From STS Roundtable

STS/RT Memphis 2008

What did I learn in Memphis about STS in the new world of work?

Socio-technical Systems (STS) theory and practice has been viewed by some as an outdated, unwieldy, and dying form of organization design. Yet, in Memphis, we came to see once again just how vital and important the practice of STS is and can be in today’s complex organizational context.

The Memphis experience deepened our knowledge about the future of work design. From Bert Painter’s presentation (“Global Value Networks and STS Design”, presentation to the STS/RT, Inc. 2008 Annual Meeting, Memphis, TN, October 16-18, 2008), it became clear that the new organization form, a global complex, network system, is truly becoming pervasive; seventy percent of work today is ‘tacit’ work that takes the form of information processing in order to create knowledge and innovate.

We experienced a speed-networking exercise that left us feeling both energized by all the new contacts, while at the same time dissatisfied with the confusion, speed and briefness of contact. This exercise created a clear image of what people experience – good and bad - in today’s organizations. While before it was the ‘assembly lines’ that disconnected a person from work, today it is the speed of change and the network forms that can produce the same alienation – instead of churning out parts, people now churn through relationships to get the work done.

This new and networked form of work has the potential to provide greater freedom, flexibility and creativity. It can also, if not designed right, have opposite effects where roles are confused by the merging of strategic and operational work and by continuous project-like multi-disciplinary work. Employees can, and do, feel abandoned as they are put into temporary roles or sent to work in other companies; they can begin to question their commitment to their organizations as a result. It may then feel like there are no ‘organizing’ rules, so to deal with the chaos people make up their own rules. This kind of innovation for adaptability (innovation that seeks to make sense of the chaos) can produce good results, but only if it is aligned with the larger system’s mission, vision and goals. Bert Painter also says that not only “can” employees/workers “feel abandoned”, there is lots of (at least) anecdotal evidence that employees/workers DO feel “alone” in these global networks. Employees can retreat into a form of anomie, but the really innovative network organizations have discovered ways for people to find a “home”/a sense of belonging within some part or “place” within the network. So what are the ‘designs’ for this kind of organization? What does this mean for the STS designing process and designer role?

STS is very relevant for this new organizational form because effective collaboration that is the foundation of this new form cannot be achieved simply by improving relationships/culture (the OD premise) or by improving Information Technology (IT) and communication tools (the technology premise). The efficiency and effectiveness of the collaboration platform depends on the socio-technical optimization of that platform. This collaboration platform needs to be built on a clear and careful design of the complex interactions required and the roles and relationships involved as well as the right collaboration tools matched to the values of the enterprise. A provocative presentation about a major ongoing health care initiative presentation confirmed the belief that STS deliberation design may be a primary design tool for the new organization form. However, even though we have often used deliberation design methodology in our work, the methodology showed in this presentation is not the simple deliberation design process of the past. This design of the future, of the ‘collaboration space/platform’ is done with respect to many factors. One way to think about the interaction and complexity of those factors is through use of the mnemonic S.P.I.C.E. – Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Communal Experience, and Emotional factors that are all critical elements of the design context. Participants then self-design specific processes and activities to achieve the goals of the organization over a multi-year timeframe. Design is no longer episodic, but continuous. Design becomes the act of organizing on a continuous basis.

This, significantly, represents a transformation in the meaning of organizing, which Stu Winby (“Using State of the Art Innovation to Improve Healthcare”, presentation to the Annual Meeting of the STS/RT, Inc., Memphis, TN, October 2008)has rightly described as the traditional organizers (management) going into the background with a new role of designing the foreground parameters (the minimal critical specifications of the network) in which self-organizing individuals, teams, and interdisciplinary cross-global groups innovate how to do the work they are held accountable for. It is a tight/loose design conundrum – the foreground, i.e. operations, that was formerly tightly controlled by management, now has built into it some slack to allow for many players from different organizations to collaboratively innovate, albeit with excellent process design that now acts as the control mechanism necessary for high performance, reinforced by process tools such as those demonstrated by Eli Berniker (“The Elders Speak”, presentation to the Annual Meeting of the STS/RT, Inc., Memphis, TN, October 2008). And what formerly management held as loose or tacit, i.e. mission, vision, values, must now be firm, very clear and shared by all players in the value network because this is now what provides meaning, power and norms for the collaborative platform or space in which all engage to do work together.

The new design process is now ‘meta design’ that then gives employees the aligned frames of reference and collaboration tools to collaboratively design their own processes to get work done. This meta design, for example, is what the Stewards of the STS/RT, inc. refer to as ‘holding the space’ for learning to occur. The term ‘meta’ works here because it implies several meanings –background, all encompassing, transformation, and a more developed level of design. Winby’s presentation was a good example of this new type of design. He showed some of the possible tools used in this ‘meta design’ such as deliberations enhanced by elements of speed (DA), innovation (prototyping), three horizons (anticipatory planning) and the social psychology of soft control that can help organizations achieve greater health and productivity in these new network forms of work. Bert Painter tells us that this passage reminds him of what (among others) Fred Emery wrote in his pithy article about “The Management of Self-Managing Groups”, (pp. 156-161, Participative Design for Participative Democracy) a very important (often unnoticed), complement to the practice of “participative design”. In many ways, it is an affirmation of ‘participative design’, within a carefully designed context. The concept here seems also very similar to what Tom Malone has highlighted about the uniqueness of AES Corporation (pp. 47-51, The Future of Work).

Continuous designing, the next level beyond continuous improvement (e.g. Lean Six Sigma), becomes a capability for both management and employees, but at different levels of the system – double-loop learning/design for management and single-loop learning/design for employees, the latter being what Jean Fuller’s case was all about (Jean Fuller, presentation to the Annual Meeting of the STS/RT, Inc., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, October 2007; and Carolyn Ordowich and Bert Painter, STS/RT, Inc. Virtual Meeting Webinar, July 18, 2008). Triple-loop learning, which is the transformation of roles, the crux of STS, is the most difficult design work because roles are no longer static, but reconfigurable in the network complex system. However, STS can bring the most value in this area; and we can start to add this value by assessing our own role as STS practitioners. This requires a change from facilitating organizational design to guiding ‘sponsors’ of collaborative platforms in sense-making of their organizations’ learning journeys and helping them to create “design” tools for this journey, i.e. tools to design the ‘map’ when there is so much uncertainty about the destination.

For example, there was a a moment (at the 2008 Memphis meeting), when a group of ten STS/RT members were gathered around a wall-chart, reflecting on our historical and current identity as STS practitioners. One of us was describing how she now works with clients--it sounded much more interactive than “facilitation”. It sounded like the work is now much more an improvisation in which we participate and and that we experience with clients. This appears to relate to the nature of what is known as “triple-loop” learning.

"Triple-loop learning is about changing your being by engaging in deep self-assessment in order to replace obsolete understandings of your self-concept and action repertoire. The key question to ask is what impact is your self-concept and action repertoire having on your ability to achieve your desired results? This fits well with Integration in the three stage learning model that encompasses Inspiration - Internalization - Integration. This final stage of learning requires you to integrate new assumptions and actions into how you see your role in the organization and yourself in relationship to the world. You transform your identity (and collectively the organization’s identity) as a result of this deep self-assessment." This statement demonstrates an immediate connection with the ‘anthropological’ perspective of STS design (Kevin Boyle and Mary Marschall, Presentation, Annual Meeting of the STS/RT, memphis, TN, USA, October 2008). Notions of “being”, “self-concept”, and “action repertoire” seem to be very much like what we mean by “culture”. This speaks to both the content and the process of design, including, as discussed above, our role as STS ‘guides’/practitioners. Here again, Malone’s book, “The Future of Work” comes to mind, particularly, his chapter 10 on leadership as “Cultivation”.