Replying to LO26398 --
Dear Organlearners,
Bruce Jones <bjones1@nwths.com> writes:
>PS: At ... How are you doing? Heard you were under the
>weather. Hope all is well!
Greetings dear Bruce,
Last things first. I am getting better, but not unscathed in both body and
mind. Not that I mind these scars at all because as usual they help me to
reorientate myself. Since I believe that both God and I are partners in my
experiences -- with God being the senior partner in managing Creation and
I the junior partner in managing merely myself -- I want to pay tribute to
this Manager who excells by far the most caring of all human managers.
>Don... which tools are you referring to? I agree that before
>turning anybody loose with any tool they should be trained
>in its use and misuse.
I wanted to reply to Don's < d.l.dwiggins@computer.org > contribution self
Dwig, please forgive me for not doing so. I rather replied to Alfred
Rheeder's (a fellow South African) first contribution (Schrodinger's Cat
...) because it provides us with the context to understand "Dangerous
Tools". In it I tried to explain how all measurements done from the
outside of a system is potentially dangerous because they will distrurb
the system irreversibly by entropy production involving BOTH the system SY
and the measuring system ME in the surroundings SU of all outside systems.
I hope that explanation helped you to get your own thoughts going further.
The fact that you introduced this topic witness to me taht you are much
aware that tools range from the destructive (very dangerous) to the
non-destructive (more safe) tools. Let me say a little bit more on it to
finish off what I wrote to Alfred.
Inner measurement involving ME cybernetically whereby ME is within the
system SY rather than outside the system SY in the SU is much safer,
provided ME measures changes within SY $$$as a result of interaction$$$
with the SU. This phrase $$$as a result of interaction$$$ is crucially
important because only then will all seven essentialities come into play.
When we consider the person (body and spirit) as a system, this inner ME
is nothing else that our sensory organs of which the first emergent as a
result of learning is our $$$exprience$$$. Should these interactions
become less or should the ME focus on intra-actions, the system will
follow the path of death without knowing it. CEOs and managers far too
often follow the latter path. It usually gives me the clue to expect
sooner or later the demise of that organisation.
Thus, when Rich Pauli < RPauli@aol.com > wrote in
"Dangerous tools LO26396" the following:
>Why do people not believe the evidence of their own
>experience? My obervation is that the things that are
>typically measured and rewarded are counterproductive
>to the success of the organization in the long term.
I laughed with joy and exclaimed to myself "Hurray for another Pauli !!!"
(The first Pauli was the famous Wolfgang Pauli of quantum mecanics who
discovered the fourth atomic quantum number called "spin".)
Rich, "experiences" per se are the beginning, but not the path.
Experiences have to increase in terms of each of the seven essentialities
(liveness, sureness, wholeness, fruitfulness, spareness, otherness and
openness) before we can begin to "believe our expriences as evidence".
Back to you Bruce. I will give you one example of a tool which is so
dangerous that not even the best training can prevent it damaging the
system immensely.
This tool is a measuring device, namely the MCQ (Multiple Choice
Questionaire). The sooner this MCQ gets prohibited from schools, colleges
and universities, the better it will become for education in general and
authentic learning in particular.
When managers make use of MCQ's (provided by some consultant using some
fads in operational or systems research), it is usually the writing on the
wall for that manager's organisation. I have had far too many solid
experiences of this "management by MCQ" not to believe how deadly it is.
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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