Empowerment LO26348

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 03/13/01


Replying to LO26324 --

Dear Organlearners,

Jan Lelie <janlelie@wxs.nl> writes:

>So empowering people would mean organizing self-organizing.
>And this is a nice paradox when one is self-organizing organizing.
>When one is not self-organized to begin with, how can one
>become self-organized with an intervention from the outside?

Greetings dear Jan,

As with Rick's contribution I could not resist to answer to your beautiful
contribution, although I actually want to leave for homa and take a rest.

Your comment above seems to be a paradox, but it is not. We have to bear
in mind the starnge phenomenon of "irreversible entropy production". A
system may change its own organisation by producing entropy internally.
The issue is then for the organisation to change in a favourable
direction. This is where the surroundings can play a desive role as
follows. The disturbance by the surroundings must be as small as possible,
yet guiding as much as possible. Nature's way to accomplish this is by way
of catalysts (like its enzymes, hormones and pheromones). Trace quntities
of them are needed and then they particpate only temporaly. Afterwards
they leave the system just as unobtrusively as they have entered it, not
used up at all by the system. Leaders who act like nature's catalysts is a
gift from God Creator.

Or as you wrote:

>The important thing is to be there or rather, "not to empower when not
>needed and to empower when needed". A balancing act.

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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