The Fourth Discipline

The Fourth Discipline: Team Learning

Aligning personal vision with organizational vision isn’t a matter of chance, or even simply a matter of good hiring practices (though hiring personnel with compatible visions would be a start)—it is a matter of practice and process. Senge calls this process “team learning” (p. 236), and describes it as a discipline marked by “three critical dimensions:

● the ability to think insightfully about complex issues
● the ability to act in innovative and coordinated ways
● the ability to play different roles on different teams” (p. 236).

The importance of teamwork in business communications has not been ignored by the field of business communication. Our textbooks acknowledge its importance, and many of us integrate group assignments and collaborative projects into the curriculum. It is also an important subject of research in the field, (Mescon, Bovée and Thill, 1999; Wambeam and Kramer, 1996; Ede and Lunsford, 1994; Lay and Karis, 1991; Bosley, 1991; among others).

“Despite its importance, team learning remains poorly understood” (Senge, p. 238). We are a nation of rugged individualists, and many of my students resist working in teams, often expressing a concern that they will lose control over their individual grades. The traditional nature of the university, with its “Dean’s Lists” and emphasis on individual scholarship, individual achievement, and individual grades is a powerful force working against the kind of team learning experience so important to success in business. When I began teaching in my institution, I was given a copy of McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, a handbook for college teachers now in its eleventh edition. It certainly encourages collaboration, but only devotes two pages of a 371- page text to “Team Learning,” while devoting entire chapters to subjects such as “lecturing” and “teaching large classes.” Unfortunately, preaching the importance of collaboration does little to develop the discipline of team learning. The discipline is only developed through practice.

Team Learning in the Classroom

One way I have encouraged team learning in the classroom is through the use of a “learning history assignment.” The learning history is an emerging business report genre which was developed by Art Kleiner and George Roth of MIT’s Center for Organizational Learning, which Senge directed. The genre is a kind of analytical report which typically has been used to analyze a recent event, or series of events, in an organization’s history, and to learn from that experience. However, it is a genre that goes well beyond the kind of “lessons learned” reports which organizations have traditionally used for this type of activity.

One thing that makes the learning history unique, is that it is a report that is written in many voices. Kleiner and Roth like to use the metaphor of a tribe gathered around a campfire, telling a story. In this “jointly-told tale,” “managers, factory line workers, secretaries, and outsiders such as customers, advertising copy writers, or suppliers, tell their part of the tale” (Kleiner and Roth, p.2).

Another unique feature of the learning history is its format. A learning history typically consists of three parts: single column text which briefly describes the events being discussed, and transitions from event to event. This part of the text is typically written by a single team member, but revised by taking into account comments from the entire team. The right hand column consists of the jointly told tale: the rich mix of individual voices telling their versions of “what happened.” Each participant gives their own range of thoughts, observations, and emotional reactions to the events which occurred. The left hand column consists of the analysis. Typically, analysis of the material is performed by a team which includes both constituents and outside consultants, who code the rich verbal data from the right hand column, and distill it into information which can be used to make the organization better.

In my assignment, the subject of the learning history is our own classroom. Four times during the semester, each student will submit their individual contributions to the jointly told tale describing what occurred in the classroom. I make this a “low-stakes,” un-graded assignment, and take steps to give students the anonymity they need to honestly respond to classroom events. During another four sessions, students are assigned to teams which must do the analytical work of the left-hand column. In these teams they are asked, at different times, to engage in reflection, inquiry, and dialogue, three completely different processes. Thus this assignment asks students to engage in each of the three critical dimensions of team learning which Senge describes.

Team Learning in Research

At its very core, the learning history is a research genre, and it has been used by Kleiner and Roth to research complex business problems at Fortune 500 companies such as Ford and IBM. However, it is the kind of research genre which potentially could be a major component of academic research into business communication.

References

Bosley, D.S. (1991). Designing effective technical communication teams. Technical
Communication 38:4 (pp. 504-512).

Ede, L.A., & Lunsford, A.A. (1994). "Collaborative authorship and the teaching of
writing." In M. Woodmansee & P. Jaszi (Eds.). The construction of authorship:
Textual appropriation in law and literature. Durham: Duke University Press
(pp. 417-438).

Gay, G., Sturgil, A., Martin, W., & Huttenlocher, D. (1999). "Document-centered peer
collaborations: An exploration of the educational uses of networked
communication technologies." Journal of Computer Mediated Communication,
4:3.

Kleiner, A., & Roth, G. (1997). "Learning histories: A new tool for turning
organizational experience into action. New 21st Century Working Papers Series.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for Coordination Science"
(http://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/mit21c/002.html).

Lay, M.M., & Karis, W.M. (Eds). (1991). Collaborative writing in industry:
Investigations in theory and practice. Amityville, NY: Baywood.

McKeachie, W.J. (2002). McKeachie’s teaching tips (11th ed.). Boston: Houghton-
Mifflin.

Mescon, M.H., Bovée, C.L., & Thill, J.V. (1999). Business today. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice Hall.

Senge, P.M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning
organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.

Shah, R. (2001). Relational praxis in transition towards sustainability: Business-NGO
collaboration and participatory action research. Doctoral dissertation.
University of Bath, UK. (http://www.bath.ac.uk/carpp/RupeshShah/TitlePage.htm).

Wambeam, C.A., & Kramer, R. (1996). "Design teams and the web: A collaborative
model for the workplace." Technical Communication 43:4 (pp. 349-356).

The Third Discipline

The third discipline that Senge describes in The Fifth Discipline is shared vision. As professional writers we often think of our personal vision, "What do I have to say?" However, I think our growth as writer-researchers will really come when we start asking the question, "what do I want to create with my audience?" Once a writer starts focusing on this question, the writing process becomes a rhetorical process--a process of the joint creation of meaning. Not just the writer having her say, but the readers having their say also.

Although this vision is shared, it doesn't come from "outside" the writer. All visions worth creating are centered within the personal aspirations of the writer. As Michael Nielsen writes in the article I Linked to in the previous blog: "The foundation of effective research is a strong motivation or desire to do research. If research is not incredibly exciting, rewarding and enjoyable, at least some of the time, then why not do something else that is?"

Too many times in our lives, we miss this point. For "practical" reasons we take on work which is not only unfulfilling, but actually destructive to the personal vision we hold. Now there are perfectly legitimate reasons to work jobs that aren't the "jobs of our dreams," but even work taken on to support self or family needs to be aligned in some way with your vision--if not, it will suck the life out of you as a writer.

The Second Discipline, Revisited

I found a great blog entry that speaks to research! I strongly recommend each of you read it!http://www.qinfo.org/people/nielsen/blog/archive/000120.html

I've been thinking some more about Senge's second discipline, mental models. Specifically, I've been thinking about the idea of genre as a mental model, and how the way we mentally position ourselves in relationship to knowledge affects the way we think! (Is the concept of "mentally positioning" oneself an example of what Lefebvre means by a "representational" or "conceived" space?).

In English studies, we have been trained to think of genres, or types of texts, in terms of their classification. For example, in our literature classes we learn about major genres such as prose, poetry, and drama, as well as subgenres such as the detective story and the lyric poem. When we study media, we might learn about television genres such as the sitcom, the serial drama, and the reality show. And in business report writing, we might learn such subgenres as the trip report, the analytical research report, or the informational white paper. When he position ourselves to think about texts in this way, we position ourselves as consumers of texts. We learn enough about the genre so that we can discern the differences between them. We may also learn some generic expectations as we gain experience from reading these texts.

As writers, we should be thinking about genres in a different way--in other words, I'm arguing that as writers, we must shift our "mental models" of what a genre is. As writers, we need to see genres in terms of the production of texts.

I believe that as writers, we need to analyze genres we plan to work in, just as we should analyze the audiences we are hoping to reach. In my dissertation, I analyzed genres in terms of three "fields" which seem to make up what we mean by the term "genre." First, I examined the "social image" of the genre we call "the manifesto," beginning with the image created by an influential and early example of the genre, Martin Luther's "Ninety-Five Theses." I looked at this "social image" of the genre by examining visual reproductions of Luther posting his theses as a subject matter for paintings and woodcuts, as well as descriptions of the text. Secondly, I examined the "rhetorical dynamics of the genre," in terms of the relationships it creates between reader, writer, text, and knowledge. My analysis here considered power relationships, the exigency offer purpose of the text, and spatial or temporal relations inscribed by the text. Finally, I examined the "formal features" of the text. This included such factors as typical formats, recurring textual features, use of visuals and typefaces, linguistic style, and register. By looking at these three fields I was able to gain a more complete understanding of how the genre works that I would gain by simply "reading" in the genre.

Why analyze genres? To become more astute at writing in the genre. And even more importantly, as a writer who wants to create or innovate--before we modify, or even challenge a generic convention, we need to understand the full impact of such a convention. Genre analysis will help us build better texts by building better genres!

Blogging Again!

Here is an updated link to student blogs:

Rebecca: http://rebeccamanley.blogspot.com
Robin: http://robzat.blogspot.com/
Sarah: http://sarahhill.blogspot.com
Gina: http://stiltnergl.blogspot.com/
J.D.: http://roserants.blogspot.com
Vanessa: http://www.livejournal.com/users/indianagirl
Dawn: http://dawnluebke.blogspot.com
Jason: http://rashon.blogspot.com
Chad: http://blaicrw462.blogspot.com
Allison: http://edialli.blogspot.com
Devon: http://DJBEng462.blogspot.com

The one excuse I will allow myself for not blogging, is work on those writing projects I have talked about. In a previous blog, I mentioned the auto-ethnography I received a grant to write. That paper is finally finished!!! Its title is: "Public Spaces, Private Spaces, Military Spaces:
How I Wrote My Way Into the Gays-in-the-Military Debate."

Tomorrow we return to our discussions of empirical research!

The Second Discipline

The Second Discipline.

According to Senge, the second discipline, mental models, is based upon the “deeply held internal images of how the world works.” These images can be trouble if “they limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting” (174). Mental models are structures, processes, and frameworks around which we organize our thinking and actions. Like all such forms, they have the power to both enable us, or to constrain us.

In thinking about writing, the first framework that comes to mind is “the writing process.” The steps of the writing process: invention, research, arrangement, drafting critiquing, revising, editing, and publishing can be a very useful heuristic tool when you are facing difficult writing tasks. However there are situations where the writing process can actually limit your writing. For example, I know a middle school teacher who requires every student who writes a research report to put all the ideas they find on index cards. The same teacher requires an outline of the report before the writer starts writing a draft. This sort of inflexible attitude towards the writing process tends to make students see it as a set of rules which must be followed. The writer taught in such a way is unlikely to discover his or her own best writing processes. For example, some students prefer to cut and paste information found on the internet onto electronic versions of the teacher’s index cards. Other students may discover that they prefer to build an annotated bibliography. Other students find that they work better reading over the research, making notes to themselves, and then come back to the research during the drafting stage to get specific quotations or information. It is also important that the writing process does not have to be “done in order,” nor should a writer go through every step of the writing process for every piece of writing. Business writers and journalists, among others, often write under conditions in which there is a “deadline” imposed, and sometimes those deadlines are impossible to meet if you feel you have to go through each step of the writing process.

Genres are another mental model, the model texts we “have in mind” as we face recurring rhetorical situations where we are called to write. Too often we teach business genres as if they are rules, conventions which must be obeyed at all times. If that were true, then every piece of business correspondence ever written would tend to follow the same patterns or formats. We know that is not the case. The business letter of today, with its clean block format, and use of white space to separate paragraphs is very different from the genre I learned during my undergraduate years. The lesson is this: mental models are not rules and processes “imposed” by an outside authority. They are “our rules, our processes.” That means we have the agency, the freedom, even the responsibility to modify them in such a way to make them work better for us as writers, and for our readers.

The Examined Life

It’s not enough to have an idea for a book—even a fairly well defined concept such as my own idea of a book examining writing for a learning organization—developing a good book proposal involves more than simply describing an idea, it requires significant research.

In my own case, I need to discover more about “learning organizations” if I am going to be able to talk about writing for them.

In his book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge says that learning organizations emerge out of groups of individuals and teams who practice five disciplines. Therefore, a first place to go to determine “what do I need to know?” is to ask myself, what do I know about each of these disciplines? Today, I will approach the first.

Senge says the first discipline is “personal mastery…the mastery of personal growth and knowing” (141). According to Senge’s vision of the future, in a knowledge-based economy, the successful organizations will be those that are made up of self-actuated creative workers, rather than the “Taylorist,” worker as cog-in-the-machine model upon which traditional management principles are based. The problem is—how do we encourage people to become more self-sufficient, more creative? I think that answer lies in many of the traditions of humanistic education.

According to Plato, Socrates, at his trial, explaining why he could not hold his tongue, proclaimed, “the unexamined life is not worth living” (210). The idea here is simple: if there are two persons, one with a map, the other without, which is more likely to arrive at their destination? The person with the map.

The problem is, many, maybe most, people avoid the kind of self-examination Socrates advocates. It is safer to follow. Safer than taking paths that end in a hemlock cocktail.

Self-examination leads to visions, to dreams. Now, one response to a dream, or a vision, might be to become depressed—after all, present reality is a long way from the dream. However, what Senge and others point out, it is that gap between the future vision and the present reality is what motivates people and organizations to change!

I need to do more research. Who else in the Organizational Learning movement has written about “personal mastery?” What about people in my own field of writing—certainly there has been a great deal written about “self-reflection” in writing. I need to look at Peter Elbow’s book, Writing without Teachers. I also should look at contemporary philosophers. Robert Novick has a book called The Examined Life. I should also read that.

An initial reading list: that’s a beginning!


Works Cited

Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline. New York: Currency, 1990.

Plato. “Apology.” The Dialogues of Plato. Tr. J. Harwards. Chicago: Brittanica/Great
Books, 1952.

Recharging Your Batteries!

Friday, I attended the poetry reading celebrating nonviolence at IPFW. Listening to poetry read aloud is always a pleasure for me. It increases my energy, recharges my spirit! I understand there are very good poets (Norman Dubie is one who comes to mind) who don't see poetry this way, but I have always found the strength of a poem to be associated with the pleasure it gives when it's heard. I'm not claiming all poetry should be lyric, or songlike. In fact, my own preferred mode as a poet is closer to narrative than lyric.

Having said that, I want to emphasize something that I think I said in the "lost" comment I made to Rebecca's first blog. While I have worked very hard to stress the commonalities shared between the research done by fiction writers, poets, academic researchers, business and technical researchers, and teachers, there are differences. And while all work with the "stuff" of knowledge, the percepts, affects, and concepts, the so-called creative writers work with the knowledge in a quite different way. I think it has to do with the kind of "illumination" Rebecca talks about. The great cultural theorist, Walter Benjamin called this the "aura" of great art. The French philosopher Deleuze said something to the effect that, in the hands of the artist, the percept became more than a perception, the affect more than an emotion.

What do you think?

Finally, A Routine

I think I'm finally settling into a workable routine here. Write in my blog one day, read and interact with student blogs the next. Part of today's blog is an extension of the class discussion on knowledge. But instead of writing it directly into today's blog, it fit better as a response to Rebecca's blog: http://rdmanley.blogspot.com/2004/09/observing-moon-shadows.html


Most students in our class have chosen to write blogs rather than conventional journals. Each has their advantages as a genre. Here are the rest of the addresses: check out what your fellow students have done--check out the comments, or make a comment of your own!
Robin: http://robzat.blogspot.com/
Sarah: http://sarahhill.blogspot.com
Gina: http://stiltnergl.blogspot.com/
J.D.: http://roserants.blogspot.com
Ashley: http://ashleyg123.blogspot.com
Vanessa: http://www.livejournal.com/users/indianagirl
Dawn: http://dawnluebke.blogspot.com
Jason: http://rashon.blogspot.com
Chad: http://blaicrw462.blogspot.com
Allison: http://edialli.blogspot.com
Devon: http://DJBEng462.blogspot.com

I now want to turn to my own professional writing projects. After much thinking, I have decided that the article for UC Santa Barbara I previously discussed is probably not the best subject for this blog. Why? Because it's a project already written in the draft stage. So I will select another idea, an idea that is nagging on my mind. Those students who have taken my W331 class in Business Report Writing (Chad, Jason), or are taking it now (Devon, Rebecca), are aware of my interest in the "organizational learning" movement. The kernel of my interest comes from a quote from Management Guru Peter Drucker, now in his 90s and still writing, who states that the "key questions of the knowledge worker and of the knowledge-worker's productivity will, within a few decades, bring about fundamental changes in the very structure and nature of the economic system" (94). I believe those changes are already beginning to emerge through the organizational learning movement, as more corporations, particularly knowledge-based corporations such as Google, are moving to corporate structures which are less hierarchical and controlling, and more decentralized and focused on empowering their knowledge workers.

In investigating this issue, I ask my students in W331 to read Senge's The Fifth Discipline, one of the foundational texts of the organizational learning movement, and I ask them to consider this question: what would writing practices look like in a learning organization? Since the "learning organization" is in many ways a "business utopia," I am asking them to imagine what those practices might be. Why is this question important to me? As a teacher of business writing, I believe that the business writing genres, like all genres, both constrain and empower writers. These genres have been defined and created by business practice and business structures, but they also act upon those business practices and business structures. I guess you could say that I believe that writing can be both a signal and an agent for the kind of structural change that Drucker talks about!

Works Cited:

Drucker, Peter. "Knowledge-Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge." California Management Review 41:2 (Winter 1999): 79-94.

Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline. New York: Currency, 1990.

Get Back on that Horse!

From my reading, and my own publication record, slim as it is, I have come to believe that the single, most important secret to succeeding as a professional writer is this—you must write, and you must not let other pressures of life come between you and your writing.

I’m intentionally marginalizing other equally important, or even more important, parts of our lives here. But my purpose here is not to ignore the importance of other work and family members. My point is this: if the call to write is in you, you need to heed it. Writing often requires you to seek knowledge which is difficult, even painfully difficult, to reach. Sometimes we will find ourselves doing everything except the writing. I’ve discovered one of the best ways of getting your closets organized is to take on a particularly difficult task of researched writing.

I raise this issue today because it has been six days since I last wrote in my blog. I’m sure I accomplished many important tasks in those six days. But what I haven’t done is write!