the case of labein tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

11

Click here to load reader

Upload: javier-ruiz

Post on 23-Jun-2015

783 views

Category:

Business


3 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

PATHS TO BE A RTO1 AS LEARNING ORGANIZATION: THE CASE OF LABEIN

Javier Ruiz LABEIN Technological Centre [email protected]

Alfonso Longo LABEIN Technological Centre [email protected]

Antonio Linares EVOCALIA [email protected]

1 RTO: Research and Technology Organization

Description of the case of a research and technology centre during its transformation as a learning organisation. What was originally known as competence management project by the human resources service becomes a process of “alteration” in the life of the organisation in order to accelerate internal and external learning with strategic customers and partners. The reasons for the project set out the chronology of a number of significant events within the process. One core feature to create, share and use knowledge is the “construction of high-performance teams” within the organisational units. To this end contexts are created to improve conversational skills, set out the perspectives of group dynamics, and enhance individual leadership qualities through coaching. The case described sets out a number of factors determining the way in which research organisations learn, the difficulties they face, and some of the cultural archetypes.

Keywords Knowledge creation and sharing in research and technology organizations, learning and leadership, technology enabling knowledge, case study LABEIN. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Management trends in RTOs Research and technology organisations in Europe form a heterogeneous set of centres from the point of view of their origin, evolution and funding. However, they all operate in the so-called "Research, development and innovation System". These systems, in constant transformation, evolve into a new distribution of responsibilities in the generation and transfer of scientific and technological knowledge.

Page 2: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

A Symphony of Innovation: Leveraging Complexity to Create Knowledge and Confidence The 2nd SOL Global Forum, Vienna, Austria, 13th – 16th September, 2005 2

Some of the features and trends that occur in the external setting include globalisation of R&D and intensification of competition. To respond to this, alliances, mergers and takeovers of RTOs are now a reality (2). Particularly, changes introduced by the new instruments of the VI Framework Programme, geared towards the creation of the European Research Area (ERA). Therefore, acceleration of technological cycles, dominated by large multinational companies. Finally, coordination vs competition of regional, national and European public efforts in Research(i).

From the point of view of the internal response of research and technology organisations, mention must be made of two concepts of interest, or management models which have been present in them over the last few decades. Firstly, technology management as a strategic paradigm has been a basic reference factor for RTOs for more than two decades now(ii). Secondly, quality management was a movement of mobilisation and transformation in the 90s. Standardisation processes according to quality management standards such as ISO 9000, ISO 17025 and others are very internal resource hungry and boost the existence of a common language, trust and transparency in dealings with the world of industry(iii,iv). The EFQM management excellence model is a reference used when RTOs seek to benchmark themselves for best practices in management (v). However, nowadays neither of the above concepts enjoy the power of mobilisation and transformation that "knowledge management" has. This emerging approach seeks to be an internal response to external change that takes place in the migration of the industrial society to knowledge-based society. 1.2 Context of LABEIN as RTO

LABEIN is a Technological Research Centre, created in 1955 in Bilbao. Its legal status is a non-profit private Foundation, composed by local and regional authorities as well as enterprises from different sectors. Labein’s mission is to support enterprises (specially SME’s) and Administration bodies in their technological needs and in the adoption of innovative technologies and management systems to improve their competitiveness. Typical services of Labein are RTD projects, Technology Transfer & Innovation projects, Technological Assessments & Plans, Technical Assistance, Innovative Management Systems and Training and Dissemination activities. Technological areas and markets covered by LABEIN are: Structures and Materials for sustainable construction, Mechanics for automotive and steel industry, Distributed Power Generation, Information Society for Regional Development. Total turnover for 2004 was approximately 16.8 million EURO. LABEIN’s total permanent staff is 300 employees, 253 of them with University degree and 30 of them are doctors.

The creation of TECNALIA corporation in 2002 as a strategic alliance involving the centres AZTI, INASMET, LABEIN, ROBOTIKER and ESI, located in the Basque Country, has been an important milestone in our evolution. 2 DEKKER J.;"RTO Perspectives on Internationalisation"; EARTO Conference;Graz, April 19th 2002

Page 3: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

Paths to be a learning organization: the case of labein 3

1.3 Change management waves in LABEIN During the early 90s, the strategic context of the centre was set by the changes to ensure greater market orientation and adaptation, compared to a technological orientation that had set the tone of the previous decade. Adopting a quality management system for the RTO activities was another of the process that determined the changes in the internal management systems. However, at the end of that decade, the centre of gravity in change management became people-focused and on the way in which they were acquiring competences. The first initiatives to adopt management by competences can be traced back to that period and are described below. Following a initial project that can barely be called successful, there was a change in approach and we became more focused on conversational competences as a basic and more far-reaching instrument to tackle change and learning processes.

The 2003-2006 Strategic Plan set the basis for an ambitious approach in terms of change management, looking to disturb the social system and introducing systemic and complexity management concepts. 2. BUILDING KNOWLEDGE BASED MANAGEMENT IN LABEIN TECNALIA 2.1. From management by competences to reflective conversations. Competence management project in LABEIN: 1998-2000 The 1998-2002 Strategic Plan addressed the main challenge of having management and researchers "commit to business results ". This challenge took the form of a series of priorities that were rolled out via what we call a "Competence Model"vi (Figure 1).

AWARENESS-RAISING

AND

TRAINING

DEFINITION OF

THE COMPETENCE

CATALOGUE

DEFINITION OF

THE ROLE

INVENTORY

COMPETENCEANALYSIS(DIAGNOSIS)

ANALYSIS OF

RESULTS (GAP) AND DESIGN

OF ACTION PLANS

INTEGRATION INHUMAN RESOURCE

SYSTEMS

PERFECTED COMPETENCE CATALOGUE

PERFECTED ROLE INVENTORY

Figure 1. Competence model

Page 4: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

A Symphony of Innovation: Leveraging Complexity to Create Knowledge and Confidence The 2nd SOL Global Forum, Vienna, Austria, 13th – 16th September, 2005 4

The management by competences project was abandoned in 2000. Firstly by the directors and then by the business units that were trying to apply the management by competences to the technological sphere of the researchers. Among the reasons for abandoning the project, special mention should be made of the high complexity of the process to define the competences, which was also highly dependent on the group that was carrying it out. Even though the definition process was enriching in terms of developing a shared vision in this group (management committee) regarding the aspects that we should develop as persons, there were very few subsequent uses. Furthermore, the designing of the process in two stages, definition of the competences and deployment, did not encourage the transformation or development of the people. When the deployment was being considered, legitimate questions were raised by parties that had not been involved in preparing it, while the majority of the efforts were being consumed by “procedural” aspects, in order to assess the competences in the most “objective” way, without that resulting in personal development, but rather in justifying more “training” as the key to the development of the people. On the other hand, the management by competences model was introduced by the external consultants rather than its development being custom designed or from the company. It was therefore complex to apply and required a great deal of effort. It was a centralised planning model that lost supporters on the management board given the great deal of effort required in its application and the poor progress or benefit achieved. 2001-2002 development of conversational skills During 2001 and 2002, under the aegis of the managing director, who started the process with a 200-hour individual course over one year, the emphasis was placed on developing conversational skills3,vii. Therefore, once the managing director had completed the training process, a course was held for the management board, which included the use of conversational skills in the work of the managers, with the help of the instructors. Two seminars were later organised and were attended by a group of 40 people, who were the heads of the technological lines in the business units. The aim of these actions was to establish basic common distinctions in the use of language in our conversations. The focus was on learning to converse better, from the humility of listening. If over the last four years, we have invested a great deal of effort on “strategic sale” seminars, where great emphasis is placed on wanting to listening to the customer, discovering his problems, needs, wishes…., before resorting to our catalogue of solutions. We were now putting forward an additional hypothesis: “it is going to be difficult to listen to the customer properly, if we do not listen to each other properly, if we do not learn to converse better”.

3 The grounds and reasons for this approach is more fully described in the works of Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela or Rafael Echeverria. Their contributions based on cognitive biology stress the importance of language in action generation and not only as a means of express and communication. We live in language, a state that allows a type of highly sophisticated coordination. Conversation would be a value creation paradigm in the knowledge-based society and would replace the “production chain” of the industrial era.

Page 5: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

Paths to be a learning organization: the case of labein 5

2.2. A systemic approach to organizational learning: Disturbing our social system. SAREA and PERLA projects in 2003-2005.

The 2003-2006 Strategic Plan was written in 2002. It defines several strategic projects that will afford continuity to the aforementioned competence-based management project carried out in the previous period. The process of "Knowledge Acquisition and Generation" was formulated as one of the most important, with four lines of action: Intelligence of the projects, prospective, R&D portfolio, and setting up alliances. This lines of action were based on two parallel and coordinated projects: SAREA and PERLA.

SAREA (Networked Knowledge). Project started in 2003, leaded by the deputy managing director and involving the centre’s activity heads (4), which was aimed at formulating knowledge-based management in LABEIN. The emphasis was on triggering initiatives aimed at transforming the way of working in the centre to make knowledge and customer relations as the focal point of day-to-day management. During one year, the whole group comprising 32 people were involved in ten workshops, with support from external consultants and coordinated by the deputy managing director. During this period, they defined the mission of the activity manager in LABEIN, and identified twelve priority projects to deploy that mission in the organisational units. Priority was given to the projects aimed at freeing time. In 2004, the projects were implemented and structured around development committees being set up in the business units. Every unit management board dedicated time to reflective conversations about their relationship with main customers, strategic priorities and regarding their way of working as a team, in and outside the centre. The setting up of portals, corporate and for each organisational unit, by means of a multi-disciplinary group of different units and services, was also raised.

PERLA (PERsons of LAbein). Project carried out by the management board

during 2003, whose goal was to define a simple common competence outline (list and short descriptions) to be used as a reference for reflective conversations by the people in the centre, which would act as the basis to redesign the human resources management processes, which cover selecting, training, assessing, promoting and paying the employees. In 2004, the project evolved towards implementing “development conversations”, aimed at the professional and human development, to be held between three people (interested party, enabler and observer). Three training workshops for managers and researchers involving 45 people were organised.

4 In each business unit, the activity heads are senior researchers acting as technical leaders that oversee the work lines and prepare proposals for customers based on their good knowledge of the needs and priorities. They coordinate and back the researchers in the project teams to meet the commitments undertaken with the customers. They therefore are technical leaders and play a key role in the customer relations, having a fundamental role for the organisation. Each unit director works closely with them and they make up the team (6-8 activity heads),that are the driving force behind the work in each unit (40-60 researchers).

Page 6: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

A Symphony of Innovation: Leveraging Complexity to Create Knowledge and Confidence The 2nd SOL Global Forum, Vienna, Austria, 13th – 16th September, 2005 6

The management board played a secondary role in this part of the process in 2004. It was as if its evolution as a team had been put on hold. In October of that year, an internal conference entitled “SAREA&PERLA. Punto y seguido” (“SAREA&PERLA. Full Stop”) was held for the 70 people involved during 2003 and 2004, and was aimed at sharing the projects that had been carried out, celebrating the achievements and planning future initiatives. Its highly participative and interactive dynamics was a new form of expression and meeting, and was very different from the previous meeting habits. An internal newspaper about this event was produced and was distributed to the whole workforce.

We will now look at three short storytelling that reflect different observations of the process underway, which have been briefly outline in previous paragraphs of section 1.4. The first one is the perspective of the deputy managing director, who has been the driving force behind the process, interpreting the needs of the centre and setting up framework for the intervention of the external consultants and different groups in the centre. The second story deals with the point of view of an external consultant who acted as an observer and “injected” feedback based on his interpretations of what he had seen in the centre. Finally, the third story describes the perspective of the director of one of the centre’s organisational units, and he is therefore a “hinge” player, involved in both spheres of the life of the centre (e.g. the management board and research teams). The perspective of the interpreter of the system Create and Conserve People in communities first cry and complain, but then laughing (Confucius). Ten years ago, despite having grown considerably, we were worried about surviving. We were excessively dependent on public funds. The market was our main challenge. Our growth had also forced us to professionalize our management. We are not a mercantile company as such, but neither are we are institute purely involved in knowledge generation. Under a new General Manager, the Strategic Planning, the Marketing Plans, the Technological Plans, Short-term Planning and Management Control were prepared for Labein, with the Quality Policy being the backbone of the project. We were one of the first Research and Development under contract organisations (RTO) to be awarded the ISO 9000 certificate in Europe. When we began to prepare our third Strategic Plan in 2002, we considered that the stage that we had christened “Business Orientation” had been surpassed. Surpassed? We were intuitively focusing our strategy on a target position with respect to the market, and on developing the necessary organisational competences. We put these figures, which had been our benchmark in previous plans, on a secondary level. We therefore defined a series of projects to develop competences. We were mainly looking at knowledge and people. We also planned the project, but immediately,

Page 7: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

Paths to be a learning organization: the case of labein 7

when they were being deployed, we began to feel that there was something new that we were able to completely grasp. On the one hand, we were setting off towards the unknown and were trying to do so along known and safe paths: a rather worrying paradox. Furthermore, our luggage was beginning to prove to be heavy and rather useless. That business orientation that had so helped was still there, but its main girders, systematic management and quality, were turning out to be excessively rigid to say the least The bottom line became immediately clear when we began to deploy development teams in different areas. We could see the horizon clearly to a point, but as managers we could not do much more than place the people looking out across the wide planes and seas, and sometimes high mountains, that separated us from it, and where, between all of us, we had to find, and sometimes construct, the way across. Then the key question began to emerge: What is the method? What procedure are we to follow? What is the theoretical base of what we are doing? The logic of a technological centre, populated with scientific minds, was strictly linked to the inheritance of our commitment to quality. We had to consider the method, the system, the phases, the tasks that would take us where we wanted to go. The same paradox: we wanted the plans of the device that had still not been designed, the maps of territory that had never been visited. At the end of a period of comings and goings, complaints about lack of direction and, a new paradox, of manipulating, and after many hours working in different teams, the scientific explanation that we so needed emerged: this was a non-linear process. The apparent chaos hid a beautiful internal order, an implicit but complex structure. We could begin to sleep at night and more people gradually joined in the process. Someone must have thought, without daring to say it out loud: But… and where is the control centre of all this? In the future, we may be able to understand that management systems based on procedures, on models, are necessary and conserve what has occurred once, twice or three times… and has to continue to occur in the same way. But if we want to create something new, we have to challenge them, we have to distance ourselves by focusing on the only possible creative tool: ourselves. The point of view of someone observing the system My perspective as a Labein observer changes and will change as the result of the interpretation of life, my progressive discovery of people and myself and my progressive formulating of a theory of what it is about. If I do not change, I am not helping.

In Labein, I feel simultaneously an insider and outsider, near and far; I tackle the transformation from paradoxes and contradictions; I try to understand the implication of the “systemic tempo” that constantly dominates the conversations, I go from interpretation to interpretation, and new projects therefore emerge. I have no written script, but I do have a script in my imagination. All the challenges that I set for Labein, are challenges for myself, for the process:

Page 8: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

A Symphony of Innovation: Leveraging Complexity to Create Knowledge and Confidence The 2nd SOL Global Forum, Vienna, Austria, 13th – 16th September, 2005 8

• A 21st-century “technological centre” (RTO) has to question the myth of being

“centre” and “technological”. “If I am central, the market has to come to me” and “if I am technological, I cannot imagine a research world into intangibles” underlie this paradox.; the relations, emotions, fears and suffering are asphyxiating and if we are asphyxiated inside, we are unable to see them outside.

• The more training (knowledge) that certain Labein employees seek, the more development (relations) they have to be given. We are facing significant imbalance between the relational and technical competence, as some professionals believe that we can be successful in the 21st century using the paradigms of the 20th century.

• The work to develop people has to be done from the tasks or missions linked to their business. This paradox made me think that professionals will accept certain development processes for themselves if they know that they will apply to others; for example, they will end up changing if we talk to them about how they can be involved in the change process for third parties (“ I accept it if I do it for someone else”).

• One way of helping Labein involves helping my partners and myself or, in other words, the more we help the system to change, the greater the risk of being swallowed up by it. We have to distance ourselves and we have to get closer.

The perspective of a director of the system My position as a director of the centre involves a certain “hinge” role, as on the one hand, I am part of the management board (with fortnightly meetings) and, on the other hand, of the regional development organisational unit, involving 45 researchers, and I therefore have to answer for its results (contracting, income and expenditure). My role in the SAREA project was to be the driving force behind its deployment in our unit in 2004, which balancing its evolution within the centre. The non-linear nature of the change process soon became clear, with uneven advances and setbacks in the different spheres of the centre.

When the SAREA was implemented in actions carried out in the organisational units in 2004, it was perceived as an opportunity to “build a team” between the activity heads of the regional development unit. The presence of an “observer” in some meetings provided additional keys to understand “from where” everyone was intervening and “how” he was participating. As he “injected” small doses of feedback on our “interpreted” conduct, his presence initially filled me with a feeling of uneasiness, of a certain vertigo when I observed the complexity from additional keys, but this was followed by a perspective of the change and greater understanding of our defence mechanisms, jammed as a team, and of our ways to compensate external changes “so that nothing changes”. I identified specific aspects where I could and had to change my behaviour to boost change in our organisational unit as a social “microsystem” within the wider system that is the whole organisation.

The emotionality that was soon established with the observer was trust (partly

due to personal chemistry, and not to the same extent for everyone in the

Page 9: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

Paths to be a learning organization: the case of labein 9

organisation), when the great potential (lever effect) could be felt that his presence had to boost change in the performance and maturity of the teams. We modified the original work plan as we went along, from the perspective of “finding the points of the system on which we had to focus” in order to encourage the changes sought, as if we were laying “drains”, which could be used to free negative tension from the system. Some of the drainage would be: • Increase the presence of the observer, by training internal “observers” who

could perform similar duties in more teams. • Change in personal behaviour, to focus on “inquiry” rather than “advocacy” in

my conversations with the project team researchers, so that my interventions would activate the teams and their capacities, rather than inhibit their autonomy and lead to follow the leader.

• Revive the role of the centre’s management committee as a team that has to be more involved and proactive in the SAREA project.

2.3. Reflections on theory and practice. Even if we have managed to alter the organisation’s social system, there are people who are reluctant and wish to return to the initial situation. They criticise the initiatives and methods used in the PERLA and SAREA projects. They have a negative view of its cost-benefit analysis. We have to make the “I-the company”, “I.-the culture”, “I-the conditions” duality disappear. The possibility of oneself has to be brought into the equation, along the lines of the world will not change if I do not change. We need a more active professional who sets off towards the future with positive, and less reactive emotions. We need to continue with the focuses adopted to increase the degree of autonomy of the researchers, but we also need to understand the criticism in order to design new actions that will be better understood and encourage “coalitions for change”. As the driving force behind the projects, we directors do not hold the truth, only legitimate yet partial views, which have to be completed and enriched with other perspectives.

In this context of change and uncertainty, the emotional perspective has a determining importance. It is necessary to provide affection to compensate the anguish due to the uncertainty and the loss of sense that is experienced at any given moment, and which goes hand in hand with the grieving process for lost security. However, the interpretation and action cannot be exclusively emotional or exclusively rational. There cannot even be a defined separation between both points of views. The changes in the system are clearer through the conscious and subconscious manifestations of the people and the team than by using objective measurements. The effectiveness of the changes has to also be seen in tangible results in the medium term.

From a systemic perspective of the change process, the emphasis is more on

applying natural therapies than antibiotics, more vaccines than chemotherapy. We are looking to provide feedback to the system so that it opens up more, so that greater confidence is generated: to understand people’s behaviour in group, interpret

Page 10: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

A Symphony of Innovation: Leveraging Complexity to Create Knowledge and Confidence The 2nd SOL Global Forum, Vienna, Austria, 13th – 16th September, 2005 10

situations from the least apparent, create processes to then make them disappear, and re-inject cultural anchors for un-jam them.

The best way of killing innovation is to systematise it. The focus therefore has

to be on freeing the procedure while using them as basic platforms for new changes. The procedure may become visible symbols that categorically express the vision regarding what we want to become, more than recordings of actions that have to be programmed in the minds and behaviour of people. The programme, the procedure, as an opposite and complementary medium for strategic creation.

We need to understand and accept the paradoxes and dilemmas that occur in the

organisation in order to alter the dominating system and active change processes. We should mention in our case: - Dealing with the simultaneous accusations of “lack of direction” and

“manipulating”: the way to access meaning and to the autonomy of each “knowledge worker” is not easy for the management, who has to be ready to accept new power distributions.

- Personal Development versus Training. - Interpreter and observer functions. - “Activate processes” versus looking for “a solution for the problem”. - Group dynamics and development of the individual. - The role of time: past, present and future: understanding the “systemic tempo”.

Finally, attention has to be paid to the cultural anchors and characteristics. By questioning the myth of the “Technological Centre”. The myth, as a cultural anchor, integrates people and makes the organisation more cohesive, but it also depersonalises and paralyses when the focus is on exploring. Changes have to feed new “myths”, such as providing value to the customer or offering intangibles, which in turn have to also be able to evolve without becoming enslaved to themselves. i LAREDO P.;"The future of European science and technology policy:which road to take?"; FP6

Conference workshop: "The future of European science and technology policy in Europe" Brussels, Heysel, 12 November 2002

ii LITTLE A.D.;"The Strategic Management of Technology";Ed. Arthur D. Little, Cambridge,

Massachusetts, 1981 iii RUIZ J.;" Quality assurance in research and development:the European way";EUROLAB Symposium,

Berlin, June 1996 iv RUIZ J.,VILLATE J.M.;"A Customer-Oriented Quality Assurance System at a Technological Research

Centre";48th Annual Quality Congress, ASQC, Las Vegas, May 1994, pp. 91-101 v RUIZ J.and others;"Twelve Fresh Views on TQM";European Foundation for Quality Management

(EFQM), 1995-96. Doctoral Thesis Award

Page 11: The case of Labein Tecnalia technology institute as learning organization

Paths to be a learning organization: the case of labein 11

vi RUIZ J., “Management Of Internal And External Knowledge In Research And Technology

Organizations”; EARTO EUROLAB International Conference, The Hague, March 2003 vii ECHEVERRIA R.;"La ontología del lenguaje";Ed. Dolmen, 1994