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The Third Phase Of Self-Development: Evaluation
The third phase of self-development is evaluation. This process is a mixture of individual and group assessments from Phase Two coupled with assessments from actual practice results. These are results from proven outcomes during normal work-day operations. In order to garner the appropriate practice evaluation, mentors and coaches must be involved in monitoring results and noting the progress on specific events that occur. For example, if a new version of software is implemented, we will want to know if IT staff and business users worked together to determine how and when it should be implemented. These results need to be formally communicated back to the learning groups. This process needs to be continued on an ongoing basis to sustain the effects of change management. The flow of the three phases of the process is shown below:
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The above process for self-development provides an important approach in assisting staff to perform better under today's IT projects. It is one thing to teach reflective practice; it is another to get staff members to learn how to think in a manner that takes into consideration the many risks that have plagued systems and software projects for decades. While the role of management continues to play a major part in getting things done within strategic objectives, self-development can provide a very strong learning method that can foster sustained bottom-up management, which is missing in most learning organizations.
Eventually self-development through discourse will foster identity development. Such is the case when both user and IT groups eventually come together to form very specific and interactive communities of practice. This helped form a clearer identity for IT staff members, and they began to develop the ability to address the many project risk issues specifically building the foundation for more group and system thinking among the IT ranks.
Evaluation of the performance of self-development is actually easier than expected, which means that if the first two phases are successful, evaluation will naturally be easy to determine. As reflective thinking becomes more evident in an IT organization, it becomes easier to see the growth in transformative behavior. Specifically IT groups become more proactive and critical by themselves, without necessarily needing input. In fact, executive participation falls into more of a supporter role; managers tend to be asked to participate more when staff feels a need for them to provide a specific task for the group. Evaluation based on performance is also easier to determine, mainly because inter-departmental communities get formed and because of the relationships that gets established with non-IT line managers. Another important decision made through self-development is to allow non-IT line managers to join IT staff meetings. So getting feedback on actual results becomes open for discussion.
Viewing self-development in the scope of organizational learning and management techniques provides an important support method for later development in system thinking. My research experience shows that the self-development process will inevitably lay the foundation for more sophisticated organizational learning, required as a businesses mature. We can learn from some of the pioneering work done in the 1980s which can now be reapplied to a dynamic and changing IT practice.
References
Mossman, A. and Stewart, R. (1988) 'Self-managed learning in organizations', in M. Pedler, J. Burgoyne, and T. Boydell (eds.) Applying Self-Development in Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Mumford, A. (1988) 'Learning to learn and management self-development', in M. Pedler, J. Burgoyne, and T. Boydell (eds.) Applying Self-Development in Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Pedler, M., Burgoyne, J. and Boydell, T. (eds.) (1988) Applying Self-Development in Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Columbia University's Dr. Arthur M. Langer is Senior Director of Technology, Innovation and Community Engagement, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science; Associate Director, Instruction and Curricular Development, School of Continuing Education; and a faculty member in the Graduate School of Education (Teachers College) and Continuing Education. He also is a member of the CIOZone's advisory board.
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