Introduction
The decade of the nineties will be remembered as a time of great organizational change with an emphasis on downsizing, shrinking budgets, and increased competitive funding. Organizations and agencies both public and private have been rethinking standards of performance and accountability. Changes have been initiated by organizations that wish to remain successful and yet provide quality performance and products. In short, it is a time when organizations are expected to do more with less.
Often in times of crisis, great progress is made out of necessity. Accordingly, there has been much progress made in understanding the importance of team work, building and maintaining organizational systems, and placing emphasis on process as a way to improve quality. Much attention has also been directed toward decision making at the lowest action level. In this context, it is critical that professionals be willing and able to make decisions that will ensure high quality programs focused on the highest priorities.
Organizations, like people, improve by going through an evolving process as they learn, apply, adopt and learn again. Those organizations that are prepared the best to make change are those organizations that are willing to learn entirely new ways of thinking about them. According to Peter Senge, "organizations that achieve excellence in the future will be "learning organizations". He characterizes them as organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning how to learn together".(Senge, 1994, pp 3–5).
Demonstrating a strong commitment to building a learning organization, the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service (NCCES) at North Carolina State University & North Carolina A&T State University have launched an innovative new leadership development program which incorporates a broad band of experiential and distance learning approaches.
Organizational Background
In North Carolina, Extension agents take a team approach to their work in all 100 counties and on the Cherokee Reservation. Supported by specialists at North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T State University, they provide educational programs for people of all ages and from all walks of life. Oftentimes, these programs enhance the work of other government and nonprofit agencies which have joined hands with Extension to improve the quality of life in North Carolina.
Volunteers and lay advisers keep university researchers and Extension professionals apprised of local concerns so that Extension's programs truly reflect the needs of the state's people.
The Institute for Systems Leadership
The goal of the Institute for Systems Leadership is to provide advanced knowledge and skills to extension professionals who lead and manage systems in the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service. Systems leadership requires individuals who lead various components (systems) in the organization to understand the whole organization by looking at all the parts, and all the forces and relationships among the parts. The Institute is a comprehensive and intensive learning experience built around the following objectives for participants:
- To examine and understand the concept of systems and shared leadership within the current organizational context of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service.
- To understand their individual current professional strengths as leaders and managers of systems within extension; thus enhancing ability to build on strengths, to recognize potential growth areas, and to plan for individual professional development.
- To broaden their perspectives as cutting-edge, visionary systems leaders engaged in planning, designing, implementing, evaluating, and accounting for extension programs including Agricultural and Natural Resources, Family and Consumer Sciences, and 4-H Youth Development.
- To gain advanced knowledge and skills in providing systems leadership, to acquire management tools to develop efficient organizational systems, and to provide continuing quality improvement for these systems.
- To gain appreciation of the role of the extension professional as a systems leader in working with volunteers, paraprofessionals, professionals, support staff, advisory councils, commodity groups, funding partners, and others.
The conceptual framework for the five week long sessions is based upon the work of two renowned experts in organizational development—Peter Senge, author of "The Fifth Discipline", and Stephen Covey who wrote "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". Each of the sessions focused upon one of Senge's disciplines: Personal Mastery, Systems Thinking, Team Learning, Mental Models, and Building a Shared Vision. Stephen Covey's seven habits of effective leaders provided background for the participants learning experience to operationalize Senge's disciplines. These habits are: (1) be proactive; (2) begin with the end in mind; (3) put first things first; (4) think win/win; (5) seek first to understand ... then to be understood; (6) synergize; and (7) sharpen the saw. (Covey, 1989)
The Institute for Systems Leadership was designed for professionals who provide leadership and deliver non-formal educational programs. These professionals include county agents, supervisors of volunteer-led programs, county directors, state specialists, department leaders, department heads, and district directors. Individuals selected for the Institute have demonstrated their ability to organize, maintain, and utilize effective systems in extension. They have a desire and the potential for higher levels of systems leadership. When applying for the institute, participants prepared a narrative describing their previous leadership experience and accomplishments, the context or work environment where they currently provide leadership, plans for using what they learned during the institute, and how the institute experience would support their professional development plans. Participants selected represented all components of the organization including state and county positions, and various program conten
t areas including family and consumer science, agricultural and 4-H youth development.
Every successful extension professional is a leader of systems. Successful programs operate with systems in place to develop, implement, evaluate, and maintain quality education programs. The Institute was designed to move these leaders to new levels of effectiveness as systems leaders in a time of organizational change, transition, and increased accountability. We believe that through the collective intelligence of our faculty leaders and their commitment to quality and success that the NCCES will be able to produce remarkable outcomes in a work environment that is innovative, cooperative and supportive.
Learning Experiences
Between sessions, participants applied what they learned in their own work environments. Distance education opportunities allowed for the sharing of learning from the application projects through an interactive video system available state-wide. Since the twenty-six participants were from all corners of the state, the distance education network was used twice to link the participants together so travel and time were minimized. The remote interaction among the group leaders and the group participants stimulated progress and provided feedback for the application projects. A special listserv to communicate quickly and effectively over the Internet and a web site entitled "Resources for Systems Leadership in Extension" was also developed for the participants.
Participants have been primary in the design of all aspects of the ISL. Each has served on three teams essential to the planning and implementation of the program. These teams included five Senge Discipline Content Teams, five Context Teams and Seven Covey Habit Teams. The Content and Habit Teams were responsible for facilitating learning in these subject- matter areas. The Context Teams ensured that the institute learning environment was conducive to learning and that congruence occurred with the learning organization model.
The Senge Discipline Content teams were: Personal Mastery, Systems Thinking, Team Learning, Mental Models, and Shared Vision. The Habit team included: Be Proactive, Begin with the end in Mind, Put first things first, Think win/win, Seek first to understand. . . then be understood, Synergize and Sharpen the saw. The context teams included Feedback, Process, Learning in Action, Resources, and Celebration. The teams took ownership of the Institute and worked for success of every session as well as creatively designed the components of each session. A sensitivity to the variety of participant learning styles was evident as each session was planned.
North Carolina's Institute provides a model for the other states which wish to use a Systems approach as a focus for leadership development. The Institute was designed to "practice what it preached" and operated as a learning system. ISL leaders used the following principles drawn from Senge, Covey and other adult educators to design and implement the program:
- Help learners move from dependence to interdependence and assume responsibility for their own learning.
- Help learners to apply the content being studied in their own work environment.
- Model the applications of the concepts and principles in the design and implementation of the ISL. ("Practice what you preach".)
- Build ISL learning upon the life experiences of the learners.
- Use a systems approach to design, implement, evaluate and adjust the ISL.
The participants successfully and collectively implemented a program design that was challenging, interesting and represented true organizational learning. A variety of experiential teaching methods were incorporated into the Institute including: guest speakers, panel discussions, games, leadership assessments, low-ropes course, skits, a nature walk, drama triangle exercise, a museum tour, question and answer forums, values audit, photo contests, storytelling, picture metaphors, world wide web demonstration and team exercises. The experiential learning components in the Institute allowed the participants to gain experience with or to "feel" the information presented. The experiences involved the senses, the emotions and/or social interaction.
ISL application projects continue to impact NCCES in a variety of ways. These include: developing a "flight simulator" computer model to manage state major programs, redesigning the system for storage and distribution of literature, using an advisory system for program sustainability, designing a system for urban counties to market extension with the news media, assessing the county extension program using systems thinking, and using a learning organization framework to analyze two NCCES organizational studies.
Lessons Learned
The following key lessons have been learned from the Institute:
- It is possible to share leadership and build on each other's strengths to create a better product.
- It takes time and space to learn organizational development techniques, and then to operationalize them.
- Professionals who represent variety of systems in the organization can work as a team to address major organizational issues and determine a plan of action.
- By linking the experiential learning components to the institute's subject matter, learning was enjoyable. Difficult concepts were easier to learn if there was a way to practice and or visualize the concepts.
In summary, the Institute for Systems Leadership has provided the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service with a well-trained group of professionals who can demonstrate the principals of systems leadership. The breadth of learning experience has poised the participants to be able to model and incorporate leadership development and experiential teaching techniques into their work. Not only were they able to design their own learning, but they have been able to make worthwhile leadership contributions to the total organization.
References
Senge, Peter M., The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. New York: Doubleday Publishing Group, Inc., 1994.
Senge, Peter M., The Fifth Discipline. New York: Doubleday Publishing Group, Inc., 1990.
Covey, Stephen R., The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Fireside Publishing, 1990.
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