The Culture Code

Posted by Santh

I wrapped up 2024 by completing the book The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. This insightful read explores the secrets of highly successful groups, examining the dynamics that foster trust, cooperation, and collaboration. It highlights three foundational elements for creating cohesive and thriving cultures: building safety, sharing vulnerability, and establishing purpose.

Build safety: Building safety is akin to a fluid, improvisational skill—much like passing a soccer ball to teammates during a game. It involves recognizing patterns, reacting quickly, and delivering the right signals at the right time.

  • The good apples: A single positive, proactive individual within a group can act as a catalyst for trust and collaboration, shielding the team from negativity and fostering collective success.
  • Signal that we are close, we are safe, we share a future: As a leader, be intentional about sending these messages to the team continuously.
  • How to build belonging? Build relationships by consistently delivering small, authentic signals of care, trust, and inclusion
  • How to design belonging? Craft deliberate systems, rituals, and structures that reinforce group identity and foster a deep, enduring sense of unity and shared purpose
  • Ideas for action:
    • Overcommunicate your listening (through body language, asking questions and paraphrasing)
    • Spotlight your fallibility early-on (especially if you are a leader)
    • Embrace the messenger
    • Preview future connection
    • Overdo thank-yous
    • Be painstaking in the hiring process
    • Eliminate bad apples
    • Create safe, collision-rich spaces
    • Make sure everyone has a voice
    • Pickup trash
    • Capitalize on threshold moments
    • Avoid giving sandwich feedback
    • Embrace fun

Share vulnerability: Exchanges of vulnerability, which we naturally tend to avoid, are the pathway through which trusting cooperation is built.

  • Embrace the vulnerability loop: Institute After Action Reviews (AAR) and BrainTrust meetings where all team members candidly share their learnings, feedback and observations.
  • Ideas for action:
    • Make sure the leader is vulnerable first and often
    • Overcommunicate expectations
    • Deliver the negative stuff in-person
    • When forming new groups, focus on two critical moments – the first vulnerability and the first disagreement
    • Listen like a trampoline
    • In conversation, resist the temptation to reflectively add value
    • Use candor generating practices like AARs, BrainTrusts and Red Teaming.
    • Aim for candor, avoid brutal honesty
    • Embrace the discomfort
    • Align language with action
    • Build a wall between performance review and professional development
    • Use flash mentoring
    • Make the leader occasionally disappear

Establish purpose: The difference with successful cultures seems to be that they use the crisis to crystallize their purpose. When leaders of those groups reflect on failures later, they express gratitude for those moments, as painful as they were, because they were the crucible that helped the group discover what it could be.

  • Name and rank our priorities
  • Be ten times as clear about our priorities as we think we should be
  • Figure out where our group aims for proficiency and where it aims for creativity:
    • Proficiency: Skills of proficiency are about doing a task the same way, every single time delivering machine-like reliability. They tend to apply in domains in which the goal behaviors are clearly defined, such as service. Building purpose to perform these skills is like building a vivid map with spotlight on the goal and providing crystal-clear directions to the checkpoints along the way. Ways to do that include:
      • Provide clear, accessible models of excellence
      • Provide high-repetition, high-feedback training
      • Build vivid, memorable rules of thumb (if X, then Y)
      • Spotlight and honor the fundamentals of the skill
    • Creativity: Creative skills are about empowering a group to do the hard work of building something that has never existed before. Generating purpose in these areas is like supplying an expedition – provide support, fuel and tools to serve as a protective presence that empowers the team doing the work. Ways to do that include:
      • Keenly attend to team composition and dynamics
      • Define, reinforce and relentlessly protect the team’s creative autonomy
      • Make it safe to fail and to give feedback
      • Celebrate hugely when the group takes initiative
  • Embrace the use of catchphrases
  • Measure what really matters
  • Use artifacts
  • Focus on bar setting behaviors

The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle reveals that the key to building successful groups lies in fostering safety, embracing vulnerability, and crystallizing purpose. By creating environments where individuals feel valued and secure, encouraging open and candid exchanges, and aligning actions with a shared mission, we can unlock the full potential of teams. Whether in professional settings or personal endeavors, this book provides actionable insights to cultivate a culture of trust, collaboration, and success.

Games People Play

Posted by Santh

I came across the book Games People Play by Eric Berne during my a conversation with my coach. This classic work delves into the subtle and unconscious “games” we play in our social interactions. Berne masterfully explores the psychological dynamics underlying these interactions, offering readers profound insights into their motivations, relationships, and conflicts.

At its core, Eric Berne defines games as recurring patterns of behavior that involve ulterior motives and outcomes. These are not playful activities but rather interactions that follow predictable scripts, often driven by hidden psychological needs. By identifying and understanding these games, we can foster more authentic and productive relationships.

The Structure of Games

Berne categorizes games based on their psychological and social functions, outlining their three key components:

  1. The Social Mask: The public-facing behavior we exhibit.
  2. The Psychological Payoff: The hidden emotional reward we seek.
  3. The Outcome: The predictable conclusion of the interaction.

Each game has a title, a script, and players who unconsciously follow their roles.

The Thesaurus of Games

Eric Berne provides a “thesaurus” of games, classifying them into categories that reflect different aspects of life and relationships:

  • Life Games: These include games like “Why Don’t You—Yes But,” where individuals seek validation for their problems but reject solutions offered by others.
  • Marital Games: Examples include “Frigid Woman” or “If It Weren’t for You,” where partners engage in blame or avoidance to sustain underlying conflicts.
  • Party Games: Social interactions like “Ain’t It Awful” focus on collective complaining to build camaraderie while avoiding deeper connections.
  • Sexual Games: Games like “Rapo” involve flirtation and seduction with no intention of following through, often to assert control or boost ego.
  • Underworld Games: These encompass manipulative behaviors seen in criminal or subversive environments, such as “Cops and Robbers.”
  • Consulting Room Games: Played in therapeutic settings, such as “Psychiatry” or “Wooden Leg,” where patients avoid personal responsibility.

Each category reflects specific human needs, fears, or desires, offering profound insights into why we behave the way we do.

Examples of Popular Games

  • “Why Don’t You—Yes But”: A problem-solving game where one person seeks advice but dismisses every suggestion, reinforcing their sense of hopelessness.
  • “Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a B**”**: A confrontational game where someone exploits a minor mistake to assert dominance.
  • “See What You Made Me Do”: Shifting blame to others to avoid accountability.

The Path to Authenticity

Berne’s goal is not to judge but to help us recognize these patterns and move beyond them. To foster healthier relationships and personal growth, he suggests cultivating three key qualities:

  • Awareness: Developing the ability to recognize games in real-time, identifying their patterns and triggers.
  • Spontaneity: Encouraging authentic reactions and behavior instead of following pre-scripted roles.
  • Intimacy: Building deeper connections by expressing genuine emotions and fostering mutual trust.

By shedding light on these patterns and adopting these principles, we can communicate more openly, build trust, and address underlying insecurities and needs.

Games People Play by Eric Berne is a groundbreaking exploration of human psychology and interaction. By categorizing and analyzing the “games” embedded in daily life, Eric Berne equips us with tools to navigate relationships with greater self-awareness and authenticity. Whether in life, marriage, social settings, or even therapy, understanding these dynamics can lead to richer and more fulfilling connections. This book is a must-read for anyone eager to uncover the hidden scripts that shape our interactions.

Magic Words

Posted by Santh

I got a reference for the book Magic Words by Jonah Berger from the SII Wharton executive program. This book uncovers the hidden science behind how language works and how we can use it effectively to persuade others and deepen relationships.

There are six types of magic words:

  1. Activate Identity and Agency: Words suggest who is in charge and what it means to engage in a particular action. Consequently, slight changes in the words we use can have a big impact:
    • Turn actions into identities: Turn the verb (“Will you help”) into a noun (“Will you be my helper?”). Framing actions as opportunities to confirm desired identities will encourage people to go along.
    • Change can’t to don’t: Saying “I don’t” instead of “I can’t” increases our feeling of empowerment and makes us more likely to achieve our goals.
    • Turn should to could: When we want our group to be more creative to solve a tough problem, rather than asking “What we should do?”, ask “What we could do?”. This encourages divergent thinking and helps us get out of that rut.
    • Talk to ourself: Nervous about a big presentation or trying to psych ourselves up for a big interview – talking to ourself in third person (“You can do it”) distances us from the tough situation, reducing anxiety and increasing performance.
    • Pick the right pronoun: Whether trying to get someone’s attention or avoid confrontation, think carefully about how to use pronouns like “I” or “you”. They can draw attention and take ownership, but they also suggest responsibility and blame.
  2. Convey confidence: Words do more than just convey facts and opinions. They signal how confident communicators are in the facts and opinions they are expressing. Consequently, words influence how we are perceived and the impact of what we say.
    • Ditch the hedges: When the goal is to convey confidence, avoid words and phrases like “may”, “could”, “I think” and “In my opinion” which suggest that things and people saying them are uncertain.
    • Use definitives: Words like “definitely”, “clearly” and “obviously” suggest whatever we say is not just an opinion but an irrefutable truth.
    • Don’t hesitate: Fillers in speech like “um” and “uh” are natural parts of speech but too many of them can undermine people’s confidence in us and our message.
    • Turn pasts into presents: Using present tense (like “I love that book” instead of “I loved that book”) can communicate confidence and increase persuasion.
    • Know when to express doubt: While seeming to be certain of often beneficial, if we want to show we are open-minded, receptive to opposing viewpoints or aware of nuances, expressing doubt can help.
  3. Ask the right questions: Questions help us collect information, communicate things about us, direct the flow of conversations and build social bonds. Consequently, we need to understand which questions to ask and when to ask them.
    • Ask for advice: Not only does it garner useful insights, it makes us seem smarter as well.
    • Follow up questions: They show we are listening, interested and care enough to learn more.
    • Deflect difficulty: When someone asks an unfair question, asking a related one back allows us to direct the conversation in a different direction, showing interest while keeping personal information private.
    • Avoid assumptions: When trying to get people to divulge potentially negative information, be careful of questions that assume things away.
    • Start safe, then build: To deepen social relationships or turn strangers into friends, start simple and build from there encouraging reciprocal self-disclosure.
  4. Leverage concreteness: Talking abstractly when we know a lot about something results in communicating in a high-level way and misses the mark. Consequently, we need the harness the power of linguistic concreteness.
    • Make people feel heard: Paraphrase with specific details that show we paid attention and understood.
    • Be concrete: Use words that listeners can see in their mind. Its a lot easier to imagine a red sportscar than ideation.
    • Know when it is better to be abstract: If our goal is to come off as powerful or make something seem like it has growth potential, using abstract language is better.
    • Focus on the why: Thinking about the reasoning behind something helps things stay high level and communicate that big picture.
  5. Employ emotion: Telling stories is the best way to grab people’s attention and have them remember our message.
    • Highlight the hurdles: As long as we are already seen as competent, revealing past shortcomings can make people like us even more.
    • Build a roller coaster: The best stories blend highs and lows. Talking about failures along the way make the successes even more sweet.
    • Mix up moments: The same intuition applies to moments as well.
    • Consider the context: Emotional language can help in hedonic domains like movies and vacations but backfire in more utilitarian domains like job applications and software.
    • Connect, then solve: Start with warmer, more emotional to set things up for the more cognitive, problem-solving discussions that come later.
    • Activate uncertainty: Evoking uncertain emotion like surprise will keep people engaged.
  6. Harness similarity and differences:
    • Signal similarity: When familiarity is useful or fitting in is the goal, similar language can help. Using the same nomenclature employed by leaders to communicate vision will signal alignment.
    • Drive differences: If we are doing a job in which creativity, innovation or stimulation is valued, standing out might be better.
    • Plot the right progression: When telling stories, start slow to make sure the audience is onboard before speeding up to increase excitement.

Magic Words by Jonah Berger is an insightful exploration of how subtle shifts in language can create profound effects. By activating identity, conveying confidence, asking the right questions, leveraging concreteness, employing emotion, and harnessing similarity and differences, we can transform our communication to achieve better outcomes and build stronger connections. Whether in professional settings or personal relationships, the book provides actionable advice to harness the true power of words.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

Posted by Santh

After a break of more than a year, I realized that the intellectual stimulation provided by books is irreplaceable and decided to dive back into reading. I began with the contemporary classic What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith, a recommendation from my coach.

As the title suggests, this book is tailored for seasoned leaders who find themselves plateauing at a certain level and are seeking strategies to unlock their potential and progress further. Goldsmith highlights 20 habits that can hold leaders back, many of which are strikingly relatable.

The book opens by explaining a phenomenon called the “success delusion.” Our past successes give us confidence and motivation, which are vital, but they can also make us resistant to change. This confidence often fosters a superstitious belief in the status quo, which can impede growth and innovation.

Goldsmith identifies 20 behavioral flaws in leadership that act as barriers to advancement. They are:

  1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations – when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it is totally beside the point.
  2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.
  3. Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
  4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.
  5. Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone, “I am right. You are wrong.”
  6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we are smarter than they think we are.
  7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.
  8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we were not asked.
  9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
  10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.
  11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.
  12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
  13. Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.
  14. Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
  15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we are wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.
  16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
  17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
  18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.
  19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
  20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.

Each of these habits is accompanied by detailed examples in the book, but even the titles alone are enough to spark introspection. Most of us can recognize some of these traits within ourselves or those around us.

The book’s most valuable insight for me was its seven-step approach to overcoming these limiting behaviors. These steps offer a practical framework to evolve as leaders and individuals:

  1. Feedback: Actively seek honest input from others.
  2. Apologizing: Acknowledge mistakes and express genuine regret.
  3. Telling the world / Advertizing: Communicate your commitment to change.
  4. Listening: Truly hear and understand others.
  5. Thanking: Show appreciation for feedback and support.
  6. Following up: Regularly check in to track progress and reinforce change.
  7. Practicing feedforward: Focus on future improvements instead of dwelling on past mistakes.

In summary, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There is a must-read for leaders who aspire to break through barriers and achieve greater success. Goldsmith’s insights and actionable advice are invaluable for anyone striving to become a better version of themselves.

2023: My experiments with learning

Posted by Santh

I take immense pride in reading books as a source of knowledge, started with fiction during my student days and switched to anthropology, technology, science and leadership during the last twenty years. I usually list down the books I enjoyed reading during a year as blogpost but did not do it last year as I did not read many books in 2022. The same trend continued in 2023 albeit for additional reasons. I will list out these reasons intertwined with my experiments and conclude with my learnings through this process.

  1. Time at work: During these last couple of years, I enjoyed spending a lot more time than usual at work. I addressed meaningful challenges by applying my past learnings from books and deep thinking aided by coaching that I covered in another blogpost. These opportunities for hands-on learning have been super satisfying, far greater than any book can offer.
  2. Audible: Due to a couple of eye problems that I was trying to figure out root cause, I subscribed to Audible to check if listening to books can be an effective alternative. I felt good about this option after listening to “Atomic Habits” but did not work for two subsequent books, so gave it up for now. I usually read books before going to sleep and keep aside my book or kindle when I can longer focus on content. But with audible, I did not know when I stopped listening and lose track of the book easily.
  3. OTT Platforms: The documentaries available over YouTube, CuriosityStream, Netflix and other OTT platforms provide latest and crisp content that are quite effective to acquire quick knowledge at a high level. I have explored these options for more than 5 years but have significantly increased reliance on them. In fact, some of the book references were from here.
  4. Difficulty with finding high quality books of interest: Finally, I am quite picky when it comes to books and go through multiple reviews before starting to read one. Having read most of the classics and contemporary best books in my areas of interest over the last twenty years, finding new ones is difficult. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the numerous awesome authors who spend their lifetime writing books. Just that I am a slow reader who takes almost a month for a 300-page book with limited time at my disposal. With other compelling options to acquire knowledge having emerged over the last decade, I need to pick the best horses for courses so that I don’t become a dinosaur.

The books I read over the years have helped me become who I am today and am sure they will continue to play a key role in shaping me in future too. There were times in the past when I felt a sense of accumulating learning debt when I don’t read books for a few months at a stretch. However, I did not feel that way during the last couple of years due to my experiments covered above. Having said that, I want to read at least five books in 2024 to check what I missed during the last couple of years and will start the new year by compiling my reading list!

Coaching

Posted by Santh

I have learnt a lot from people, experiences, books and online resources during my 25-year professional career. For the first time, I had the good fortune of formal coaching interventions during 2023 and benefited from three different coaches. All of them helped me understand my strengths and improvement opportunities to come up with a credible development plan.

I am not a certified coach, so with this call out, let me start with my personal perspective on who can be a coach. It should be a leader who is accomplished in an area that we passionately respect, one we consider role model and derive inspiration from. A coach is not a teacher or manager who can instruct on what we should do. Rather, a coach helps in discovering ourself by asking questions that enables introspection and offers possible solutions when asked, leaving the decision choice to us. Most importantly, a coach should be one we can fully trust to keep conversations confidential.

All my three coaches had distinct approaches and each one of them helped me immensely in different ways. One common factor was rich experience that I have learnt from. It is important for us to understand our coach and figure out how to leverage the opportunity. The rest of the blogpost covers how I accomplished it.

Knowing each other: I mentioned trust as an important factor in a coaching relationship and we cannot trust strangers. So, it is important to start the engagement by knowing each other. In my case, I already trusted one of my internal coaches and an informal breakfast conversation with the other covered this part. While we are likely to know any internal coaches to some extent, I did some research on my external coach before the first conversation. This helped me strike a good chord during the first conversation and build trust.

Agree on expectations: Once the “knowing” part is complete, the first meeting should also cover setting ground rules and expectations. It is important to recognize that the coachee is the primary benefactor and should drive the engagement.

Identify a priority to focus on: Two of my coaches asked me questions and pretty much took control of the engagement, which made it easy for me. I still had to follow-up on discussion points and demonstrate that I am serious about learning from them for self-improvement. While there are many themes and topics that might be of interest for coaching engagement, I focused on one or two at a time, delved deep over multiple conversations before moving on to others. It is ideal to end the first meeting with the priority theme to start with.

Go well-prepared: This is possibly the most important part of the process to benefit from the engagement. The coachee should diligently follow-up on any previous discussions and start every meeting with those updates followed by listing down items wish to be covered.

Speak about our fears and weakness: My best learnings were when my coach acted as a mirror reflecting my weaknesses and suggested solutions from their experiences. When we stand in front of a mirror with make-up, we cannot diagnose imperfections accurately and the results from any follow-up actions will not be effective. The whole point of trust is to be able to confide with our vulnerabilities without concerns of being compromised.

Internalize learnings, act with commitment, and introspect to recognize changes: Coaching conversations and like leadership development programs. Many go into those programs expecting magical transformation and growth overnight, and get disappointed after a few months when they realize nothing much has changed. We should understand these interventions are a source of new ideas that we need to internalize and consciously practice over long periods before expecting results. Due to slow and incremental changes, we might not even notice them ourselves but will be good to introspect regularly to recognize progress. It is like looking at our own pictures from several years back that usually leave us admiring either our present or the past.

Share progress made: I consciously share with my coaches success stories resulting from coaching engagements that made me proud and further reinforced changed behaviors. I believe this will also be an encouragement to the coach as leaders love to hear about positive difference they made to others!

Logical closure: You can’t be stuck on the same theme or topic forever. If that happens, the coaching engagement is not really meeting the objective. I try to conclude a theme with an agreement on future course of action and move to the next one. The cycle starts again with the next priority theme.

Once again, these are just my perspectives on coaching based on my experiences so far and might differ from what coaching manual says. As I learn further, will update this post with any changes. In conclusion, want to thank my coaches and my leadership who gave me this opportunity and this blogpost is a tribute for their help to become a better version of myself!

Keynote address: Redesign the future of business

Posted by Santh

I had the honor of delivering keynote address for a panel discussion on redesigning the future of business during the Annual HYSEA Summit & Awards 2023. The idea was to set the stage by emphasizing how digital technologies are disrupting businesses and challenges encountered by the IT industry post pandemic with 100% remote work impeding the ability to build deep expertise. You can watch my 8-min key note here.

Aspiration, Inspiration & Relentless Perseverance

Posted by Santh

I was invited to be the Guest of Honour at the Graduation Day for the Class of 2022 of HITAM (Hyderabad Institute of Technology and Management). This was my first time playing this role and should thank Ms Sheenam Ohrie, Broadridge India MD for providing this opportunity. A special thanks to Mr Vamsi Koka, Dean – Strategy & Operations and the leadership at HITAM for making it a memorable experience. It was a great honour to be at the stage with Padmashri Prof Sanjay Dhande, Former Director of IIT Kanpur and the Chairman of the Governing Body of HITAM who graced the occasion as the Chief Guest.

I have heard some legendary speeches from great leaders addressing students during their commencement or graduation ceremonies and wanted to make some sense during my five-minute message to the students. It was about six months since these students completed their engineering curriculum and all of them should have started their career as a professional or an entrepreneur or should be pursuing higher studies. So, I shared three essential qualities that have served me well throughout my professional career over the years. I strongly believe they will help anyone who want to succeed in their life:

  • Aspiration: A strong hope and ambition of achieving something has differentiated humans from other animals. It is the aspiration of humanity that led to agricultural, scientific, industrial and information technology revolutions over the last ten thousand years. As Sir Isaac Newton said “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”. Each one of us have the opportunity to be such a giant for our posterity if we are aspirational with a meaningful purpose and vision.
  • Inspiration is the urge to do something and can trigger an aspiration or at times can also help achieve an ambition. As we grow up, we are inspired by several people and some of them also become role models. Personally for me, my parents have been an inspiration, a number of sports people and exceptional achievers in several fields have inspired me. We get inspired by nature as well, remember the legendary story of Robert Bruce being inspired by a spider and just imagine the sheer beauty of the world around us. We all are inspired by different things, but is it most important to follow that urge and strive to become an inspiration for others through our success.
  • Relentless perseverance: Once we are inspired and commit to be aspirational, the next step is relentless perseverance towards our goal. Many of us dream of luxury and expect it to make us happy. But try to remember the moments that you cherish the most in life and the ones that you are most proud of. Are they the time you spent in luxurious comfort or your achievements overcoming massive difficulties through hard work with sustained intensity and enduring pain towards a meaningful purpose? It is usually the latter.

I strongly encourage you to aspire, inspire and perspire towards your goals. We all have limited time in this world and every day, hour and minute is precious. Before you decide on how to spend this precious time, think how you will feel about your choice ten years from now. We are fortunate to be living at a time when knowledge is democratized and each one of us have numerous opportunities to make a difference. Please make it count to take yourself and your community forward.

I jotted this down as a blogpost so that I can see for myself ten years from now on how I feel about this!

The Fifth Discipline

Posted by Santh

One of the few books that keeps coming to my mind and reminds me of my north star every time I need help is “The Fifth Discipline – The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization” by Peter Senge. I have used the principles and learnings from this book countless number of times during the last ten years since I read this book. 2022 has been an extremely busy year for me at work and have neither been able to read many books nor post any blogs. So, thought I will celebrate tenth anniversary of reading this book by sharing the key learnings from this book here.

Peter Senge aptly uses the example of aviation technology taking more than thirty years to serve general public after Wright brothers invented flying to highlight that an idea moves from invention to innovation only when diverse “component technologies” comes together to integrate an ensemble of technologies that are critical to one another’s success. Similarly, there are five “component disciplines” are gradually converging to innovate learning organizations. They are – Personal Mastery, Mental Models, Building Shared Vision, Team Learning and Systems Thinking. While the first four are effective on their own to a certain extent, the fifth discipline of Systems Thinking integrates the other disciplines, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice.

This blog post is not about these disciplines or even Systems Thinking but lists out two key topics that provides an understanding and basis for the core disciplines for building a learning organization. These topics are the 7 Learning Disabilities that lead to individuals and organizations failing in the long term and the 11 Laws of the Fifth Discipline that enables an organization to sustain its ability to learn and grow.

Learning Disabilities: We have seen a number of well-established companies vanish over a short period of time. A study estimates that the average lifetime of the largest industrial enterprises is less than forty years, roughly half the lifetime of a human being! We have seen a number of industry leaders disappear during the last fifteen years, the ones relevant to our context will be Blackberry, Nokia, Kodak and Blockbuster to name a few. In all these companies, there was abundant evidence in advance that the firm was in trouble. The evidence goes unheeded, though the individual managers are aware of it. The organization as a whole cannot recognize impending threats, understand the implications of those threats or come up with alternatives. This is a reflection of these organizations failing to learn, which could be due to a number of reasons – they way they are designed and managed or the way people’s jobs are defined. Most importantly, the way we have all been taught to think and interact create fundamental learning disabilities. It is important that we learn to recognize when these disabilities occur and take corrective action.

  1. I am my position: We are trained to be loyal to our jobs – so much so that we confuse them with our own identities. When people in organizations focus only on their position, they have little sense of responsibility for the results produced when all positions across the organization interact. Moreover, when results are disappointing, it can be very difficult to know why and the default assumption is that “someone else screwed up”.
  2. The enemy is out there: Humans have the propensity to find someone or something outside ourselves to blame when things go wrong. In a Product Development organization, it is common for business analysts and testers to blame developers – “if only developers write quality code, we can satisfy customers”. Developers and business analysts blame testers – “if only QA tests important scenarios, we can prevent defects in production”. Testers and developers blame business analysts – “if only BAs provide proper requirements, we can deliver solutions that customers really need”. “The enemy is out there” syndrome is actually a by-product of “I am my position” , and the non-systemic ways of looking at the world that it fosters.
  3. The illusion of taking charge: Many a times, managers proclaim the need for taking charge in facing difficult problems, be proactive in approach rather than react. But if we simply become more aggressive fighting “the enemy out there”, we are only reacting. True proactiveness comes from seeing how we contribute to our own problems.
  4. The fixation on events: Conversations in many organizations are dominated by concern with short-term events like new budget cuts, who just got promoted or fired, missed milestone, etc. Our fixation of events is actually part of our evolutionary programming where our ancestors primarily needed only the ability to react to immediate threats to survive another day. However, if we focus on just events, the best we can ever do is predict an event before it happens so that we can react optimally. But we can never learn to create.
  5. The parable of the boiled frog: If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to scramble out. But if it is water at room temperature that is heated slowly, it will become groggier until it is unable to climb out of the pot. Similarly, we are also tuned to sensing sudden changes in our environment, but not to slow, gradual changes. We slip into what is famously referred as comfort zone and becomes very difficult to get out of it.
  6. The delusion of learning from experience: We learn from our experience but never directly experience the consequences of many of our important decisions. The most critical decisions made in organizations have systemwide consequences that stretch over years or decades.
  7. The myth of the management team: Every organization has a management team that is a collection of savvy, experienced managers who represent the organization’s different functions and areas of expertise. All too often, the managers tend to spend time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally and pretending that everyone is behind the team’s collective strategy.

This book covers these learning disabilities to highlight the need for the five disciplines of the learning organization. After I read this book ten years back, I consciously take a step back once in a while to introspect and look for any of these disabilities in myself and try to overcome if I found any.

The Laws of the Fifth Discipline: Systems Thinking that enables understanding complexity is the cornerstone of the learning organization. The eleven laws of this discipline helps us look at problems and opportunities holistically and avoid pitfalls of siloed thinking.

  1. Today’s problems come from yesterday’s “solutions”: Often we are puzzled by the causes of our problems, when we merely need to look at our own solutions to other problems in the past. For example – an organization that prioritizes reducing time to market thereby rushing a product to the market ends up dealing with quality issues and frustrated customers. Solutions that merely shift problems from one part of a system to another often go undetected because those who solved the first problem are different from those who inherit the new problem.
  2. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back: Well-intentioned interventions to solve a problem call forth responses from the system that offset the benefits of the intervention, this phenomenon is called “compensating feedback”. For example – a person quits smoking to become more healthy but ends up gaining weight and suffers such a loss in self-image that he takes up smoking again to relieve the stress. When our initial efforts fail to produce lasting improvements, we push harder without understanding compensating feedback.
  3. Behavior grows better before it grows worse: Low-leverage interventions to solve problems actually work in the short-term as compensating feedback usually involves a delay. We declare victory too early and a new problem eventually shows up elsewhere in the system that someone else needs to solve now.
  4. The easy way out usually leads back in: We find comfort applying familiar solutions to problems, sticking to what we know best as it is easy for us. Pushing harder on familiar solutions while fundamental problems persist or worsen is a reliable indicator of non-systemic thinking reflecting “what we need here is a bigger hammer” syndrome
  5. The cure can be worse than the disease: Sometimes familiar solutions are not only effective but also addictive and dangerous. Alcoholism may start as simple social drinking to relieve stress but causes addiction and bigger problem in the long-term.
  6. Faster is slower: Organizations often go for quick fixes for problems that deliver results fast but don’t last long, despite being aware that solutions that stick take longer to show results.
  7. Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space: We tend to address symptoms rather than root cause as symptoms are readily visible while the real causes might have occurred at a different time. The first step in correcting this mismatch is to let go of the notion that cause and effect are closely related in time and space.
  8. Small changes can produce big results – but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious: We are usually tempted to go for familiar solutions to problems as they are the most obvious and easy to understand and implement. Understanding the system as a whole and deep analysis to identify the real underlying issue will help identify those small changes that have the potential to deliver the most.
  9. You can have your cake and eat it too – but not at once: Sometimes the knottiest dilemmas, when seem from systems point of view, are not dilemmas at all. They may just be false dichotomies. For example, we might not have to make a choice between quality and cost. They may both go up in the short-term but reduced rework in the long-term can bring in the required cost savings.
  10. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants: Organizations are living systems that have integrity. Their character depends on the whole. Understanding the most challenging managerial issues require seeing the whole system that generates these issues. Dividing the system into silos can break this integrity.
  11. There is no blame: We tend to blame “others” for our problems. Systems thinking shows that there is no separate “other”, that you and the “other” are part of a single system.

Understanding the learning disabilities and the laws of systems thinking has helped me getting to the root of many problems over the years. It also prevented me from falling into the trap of familiar solutions that provide short-term relief but lead to bigger problems in the long-term.