Learning as a Way of Being: Strategies for Survival in a World of Permanent White Water

Peter B. Vaill

Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco: 208 pps., 1996

It has almost reached the point where a book in the organization and management arena doesn't get published if it doesn't promise an eight-step program for transforming organizations or the seven requirements for real leadership. As a consultant, executive, or employee I, like so many others, encounter many situations in which these generic strategies fall woefully short. Peter Vaill's work has always been a constant counter-voice amid the huge chorus of 14 points, 7 habits, 5 disciplines, and 1 minute managers. His latest book, Learning as a Way of Being: Strategies for Survival in a World of Permanent White Water extends his call for asking critical questions that we have looked past in our continual search for a better method or technique. Vaill's book helps to reinforce what intuitively I think most of us know, basically, that a leader managing people has to exercise wisdom which does not always derive from certain principles or procedures, but must be exercised in the moment out of experience, feel, conviction, vision, and determination. In short, the leader must "roll with the punches," "throw away the script," and "fly by the seat of the pants" (p. 72).

I count Peter Vaill as a friend and mentor, in addition to being one of the wisest and most insightful thinkers, observers, and framers of what is important in our field. This book begins with a strand from his earlier book, Managing as a Performing Art: New Ideas for a World of Chaotic Change (1989). He picks up his metaphor of "permanent white water" and more thoroughly defines, plays with, and embraces it as a condition of life today and in the future, touching everything we do and think. Vaill suggests that white water events are characterized as being full of surprises, novel, "messy" or ill-structured, often extremely costly or at least obtrusive, and recurring. He contends that a typical manager's (if not, person's) average day consists of dealing with something for which he or she is not prepared and for which there is no standard operating procedure to turn to for guidance. Permanent white water "means permanent life outside one's comfort zone."

After establishing this context, Vaill then takes on the conventional, decades-old approach to education. He labels this approach "institutional learning" and paints an all-too-clear picture of an expert-centered pedagogy in which the parameters of learning are carefully defined. Vaill's treatment of institutional learning is thorough and damning, leaving the reader wondering how education arrived at its current state. Two brief examples of his observations:

In response to the learner's unspoken question, "Do I have any friends, supporters, soul-mates, co-learners here?" The setting replies, "You are on your own." (p. 37-38)

One of the supreme ironies of management education is that we have thought we could educate leaders through institutional learning, which keeps us in a passive, dependent state. Leadership training through institutional learning can be no more than talking about leadership as a subject. Without that abiding inner need to make something happen in an organization, the most critical element of leadership - its very essence - is left out of the learning process. (p. 60-61)

In contrast to the institutional learning model, Vaill offers learning as a way of being (LWB). He defines LWB in terms of seven qualities or modes. These seven provide a framework for discussion, but are not offered as prescriptions or principles. Vaill suggests that these modes are either tightly controlled by, or not part of institutional learning, and they are important if one accepts the assumption of permanent white water - self directed learning, creative learning, expressive learning, feeling learning, on-line learning, continual learning, and reflexive learning. In describing feeling learning, for example, Vaill notes that learning something new (i.e., being a beginner) often causes people to be anxious, fearful, and occasionally panicked. These feelings need to be included as part of the learning experience. Feeling learning also consists of learning about meanings, "how meanings are formed, how they are challenged or lost, how they can be sustained and revitalized" (p. 46). If we are to thrive in permanent white water, we must change the status of the beginner from one of the disempowered rookie to the "captain of his or her own 'learning ship'" (p. 39).

The discussion of learning as a way of being, and the comparison with the institutional learning model, is then followed by four chapters, one each devoted to systems learning, leaderly learning, cultural unlearning, and spiritual learning. Because others have been equally critical of institutional learning (Brown and Duguid (1991), Revans (1983), Mezirow (1991)), these later chapters contain the greatest contributions of the book.

Each chapter is a pleasure to read because Vaill writes with expression and flair. My favorite is the chapter, "Systems Learning." Peter Senge's book, The Fifth Discipline (1990) has brought the notion of systems thinking to the fore in many organizations. Vaill is not a systems theorist, but his wisdom and experience produce a number of insights that anyone purporting to take a systems perspective should consider. A simple but powerful insight is the question of how a system made up of non-humans differs from a human system, in which humans can notice attempts at theories about them and change their behavior accordingly (p. 117). Vaill also makes the observation that everyone probably has a systematic understanding of whatever he or she performs well, be it hosting a party, quarterbacking a football team, managing employees, or parenting.

The briefest chapter is entitled "Spiritual Learning." It is Vaill's effort at overlaying learning as a way of being on spirituality, primarily in the workplace. Vaill limits his discussion of spirituality to "meaning" and "holistic perception." These deliberations emphasize Whitney's (1995) spirit as meaning and spirit as energy. Whitney enlarges the discussions with the categories of spirit as sacred and spirit as epistemology, which seem to be useful additions. A further expansion of spirituality is provided by Fox (1995), who relates spirituality more directly to work.

The power of the book is the questioned raised throughout - how do we learn? Especially, how do we learn complex phenomena such as leadership? How do we know if we are learning more effectively than we did five years ago? This book puts tremendous substance to the trite phrase, lifelong learning. If we accept Vaill's call for attention to these questions, the nature of the workplace changes fundamentally. Or, as Vaill would probably argue, the nature of the workplace has already fundamentally changed in this direction. Consequently, each person in the organization, and those of us who profess to assist them, needs to view organizational roles as primarily about learning. And, we have to learn more about how to do that effectively.

Eric B. Dent

George Washington University

Washington, DC, USA

References

Brown, John Seely, and Duguid, Paul (1991). "Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation." Organization science. vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 40-57.

Fox, Matthew (1995). "Reflections on a spirituality of work." Rediscovering the soul of business: A renaissance of values. San Francisco: New Leaders Press, pp. 161-167.

Mezirow, Jack (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.

Revans, Reg (1983). The ABC of action learning. London: Chartwell-Bratt Ltd.

Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday.

Vaill, Peter B. (1989). Managing as a performing art: New ideas for a world of chaotic change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Whitney, Diana (1995). "Spirituality as an organizing principle." World business academy perspectives. vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 51-62.