Replying to LO25413 --
Dear Organlearners,
Winfried Dressler <winfried.dressler@voith.de> writes
>Senge ends his tapes on the Fifth Discipline with:
>"One person trying to bring about change in an organization
>will get creamed, no matter who he is. Two persons can
>commiserate. Three people become the beginnings of a
>full fledged conspiracy."
and then concludes
>A LO may emerge as a three-people conspiracy and then
>grow in its disciplines qualitatively and also quantitatively
>by feeding on the rest of the organization.
Sadly, the rest of the organisation does think of the "LO-germ" as a
"conspiracy" which "feeds" upon the assets of the rest of the
organisation. The best way which I found to prevent this misconception is
for the "LO-germ" be very open (honest) on what it does and to produce as
much as possible by "importing" as little as possible from the rest.
Winfried, you also write:
>Abbreviated I have also noted from the tapes on how to
>get started with LO: "Learn how to beat the path as we
>walk it. Start where you start [AS A LO]. You don't need
>all disciplines, EVENTUALLY they are all important.
You then discuss a number of settings.
The method which I found most valuable, is rather time consuming. It is
to invite again and again members of the rest of the organisation to
partcipate in mental and spiritual emergences. This does not work like a
political rally in which people are won over en masse by deft rhetoric.
Members rather get convinced one by one through the weight of their own
experiences in mutual emergences with the "LO-germ".
>In reality, usually the empire strikes back as soon as the
>initiative, the newly emerged germ causes the warning
>lamps of the old paradigm to alarm. Think of Smuts in South
>Africa or Allende in Chile. Think of the many local
>implementations of TOC which could not spread and grow.
>How many LO-initiatives do sustain themselves? Are CoP
>really allowed to controll change? And if the initiative succeeds,
>the empire lifts its head from within. Think of Robbespiere,
>Lenin/Stalin, Mao Tse Tung.
>
>What about a 'theory of empires striking back' .... ?
Dear Winfried, the "empire strikes" because, as Thomas Kuhn probably would
have said it, the empire has too much vested interests in the present
organisation. The empire is afraid that it will not be able to cope with
the changes in organisation (of which "entropy production" is its measure)
and thus lose control over its vested interests. Thus it makes use of
certain "means" to suppress the changes. But it is ignorant to the fact
that these "means" also produce entropy and thus bring necessarily
organisational changes about in a destructive manner. Eventually the
empire does lose control completely through its own doings. Should the
empire have manifested the five disciplines Personal Mastery, Team
Learning, Shared Vision, Mental Models and Systems Thinking, its own
doings would not have caused its demise. But for some reason the empire
believes that its ideology and policy will keep it in power forever.
I have first hand experience how it has happened here in apartheid South
Africa. The signs are there that the New South Africa is beginning to
follow the same path. History teaches one sure lesson -- most people do
not learn from history.
I am of opinion that the same has happened in East Germany and other
communistic countries the past ten years. Late yesterday night there was a
documentary film on the Inca Empire of Mexico. Much of what had been said
in the film points to the same thing. History has many examples over many
millenia involving many kinds of social systems in several civilisations.
The prophets of the Old Testament (Torah) are also remarkably clear on
this self undoing when the empire tries to enslave people will authentic
mental behaviour.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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