Is too much of our work in organizations remedial? Do we have to pay more attention to how children and young people learn?

摘要

When an organization asks me to help a senior team work better together, much of my efforts are more akin to remedial education. Such teams may be malfunctioning because people do not get on with each other. Maybe if they learned how to do this when they were younger they would not have these problems. Teamworking capability is key in organizations. Some of the abilities needed include: 1. listening to others - and remembering what they say; 2. tolerance of different personalities; 3. awareness of emotions - understanding how people are feeling; 4. openness to ideas; and 5. giving everyone a say - not just the most talkative. The list can go on - but it is all fairly obvious and well-documented. Most people recognize what is needed. So why is it a problem in organizations? Why do they keep needing to hire people like me to help them sort these things out? There are a number of aspects to the problem but the one I want to pick up on here is the impact of schooling. In school the focus is on individual performance and on subject learning. If you help each other in a test it is called cheating and you get punished for it. Yet in organizations cheating is essential. It means working together and helping each other. The classroom is a throwback to a Victorian model of the office. The supervisor sat at the front of the office with clerks with quill pens arranged in serried ranks at desks, each under the watchful eye of the supervisor. Each individual performed regimented tasks under strict control. These offices gradually disappeared during the last century. However schools still work to this model. One commentator suggested that the only real change from Victorian times to now is from black to white - from the use of a blackboard to a whiteboard.