Replying to LO27004 --
Dear Organlearners,
Peter Hubbard < Peter_Hubbard@will2win.com.au > writes:
>Reading your recipe prompts me to ask you this question.
>Why is the modern trend of business management so
>focussed on looking at the parts, and not the whole?
>Particularity in the IT area, where I would observe the
>biggest single inhibitor to prosperous synergy's is IT's
>almost pathologic ignorance of real business needs.
Wees gegroet liewe Peter (Greetings dear Peter),
This is a great question! I can generalise it by asking why so many people
of most cultures are focussed on the parts and not the whole?
It is a question which I have asked myself a hundreds times for each of
the 7Es (essentialties of creativity: liveness, sureness, wholeness,
fruitfulness, spareness, otherness and openness) and not merely wholeness.
As for your question why many business managers focus on the
parts and not the whole, one could answer that it is because of a
lack in wholeness. However, logical as such an answer may seem
to be, it is useless since it lacks self in wholeness! One way to
increase the wholeness of the answer, is to (as your signature
quotes):
. "KNOW THE FUTURE -- ASK THE NEXT QUESTION"
So why do many business managers lack in wholeness? We will get a plethora
of answers from fellow learners. Some would answer that it is a lack of
wholeness in the very training of managers. Others would answer that
fundamentally managers have to work with individuals rather than teams or
divisions. Another answer will be that it is the stress inherent to the
managerial task which causes wholenes to bite the dust first. A last
answer, among many others, would be that it is a global pathology of the
modern technocratic society.
To try and select the appropiate answers for the lack of wholeness in a
particular manager is in my opinion to go for sureness, but not wholeness!
So let us use once again the quote in your signature: How can a manager
make up for the lack in wholeness?
Well, I think it is imperative to know that wholeness is not a rigid-fixed
quality, but that it can change in value. Changes can either be an
increase or a decrease in wholeness. The more the wholeness of a manager
decreases, the more the manager will focus on the parts rather than the
whole. However, Jan Smuts has argued strongly in his Holism and Evolution
(1926) that holism="increasing wholeness" is the driving force of all
kinds of evolution, physical and spiritual.
Today I will put it slightly different, not because he was wrong, but
because of understanding a greater complexity than what was possible in
his time. "Increasing wholeness" is one of the seven "sufficiency
conditions" for evolution in every realm of reality. We will also have to
take the "necessary conditions" into account. They unfold into "ridge of
chaos" and "valley of equilibrium" conditions. The former entails
sufficient free energy available to produce entropy fast enough so as to
reach the ridge of chaos where bifurcations happen. The latter entails a
nourishing environment and ample time so that an emerging feature can
become mature and hence give up its free energy.
Let us keep on endeavouring for more wholeness by asking more questions.
Why is "increasing wholeness" required as a sufficiency condition for
evolution? It has to do with what I understand as the Law of Requisite
Complexity (LRC). Evolution is the steplike (Goethe would have said
"Steigerung"=staggering) increase in complexity from simplicity. These
steps are uneven. Yet the LRC requires that none of these steps
(emergences) can be skipped. They have to be taken one after the other.
Trying to skip a number of them will lead to destructive immergences
rather than constructive emergences.
Why do they have to be taken one after the other? This where a deep
understanding of the 7Es and how they manage "entropy production" and
"free energy" comes in. Should it be possible to transport with a time
machine, say, Aristotle of more than two millennia ago into the world of
today, this perhaps most intelligent person among the Greeks would have
been dumbfounded by the complexity of the present world.
Why do the universe and especially humankind increase in complexity
through stepwise evolution? Part of the answer has to do with what I
understand as the "measuring of complexity". Another most profound
function (other than the LRC) of the 7Es is that they all valued together
measure the complexity of a system. This is then manifested in what I call
the LSC (Law of Singularity of Complexity). The more complex a system
becomes, the less the other specimens of the same species there are.
The other part of the question I can answer only from my viewpoint as a
believer in God Creator. God is so perfect in the 7Es (eg., perfect
wholeness is better known as holy) because of the perfect complexity of
God Creator. Should a person (as for example Moses did) encounter God
Creator with arrogant simplicity, that person will be digested (like a
fire burning up wood) by the complexity of God Creator. Thus I am deeply
aware myself of the need to be prepared in a stepwise fashion for a
personal meeting after death with God Creator.
>I'm in the business of helping people to create the recipe
>and bake the sosatie, usually by understanding the
>potential of the individual ingredients on the way through.
Your metaphoric description of your task is fantastic. But I have to add
that this metaphor will only speak to those who have prepared, grilled and
eaten sosaties!
>The environment, however, is almost obsessed with the
>minute of every definable grain of salt, and seemingly
>dedicated to repairing the granular structure with little
>regard for the real purpose of the spice!
Is it not peculiar that one of the main reasons for Europeans traveling
all over the world by ship some four hundred years ago (during the Age of
Emightenment) was to get hold of spices. In those days spices were worth
their weight in gold. Today spices are taken almost for granted while the
majority of farm workers who have to produce it, live in poverty.
I think that we fail to notice how Europeans during the Enlightenment
explored all possible sensations through the five sensory organs up to the
hilt. These sensations lead to inner experiences which subsequently
emerged into inner tacit knowledge. The tacit knowledge then emerged into
inner formal knowledge and thus its mapping into external information. The
creating of all layers inner knowledge was a burning fever in those times
-- hence the term Enlightenment.
But today the business in external information has become a buring fever.
I think that unless there is inner knowledge which can deal effectively
with such external information, the outcome of this buring fever will be
mortal to our complex spirituality. Almost each day I encounter some end
user of IT who is making one big mess with it without becoming aware of
it.
For example, I had to buy this morning a bag of white cement (very rare
here). It should have taken me less than a hour to be back at the
university. It took me more than two hours. The sales printer of this very
large business had a gremlin. It took the ladies almost an hour to fix it.
Meanwhile the que of customers became longer and longer. They begged the
customers to be patient, but many left in anger. Since I was first in the
que when the printer failed, I had full view to observe the activity
afterwards. I am also keen on understanding how people behave towards
technology.
But why did they allow the que to become longer? After questioning I found
out that no one had the experience any more of making an invoice out by
hand, nor did they even have a paper based invoice book to work from! They
had become slaves of their computer based IT system without realising it.
Where was the IT manager? Sitting in cubicle with his head self glued to a
computer screen. Several times the ladies rushed to his cubicle and not
even once did he get down to them to help.
Yesterday I had been to a huge hardware shop. A man bought some R1978.50
in goods and offered a check of R1980.00 (previous quotation by phone) for
payment. The computer system did not want to accept it because the amount
was not correct. He asked how much the difference was. I mentally
calculated in less than a second that it was R1.50. It took the lady some
minutes to work it out with a calculator. The man said that she could keep
the change. But she insisted that the computer will not accept the check.
So he left in anger and the hardware shop lost R1978.50 in sales. Where
was the IT manager?
What is technocracy doing to the minds of people in this country?
Is it happening in yours too?
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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