Organisational transformation requires a culture of learning

By Johan Pauw, Managing Director, SAEON Tweet

The term ‘transformation’ abounds in both business literature and the socio-political narrative in South Africa.

For SAEON, as South Africa’s publicly funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) organisation, and thus operating within the governmental sphere, transformation of the demographic composition of the organisation’s personnel is an obvious political imperative.

From a business perspective, organisations are compelled to transform continuously in response to economics and technologies, and to identify and pursue a “blue ocean strategy” that will create new markets.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, transformation means a “marked change in form, nature or appearance”. This definition therefore focuses on the outcome of a change process, but with neither qualification of the resulting form, nature or appearance after transformation, nor quantification of the temporal or spatial dimensions of that change process. The only qualification stipulated is “marked”, which same dictionary explains as meaning “clearly visible”.

Organisations seldom change spontaneously overnight as this would most likely incur major expenses, would run the risk of losing reputation and key talent, or simply turn out to be following a disastrous venture. Furthermore, transformative organisational change, especially in the government sphere, is constrained by rules and regulations which are often designed to maintain the status quo rather than to renew and transform. SAEON finds itself in this situation that is ironically also coupled to the LTER ethic, which in its simplest form states that in order to observe and quantify changes in ecosystems, those observations should be held at a constant over time and space.

On the surface, so it seems, the chances would be slim that SAEON could ever be transformational. Nevertheless, the reality is that SAEON is on a transformative curve that is both exciting and hard to handle.

Culture of learning

Much of the change has come about as a result of SAEON’s culture of learning over the past 15 years. Among other things we have learnt how to roll out a network of physical environmental observation sites and how to collaborate well with external organisations. We have learnt what it means to place and maintain a variety of instruments for environmental observations in many different situations, from mountain tops to the bottom of the ocean, and from private land to communal and public spaces.

We have learnt to build data portals that can collate data from different sources to run decision-support tools for managers and policy-makers. We have learnt how to engage rural schools in practical science as a contribution to transforming the National System of Innovation. We have also learnt how to manage the diversity of SAEON’s people and our partners.

Rather nervously, during the recent drought in the Western Cape, we have used the opportunity to learn how to take our science to society through smart advocacy.

All the while, we were mindful of the need to learn from past experiences as well as the best practices of others, to experiment with new approaches, to solve challenges systemically and to transfer newly acquired knowledge across the SAEON network. It also helped that we focused on our vision throughout and less on meeting numerical targets. Indeed, rules and procedures were used much less to control the organisation than our vision and values were.

The power of knowledge and collaboration

Our culture is one that actively promotes initiative. We foster the power of knowledge rather than the power of hierarchy. We are a multicultural organisation making steady progress with diversity management. With due respect to our stakeholders, we are focused on serving our stakeholders’ needs and creating new areas of value delivery. We certainly foster collaboration as the way to enlarge our organisational footprint and avoid classic competitive behaviour.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” was one of Peter Drucker’s mantras, and by adopting a culture of learning, as briefly outlined above, SAEON’s transformation CV has grown in unforeseen ways. Developments such as the hosting of the Department of Science and Technology’s (DST) two South African Research Infrastructure Roadmap (SARIR) projects and the evolution of the SAEON uLwazi Node are “clearly visible” examples of the transformation of SAEON’s “form, nature and appearance”.

No learning organisation is built overnight because it requires the careful cultivation of attitudes, commitments and organisational processes. These accrue steadily, albeit slowly, and may at times be unconventional and risky.

In SAEON's case, being a learning organisation proved to be fundamental groundwork for unexpected rapid organisational transformation. Our culture of learning has prepared us to embrace new collaborative opportunities in the socio-political context, e.g. the SARIR projects, despite the potential constraints of being in the government sphere and having a focused LTER mandate.