                           Donald Schön                                                    quoting Edgar Schein ((Schein, E. and Kommers, D. (1972). Professional Education: Some New Directions. Hightstown, New Jersey: McGraw-Hill Book Company; Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books, p.45)).“One of the hallmarks of the professional, therefore, is his ability to ‘take a convergent knowledge base and convert it into professional services that are tailored to the unique requirements of the client situation”
Adaptability involves both use of the situation and use of theory and experience. Adaptability ultimately involves how well we can read the variability in the situation, understand it and have accessible, operational knowledge and experience to draw upon in taking action.
Masterful practice in action is beautiful! The right action or statement or question at the right time. It got results or the desired results. It worked (according to some yardstick). Perhaps the most important outcome in working with any human systems is that it helped that person or organization in that situation. Thus, we are always dealing with variability and need to quickly interpret the situation, draw upon a readily accessible knowledge base (theory and organized experience) and choose among action alternatives.
Practice in human systems has to be immensely adaptable to the myriad of variables and clues in the environment at the time of execution. The practitioner must interpret the situation, draw upon previously developed/learned principles and frames, decide in the moment what is applicable and say or do something… or nothing. When skill sets were mostly physical, such as crafts, there were fewer variables changing the work situation. Not so in human systems with professional work! All of the players and parts are changeable and in dynamic relationships.
So how do we prepare for both the variability and the need for adaptability? We need to develop a knowledge base that is comprehensive for the human systems we work in, readily accessible to us and operational for application. In other words, we need to have a working understanding of theories, models, concepts and experience that can give us meaning across a variety of situations and readily provide us with action alternatives. Our knowledge base needs grounding in reality for us, integration among its parts and applicability for our use. It can’t just be an interesting model or theory. It has to be visible and operational to us in organization reality. It has to be relevant to our work situations. In fact, as we work with and integrate across various theories and experiences, we develop practice theories or what Argyris and Schön ((Argyris, C. and Schön, D. (1974). Theories in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers)) call theories-in-use.
Therefore, one aspect of learning how to practice is preparing for adaptability by learning/building a ready inventory of principles and frames (drawn from theory and experience) to use when assessing any situation and an understanding of the situational conditions and patterns that lend credence to their applicability. In other words, “there is nothing so practical as a good theoryâ€. Without them we might never know how to give meaning to the myriad of variables and dynamic relationships in any human system, nor which ones are applicable in a given situation, nor what actions are available to take, with reasonable odds of being helpful, in the immediate circumstances. For our purposes here, I’m using theory very broadly to include conceptual frameworks, models and patterns of tacit knowledge ((Raelin, J.A. (2007). “Toward An Epistemology of Practice”. Academy of Management Learning & Education Journal. Vol 6,No 4, pp. 495-519)) understood well enough to provide confident interpretation and action choices.
Preparing for adaptability also allows us to move more rapidly from uncertainty (of the new situation) to some certainty in understanding what’s going on and having action alternatives. While this is highly useful from a practical perspective, it is also useful emotionally, for both the professional and client, in raising confidence and lowering anxieties ((Lundberg, C. (1997). “Towards a General Theory of Consultancy: Foundationsâ€. Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 10, No. 3. pp.193-201)).
Continuing food for thought ….until next time.
[tags]Dave Jamieson, masterful practice, adaptability, accessible knowledge, sense-making, tacit knowledge, theories-in-use, envisia learning[/tags]
David Jamieson
Dr. Jamieson is President of the Jamieson Consulting Group, Inc., an Adjunct Professor in the Master of Science in Organization Development Programs at Pepperdine University and American University/NTL and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Benedictine’s Ph. D. in OD Program. He has over 38 years of experience consulting to organizations on leadership, change, strategy, design and human resource issues. He is a Past National President of the American Society for Training and Development (1984) and Past Chair of the Management Consultation Division and Practice Theme Committee of the Academy of Management. Dave is co-author of Managing Workforce 2000: Gaining the Diversity Advantage (Jossey-Bass, 1991) and co-author of The Facilitator’s Fieldbook, 2nd Edition (AMACOM, 2006). He serves as Editor of Practicing OD, an OD Netwok on-line journal; Editor, Reflections on Experience Section of the Journal of Management Inquiry and on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Organization Change Management and The Organization Development Practitioner. Contact information: david.jamieson@pepperdine.edu; 2355 Westwood Blvd., Ste 420, LA, CA. 90064; (310)-397-8502.
