I have been writing about smart working – what it is, why it matters, exploring first wave smart working methods, and suggesting that this knowledge can be re-interpreted and applied in a second, social computing-fuelled wave.

Nothing New Under The Sun

Much of what I read from the big business schools and consultancies is repetitive. My own blogs have become repetitive. A lot has been said before and is frequently nothing more than the same old stuff re-branded. See for example Freedom-based management (my doctoral thesis explored how to optimise local autonomy, self-determination and self management with simultaneous, centralised co-ordination).  Time to apply what is already known to real, practical business challenges.

Executive Work-Based Learning

I led the effort to grow the Master’s by Learning Contract at a UK university, establishing it as a university-wide provision across all faculties, and was also a personal learning consultant to executives on the programme. This gave me wide experience of the andragogic, emotional and practical challenges of Master’s level work-based learning in the UK and Russia.

Whereas in a traditional Master’s degree people get shoe-horned into experiencing a common curriculum, with some flexibility in choice of electives, the work-based Master’s degree turns the engagment with students on its head. This starts with the question ‘What do you need to do?’ and a custom-designed programme, or set of programmes, is created around achieving that objective for an individual executive or cohort from within a specific company. The learning programme is pulled together within a learning contract.

Learning Contracts

A learning contract is a highly flexible framework for structuring learning. It can be completely customised or can be generically written so that one framework can be interpreted by multiple individuals for their unique situations. It can be based entirely on work activities or it can include traditional taught modules. The learning contracts I have used contain learning objectives, outcomes, activities, resources, assessment criteria, and modes of asessment – artefacts showing that learning has taken place. This is usually a thing produced at work – report, diagram, a signed-off technical specification, spreadsheet etc, accompanied by a critical reflection.

In this method content is accessed in a just-in-time way, as it is needed. I said in my last post that I help senior executives discover what works for them as they make the transition to new ways of working and new strategic positions. I see myself like the Mary Poppins of the business world; I have a big metaphorical carpet bag of content, sources, tools, frameworks, approaches and research, and I dig into this and make suggestions to executives as to which of them I think might be useful. If not useful, no problem. We try something else.

There are regular points of stopping and checking along the way. Where are we? How do we know? What’s working or isn’t working? Again, how do we know?

Thinking And Doing

That is basically it:

(1) Diagnose (2) Framework (3) Do it (4) Facilitate individually and collectively – suggest content, modules, sources, tools as required (5) Peer support – sharing, talking, challenging, laughing, collaborating, explaining etc (6) Reflect, iterate and complete the programme.

At Workplace 2017, Dr Frances Westley spoke about needing to develop new methodologies able to synthesise individuals’ specialist disciplinary knowledge while integrating it with those of other disciplines. These new methodologies also need to promote thinking about collaborative learning within work systems full of paradoxes and dilemmas. Using the conflicting dimensions of safety in speed in sports cars as an illustration, she emphasised that managers regularly have to reconcile the horns of multiple dilemmas.

In The Opposable Mind, Roger Martin calls this integrative thinking, which he defines as:

“The ability to face constructively the tensions of opposing ideas and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each.”

Engaging in knowledge production demands higher-level cognitive skills and the ability to act effectively within our social networks, including risk-taking and assessment, making choices and judgements, pattern discernment, inter-personal skills, negotiation, active listening, cross boundary and cross cultural collaboration, and conflict management.

My experience tells me that the learning contract framework and work-based learning processes are highly effective and flexible structures for developing the sort of thinking and doing skills required for knowledge production in complex operating environments.