Claudia Madrazo and Peter Senge Seeing Cultural Dysfunction The original exploration of communities of commitment identified three basic imbalances, corresponding to how we relate to our perception, our circumstances, and to one another: fragmentation: a deep habit of perception to break complex problems into isolated pieces and then attempt to address the pieces separately; reactiveness: focusing only on visible problem symptoms and not on their deeper sources, forcing us to react to these symptoms rather than creating longer-term systemic change; and destructive competition: pitting individuals and organizations against one another in win-lose contexts that prevent balancing cooperation and competition. In many ways, school is the archetypal embodiment of these dysfunctions, and though we didnt use these terms we all encountered each in our earliest days as a schoolchild. Take fragmentation. Prior to entering school, life is learning: walking, talking, riding bicycles, learning how to get along with family members and children on the playground. This learning is inseparable from the day-to-day living. We live our learning; we learn through our living. School changes all that as we encounter a system of ‘learning’ fragmented from daily life. Students suddenly find themselves reacting to an agenda of what needs to be learned given by their teacher. They gradually discover that schoolroom learning is about right and wrong answers not more effective action, and that it pits them against one another in a process mediated by a teacher who is the ultimate arbiter of right answers. They eventually realize that academic knowledge is broken up into separate subject domains, like arithmetic (which later becomes mathematics), spelling, grammar, and history. These fields have little to do with one another, and soon these boundaries solidify further as they encounter classes that are exclusively about fragmented subjects taught by teachers who are strictly subject matter experts. Lost in all of this is the fact that life – solving real problems in work settings, raising children, citizenship – has not changed. It is still inescapably holistic. When was the last time you encountered a real-life problem that was only technical and not about how people implement a technical solution, or only about history and not how history is embodied in people’s assumptions and habits today? These dysfunctions are no less evident in work organizations, starting with the familiar fragmented organizational structure: work broken up into isolated departments. People inevitably adopt a reactive stance when they see only the symptoms of problems that manifest in their “silo” of accountability and are expected to fix them, which is possible for those which are generated locally but not for ones the arise from larger processes that cut across the silos. So, sales people react to slow sales with price promotions, when the real difficulties may be in product design or manufacturing, just as the school superintendents react to poor student performance with increased pressure to perform on standardized tests, when the real difficulties are unmotivated and disengaged students and stressed teachers. Locked in to reactiveness, people compete for whose symptomatic fixes are best and will make them look good, while many others become increasingly frustrated and dispirited as more systemic problems go unaddressed. Over time, reactiveness begets more reactiveness. As deeper problems remain unaddressed, problem symptoms return and perpetual “fire fighting” becomes a way of life in even highly sophisticated corporations.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 19:54:55 +0000
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