Workshop Descriptions

1. Introduction to the Knowledge Economy and Autonomy: The 21st century knowledge economy has evolved and requires significantly new work skills and mindsets to enable them. This knowledge economy is supported by an organization’s environment.

2. Mindsets, Systems, Stakeholders, and Workflows: Once the knowledge economy, its requirements, and its resources are understood, the next step in maximizing this economy is to identify the mindsets of your organization, yourself, your stakeholders and partners, and the systems and workflows that influence and impact all work and decisions. These mindsets hold the expectations of autonomous work.

3. Organizational Mindset and an Autonomous Environment: Organizations have personalities, narratives, and mindsets that guide all work and interactions. The organizational mindset and learning organization model include a vision, goals to fulfill that vision, values that guide work, beliefs that translate these values into work, and defined modes of work that support all workers, teams, and interactions while working autonomously, both independently and dependently, toward the organization’s vision. The learning organization model includes systems thinking, personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, and team learning (Senge).

4. Personal Mastery and Autonomy: The most important and scarcest resource of an autonomous organization is its workers. When they are autonomous in their thinking, they are committed to their own and the organization’s development and growth. Autonomous workers have the responsibility to define their individual personal mastery and autonomy. The organization must support this personal mastery and autonomy of knowledge workers.

5. Shared Vision: The knowledge economy is autonomous in its work, which means it is independent and dependent within a collaborative environment. The visions and mindsets of those who are dependent on each other for compatibility and complementary work must be considered, to create a match for most maximized results. Organizations, members, partners, and stakeholders must share their visions and mindsets to work together on a common platform towards common goals. Consider how visions and mindsets are shared within your organization.

6. Mental Models and Metrics: Certain assumptions of values and beliefs guide individual’s work, organizational work, and stakeholders and partners work to build compatibility and common direction. Alignment of these values and beliefs allows diverse perspectives to see certain perspectives of agreement that will enable collaborative work. Since these diverse perspectives may be in conflict, it is essential that workers find the perspectives that are in agreement so that they can align in some ways that support their collaborative work for jointly agreed-upon results.

7. Team Learning: Organizational work is usually done in the 21st century through team structures. When work is structured with the learning organization, systems, and project models, it can yield significant learning for reaching current goals and for identifying future pursuits. Team learning is tracked through structured processes that yield important feedback and insight into work and its desired results.

8. Six-step Learning System: Autonomy requires and is enabled by learning. A six-step learning system uses autonomous work to build the learning needed to complete a project with its best result. This learning system structures inquiry and learning, the importance and significance of interconnections, and the sequencing of work that will yield desired results.

9. Reflection, Recognition, and Reward: Reflecting on previous thoughts, work, and results provides insights that can define your next steps to create new value. Reflecting needs to be routine, consistent, and structured so that all domains of interest and relevance are investigated. Reflections identify improvements to current work and new opportunities to pursue with action plans.

10. Mindset, Autonomy, Satisfaction, and Narrative Metrics: Worker satisfaction happens when workers are content and motivated. These characteristics also help build compatibility for 21st century collaborative work. Autonomous workers define their own needs for contentment, motivation, and satisfaction that can be fulfilled by the organizations within which they work. Worker satisfaction also creates a narrative of your organization that attracts new workers, partners, and customers.