Most organisational learning involves an experience of identity.  

I'm talking about our work role identity which is defined in documents such as position descriptions, organisational vision and mission statements, policies and procedures.   

Organsaitonal job descriptions, policies and procedures go some way to helping workers understand the work they are expected to do and the organisations expectations of their role.

But these documents can be a long way from the reality of bringing that role to life.  it is the person in the role who does that.  

And they bring all of their beliefs, thoughts, words, action, habits and values into the role.

Our role in organisational learning and development is to help our people to learn how to bring themselves into the role and how to bring the role into themselves.

Neurons are the basis of all learning.  It is the electrical firings and chemical messages (neurotransmitters) that run between neurons, the neural pathways, which produce our thoughts, feelings and interactions with our world.

Hebb's rule: The neurons that fire together wire together
Named after pioneering Canadian neurologist, Donald O. Hebb – one of the founding fathers of neuroscience, Hebb’s rule states that when two neurons fire together regularly or fire once with significant intensity, their connection is strengthened and they are more likely to fire together in future to the detriment of connections with other neurons.

This action forms the basis of learning.   

We learn through repetition and recognition. Repetition creates well developed brain patterns (connections between neurons).  Learning to drive a car is often used as a way of explaining learning in terms of moving from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence.   That transition from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence is about the building of new neural pathways and the more you practice the easier driving a car becomes until you don't have to think about it when you're doing it.

Some quick facts about neurons

• approximately 100 billion in the human brain
  
• 10,000 distinct varieties of neurons
  
• trillions of supporting cells
  
• trillions of synaptic connections
  
• 100 known chemical regulating agents
  
• miles of miniscule blood vessels
  
• axons ranging form a few microns to over 45 cm
  

Interesting article:
How many neurons make a human brain? Billions fewer than we thought
http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/feb/28/how-many-neurons-human-brain

Turns out we still don't really know.  Interesting that the generally accepted number is 100 billion however this article refutes that.  And in the video below, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain, Barbara Arrowsmith-Young states we have 200 billion.  I think the most important point for learning and development practitioners, is just to appreciate the enormity and complexity of the neurone numbers involved. 

How We Learn – Synapses and Neural Pathways
The best explanation I have found about the physicality of how the brain learns comes from Lord Robert Winston, Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London: 

Neuroplasticity
The brains ability to change in response to our experiences, its ability to learn.

The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: Barbara Arrowsmith-Young at TEDxToronto: 

How do you want your learners to feel? 

Engaged?  Enthusiastic?  Energised?  Confident? Willing to have a go?

When our learners come to our learning and development programs we want them to learn. 

This sounds like I’m stating the obvious and I have seen many trainers and facilitators focus on the content too much and assume that the learners are in the right emotional state for learning, they’re ready to go.  So they launch head first in to the content via a fairly standard opening eg these are the objectives, this is the agenda, here are the ground rules…now lets get started.

But creating a true learning environment is not as simple as that.  People are emotional beings.  They lead busy lives and are usually juggling multiple competing priorities.

We want to get to: the learner’s executive brain, their prefrontal cortex

• You use your executive brain (pre-frontal cortex) when you consciously think, manipulate information, pay attention and when you learn 
• But our mammalian brain will take over and stop the learning if we let it 

Our emotional brain, the limbic system.

Our emotional brain, the limbic system, is an ancient part of the human brain.  

It supports a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, motivation, long-term memory and olfaction.

Some basics about the Limbic system:

• The limbic brain emerged in the first mammals
• can record memories of behaviours that produced agreeable and disagreeable experiences
• it has a great deal to do with the formation of memories and face recognition
• the seat of the value judgments that we make, often unconsciously, that exert such a strong influence on our behaviour.

The Limbic brain is not a separate system but a complex set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus,  right under the cerebrum. The main structures of the limbic brain are the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus. 

Our Lizard Brain
This is the oldest part of the human brain, our most primal brain.  

Controls the body’s vital functions eg heart rate, breathing, body temperatuve and balance.  

It includes the main structures found in a reptiles brain: the brainstem and the cerebellum.

Our lizard brain protects us from threat and seeks reward - it helps us to decide what is significant at any point in time.

Take care of your learners lizard brain.  

On Tuesday 12 August I had the privilege of attending the pre-Conference workshop:
P3: SPACE: Five Steps for OD Workshop integrating the best of AI, Future Search, the World Café and OST with Kazu Katori and Max Watanabe

Synopsis:
In this rapid changing and complicated business environment, traditional leadership and management practices no longer work effectively. New approaches to create vital and agile organization are needed. The answer to this challenge is Five Steps for OD Workshop to embrace the best of people and organizations, which is founded on a group of workshop metrics called the Whole Systems Approach including Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, The World Cafe, and Open Space Technology. The five steps are:

1. Setting context
   
2. Preparing to move to new dimensions
   
3. Aspiring for the positive future
   
4. Crafting strategy
   
5. Embodying the future

The workshop was informative, engaging and gave me a lot to think about how I could use this approach in my work.  It was evident Katori San and Watanabe San have a deep understanding of each discipline that makes up SPACE and that this approach they have developed is grounded in their significant knowledge and experience.

My favourite quote of the day: 
‘Groups and organisations are not machines, they are living creatures’.  

Here are my notes:
OD:
The common approach to OD: change management, deficit-based analytical organisational development approach, deficit-based human relationships building.
Often bring consultants in who come with pre-determined solution
Often a painful process for the people – it becomes a matter of endurance.  The thinking being that given enough time if people endure, change will occur.  But for how long?  How effectively?
OD can change whole organisations, a whole system approach works better for changing cultures

VUCA: we live in an era of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity

No single person knows the right answer.  It’s important for all the members of the system to share the dream

SPACE helps people suspend ordinary thinking and shift mental models

Set the context
How would you describe your current work environment?

Prepare for shift
Timeline activity – Global, Local, Personal.  What stories did we find?  What implications for the current situation of our organisational/team?

Story telling: telling our story to our table group about the organisations or teams we are working with. The rest of the group were tasked as listeners and took notes on post it notes (trying to find causes of success, one word per note) to give feedback to the storyteller– changing mental model from deficits to focussing on strengths. For me this was a very humbling experience

Craft strategy
A critical part, without it nothing will happen
Make a list of actions for what you can do to make this happen

Enacting change
Decide as a team three main actions you will do

Where I think SPACE really shines is that it recognises that to take a group or organisation from the issue/problem/change they want to address to being able to enact that change needs different approaches at different stages of the journey.  

In creating SPACE, Katori San and Watanabe San have created a whole systems approach, a framework, that enables facilitators to knowingly use the most appropriate facilitation technique for the stage that the group is at so they can get the best results for the organisation and it’s people.

Jane :)

I chose this workshop because I am a musician so I was fascinated to learn more about this facilitation technique, which I’d never heard of.  

We had great fun.  Kaoru started by asking the group to stand in a large circle, she then handed each of us some kind of small percussive toy and asked us to pass the toys around the circle in time with the rhythm she was playing.  Lots of laughter as Kaorus’ rhythms got faster and we tried to keep up = toys started flying everywhere.

The next activity, we sat in a circle and Kaoru placed a pile of ‘boomwhackers’ on the floor asking each person in the group to choose one.  She then divided the group in half and gave each half of the group their own rhythm to play – now we’re jamming! J  How good is that?

People were listening and observing (and getting a bit adventurous with their rhythms!) – and in the process we are creating connections without any words needed (=the power of music), building a shared understanding of the group.

To finish the workshop, Kaoru debriefed the group using a short paper point,  encouraging us to reflect and share our learnings/thoughts.

Here are the notes I took:

• ‘rank’ – difference of ability/power
• Each person has a layer of ranks – social; structural; contextual; psychological; spiritual…
• When someone is in a lower rank situation they are very aware of it, when they are in a higher rank setting they are not aware of rank
• Making space for all the voices to be heard
• Being aware of your rank, as a facilitator, is very important
• Ranks can flip over at any moment
• Good facilitation – awareness is a key attribute 
• This is not about removing the rank, its about being aware of the rank
• Rank is a cultural thing, some cultures respect rank more

So really, this was about reflective practice – what kind of facilitator are you?  Do you know what your rank is? How can you use your rank?  How aware are you of the other people in the group?  How are they perceiving your rank and their own when you are facilitating?   

This was very much an activity based workshop, so not many notes …didn’t even have time to take any photo.

So here is a photo of the Day 1 Lunch (food is always important) J

“Weaving stories toward global facilitation frontier”.

In recent years, wave of globalization is rapidly spreading into every corner of societies and business circles creating greater challenges and opportunities. The trend will inevitably shift the focus of facilitators’ activities to global collaboration.  We facilitators will be expected to facilitate cross-border collaboration to explore new ideas/solutions by leveraging diverse views and wisdom in the world beyond traditional local paradigm.　In this conference, we expect to see colorful threads of diverse cultures and methods will be woven together into stories of novel values. We hope they will be inherited to the next series of conferences to make ready for the future challenges in front.

English was used as the common/global language which did take me by surprise.  Even though I knew there would be people form all different nationalities I had this concept that the conference would be in Japanese with an interpretor or 2..not very practical when I think about it now.  I have nothing but total respect for all the participants who showed amazing abilities to discuss and grapple with complex concepts in a language that is not their first (which was most of them).

Met a journalist who was there to cover the conference - she had a particular interest in the use of English as it is one of the few times that a conference has been hosted in Japan where they haven't used Japanese as the primary language.

A great way to start the conference - we understand why we're there, who is there, what is going to happen and a sense of how.  We've spent some time starting to get to know who is in the group and already starting to understand the diversities and similarities between 180 people from 13 different countries - all passionate about the power of facilitation.

Time to head to my first workshop - 
Finding Facilitators’ “Rank” through Drum Circle/Rhythm Activity, Kaoru Sasaki
 ドラムサークルで学ぶファシリテーターの"Rank"概念

Heading to the 16th IAF Asia Conference Tokyo 2013 in a couple of days - really looking forward to learning more about facilitation, meeting new people, having time to reflect on my own practice http://www.iaf-asia2013.com

And then, of course, a bit of frolicking before heading home.