Control hormonal sistémico

The commitment of the individual within the LO to individual learning that continued throughout their career was essential for the organization to keep pace with change in the business environment and maintain competitiveness (Keep, 2000). Senge et al (1990, 1994) noted that this notion of learning was that the individual never actually arrived at a destination and that learning was a journey towards an unknown destination. Therefore, for the purposes of this thesis, the organizations were assessed for their individuals’ long term commitment to the learning journey and the support which the organization provided to allow them to realize their vision.

6.3.1 Cincinnati

Cincinnati’s approach to lifelong learning was with a two stream approach. They recognized the weakness of individuals only being able to progress their careers through a management route. Cincinnati had been able to establish an alternative technical specialist route for those who wished to stay technical as opposed to managerial. The old Mental Models that people could only attain a certain seniority when they had a certain number of reports were slowly breaking down. Cincinnati’s leader noted a few areas where Mental Models were changing in terms of staff grades being only related to the number of direct reports:

“…you haven’t even got anybody who reports to you, yet you’re a level one.

What an easy life you’ve got!” But I couldn’t do what they do.”

Central group prepare a learning programme based upon personal goals and skill set requirements (following Petroni, 1999). The principle, at all levels of the organization, was never that someone was trained once, deployed into a role and forgotten about.

The main piece that drove the personal development was the underlying business succession plan, which suggested a good link between these two business processes.

Cincinnati’s approach created a network of learning and training programmes for every stage of the individual’s career. The approach to first year trainees was for them to spend their first year learning how to do the job before they even set foot in an office. Cincinnati’s leader recalled:

“…I didn’t even step in the office for the first year. I spent it in a training centre learning how to do practical engineering side of things…”

In this way, they were likely to remove some of the pressure on the experienced office staff to train extremely ‘green’ trainees. It was likely that this approach improved the quality of work produced by the office as it did not have to ‘carry’ these staff for their first year.

In addition, Cincinnati sponsored key members of staff to complete a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree on a full time basis and with full pay. These degrees could be taken when the individual and the organization agreed that business and personal circumstances were aligned. In terms of starting learning for their junior staff, Cincinnati tried to give them as much responsibility as early as possible. It then had its senior staff manage and mentor the juniors. One interesting comment made by one participant of the focus group was “…it’s courses galore…” in terms of developing the senior staff. Blackman & Henderson (2005) noted the weakness in a ‘courses galore’ approach to developing a LO and confirmed Senge et al’s (1990, 1994) position that action learning was the better way to develop Personal Mastery. The reliance on courses suggested a weakness in the Cincinnati Personal Mastery model when compared to Senge et al’s (1990, 1994) model.

6.3.2 Tennessee

Tennessee did not have a formal Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme. Its approach was to have a commitment to their people to ensure that they were content in their roles. Such commitment from the individuals enabled them to take control of their own learning and development in order to give the most in their role. In addition, Tennessee tacitly rather than explicitly expected its employees to comply with the CPD requirements of their respective professional bodies.

Tennessee’s MD commented:

…getting [employees] to do that is one of the basic culture items of the company.” “…that is part of this issue about how people in an organization do, sort of, belong to it. Focused in what it is that they’re doing, that the

company actually commits to them being satisfied with their lot within the company. And out of that comes a willingness and a wish to actually make sure that they do their best for the company. And how do you do your best for the company? Well you make sure that you keep up to date for a start…

Tennessee did have a learning and development manager who provided support as required, but it was up to the individual to take ownership of their own development;

which was how Senge et al (1990, 1994) suggested Personal Mastery ought to happen.

6.3.3 Indianapolis

Indianapolis’s key position on lifelong learning was that the majority of their staff did not leave the organization, but rather spent their entire career at Indianapolis. This meant that they were living and learning the organization’s culture for much of their lives. This culture, it was suggested by the MD, was that of “…Indianapolis being better tomorrow than it is today…” Indianapolis suggested that it learns together as a family through shared experience and communication.

Indianapolis admitted to having no formal structure, policy or process for encouraging, enabling or supporting lifelong learning. There was a personal development planning process, but the directors admitted that this did not work particularly well. It did not see this as a weakness, because it suggested that the family atmosphere and family approach as being a powerful tool in lifelong learning.

The MD suggested:

“How does the family learn? You know it learns through experiences. It learns through the communication. And that’s the way we are.”

Individuals were still encouraged to achieve professional qualifications, but without a well-working formal planning process to support them it appeared that Indianapolis may be abdicating too much responsibility for development to its staff.

Indianapolis felt that the flexible approach to training that they gave their staff, which involved giving them an understanding of other team members’ roles, was another positive. This approach allowed Indianapolis to be flexible in terms of having multi-skilled individuals who understood how the rest of the organization worked, as the MD noted:

“…I want the benefit of [Indianapolis employees] being cross discipline, agile and flexible. So that if you think about it, if I’ve only got a cost manager, but I need a construction guy on another job…I want to be able to say ‘right, great you’re not totally 100% construction. But you understand it enough to be able to do that role for me.’ And that’s where you become agile and that’s where you add value to your client.”

The advantage of such a Systems Thinking approach to Personal Mastery (Senge et al, 1990, 1994) was an absence of the silo and boundary mentality prevalent in the construction industry (following Ankrah et al, 2009). Indianapolis also accepted that this did make its employees more marketable from a recruitment perspective, but accepted this as part of the reality of business.

Following on from this, Indianapolis was starting to raise the profile of ‘attitude’ in comparison to ‘technical competence’ in the selection and development of people and supply chains. A member of the focus group asked “…it's the right person the right attitude, they can learn to do the job can't they?” There was a general agreement in the room from the focus group to this rhetorical question.

Sagar (1980) differentiated people with positive attitudes as ‘improvers’ as opposed to ‘non-improvers’ who were those with poor attitudes. Indianapolis, therefore, were looking to hire ‘improvers’. For development of their own people, Indianapolis had developed its own system called ‘I-Train’ which covers technical and behavioural competencies.

6.3.4 Chicago

Chicago had a similar stance on lifelong learning to Indianapolis in that they suggested that there was no substitute for learning through doing and that this stance had been very successful. Its MD admitted, however, to having to add a necessary change into the system in order to encourage people to learn, saying:

…my job really is to just keep challenging and pushing and you know people get so frustrated with me because I'm constantly fiddling with systems and suggesting productivity aids and encouraging people to try new ways of doing things. And altering structures, but I think that's my job isn't it; I've got to keep challenging and that forces people to keep learning….

It could be suggested that the MD was trying to challenge people’s Mental Models in order to necessitate learning. It may be argued that Chicago’s position, which was much like the other participants in the research study reported in this thesis, were aware that lifelong learning had to be led by the individual and the business did not drive it through a formal process. Basic education and qualification in the business essentials, such as NVQs, was encouraged and some directors within Chicago encouraged their teams to gain further formal qualifications. Even accepting this encouragement, all participants confirmed that the onus was always on the individual to push themselves and then the support would be provided by Chicago. During the focus group, there was a lot of discussion around wanting to do further study, but work commitments not permitting the time. A general comment from the focus group was:

I always had this whole idea when I came out of university about going on and do another course afterwards and definitely getting my Chartership for building. But it’s just one of those things as soon as you get into work and you’re working away you just…It just vanishes. And I’ve been meaning to do it for ages.

It might suggest that Chicago had a culture where formal qualifications were not viewed as a source of business excellence; a view which was in fact supported in research (following Fonda & Smilansky, 1994). Support to the individual taking qualifications was decided on a case by case basis and Chicago had made use of

‘coaches’ for their directors and some key project managers to develop competency where needed.

6.3.5 Dallas

Dallas suggested that its training and development of new trainees was amongst the best in the industry, but admitted that after trainees reached their chartered status, Dallas was not brilliant at taking personal development further. An example was given of a recently chartered employee who wanted to do a Risk Management Masters degree, but who was being discouraged because she could not demonstrate a clear benefit to the business. Dallas did not wish to garnish CVs with qualifications for the sake of it. The strategy for this person was for her to spend time with Dallas’

three best risk managers to learn as much as possible and then the Masters would be reconsidered. She commented that she was advised:

…go and talk to these three people, look at their risk registers, talk to them about your job. They’ll all be quite happy to help you compile your own risk register and let’s see how it goes. Come back and tell me at the end what you got right, what you got wrong, what risks you controlled and then let’s get you off on a Masters degree.

In addition, Dallas had an internal prospectus of 400 courses which were usually selected by individuals for personal development during their appraisals. This appraisal process flowed from, and was linked to, the overall business plan which ensured role alignment. The process highlighted areas and directions for personal development which combined the business and individual needs as one. Alongside the

‘Academy’, Dallas offered first degrees which were created specifically to improve upon the formal education offered by Universities which Dallas stated was ‘boring’

their trainees. Therefore it had created a degree course which aligned with the interest trainees got from their on site learning environment. Dallas team leader for the Washington commission stated that:

…we set up our own degree course in [location] and that’s a general construction management course…” “So they come out with a basic understanding but then the Academy trains apprentices as well. Generally about 50 a year bricklayers, carpenters and some decorators… the knowledge that probably 70% will leave us but there will be a number that will stay with us….

Dallas’ position here appeared to be well aligned with Senge et al’s (1990, 1994) position on Personal Mastery, where it was defined as a journey of personal enlightenment which served to change the organization itself (Garcia-Morales et al, 2007). Many of the other participants talked almost exclusively about the development of the individual as a destination ending in a qualification without reference to the impact upon the organization.

Part of Dallas’ early development of trainees was not to pigeonhole them as project managers, quantity surveyors, architects, planners or similar. Dallas gave them the opportunity to spend a couple of months within each department, should they so choose, to gain an understanding of where their career might best lie. In addition, this developmental approach gave all trainees a better Systems Thinking understanding of the organization and the industry (following Senge et al, 1990, 1994). The MD of Dallas started his career this way and recommended it to new

starters as the best way to find personal direction. Indeed, more experienced members of the organization were still moved around where relevant to their learning and development. A focus group member commented that:

“…you're watched sort of you know, you're interacting with people and that.

And if they think you've got a capability for doing something they'll tend to sort of, you know, move you forward or into a different area…”

Dallas used to have a different approach to lifelong learning in terms of taking individuals through their career. It used to be that individuals would start at site labourer level and work their way through to project manager level. However, given Dallas’ move to a more ‘management contractor’ model relying on subcontractors to supply site operatives on projects, they now had individuals coming in at trainee project manager level instead and going through the ‘Academy’. This approach, Dallas admitted, was not as good a route as before, so it tried to get trainees on site as much as possible to observe and to ‘make mistakes and learn from them’

(Kriegsmann, 2005). Dallas’ team leader for the Washington commission asserted that:

…the difficulty for us is letting someone do something and making a mistake. Accepting that someone learning is going to make a mistake. It’s very easy to do everything yourself and jump “You’re doing that wrong, do it like this”. They don’t learn anything by doing that. Let them make a mistake, it’s not a problem once. It’s not a real problem twice….

Dallas did have understanding customers who accepted having such trainees on their projects and that such mistakes were part of the learning process (Kriegsmann, 2005). Dallas’ team leader for the Washington commission followed up with:

…we do consult [Washington] and if we’re going to put somebody in the firing line, one of the Assistant Project Managers in the firing line to do a particular task, say give them a piece of the work to do and say ‘Right that’s yours, you’re responsible for it’. We’ll talk to the [Washington Project Representative] first and say you know and 99 times out of 100 they’ll say

‘That’s good you know give them a chance to develop and go for it.

The ‘Align’ team within Dallas had its own personal development budget in order to keep themselves up to date with new technologies to bring the learning into the organization. This team was actively encouraged into keeping their lifelong learning

completely up to date to ensure that they did not fall behind their competitors. This approach, however, did not suggest a LO in Senge et al’s (1990, 1994) terms where individuals choose to engage in lifelong learning in order to be able proactively to shape their environment.

6.3.6 Kansas

Kansas sought to develop people from entry level to management level and tended to work with those who put themselves forward for new roles. It had appreciated that individuals may not perform or grow within a role that they do not want, even if it did look like a good career opportunity. Kansas MD indicated that:

“…[director] who owns Kansas Joinery he’s a very encouraging man for people to get on with in the business. But once he gives you something he tends to let you just get on with it. Because you’ll either make a good job of it or you’ll just fall to the wayside, do you know what I mean? And he’ll support you on the way up there but he won’t push you to the extent you’re somewhere where you don’t want to be.”

In addition, the directors appeared to understand the principle that if someone could not be replaced, they could not be promoted. Kansas MD stated: “…I want you to have my job because if you have my job that means I can move on to another job.”

Kansas also provided support to individuals who wished to take formal courses. This support took the form of payment of fees and time off for study. In fact there were compulsory levels of study which the organization required and in some cases individuals were seen to need to be strongly encouraged into taking the study. In some instances individuals took it upon themselves to gain formal training and qualifications without the organization’s knowledge and then informed it afterwards, rather than ask for support up front. Kansas’ directors speculated that this might be because individuals did not wish to take the risk of having business support them on a course that they subsequently failed and with then feared they might jeopardize their position as a result. The MD stated:

“…if [employees] fail and they don’t make it, it’s not… They think it might affect their employment within the business. But it doesn’t really with Kansas if I am honest…”

Fear of failure was seen to be a key element holding back many organizations from becoming LOs (Simpson, 1997). It was made clear during the herein reported research that Kansas did not view a failed course as being a weakness in an individual, although a passed one was viewed as a strength. If individuals were making a different assumption, then there appeared to be a disconnection between the directors’ message and the employees’ beliefs, a disconnection that might suggest a lack of a Shared Vision being demonstrated in the Personal Mastery arena (Senge et al, 1990, 1994).

6.4 Summary

Within this Personal Mastery chapter, the analysis again came from the case study work done on all six nominated contractors. It should be noted, however, that not all discoveries in all contractors were analyzed against all Personal Mastery elements.

Within this Personal Mastery chapter, the analysis again came from the case study work done on all six nominated contractors. It should be noted, however, that not all discoveries in all contractors were analyzed against all Personal Mastery elements.