Problem solving: Integrating differences

Synopsis: People respond not to the external stimulus, but to their perceptual interpretation of its significance.


People tend to perceive the world through cultural frameworks, and accordingly, understand reality.

First language

Thought structures generally develop along cultural lines. People prefer to express themselves in the language they are comfortable thinking in. From their socio-cultural interactions they are actively involved in constructing their knowledge of the world. This is a collective activity. Conceptual schemes are generally bound to background, and so is the language used to transmit them.

In the cross-cultural context, the dependence on a specific first language imposes certain limitations to the perceptive outlook. Thus, meaning is given to the world in a culturally defined sense. People learn to respond to stimuli in characteristic ways, in interactions with the environment and other people. Multilingual abilities enable people to widen their perceptual fields and recognise different cultural contexts and realities.

External and internal

External stimuli motivate people to react with characteristic (learned) behaviour. Some researchers say people respond not to the external stimulus, but to their perceptual interpretation of its significance. The motivation to think and then act beyond the cultural limits comes from within.

Other researchers point out that both external and internal motivations operate in learning. Because it occurs through social activity, learning is tuned to social rewards. However, the drive to learn depends on the individuals themselves.

Cognitive development

They argue that all our cognitive functions – like voluntary attention, logical memory, and formation of concepts - originate from the social interactions we are exposed to as children.

The cultural socializing is the process of being integrated into the prevalent knowledge community. This motivates learning. Guidance of teachers or elders, and peer collaborations influence the understanding of, and the attitudes towards, organized and unorganized routines.

Therefore, development occurs first on the social level, from significant interactions between people. It then proceeds within each person, on the individual level. People eventually learn to think in a particular mode - convergent or divergent - as a result of their actual relationships with others. They also learn to be individualistic or collectivist.

Using resources

Convergent thinking provides technical depth and expertise generally associated with academics. Divergent thinking contributes to people being streetsmart. Globalization brings together people of different cultures, with perspectives developed by such different thought processes.

It also shows up clear distinctions of space and time in people’s minds. Clearly, having the same culture and language helps to understand others and be understood by them. People sharing the same workspace may think, feel and act differently in each situation. But companies and their decision makers sometimes tend to become hidebound over what ‘works’ in the attempt to conserve resources and preserve structure.

How cognitive resources are actually used in problem solving should then depend on circumstances, and not on our comfort zone with one or the other process alone. Sharing perspectives bring to view areas or dimensions that are unusual or being overlooked. For effective problem solving, these group participations are important, even critical for the system’s healthy survival.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

References for ‘Problem solving’ and ‘Talking’ blogposts:

Social Constructivism

Why Vygotsky?

Problem solving: The value of obstacles

Synopsis: ‘Speechifying’ enables understanding relationships between objects and things in the surrounding environment.


Obstacles interrupt the normal flow of activity, and their doing so attracts attention. We get to thinking about situations, and become aware of problems in terms of what was and is or should be. We then devise ways of getting around the impediments.

Thought and word

We initiate activity for survival reasons - to adjust to the environment in a new or different way. The break in pattern is the critical stimulus . It activates the thinking process. We:

We initiate activity for survival reasons - to adjust to the environment in a new or different way. The break in pattern is the critical stimulus that alerts us. It activates the thinking process. We:

a) become aware of the problem, and
b) express becoming aware by speechifying.

Thence in words and opinions, our thoughts become known. The meanings attributed to words or drawn from them lead us to concepts associated with problem solving. The connecting link between thought and word grows and changes as our cognitive processes evolve.

Ways of thinking

People of all cultures are able to think critically about issues and find solutions to them. But in the total group, they generally utilize their faculties in either of two very different ways.

· Convergent thinking: This implies a focus on rules and precedence – a dependence on
methods, and procedures independent of the social context. The same conditions always apply. Answers derive from universal theories in a logical, stepwise manner. Like the algorithms that we can look up in a specific ‘book’ of standard received wisdom, they serve solutions processing information to save time, effort and resources.
· Divergent thinking: Divergent thinking is focused on situated learning. This involves observing and reflecting on each unique circumstance. The thinking process is unstructured, providing spatial associations. Solutions lie within the elements of problem, derived by changes in their existing relationships. The local context is determinant, and problem solutions often innovative.

Nonsense talk?

Critical reasoning in problem solving is thought to develop from childhood ‘nonsense talk’. This is the ‘egocentric speech’ that Jean Piaget identified and earlier considered just transitional to socialized speech.

Social scientists Vygotsky et al now believe that nonsense talk instead relates directly to the problem solving process. Observational studies with children show that they tend to verbalize far more than adults do when faced with a problem. The ‘speechifying’ enables their understanding relationships between objects and things in the surrounding environment.

In the course of social interactions, it is a guide to their activities of:

· releasing tension coming up against difficulties or obstructions to goal achievement
· expressing thought and feeling about the issue or problem
· following up action to resolve the specific difficulty or obstruction
· changing direction of activity, if initial outcomes are unsatisfactory.

Egocentric speech in childhood transforms to inner speech in adulthood. The audible verbalizing simply goes underground. Although we become quiet outwardly, inner speech continues its earlier function within the confines of our mind.

In the process of growing up, most adults learn to contemplate issues and problems in silence. They tend to verbalize only afterwards, to offer specific opinions about the situation arising, or solutions to resolving it.

Cont’d 2…integrating differences

Talking: Co-constructing knowledge

Synopsis: Diverse members of the team can contribute inputs from different angles. The group gains more insight of reality.


Clear distinctions of space and time exist in people’s minds in diversity.

Getting across

The more dimensions there are, the more the requirement for a better understanding of issues and their circumstances. Diverse members of the team can contribute inputs from different angles. The multiplicity helps the collective thinking become more rounded. The group gains more insight of reality and considers creative innovations to resolve them.

Issues and problems that create obstacles to workflow arise from different situations. They may also have different contexts and run different courses. The solutions then need to be designed to fit.


Two cognitive levels

Members verbalizing their inner speech are then vital to finding these new courses of action. Our intellectual development occurs at two cognitive levels. According to social scientist Lev Vygotsky, these are:

· Actual development: where the individual is capable of independently dealing with issues and solving related problems.
· Potential development: this constitutes the "zone of proximal development" where the individual needs assistance in dealing with challenges. The interactions with others are crucial for guidance or collaboration.

Learning continues through our lifetime in the zone of proximal development. Much of it is collaborative in nature, impossible to separate from the social context. As we gain in experience and expertise, the learning consolidates as actual cognitive development.

Learning

Learning does not occur simply with the intake of book knowledge. Vygotsky argues that all cognitive functions originate in, and are products of social interactions. By interacting freely and openly, we put the knowledge to test. In the process, we are always learners.

Consolidating learning also depends significantly on the individual's internal drive to understand and promote the learning process. With this inner drive, we develop even as we age. Without it, we tend to resist change.

Collaborative learning methods diffuse the required motivation person to person. In the process, learners develop teamwork. Individual learning and successful group learning are thus mutually related. Collaborations build up an atmosphere of mutual trust, respect and acceptance within the group. The system thus builds its own culture and values in diversity.

Co-constructing

Through the social interactions, individuals in the group can receive other people’s points of view, as well as present their own. Just talking together allows them to discover new ways of communicating their thought processes.

A close knit group, even with members of different cultures, develops a common language – like slang or verbal shorthand - that bind group experiences together. From shared learning, the cognitive structures may be utilized in new or innovative ways. People become more effective in adapting to environments and to change.

Being averse to ‘conflict’ among people of the system could inhibit creative thought or prevent its expression. To discourage talking amongst the collective is to retard processes of collective learning and problem solving. Fact is we don’t construct knowledge just by ourselves, but largely ‘co-construct’ it with others in the environment.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

References for ‘Talking’ and 'Problem solving' blogposts:

Social Constructivism
Why Vygotsky?

Talking: Focus on agenda

Synopsis: Minimizing personal contacts in organizations also minimizes lateral communications, preventing people from just talking to one another to create a common culture.



Differences, most organizations believe, will lead to conflict.

Talking

So they prefer to minimize personal contacts between members of the workforce. Keeping focused on the business agenda ensures a conflict-free work environment. It prevents time being wasted or interpersonal issues being raised. The trouble is it also minimizes lateral communications, preventing people from just talking to one another to create a common culture.

People are constantly talking around issues and solutions - in their minds. It is a conscious, purposive reflection on experience and learning. New perspectives are integrated into existing ideas, abilities and actions. This inner speech includes thinking slightly ahead of the present moment. That is, extending reasoning into the future, where outcomes will be met.

Its decisive power depends on each individual’s links with environmental factors, like other theories or other people. When people are familiar with one another these links are strong, and they are encouraged to share their thoughts and focus on issues and problems.

Culturally defined

Language and culture play a large role in our intellectual development. They actually define us, in how we tend to perceive worlds beyond our sensory data. Colour and shape that we see externally is transformed in throughput, to make sense as the things we see around us.


We assign meanings to environmental objects accordingly. For example, our eyes might see something round and black with two hands. Our minds then interpret the incoming data to mean ‘clock’.

More views

Diversity causes dimensions to multiply. Increasingly societies are becoming composed of various demographic groups. This means that the individual has to contend with more cultures, more languages, and more views than ever before.

Homogeneity among people makes communicating easy. Words, nuances and connotations are easily understood. But getting sense and meaning across those not sharing the same culture and language is harder, obviously because the words or signs that they will correctly understand need to be found.

Weak social and language skills inhibit group discussions. Cultural barriers stop people contributing their own thoughts to the group. Many in the workforce simply await instructions for task assignments.


Effective talk

Just talking outside the business agenda is an important aspect of social interactions. Heterogeneous groups get to know one another’s backgrounds, and can clarify boundaries, and express opinions, intentions and solutions. It helps in teamwork to fathom where one is coming from, or intending to get to.

Diverse people need to be just talking together to share knowledge, experiences, perspectives, and even feelings. It makes them aware of denotative and connotative words. They begin to catch on to undertones, nuances and idiomatic turns of speech.

Their interactions facilitate increasing the multicultural workgroup’s knowledge base and problem solving capability. The team members explore and present fresh angles, processes and options. The group, alerted by disagreements, can focus critical attention on the obstacles that are stalling the flow at work, or may do so in the future.

Cont’d 2…co-constructing knowledge

Appraisals: The drive to excel

Synopsis: The drive to excel comes from within. Management needs to facilitate the involvement of employee in decisions at work.


Extrinsic motivators, like monetary rewards, are generally relied upon to ensure the workflow. But with overuse they tend to carry unintended negative consequences.

Intrinsic motivation

For example, in the context of work, people begin to assume that the tasks are actually unpleasant and hence the money offered is actually the sugarcoating being offered. The employees may learn to expect extras every time a task is to be fulfilled.

Besides, the appreciation of the workforce as responsible, thinking human beings begins to diminish. Fact is the quality of performance depends not only on targets or incentives, but also on the emotional involvement of workforce members with the work decisions. Optimal work performance requires self-reliance, self-determination and intrinsic motivation. Basically, the drive to excel comes from within each person. People should want to work.

Once people buy in on a particular issue, their emotional arousal monitors and sustains the quality of their activity, through:

• Generation of action - the tendency, readiness and decision to act on a plan, intention or preferred option.
• Execution and control of action - the mode of execution and its degree of intensity.
• Explanation of action – the context perceived from a personal point of view.
• Rationale - justifications for the action.

Emotions influence the direction and energy of action performed, and are crucial for its success. Else, people simply go through the motions of doing.

Evolvement

Assumptions underlying the appraisals must change – for instance, that the individual is responsible for organizational success, and that improving their performance alone improves organizational performance.

The onus, the experts say is rather on the organization to create a different culture, and shift its business perspective from profits to people, from theory X to theory Y. Non-controlling positive feedback, and the acceptance of others’ perspective are important, contextually. Individual freedom, autonomy and trust during interactions with the organization and system-at-large needs support.

In diversity today, Frederick Taylor’s scientific management principle of separating decisions from work may have outlived its utility. The growing need is an evolvement from past practices. Because meanwhile, the quality of the workforce has changed drastically. It is now necessary to include workgroup members in work decisions.

The key areas

Authors Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins suggest a systems approach in key areas of human resources. The changes they advocate include:

Coaching - disconnecting its need from the PA process, and use goal setting only when it’s effective.
Feedback – initiating a bottom up process, moving employees towards gaining knowledge and new learning.
Motivation - developing intrinsic motivation so people find meaning in what they do.
Career pathways – decoupling promotions, career advancement, employee development, and downsizing decisions, from appraisals and each other.
Poor performers - helping the individual reach a satisfactory performance level, secure better job fit, or a respectful release.

Work output ultimately depends on the individual’s subjective commitment to the job. Appraisals should motivate people to generate optimal activity. But as post-mortems linked to reward and punishment, performance appraisals become intimidating and adversarial for the workforce.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

References for 'appraisals' blogposts:

Rethinking Performance Appraisals: A Book Review
About winning - carrots and sticks [article no. 1416 on twmacademy.com]

Appraisals: Measuring success?

Synopsis: With assumptions built into the performance appraisal process, context is generally missed.

Theorists say that each job should be directed towards the objectives of the business, the success of the whole. Performance appraisals (PA) are meant to identify and measure, so that this success may be managed.

The assumptions

Built into the PA process are assumptions that:

• One appraisal process can effectively serve several functions at the same time – like training, promotions, compensation, etc.
• People want and need to know where they stand, and appraisals tell them so, i.e., they provide accurate performance feedback.
• The organization and the supervisor are responsible for individual employees’ morale, performance, and development – and PAs help to motivate the employees.
  

The PA decides the organizational value of the people. It’s relied on to regulate outputs and manage resources.

Differing focus

But critics say that when management focus is solely on the bottomline, the targets set are often unrealistic and impossible to reach. In most companies, PAs also turn out to be the only source of employee feedback.

As a result employees may spend much of their time dissatisfied with their last review or dreading the next one. Their work focus then shifts – from actual performance on the job to calculation of rewards.

Inequity

Interest in the work itself diminishes, and workforce members compete for favours from authority instead. What gets measured gets done or enhanced. Obviously other aspects of the job may be ignored.

Employees realize that they don’t own their job decisions; they don’t have control over their work. And thence, many don’t feel accountable for it either. The sense of teamwork or a collective performance for the organization is lost. When the tasks are complex, or there is inequity between effort and remuneration, working hard may soon become hardly working!

The burden

One PA to feed many channels is a "bureaucratic burden" that interferes with performance and wastes resources. It pressures individual, group and organization, with numerous hours of preparation, extensive paperwork and psychologically stressful interactions. The employee at work is made to feel the sword of Damocles hanging overhead.

In knowledge-based situations, many managers are unhappy themselves with using the PA process on members of their teams. Documentation of individual performance could imply serious performance problems even when there aren’t any.

Missing context

Surveys conducted through the ‘90s showed that between 80 and 90 percent of appraisals are ineffective. Should organizations then stop measuring performance?

No, say performance consultants, because measurement of performance and its feedback is critical for a high performing unit. However, they point out, the performance appraisals as practiced, generally miss the “adult-to-adult context”.

Fact is the workforce is also an organizational stakeholder. In knowledge-based systems, their intellectual capacities form the business platform. It is difficult to pin numbers on these contributions. The organization that relies overly on targets achieved fails to recognise the efforts involved, and effects of the circumstances surrounding the performance process. It fails in its duty to its internal customers - the workforce - and in alienating them, loses long-term effectiveness.

Cont’d 2… the drive to excel

Risk: Relying on habit

Synopsis: Persistent ‘risk taking’ is now associated with conditions of stress and mental health problems.


Plagued by uncertainty and indecision, people tend to back risks, especially if they worked in the past.



Job stress

Many thus play ‘safe’ with risks on the job. To de-stress from its pressures, people in increasing numbers also play the odds. These facilitate their eventual preoccupation with winning, or attempting to recouping losses.

For example:

• A survey study of 43,000 Americans found that more than a quarter gambled five or more times a year – from playing cards for money, to buying lottery tickets, and betting on sports games.
• A research on the habits of office workers (Morse, January 2007) found that one in three workers gambles during work time, at least once a week and for at least 15 minutes.
  

The figures are on the rise in other parts of the world as well.

Goal change

The goal sought changes from effective decision-making action to anticipating the pleasures of a win. The attempt to call correct becomes the dependable strategy at work and in life. Failures or losses do not encourage rethinking the underlying premises, but the same strategy and its consequence repeats over and over again.

The habits of risk taking and gambling share the same neural networks in the brain. Hence one can soon lead to the other. A study reported in Forbes showed that continual risk taking could become like a narcotic, a way of coping with the pressure. The degree of anticipation grows with each successive strike, and so does the drive to win.

Rewards in the mind

Persistent ‘risk taking’ is now associated with conditions of stress and mental health problems. People afraid to lose, rely on this decisional process although it neither guarantees nor sustains success. Researchers implicate both individual attitudes and organizational culture in nurturing this type of decision-making.

The repetitive behaviour is a clear pattern of cumulative stress as the ‘rewards’ are only in the mind. Beating the odds to win is the consuming passion – the addiction. It pushes people further into stress and prolongs their fear of the unknown and future uncertainties. Even responsible managers can fall prey to the addiction to winning.

Using resources

The attempt is to control the environment with a reliance on odds. Despite prevailing circumstances, past assumptions about success with standard received wisdom, or best practices in ‘the way things have always been around here’, also remain the same. The preference for the ‘familiar’ stems from the individual and organizational desire to conserve resources.

In unknown situations, the resources needed, like critical thinking and reasoning, are far greater. New knowledge about changing environments helps develop our abilities to adapt to them. Improving adaptation facilitates our learning new ways to combat change and its challenges. We become more equipped and adept at dealing with uncertain times.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

References for ‘Risk’ blogposts:

Are You An Unhealthy Gambler?
Thinking twice [Article no: 84 on website twmacademy.com]

Work-related stress

Risk: Current to future

Synopsis: People prefer ‘risky’ situations to those they consider unknown.


Effective decision-making is hard, as clearly apparent in the global forum. Many of today’s problems result from decisional errors of the past.


Decision steps

The decision making process should logically follow certain steps:

• Defining the current problem
• Analysing the problem
• Developing alternative solutions
• Evaluating alternatives thinking future
• Selecting suitable action contextually
• Implementing the decision
• Following up on action
• Receiving feedback
  

Considering both current needs and future uncertainties helps gear decisions towards the future where their effects will be felt. But people under pressure to perform tend to focus on current outcomes, leaving the future to take care of itself. The variables overlooked generally interfere in time, with goals.

Uncertainty

The new millennium has forced environmental change that includes:

• World disasters
• The general economic climate
• Globalization
• Male/female dynamics

Uncertainty is a part of the new reality. Survey studies conducted even before the current recession showed that more than 50 percent of the companies surveyed were undergoing major changes most of the time, and two out of three people felt a constant uncertainty.

The push for twice the work in half the time, flatter organizations, downsizing and outsourcing, made lay-offs a regular happening through the 1990s. The economic recession begun in the West is now causing massive losses of investments, jobs and even homes in many parts of the world. Work related stress is on the rise – on employees who have to leave, but perhaps more, on those who remain.

Go-getting

People try to deal with the stress by taking more risks. Traditionally, risk taking has been the hallmark of the aggressive businessperson, the fearless buccaneering spirit that achieves the impossible against all odds. Americans, for example, have long been considered “a nation of risk takers” with natural go-getting talent to do anything.

But indiscriminate risk taking actually means “short-circuiting” the decisional process – gambling, in other words. Thus people become unaware of or ignore the uncertainties/challenges of the environment, and of time. The resulting over-stimulation of the reward centres of the brain leads to anticipating the pleasures of immediate success. Much of today’s economic meltdown has resulted from such aggressive overreach.

Two networks

In studies were conducted with experimental betting games, the players could choose bets on two different card decks. One, labelled ‘risky’, contained identified odds. In the other labelled ‘ambiguous’, risks were unidentified. Researchers observed that people prefer to bet on the ‘risky’ deck, and tend to avoid exploring the unknown represented by the ‘ambiguous’ .

Recordings of brain activity showed two distinctly different networks activate in the brain in situations perceived as ‘known’ and ‘unknown’. Player perceptions of the situation is important in determining which specific network is activated.

In situations perceived unknown, twenty-four brain centres are activated including intelligence and emotions. Obviously it takes time and effort to understand and identify challenges. Where risk is perceived already identified, only the reward centres in the brain comes alive with anticipation of a lucky strike.

Cont’d 2…relying on habit