The Unique Process of Managed Cultural Learning
Managed cultural learning is a unique process. It’s based
on transformative learning, a development often cited as “the
most significant advance in the field of Adult Education in
decades”. The planned process of transformative learning
emerged from research into its spontaneously occurring counterpart
— a paradigm shift. These shifts typically occur in
response to a personal challenge such as a divorce, job loss,
parenting or severe illness. It involves a break with one
set of beliefs, ones an individual may have held for years,
and the “shift” to another paradigm. The change
is often pronounced and typically results in quite a different
way of seeing the world and thinking. Managed cultural learning
is the collective application of transformative learning.
As a unique process, managed cultural learning presents a unique
set of challenges in its planning, development and facilitation.
For example:
Needs assessment Identifying
the beliefs underlying popular techniques such as customer
relationship management or reengineering is relatively
straightforward. Renegotiating the cultural order and agreeing
on the requisite beliefs and values for realizing the vision
or successfully implementing a new strategy is a much more
complex and challenging task.
Even when the content is agreed upon, the context must
still be assessed and then considered in the design and implementation of the
cultural learning and change process.
Surfacing existing cultural assumptions.
Shared cultural assumptions operate out-of-everyday awareness;
a group tends to see the world through and think from
them, not about them. To think about them, members need
to come off of “automatic pilot” and make
the tacit explicit. They also need to overcome the inclination
to confuse espoused beliefs and values, often posted on
the company’s web-site, with those that actually
guide collective perception, thinking and performance
on a day-to-day basis
Unlearning. Underlying assumptions
provide meaning, order, certainty, predictability and
identify. Unlearning, letting go of long-held assumptions,
inevitably triggers temporary feelings of discomfort (e.g.,
meaninglessness, disorder and uncertainty). In comparison
to skills and knowledge training, facilitators need to
provide a particularly safe and supportive learning environment.
Individualized. The response
to cultural learning varies considerably among individuals.
It ranges from immediate cries of “Ah-ha!”,
“Of course! “, “It’s so obvious!”,
to a great deal of denial and rationalization that culminates
in no change in thinking or a very minor alteration
in behaviour. Accordingly, some learners require a lot more
mentoring and practice than others in learning how to
think from new beliefs.
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