can grow into something big and wonderful.

In his experience, formal change programs mandated from above are not effective because they do little to cultivate the deep commitment needed to sustain the process. Senge says "deep change comes only through real personal growth-through learning and unlearning." Most people in organizations never totally commit to changes because they operate out of the need to comply with what others say they should do. People will change if they have to-which can lead to dependence on changes driven only from the top.

This article made me think of change efforts in Extension and how important it is to involve staff and engage them in conversations about why the changes are important to them and to our future. When staff do not have the opportunity to ask questions and be heard, resentment spreads and can be detrimental to everyone involved, including those leading the change. From my experience, our organizational culture is one that has been historically open to new ideas and learning from our past.

My colleagues in staff development all support Senge's philosophy about learning and change work. We discussed the correlation between Senge's gardener approach and Gareth Morgan's work. Gareth Morgan writes about organizational change using the "strategic termites" metaphor to describe large change efforts that begin with termites that strategically, over periods of time, eat away at long standing structures and build new systems.

I recommend this article to anyone interested in learning about models for change.

-- Anonymous, April 27, 1999