“It is not simply the brightest who have the best ideas; it is those who are best at harvesting ideas from others. It is not only the most determined who drive change; it is those who most fully engage with like-minded people. And it is not wealth or prestige that best motivates people; it is respect and help from peers.” -Alex Pentland Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread – The Lessons from a New Science
We live in a hyperconnected world, which in many ways has provided us a wealth of access and answers to the challenges that we face, while adding new complexities to an already complex world. In the midst of this hyperconnected world, we are seeing the rapid rise of networks, both informal and formal, serving as engines for new learning and innovation. The Stanford Social Innovation Review shares, “With the rise of new digital media platforms and social networks, people are absorbing information at a greater velocity and from a wider set of channels than ever before; they are also using that information in new ways.” For which they add, “Leadership has become distributed and collaborative. The new reality is that leaders don’t lead alone. We are all part of a much broader problem-solving network, with many high-performing organizations and individuals-public and private-working on different parts or the same problem or even the same part of the same problem. The most influential members of the collaborative are increasingly harnessing new technology to share ideas, get real-time feedback, and build knowledge for the field. Leaders are no longer just steering their own ship; they are helping a network solve problems with the best and must current thinking available.”
It is in this hyperconnected world that we are just beginning to see new distinctions drawn between what some term as communities and networks (communities vs. networks). While there are distinctions between the two, the better option is in enhancing and leveraging both for better access to greater learning and innovation. This is best achieved by engaging the AND of both communities AND networks. As Team BE of Wenger-Traynor state, “For most groups, however, the aspects are combined in various ways. A community usually involves a network or relationships. And many networks exist because participants are all committed to some kind of joint enterprise.” So, while we’ve become much more accustomed to working in “communities” of learning and practice within our organizations, the digital transformation and this hyperconnected world has led to an exponential rise and engagement in both formal and informal networks to support and infuse greater idea flow and new learning into our organizations, leading to better innovative value for both our individuals and organizations. As Alex Pentland shares in Social Physics, “In the last few years, however, our lives have been transformed by networks that combine people and computers, allowing much greater participation and much faster change.”
In Learning to Improve, Bryk and his co-authors build on this idea of AND, drawing on the work of Douglas Engelbart in what he termed Networked Improvement Communities (NIC). It is in this Networked Improvement Community that Engelbart has created an ABC Model for Continuous Improvement. As Bryk puts forth in Learning to Improve, there are “three interrelated levels of learning” which serves as the basis for this ABC Model.
Level-A which “represents the knowledge acquired by front-line workers as they engage in their practice.”
Level-B which is when “learning occurs across individuals within a workplace.”
Level-C which is when learning occurs “across institutions.”
This idea of an ABC Model for Continuous Improvement and Networked Improvement Communities was cast over 35 years ago by Engelbart in his assessment and determination that the “complexity and urgency [of world problems] are increasing exponentially, and the product of the two will soon challenge our organizations and institutions to change in quantum leaps rather than incremental steps.”
The one thing to realize is that most organizations, even individuals for that matter, do not operate well in all three (ABC) of these learning areas. Engelbart shares that “most organizations operate in at least two dimensions,” which is most often Level A and B.
Which is where much of our future work in networks lies, especially since Level C work is vital to improving the learning and the innovative work of our individuals and organizations.
As Engelbart shares, “Most organizations already have all three activities going on, but the ‘C’ activity is generally pretty haphazard and the ‘B’ activities suffer accordingly.” Whether Engelbart or Bryk’s work in Learning to Improve, we see an emphasis on the importance Level-C.
As Bryk adds in Learning to Improve in regards to Level-C learning, “It is an especially potent form of knowledge generated as ideas are elaborated, refined, and tests across many different contexts. The development of Level-C learning is not a simple, naturally occurring extension of Level-A and -B learning. Rather it requires deliberate organization. It is catalyzed and orchestrated by a network hub and relies on appropriate technologies for rapid communications about insights developing across distributed sites. Operating in this way enables a network to accelerate how it learns.” For which Bryk adds, “When individual insights are systematically pooled, collective capabilities grow. Moving this to Level-C learning radically speeds up this social learning process. When many more individuals, operating across diverse contexts, are drawn together in a shared learning enterprise, the capacity grows exponentially.”
Understanding the value and importance of networks and the platform they provide for the acceleration of social learning is going to be vital to the future relevance of our organizations as we seek to improve both individual and organizational learning and capacity. In a world of exponential shifts, the only true advantage to parallel pacing the speed of change that we are will be facing, will be found in how we enhance and improve our ability to learn, at pace and scale.
“It seems that the key to harvesting ideas that lead to great decisions is to learn from the successes and failures of others and to make sure that the opportunities for this sort of social learning are sufficiently diverse.” Alex Pentland Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread-The Lessons from a New Science
DCulberhouse 