Facing Uncertainty, Fall, 2020
Roger Putzel
David
Alofsin has been using XB in our local high school for several years (the only
person to have succeeded with it in a traditional high school). A few days ago this
e-mail from him cracked open the present situation and OB’s and the CAO’s singular
opportunity.
“… We are back for in-service starting tomorrow...not really sure how to feel about the year just yet, but one way or the other we will see kids in a few weeks, and something will happen. Much like XB, this is learning by doing, we will have an experience, and something will come of it. Living CAO as life right now, I just wonder if there will be a struggle for power or how we will be effective!”
I wrote back: “Your simple note hits the nail right on the head: “living CAO as life right now.” I set XB up to make the most important elements the most obvious. And THE most important element is the learning cycle, which David Kolb conceived (and I re-labeled for XB) as a way of coping with experience. As a teacher in this situation I would emphasize the learning cycle using school events and changes as well as internal ones to run through the learning cycle.
[stop here if you’re in a hurry; the rest may get a TLDR]
Kolb is really the theorist of the hour. His learning cycle came into being as a tool for dealing with uncertainty. Lecturing (!) in our first-year business course, I used to stress to students that business and management often deal with unique situations and unpredictable environments. The classroom, the very center of the ivory tower, has traditionally been as insulated from the environment as possible – a great place to experiment. But universities opening this fall don’t even know if live classes can last more than a couple of weeks!
Kolb and the great consultant Dick Beckhard were my teachers at MIT from 1968 to 1970. MIT shut down both years, as I recall. Classes were called off, but Beckhard met with us in a “non-class” to talk about organizational change as it was happening.
Kolb had not published his learning-cycle book yet. I liked the cycle but, being new to the jargon of social science, could not relate to the adjective plus abstract noun labels he put on the four moments of the cycle (concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation). When designing XB, I did not catch up on Kolb’s work but translated the learning cycle into simple English and made each moment into a department (Observing, Understanding, Taking Responsibility, Doing). If students only remembered the names of the four departments of the organization, I reasoned, they would be remembering the most practical lesson of management.
This is the moment to begin by observing the complex situation unfolding around your class. Understanding should not be limited to OB material! If I were dean, I would require all students to take a crash course on public health (I had such a course in Peace Corps training in 1966). Understanding our present situation could also include a lot of history, politics, and management.
Next, the drama of management. My grad-school colleague Gib Akin had a sign over his desk that went something like this:
"The arts record and convey the fundamental values and ineffable experience of human civilization. The sciences propel the spirit of inquiry into the universe and undergird the ascent of mankind. Management applies artistic cultivation and scientific erudition to challenges that must be resolved by next Tuesday." [let me know if you can find the exact quote and source]
Taking Responsibility means using the key elements of understanding a situation, including your own goals, and designing a workable response. Doing means executing the response. Then you go around again.
Organizations at every level must respond. Kolb’s (or XB’s) learning cycle provides an excellent set of concepts for you to practice and for students to learn – for the next time.
Roger
Debby Thomas
Thanks Roger,
Tomorrow morning we start face-to-face classes at George Fox University. I’m the dean of the College of Business this year, what a year to step into leadership! Tomorrow my plan is to be fully available to my faculty. They are nervous: teaching in gymnasium make shift classrooms with new technology (that were completed today!), teaching in masks, to students in masks, sitting 6 feet apart, listening through headphones to their professors. Not only is teaching new and strange, heath concerns are top of mind. This is an experience none of us have ever had before. I’m going to go to their new and strange classrooms with them to make sure technology works, and be there when they are done to debrief, brainstorm and make plans to solve the existing problems. We are all living Kolb’s cycle, even the professors who have never heard of Kolb. The engineering professors are hard at work making portable whiteboards, because there aren’t white boards in the gyms, and have been making face shields with their 3-D printers all summer for all faculty and staff. People are being creative and solving problems. Some systems are completely broken and not working, others are emerging with new solutions we’ve not tried before but are working. It’s exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time. It’s a living CAO, with no guard rails of “it’s just a class”. It’s not a class this time, it’s our lives, and our students lives and their education. The stakes are real. So here we come Monday morning.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, my youngest (4th) daughter is a freshman engineering student at GFU and moved into the dorms on Friday. My third daughter is a senior nursing student at GFU. That makes it even more up close and personal for me and my family.
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