Hello my fellow LOites
(THIS FIRST BIT IS TOTALLY OFF THE POINT: I prefer to call you LOites
[pronounced 'el-oh-ites', or 'low-ites'] because I've just realised why I
hate the term 'organlearners', which was, I believe coined by the lovely
At de Lange. It reminds me of 'organleggers', a term coined in the 60s by
Larry Niven, an SF writer, to describe human organ bootleggers, and
conjures up an image of body parts in jars of formaldehyde. Here in UK
[actually it's 'the UK', but most non-UK people don't know this] we
currently have a scandal about the illegal removal of organs from dead
babies by a rogue doctor, so that image springs to mind every time I turn
on the radio. So an 'organlearner' sounds like someone who learns from
organs, which is the claim that the rogue doctor would make -that he was
keeping them for 'research' - in fact the procedures were so poor that
none of his specimens were any use for research. He also lost and stole
medical records. Back in the 60s, 'organlegging' was one of the most
heinous and terrifying possibilities that dystopian SF writers could
imagine. Of course it is now a reality in some parts of the world. So it
goes, as another SF writer, Kurt Vonnegut says...
END\TOTALLY OFF THE POINT BIT)
Anyway, this email consists of responses to various points raised in this
thread so far, and includes an answer for Harriet to the riddle: "What did
a certain CEO say when one of his staff asked him at an open meeting
whether he wanted "his organisation" to be a learning organisation?"
It is, I see on rereading it, a little bitter, but it is from a good
heart, I hope.
?Nancy? said:
> I worked for a hospital system once that was
> going through massive TQM training (a total waste of time and money as it
> turned out).
Isn't all training a waste of time if it isn't part of a climate of trust,
in which the management is of a 'good heart'?
> Anyway, the leadership was required to read Senge's Fifth
> Discipline.
You can take a manager to water but you can't make him think, or even
read, to mangle a couple of aphorisms. Learning is what you do of your
own volition, training is done to you. As James Carse points out in his
wondrous book 'Finite and Infinite Games', training is rooted in the past,
the finished, the finite. Schools increasingly mainly train rather than
'support learning' or 'educate'. <Rick: insert a plug for the new Schools
Fieldbook, here, thanks>
Forcing people to read things is an example of what I call the 'Beating
People Up For Jesus' syndrome. Nice goal, shame about the tactics...
> Immediately, the Administrator started greeting all new
> employees by telling them that "we are a learning organisation." He had
> no idea what that meant and we were the furthest thing FROM a learning
> org. you will ever find.
Well obviously, he didn't actually bother reading the stuff himself,
because this type never does - reading is for 'the little people'(like
'paying tax is for the little people' - Ivana Trump?), or he would know
that saying 'we are a learning organisation' is like saying 'we are
perfect and complete in every way'. It's a journey, not a destination.
Learning is a verb, not an adjective. Doh!
> My assumption is that many leaders view their orgs that way but truly have
> no idea what it means.
Nancy, you are being way too charitable. They don't view with anything
other than McGregor Theory X and Argyris MMM1. They just say it because
it sounds good, like 'we are an equal opportunity employer'. The smarter
ones say 'we are working towards being an equal opportunity employer'
and/or 'we are working towards being a learning organisation' , but saying
that doesn't make it any truer. We need some other signs before we'll
believe them...
> Most of them couldn't even plow through the Fifth
> Discipline. I actually had to do a cliff notes version for my leaders.
Yep, 'managers bias for action' - Argyris again. It's like the technofear
of managers - keyboardophobia. They must imagine that if they do their
own type they'll turn into secretaries. Quel horreur. So it must be
utterly horrific for them to contemplate both reading AND typing; they
must imagine that they'll turn into something far, far, worse:
bespectacled tweedy secretaries who can't get a date because they're too
clever.
Sorry to say Nancy, you wasted your time. They won't read the book, and
they won't read your CliffNotes, and they'll ask for, but won't read your
'Just gimme a 2 pages of A4 summary' either. What I'm trying to say is,
they DON'T READ! Because they think it's girly! Big boys give orders!
Big boys fix things!
Lawrence Philbrook said:
> On the question of which organizations are learning organizations my own
> response is any organisation that is surviving is a learning organisation.
> Just as individuals are constantly learning entities or they die, so it is
> with organizations.
Sure, ok, so we could say learning = adaptation = 'changing in response to
the environment' = living..., which is my view, BTW. All these concepts
slide into each other, don't they? Is anyone else interested in the
confusion that exists in Argyris/Bateson/Senge/et al, when phrases like
'adaptive learning' 'generative learning' 'adaptive management' etcetera,
are used. I for one am confused. I understand the notion of 'double loop
learning' or rather I understand the concept these words point at, but am
I alone in finding the term mechanistic and static?
> So the question of finding a learning organisation is
> not hard. Using the method of Affirmative Inquiry you can look at any
> organisation and discover what capacity it has for learning that is
> keeping it alive.
Well, I sort of agree; I'm sure AI is useful for all sorts of, er,
inquiry, but...
HERESY ALERT!
what's so great about being a learning organisation anyway?
(There I've said it, I just know I'm going to get excommunicated now,
Rick'll come round to my house and ...)
STAND DOWN HERESY ALERT
> We need another term for Learning Organization's that clarifies what we
> are looking for. Earlier someone used the term High Performance
> Organizations, perhaps the term could be Effectively Learning
> Organizations I am not sure and there are probably others on the list who
> have better wordsmith skills
Sorry Lawrence, but a clear symptom of the death of a meme is a plea that
begins 'We need another term for ..."
I saw it happen with 'play' as in 'children's play provision'.
Successive cuts in grant aid to voluntary organisations providing 'play
opportunities' to kids during school holidays meant that the local council
(Bradford in Yorkshire) began to talk about 'quality play', which was
their way of secretly acknowledging that peanut funding buys monkey
results without having to admit it publicly . What they meant, of course,
was 'the play opportunities on offer are below par; therefore they are NOT
play opportunities in the sense of...details/criteria/KSFs, etcetera...
I'm sure you're right to say that:
> the key elements are:
...snip...
The thing is 'you can't fight city hall' and in this case city hall is the
memescape. In the memescape of managers, the meme 'learning organisation'
has been denatured, defanged, neutered. The fad cycle has moved on, and
many who advocated learning organisation are advocating knowledge
management. Which is cool, if it's done with a good heart...
I would save your energy for your chosen work Larry, and forgeddabout
trying to flog a dead meme...
Then Harriet said:
> OK. I'll ask. What did a certain CEO say when one of his staff asked him
> at an open meeting whether he wanted "his organisation" to be a learning
> organisation?
OK, I'll tell, but first I want to set the scene. This organisation is
not some little 200 staff light engineering factory in the Midlands,
bossed about by some scared guy trying to keep his outfit afloat in the
teeth of competition. No, it is a new, thrusting 'National Agency',
receiving massive funding from taxpayers to do good deeds; more
specifically, it advises its sector on 'improvement'. It employs
consultants who go out and show its clients how to do things better. It
has a unit called 'Best Practice' [which is a bit of a giveaway - to be
explained later]. Part of its work involves taking the government's
shilling to promote 'Lifetime Learning', whatever that is - as was
implicit in the earlier para on terminology, you sure can't learn OUTSIDE
of your lifetime.
So there they were: a gathering of staff in the conference room, and it's
Q&A time, and my chum asks that question. It's because he's a troublemaker
- but what nobody in management seems able to spot is that he's also a
believer, an idealist, he really does want to help make the world a better
place. Unlike many of them: as managers they are committed only to
improving their salary and their power. If they'd just notice him they
could use his good heart, his energy and passion to achieve great
things...
so anyway he asks the question, and do you know what the Chief Executive
says in response? He says:
"No."
Now I've got a theory as to why he said that, but I'd really like to hear
your theories, dear LOites...
Best wishes
::::::APB::::::
--arthur battram <apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk>
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