Leadership in the knowledge economy

Something is missing from our conversations about the 21st century Extension professional, skills of the future knowledge worker, Extension Reconsidered and the Second Machine Age. This missing piece is the discussion on what leadership for the knowledge and rapid changing environment should look like. 

Leadership in today’s globally connected, technology-charged, and democratized economy is not the same that as leadership that drove the industrial age--where goals were achieved with directed and controlled with top-down hierarchies. Traditional organizational theory focuses on the ability to avoid uncertainty. In the knowledge economy, knowledge producing organizations focus on organizing, creating, capturing, and distributing knowledge and information. Today’s leaders need to find ways to achieve adaptability and ongoing learning from within and outside of the organization in order to improve the capacity to address complex challenges with innovative solutions.

Mary Uhl-Bien, (mbien2 at unl.edu), Russ Marion, (marion2 at clemson.edu), and Bill McKelvey, (mckelvey at anderson.ucla.edu) developed the Complexity Leadership Theory which is a framework that describes three leadership functions--administrative, adaptive, and enabling of a modern knowledge organization.

Administrative leadership is the formal managerial functions of planning, controlling, coordinating, acquiring resources, building a vision, and managing organizational strategy that represents the hierarchical and bureaucratic functions of the organization. Complexity Leadership Theory suggests that administrative leadership exercises authority with consideration of the need for creativity, learning, and adaptability, so that its actions can have significant impact on these dynamics.

Adaptive leadership is an informal, emergent, and complex dynamic rather than a person of authority. The creative actions and learning that emerge from the interactions of adaptive systems are the sources of change for the organization. Tensions of constraints and conflicting needs, ideas, preferences, and cooperative efforts produce flexible outcomes in adaptive social systems.

Enabling leadership fosters and facilitates conditions for adaptive leadership to emerge and accelerate adaptive system dynamics. Enabling leadership is about creating conditions and dynamics that allow for cooperative interactions and knowledge flows to allow shared creativity, problem solving, and learning. Enabling leadership can be found anywhere.

The framework sets the stage to create ways to lead in complex adaptive environments and enables continuous creation and the capturing of knowledge. Organizations that are “complexly adaptive (possessing requisite complexity)” are optimized for knowledge development and adaptability. The Complexity Leadership Theory is specifically designed for knowledge producing organizations.

Complexity Leadership Theory suggests that managers should enable contexts and environments where informal learning can emerge. These three leadership functions are entangled. There are conditions in which authority needs to be invoked. At other times, complex environments are needed to address complex problems.

Specifically speaking of public universities and Cooperative Extension, how can we prepare and organize to be adaptive and encourage a design mindset, virtual collaboration and sensemaking? We talked about hiring new people who have these skills. We talked about helping our current professionals adopt new skills. We have not talked about the changes in the way we approach leadership.

As I read about Complexity Leadership Theory, I thought of some examples of more inclusive engagement and how some within the ranks--faculty and local educators are pursuing knowledge broadly from diverse sources. Through seeking knowledge and connections and working outloud, they are helping the organization adapt and are enabling change. Additionally there is some discussion that Extension could cultivate the way to build more engaged land-grants. We need to start discussions on how we can become a more open, participative, continuously learning organization.

Cooperative Extension and land-grant universities are no doubt knowledge-producing organizations. Complex Leadership Theory is about creating conditions--in relation to the bureaucratic structure--for which emergent learning, knowledge, and solutions can arise. In this democratized knowledge era, there is a greater need to absorb knowledge from many sources, make sense of that knowledge, and co-create operative solutions to complex problems. Traditional top down approaches will not be effective as they have in the past. The Creative Leadership Theory provides a framework for which we should consider in our Extension organizations. 



Note: Thanks to Jeff Miller who shared the Complexity Leadership Theory with me and to Gae Broadwater who helped edit this post.

Alternative Keynote Session

Tomorrow I will be discussing elements of the Iowa State Virtual Conference Keynote address Continuous Beta and a Healthy Dose of Paranoia in a webinar. We hope to have some discussion at the end of the 45 minute webinar.

Other information and connection information can be found: https://learn.extension.org/events/1110

Please join us on June 25, 2013 at 3 PM Eastern. If you can't attend the archive will be added to the website above in a few days.

The recording of this keynote is located https://connect.extension.iastate.edu/p2ehodt6g48/

Understanding acceptance of change

John Dorner, at a time of frustration, talked about people's unwillingness to learn something new, particularly when the new technology serves as a benefit for the greater organization. His main question is "How do we get people to 'want' to learn?"

John makes the obvious observation that using technology is necessary in "today's world." We simply cannot ignore technology.

How do we get people to embrace new technologies? There are no easy answers. Focusing on the individual decision is one way to affect change.

One theory, the Transtheoretical Model, describes how people go through stages when changing their behavior. This model has been demonstrated mostly in health behaviors (smoking, eating habits, drug use, etc.), but has also been used to explain other behaviors, such as organizational changes and changes of acceptance of technologies.

Stages of change and weighing the importance of advantages and disadvantages.

The theory posits that individuals go through stages of change in the adoption of new behaviors. Levels of confidence are stronger in the later stages. Also in later stages, individuals weigh the importance of the benefits (also known as pros) over the importance of the disadvantages (also known as cons).  

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Originally uploaded by only alice

In the earlier stages, individuals weigh the importance of disadvantages over the importance of benefits. This seems very theoretical and maybe obvious.

However, we often don't change our message even though our target audience has varying degrees of acceptance of the technologies (changes). We also often discuss benefits as we see them as important--not considering what potential adopters find important. The practical piece of the Transtheoretical Model is that change efforts should adjust according to the stage of the potential adopters and to what is important to them, individually. 

Self-efficacy.
John hears "I'm not tech savvy". Individuals are not confident in their ability to learn or understand the technology. This lack of confidence may come from many sources, even if they are quite capable of learning. Individuals:

• May feel uncomfortable learning something new because they don't want to fail.
• May truly feel they are incapable of learning and understanding something beyond their normal work and life environment.
• May feel that the technology is not compatible with the way they operate and think (for example, some people really like Algebra and others just don't get).
• May not understand the benefits. The technology brings such a different phenomenon that they just doesn't see the benefits.
• Doesn't want their work environment to change and use the lack of ability as an excuse.

Disadvantages, Costs, Cons.

The lack of confidence contributes heavily to the weight of the disadvantages. Some individuals place a lot on the importance of not wanting to fail and on the belief that they are not capable. Other disadvantages include not wanting to take the time and effort to learn, nor spend resources. In adopting new technologies, some new technologies don't last so there is risk in taking the time and effort only to have to change again.

Understanding how individuals weigh the importance of each disadvantage is a step to targeting those perceptions when communicating with the potential adopters. If they are not confident that they can change, then we should develop ways to improve their self-efficacy. Training is an obvious solution. Another is demonstrating how others in their peer groups are using the technology. Also, in early stages of change, it is important to provide support to keep building self-efficacy.

Advantages, Benefits, Pros.

In making decisions to adopt a change, potential adopters also weigh the importance of the benefits to them. While some will consider the benefits for the greater good, most people will look at the direct benefits for themselves, then the benefit to the organization, and then the benefits to outside the organization. As change agents, we often fail at convincing potential adopters because we don't target our communications that punctuate the benefits that are important to the individuals.

Targeting communications and support.

While John is absolutely correct in that the "greater good" benefits are reasons for using these technologies.

It wouldn't be so bad if their ignorance only affected them. In today's world, their ignorance affects everyone around them. Their co-workers waste a lot of time because they are working on projects with them. The organization loses because countless hours and dollars are wasted, knowledge is not being shared and work is being duplicated to name a few ways their ignorance affects others.

For the potential adopters, the importance of the costs of change outweighs the importance benefits. What are the benefits to the individual for using the technology? What are the costs (time, effort, risk of failure) to the individual to adopting these technologies? How important does the individual view these advantages and disadvantages?

John's question and rant are familiar to all of us who are involved in changing our environment, organization, and technology. Simply, there are no easy answers to changing behavior because the change must come from the individual.

Effective change behavior works best when we focus on individuals. The most important time to focus on the individual is during the early stages of diffusion and in the early stages of change.

del.icio.us Tags: changing behaviors,stages of change,Transtheoretical Model,TTM

Challenging the process is a must to move from good to great

What are we doing to facilitate innovative ideas? Who are we asking and watching? What processes do we need to question as to their appropriateness in our organizations today?

This week I will be helping facilitate a Leadership Challenge workshop. I attended this workshop in the Spring and was asked to help with this session.

The Leadership Challenge concept is based on the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®. Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner researched that exemplary leaders practice these competencies. Anyone can provide leadership within their organizations.

The five practices are:

Model the Way which leaders voice and clarify their values and set examples for others to follow.
Inspire a Shared Vision which leaders envision the future, creating an ideal and unique image of what the organization can become.
Challenge the Process which leaders look for opportunities and seek innovative ways to improve their organizations, by stepping into the process, experimenting, and taking risks.
Enable Others to Act which leaders foster collaboration and actively involve others, making others feel capable and powerful.
Encourage the Heart which leaders recognize and celebrate contributions that individuals make.

I am facilitating this workshop with the 3 instructors from the Spring workshop. Francesca Adler-Baeder, Rebecca Dollman, and Denise Michelle Cole.

One of my responsibilities is to facilitate the "Challenge the Process" module. The point is to encourage participants to challenge the way things are done in order to find creative solutions. Doing the same things over and over will not create innovative ideas. Innovations, are not usually created by one individual, but ideas are developed by seeing other products, services, and communications outside of our normal processes. An idea can be sparked by a simple notion or a conversation.

Another point of this module is that successful change happens in small steps. These small steps invokes confidence and can more easily be used as trial and error exercises. One example used is how U. S. Mint transformed from a non-responsive agency into one with great customer service and cutting edge web presence by taking the changes in steps.

During the workshop, the participants will come up with their own ways to seek innovation ideas and to step outside of our boundaries.

As I have been preparing for this workshop, I have thought of Ron Brown's talk on the Future of Extension. Several times, he referred to Jim Collin's book Good to Great. Ron talked about how we are good, but if we want to become great, we cannot keep doing the same thing over and over and listening to ourselves.

One example that we could ponder is: We will not create a great Extension's web presence by simply moving a print format and approach and a classroom learning approach to the web. We can be good at some of this, but we cannot become great with standard approaches.

What can we do in our own organizations that will help create innovative processes? How and which successful organizations should we be observing? What do we know about what our clients want?

In addressing Web 2.0, some people want to create online communities--develop online communities based on our traditional ways of education and providing information. Moving toward existing communities and current online conversations seems to be a more appropriate way to step into the process of developing innovative ideas. In this scenario, we go to our audiences rather than them coming to us. Getting started in online conversations is a start--a beginning point.
We have more ways than ever to seek changes and involve people from outside of organizations. We have more ways than ever to seek partnerships with nontraditional organizations? The possibilities through easy connections are endless.

Another thought when preparing for this workshop, is that we should also be looking into the future. Technologies are obviously advancing, so how can we prepare our workforce to take advantages of the newest technologies? How do we prepare them so they are ready to use new technologies effectively--before these changes arrive? One way is to be knowledgeable of the development of technologies. We need to develop an understanding of the newest technologies--even if we and our clientele cannot currently afford them.

We simply cannot make decisions based on the technologies we have at-hand. The following video is an example of a telepresence technology. Thanks to Mitch Owen for the link. Mitch mentions technologies take 20 years to develop. I don't believe it will be 20 years. What are the implications? With this technology, what are the possibilities of using this technology if 5 years, 10 years? What other technologies will change the way we communicate and operate?