Blog Post: Future thinking

Wayne Hodgins seeks out trends.  Traveling around the world, he speaks to different groups, professing to be the "dumbest guy in the room."  And while he listens to all these experts in a wide variety of fields, talking with the best and the brightest of a myriad of companies, he finds similarities across the board between all of them.

It's rare that one industry gets a chance to have a sense of what's happening in another one.  So, each group thinks that it's unique, but does so in the wrong kind of way.  Each industry doesn't think that it needs to worry about the conversation another industry is having, since it believes that there's little in common between them.  But it is these similarities -- the patterns -- that each company shares in which growth exists.

"I was just in a conversation with this group," Mr. Hodgins tells me over the phone. "And they've got nothing to do with the group I just met yesterday, but if I change a few words here, they're pretty much describing the same thing."  They're often surprised to find that a solution to their problem could be found in an organization from an industry in no way affiliated with their own.

Here's an example:  
Wayne observes that almost all work takes place in the context of a project -- long ones, short ones, etc.  The teams for these projects often are comprised of people from different departments utilizing different skills to guide the project towards success. 

Can you say this about your company?  Consider other companies in other industries: automotive manufacturers, hospital administrators, book publishers.  Can these organizations identify project teams that are made up of employees from disparate divisions within those companies?

Why then, asks Wayne, are companies organized counter to that model, grouping people by similar skill?

That was something that made me go "hmmm," both because it poses an interesting question on organizational development, but also because it illustrates the concept that companies which are run similarly can behave similarly. 

Wayne Hodgins will be sharing some of what he's gleaned from his corporate discussions on the evening of Wednesday, November 19 with ASTD-Orange County.  This discussion will be oriented towards the future of workplace learning and development, where he'll share his views on what he calls the Snowflake Effect.  Individuals are unique, he comments, with unique paths that got them to the point in time during which they attend training.  Their past is comprised of a myriad of events and experiences that dictate a unique way of learning for each person.  So why do we design our training based upon the assumption that there are large groups of people that are very similar, who therefore learn similarly?

It looks to be an interesting discussion.