Requirement: 3.A.
Individual Learning Memo Assignment (Max 4 pages): write a final memo on what you have learned about action research.
a. What do you take with you to the next part of your program? Summarize your takeaways as bullet points on the last pages of your memo. (1 page)
b. Define your contribution to 1) the field of AR (practices and concepts) and to management literature more generally. Be quite specific, cite the literature, introduce your contribution as if at the start of a journal article on your project.
My contributions to the field of AR practices and concepts and management literature in general
Introduction: It would be very hard to overstate the benefits accrued from the power of applying the scientific method to the human condition over the last 3 centuries. But, just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean it is impossible. In fact it happens all the time, where claims of the objectively scientific ways of knowing are given preeminence in areas where the right to supremacy has not been earned. In many cases attempts to point out the limits of objectivism and technical, scientific rationality are met with the straw man argument that the questioner hates progress and would roll history back to the Dark Ages. It is entirely possible to concede the enormous benefits of science and the scientific method, and yet still observe that there a set of increasingly complex challenges that involve societies and human networks linked inextricably to the environment that do not lend themselves to reductionist, objective problem solving methods. In some cases, these wicked problems are driven by technology, and in some cases technology is a member of the supporting cast. It is clear that there is important problem solving work that needs to be done beyond the limits of scientific knowledge, a place where science is a respected point of view among many others that include multiple ways of knowing and accommodate the views of stakeholders who come from different points of view and with unique values and needs.
The rigor, objectivity, scalability and power of the application of the scientific method to Industrial Age production have had dramatic impacts on the quality of life and advancement of human progress in areas that are central to prosperity like agriculture, medicine, transportation, communication and manufacturing. The global growth of prosperity has raised standards of living as measured by per capita income, lifespan, eradication of diseases, and access to education. See Womack’s “The Machine That Changed The World” (2007ed.) for an example of how far we have come from Taylorism and yet still are faced with technologically induced sustainability challenges. The extraordinary growth has not been equally distributed, nor has it come without price. As technology has made the world a smaller place, and the consequences of human action are more widely and more immediately felt due to interconnectivity there is a growing sense of a need to consider how to live and grow in harmony. The combination of the promise of technology and the pervasive problems created by 2d and 3d order effects in human societies on our planet affords a rich environment for meaningful change where the status quo promises only greater harmful impacts. Addressing human sustainable needs through action research inside strong, science based cultures will be the focus of this chapter.
Specifically, I will be examining how the strong US Army culture can incorporate and institutionalize action research principles, practices and values in support of its mission to educate leaders and managers for success. The cognitive skills and emotional awareness that guide action research are in harmony with emerging Army leadership doctrine. That doctrine, however, has not been institutionalized yet in either units or schools, and the time is ripe to make progress in this direction.
Army culture characterized: It is true that from the outside, and at many times on the inside, Army culture can be characterized as male dominated, linear, scientific, hierarchical, action oriented, externally focused, protective of boundaries to the point of being insular, and reluctant to change, and by its nature adept in the use of force & violence and directive in nature. It wouldn’t be a shock to find these qualities listed in a sociology text as an operational definition of traditional masculine western culture. And yet, this is also a simplistic view of a culture. I suspect no culture can be so easily characterized, idealized and fit into neat boxes like that. Army culture also formally and informally values: initiative, humility, selfless service, speaking truth to power, listening, restraint, toleration of others, openness to new ideas, a tradition of service to others, and protecting the weak. The soldiers that constitute the forces come from a heritage of rugged individualism, and who have had a mistrust of formal authority and central authority. In short, there are elements of both yin and yang in Army culture. It is fair to say that it is a strong culture in that broad and local norms, once established, have much power and tradition.
Initial planning and inquiry: Based on this notion of strong culture, I began the AR effort with some assumptions that have not been proven through experience. This surprised me given my 25 years of experience in which being a judge of project merits and procedures has been a strength. I anticipated friction and developed contingency plans for a lot of resistance to our AR project. Instead of resistance though, I found enthusiastic acceptance for the opportunity of stakeholders to participate. The administration has been far more receptive than I expected, in part because there has been a growing awareness of a need to go beyond business as usual with respect to leader cognitive development. Johansson and Lindhult (2008) address the very real concerns about the tradeoff between the goals of the researcher and the client in any AR project.
In the chapter narrative, I would examine my 1st person learning, the 2d person learning of various groups of stakeholders, and the iterative nature of planning, action, and reflection to evolve the scope and methods of the project. My learning not only consisted of adapting my expectations, but a deliberate effort to change my personal communication methods and purposes that featured more cooperative engagement and mutual education instead of a tradition “marketing” approach to project management. Traditionally I might have had to stop the project and reorient deliberately in my own study and returned to engage later. In the AR project this adaptation and reorientation happened as part of normal business inside of stakeholder meetings. So there was some 1st and 2d person learning going on simultaneously. The eagerness and proficiency of the stakeholders in adopting AR practices and values is evidence of the power of 3d person AR. Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulson’s (2008) narrative of 1st person learning highlights the power and perhaps the saving grace of 1st person inquiry..
Action research meets a strong culture: I expected more resistance to the AR approach, since it represents a fundamentally different way of approaching problem solving. It doesn’t presume that we get problem identification and orientation and strategy sorted out up front and then execute a coordinated plan. It resists the idea that expertise resides in a single head and from a specific point of view. It is open to the possibility, and actually expects and seeks that our ongoing actions will lead to learnings that morph our team, our purpose and our outcome, and that we anticipate radical transformation to occur. These are values and outcomes that on the surface would challenge a strong culture based on values of certainty and control. And yet, because of the stated values of openness, democracy, honest inquiry and a commitment to shsared purpose AR actually aligns very strongly with many elements of Army culture which has always valued the insights of the lowest ranking private or lieutenant on the front lines where the real meaning of warfare is discovered. The AR project offered our administration a tested, systematic and insightful process of discovering the truth as we go, and the leadership was open to supporting the effort and expanding the scope as preliminary results came in.
The reflective learning in this part of the chapter would examine the relationships of strong cultures with AR principles. Looking for natural synergies and potential friction points and negotiating the pathways and practices of power is well addressed by Grant, Nelson and Mitchell (2008). Heron and Reason’s (2008) discussion of spirituality and charismatic learning is an example of the kind of AR that on first contact might have difficulty getting attention from a conventional organization concerned with maintaining a status quo.
More is better: AR makes the transformational pie bigger. The last bit of surprise for me was that I expected it to be more difficult to muster support for a broad set of initiatives that would emerge from multiple stakeholder inquiries, but in fact, since the stakeholders have shared a common central focus, their individual ideas have tended to be mutually supportive, and thus easier to implement as a bundle as compared to the traditional change management advice which suggests that you should narrow the scope and take change in smaller chunks, and build momentum linearly and sequentially. The momentum our project has, seems to be more like a wildfire with positive 2d and 3d order effects joining together. This has been a case of larger being better. In the same way that the power of a network is a power function of the number of nodes and connections, an AR project can gain leverage by incorporating more stakeholder groups. Surely there is an upper practical limit to what can be accomplished, however I have made limiting assumptions in the project before which proved to be unwarranted, so I am not prepared yet to put a cap on what can be possible when human ingenuity and positive spirit are harnessed in pursuit of worthy goals.
Schein (2008) has an excellent model and advice for approaching the client and the organization, which provides a framework for first actions, from which the development of future plans can spring, based on 3 dimensions: the source of the inquiry, the researcher’s degree of personal involvement, and the participant’s degree of personal involvement. Coupled with his insights into culture dynamics, this is an essential grounding for any researcher.
Ongoing contribution to AR in education: for me, a path is unfolding as the fog begins to lift. I am eager to do more work AR in an educational setting. I strongly believe that schools represent the infrastructure of the mind, and that by engaging schools, administration, teachers, students, community, and researchers, we have an opportunity to create learning that lasts and have it reflected in fundamental structural infrastructure in terms of process, standards of practice, in the classroom and beyond. The literature of AR in education seems mostly to take the form of teachers using 1st person AR to improve their own practice. I am thinking of Jack Whitehead and his circle of influence; they have some presence on YouTube for instance. The Levin and Greenwood (2008) article from the Handbook seems like a call to action to re-vitalize the 2d and 3d person inquiries within education.
Another powerful aspect of AR in the Army classroom is the effect of empowering student voices in their own presentational knowledge. The liberating effect has important consequences for officers who will turn around and lead large units of soldiers. It would be natural to expect them to be better listeners and inquirers when they are in positions of power when they have seen the benefits of engagement and democracy when in a traditionally subordinate role of studenmt in a classroom. This phenomenon was well described by Chowns (2008) in her work with the children of terminally ill parents.
In the world of educational best practices in learning organizations and schools in particular, Senge’s (2001) work on Learning Organizations and his 5th Discipline Handbook “Schools That Learn”, is of interest because his reputation as a thought leader gives him access to the mind space of decision makers in many disciplines. AR in name is conspicuously absent from the index and table of contents, although a quick scan finds a number of AR-like topics and concepts in the mix of descriptions of and prescriptions for best practices. Senge (2001) (p.362) shows a nice “systems over time” diagram that shows the detrimental effect of increased resourcing of quick fixes at the expense of fundamental change and capacity building which leads to predictable decreased performance AND loss of capacity.
To me, any truly revolutionary, evolutionary attitude/approach that seeks to promote long term, infrastructure based change-that-lasts must engage education or we’ll always be trying to “fix things on the margin”, dealing with the short comings that our non-evolved, unconscious education system produces. Levin and Greenwood’s (2008) challenge the AR community to address educational infrastructure in their call to action for more AR in the university.
An argument against AR, especially in education, is that it can seem to represent a longer term commitment in time and other resources as compared to hiring/buying a commercial off the shelf expert/solution. Only by examining “systems over time” impacts do you appreciate the potential cost-effectiveness of an AR solution, a cost-effectiveness that is applied to meaningful results in problems that matter.
These are the things that have most affected me this term and have caused behavioral change that seems to be lasting, which for me is an operational definition of learning.
1. The 4 ways of knowing: experiential, presentational, propositional, practical. I see these now more explicitly in lessons I am preparing and constructing in the college. I evaluate claims for knowledge on the basis of this framework. I look for opportunities to integrate all 4 in all lessons. I have introduced the idea into our faculty development program, since there is synergy with our stated educational philosophy.
2. Unproductive communication exercise: a useful set of techniques to formally and systematically reflect on problem areas. This is a tough area for me as a generally effective communicator, to spend time and effort and re-work what comes so easily for me. But we know in business for example you get great value by expanding your strengths not just addressing weaknesses. Has made me more conscious of my communication methods and frameworks.
3. The Leadership Development Profile: Torbert’s intriguing and useful model for engaging organizations in transformation on a grand scale through self-awareness and a calibrate sense of what’s possible and anticipating friction points. I haven’t been able to apply it yet but I can see how powerful it will be inside my college, because it provides an organizational scaffolding around work we are already doing with individual leader transformation.
4. Simultaneous 1st, 2d, and 3d person inquiry: I appreciated from the paired assignments, supplemented by the readings that there can be simultaneous learning loops in practice. My exposure to traditional change management techniques has been much more sequential and single task focused. There is a lot of momentum for change that can be generated when approached on multiple paths simultaneously.
5. Transparency in research in action: It has been very liberating to approach the AR project from an explicitly transparent perspective, with my needs, values and goals up front, and encourage the stakeholders (who are at first invited to be stakeholders) to do the same to find the maximum area of common interest to exploit. Transparency in education has been a new topic introduced by our Commandant and it matches up well with the values of AR: democracy, empowerment, and building capacity among others.
6. Systems Thinking: The Ray Ison article in the handbook is a treasure of clarity and conciseness, and comes along right when I need it to be able to engage our developers with generating the requirements for leaders cognitive skills, many of which are sensed to be from the field of systems thinking.
7. Variety of experience and perspective, linked by common framework: On 2d and 3d readings and after reflection I have come to value the sharing of different perspectives and experiences contained in the Handbook. There are many insights and techniques that I initially set aside as non-relevant to me, but after adopting a wider perspective and accepting that in the future I may very well be partnering with people for whom those insights and techniques may have major value, I have come to appreciate the broadening of my horizons.
8. Iterative Learning & Doing: This could also read Learning by Doing, and Doing the Learning, since they are happening simultaneously and incorporate both the action and research components of the discipline. In the act of writing this bullet, this additional meaning of Action Research crystallized, since I am now seeing that regardless of which “phase” of the project you are in, you never stop doing research and you never stop acting on your knowledge.
9. Potential for AR in Education: Covered at greater length in the preceding pages, but it is clear to me that since infrastructure is a necessary part of learning/change that lasts, that AR must be a part of the education system, or we will continually be producing the kinds of wicked messes that require AR to address in the future. Unless AR is somehow integrated into our “fire prevention” in the ways people learn to think and work and share together, then AR will be focusing on “fire fighting” after the initial damage has been done.
10. Practicality: for all the concern I initially had about the field of Ar being soft and fuzzy, filled with the kind of breathless fervor I negatively associate with true believers, I m seeing more and more the practicality of the philosophy, the integrity of the commitment to values I support, and the practicality of its methods and purposes inside my own work and life environment. It resonates with other experiences I have had, positive and negative, in the change management, quality and systems movements and I now see it as a practical discipline for achieving important change that lasts.
Bibliography:
Chowns, G. (2008). No- you don’t know how we feel. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. (pp 562-572). London, Sage Publications, Ltd.
Grant, J., Nelson, G., & Mitchell, T. (2008). Negotiating the challenges of participatory action research: Relationships, power, participation, change and credibility. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. (pp 589-601). London, Sage Publications, Ltd.
Heron, J. & Lahood, G. (2008). Charismatic inquiry in concert: Action research in the realm of “the Between”. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. (pp 439-449). London, Sage Publications, Ltd.
Johansson, A., & Lindhult, E. (2008). Emancipation or workability?. Action Research, 6(1), 95-115.
Kristiansen, M. & Bloch-Poulson, J. (2008). Working with “Not Knowing”, amid power dynamics among managers. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. (pp 463-472). London, Sage Publications, Ltd.
Levin, M.& Greenwood, D. (2008). The future of universities: Action research. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. (pp 211-226). London, Sage Publications, Ltd.
Schein, E, (2008). Clinical inquiry/research. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. (pp 265-279). London, Sage Publications, Ltd.
Senge, P., Cambron-McCabe, N, Lucas, T., Smith, B., Dutton, J. & Kleiner, A. (2001). Schools that learn: A Fifth Discipline fieldbook for educators, parents, and everyone who cares about education(5th ed). New York. Doubleday.
Torbert,W. & Taylor, S. (2008). Action inquiry: Interweaving multiple qualities of attention for timely action. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. (pp 239-251). London, Sage Publications, Ltd.
Womack, J., Jones, D., & Roos, D. (2007). The machine that changed the world: The story of lean production- Toyota’s secret weapon in the global car wars that is revolutionizing world industry. New York. Simon & Schuster, Inc.