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of our programmes

Successful work in teams and management of teams requires the surfacing of mental models which lie behind and influence the perceptions and assumptions of our clients, our colleagues, our companies and ourselves.  This course can be supplemented with executive coaching on an individual basis.  It will teach the basic technical and managerial competencies and the negotiation and communication tools widely used in Learning Organization settings to encourage personal, team and organizational success in customer-service projects. It will also use recent books on Knowledge Management from the Harvard Business School Press to teach the importance of knowing what knowledge the organization posesses and will demonstrate proven techniques for managing creativity and innovation.

2. The Setting

This hands-on session can be given to groups of between 10 and 12 project managers who already speak good English or understand it well.  They will acquire up-to-date business vocabulary while learning about an important aspect of how the best international product and services companies such as Intel, Chaparral Steel, Sony, Xerox and Hewlett Packard continually stay competitive through learning faster than their competitors. There will be two team learning sessions.  They will last five days each (9.30 am to 5 pm). Between the two sessions, participants will transmit their learning to their project team members and work on using the skills and concepts learned in the first session. The Team Learning exercise will necessitate participants networking between sessions, either in face-to-face peer groups or via groupware (in this case, Lotus Notes). The Systèmes & Ressources consultant will facilitate the networking process. The setting will be made comfortable for learning. The emphasis throughout will be on how to creatively surface patterns of defensiveness to show how to avoid destructive individual and organizational behaviours.

3. The Method

Each session will be extremely interactive. Participants will become acquainted with Learning Organization theory (based on systems thinking, mental models, personal mastery, shared vision and team learning) and then begin to put the theory into use in small case studies. There will be different levels of English language competency within the group. However this will be a good example of where the more proficient members of the group in one discipline (English) will be expected to play a strong role in that area while getting the best out of their colleagues' superior proficiency in another area (suggesting ideas, shaping ideas, etc.). The facilitator's role will be to reduce reluctance to participate by sweeping the students along in the role-play exercises which will punctuate the three sessions.

4. The Sessions : This is a description of the 1st session to prepare for hands-on work

4.1 Why the emphasis on Team Learning ?

4.1.1. Ice-breaker : participants will be asked to present themselves in a playful, safe way in English, their personal interests, professional interests, hobbies, special experiences, by writing a few words or drawing on a white board and by saying what sort of historical personage or literary hero they would have liked to have been.

4.1.2. Examples will be given from Peter Senge's work and from recent books published by Harvard Business School : "The Innovators Dilemma" and "WellSprings of Knowledge" which will show how some hierarchical organizations such as Sears, certain computer hard disk manufacturers (Quantum, Seagate), and major American steel manufacturers were nearly driven into oblivion because they were blindsided by organizational learning disabilities. (In many cases the companies which took their markets were started up by former employees who had not been able to get their ideas heard in the more hierarchical organisation).

This part will also have a handout on the "intellectual capital" formation process described by Nonaka and Takeuchi in their ground-breaking 1995 book "The Knowledge-Creating Company" which describes how knowledge increases as the tacit knowledge of individual participants is made explicit within the group and then becomes tacit knowledge at a higher level.

4.1.3. Explain the importance of being aware of the company's strategic objective : does it want to be number 1 in its industry, just make an adequate return on capital or (for non-profits) satisfy its mandate? How can mental models help or hinder organizational learning ? How to be aware of one's own role, one's own needs, one's own learning style within that strategic setting. Use will be made of Kolb's learning cycle to help participants if they prefer action, reflexion, introduction of new theories or pragmatic use of new learning in familiar settings. Administer a Keirsey type questionnaire, which will probably take about 20 minutes to fill in, with students helping each other. Hand out a brief explanation of the different types (INFP, ISFP, etc.) and provoke group discussion. Then move onto Belbin's team roles followed by group discussion : are the participants more happy with the team-worker role, the chairman role, the resource investigator role, etc. Then do a role-play around a business topic which will draw on the Myers Briggs Types, the preferred learning styles and the preferred team role to demonstrate how personal traits can lead to organizational defensiveness and how that can be avoided.

4.2 Personal Communications within the Team and How to Fix Objectives & Priorities

4.2.1. Based on the concept that within the project team there should be mutual dependencies, individual objectives and personal visions which lead to a shared vision.

4.2.2. How to use a creative management technique (NLP) to set personal objectives (visioning) and how to set one's own criteria for success within the project.

4.2.3. How to interact with other team members : active listening, open and closed questions, reformulating the other person's ideas, creating rapport, acting as a consultant (problem-finding) and not as a salesman (solution-selling).

4.2.4. There will be various exercises in groups to demonstrate the practical application of Kolb's learning cycle. The concept of active listening will be explained and then person A will talk in English about a favourite book for five minutes while person B listens and reformulates while person C observes. C will give his/her comments. Then person B will talk and then person C, etc. When the participants are back in the main group there will be a feedback and question and answer session.

4.2.5. There will also be a role-play in groups of three on being a consultant to a client (or another team member) and accepting the client's formulation of a problem.

4.3. Systems Thinking, Innovation & Creativity

4.3.1. Give the different concepts behind the use of systems thinking and creative management, explain some of the settings (quality circles, project teams) and techniques (brainstorming, gap analysis, technology monitoring, checklists)

4.3.2. Give examples of outdated or non-performing systems and other obstacles to creativity and innovation (groupthink, organizational defence mechanisms, cognitive biases--using the MBTI type example).

4.3.3. Finish up with a creative problem solving exercise within the group. All participants will be asked to propose a business problem. One problem will be chosen and the group will go through a problem definition, brainstorming and options evaluation exercise in English, while referring back to the problem owner to make sure that they are on the right track.

After the first session, participants will go back to the teams they manage, tell them what they have learned and begin, say, a customer-based project (say "Improve customer perception of service by ...% by ...date) with their teams, while using the concepts given during the first session.

Participants, after working on their project for between 5-8 weeks, will come back and give individual presentations to their peers. The project with the best outcomes will be chosen and then the team will go further into depth in change management techniques to benchmark the most successful project and transfer the learning to their own area of responsibility.

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