I write this not for moral but for commercial reasons. In my experience, this principle is the single biggest factor in the successful embedding of an organisational change. And it is very, very difficult to do.
Organisations tend to see people either as means for achieving a specific end or as an obstacle to achieving this end. Either way, they are objects to be manipulated. Working on a project in an organisation, it is very easy to get trapped into this mindset, because we are surrounded by people who are demonstrating it on a daily basis.
This is particularly paradoxical because most employees are also on the receiving end of this on a daily basis and find it profoundly demotivating. (The best way to connect to this principle is to think about your own personal experience in different teams. In particular, think of any time you’ve been told what to do in a way that you find disrespectful by someone whose authority you don’t recognise – or even by someone whose authority you do. Whether or not they’re right doesn’t feature.) Most people agree that their performance is dramatically improved in an environment where they are valued, respected and treated with dignity.
This is important for Learning Strategy for two reasons. Firstly, for anything to change, people will have to choose to play – to create new and different content, to use the Group Learning Platform more and differently, to be part of Learning Networks, to experiment with new ideas and technologies and give up familiar ways of working and share with other parts of the Group. If people are not being paid or forced to do this, it’s only going to happen if they want to.
Secondly, it’s important because Learning Strategy is a creative project. Even if it were possible to command compliance, this alone would not be sufficient to deliver it successfully. New Learning content and ideas are required, and creative mental work is needed to connect the standards, content and new technology to real business needs.
Some implications of this principle for Learning Strategy:
• Don’t lie to people. They will know, always, and they will never trust you again, ever. Withholding information counts as lying unless you tell people that you are withholding information.
• Specifically, as we involve people in Learning Strategy, we need to share with them that there will be job losses as part of this project. But there will also be other examples of this as the project progresses.
• We need to assume that everyone’s right, all the time. If someone who knows a business area says ‘that won’t work here’, we need to assume they are right and get curious. Enquire as to what would work, or how to get round it, or accept that it’s a bad idea and we need to do it a different way. If we assume that we know better than they do, we’re no longer treating them like adults and we’re stuffed. (Also, we’re likely to be wrong. How much do they know about what it’s like to be sitting where we’re sitting?)
• Trust people to know what they need. Ask them how to make things work. Use networks, user groups and the Learning Community as test beds for little and big ideas alike. Take the answers very seriously even when it seems to throw spanners in the works. Involve the people whose views are most different from ours, the ones that most irritate us and upset us and lead us to think that the project will never work. Because they’re right. We’re right too, often, but they’re still right.