Replying to LO27555 --
Hi Chris,
You feel very passionate about this topic I can see, and I share a lot of
your enthusiasms.
I will add only a few words of caution which I - as a math graduate and an
experienced organizational person - have learned (only too slowly, I might
add). I have spent 30 years in business and 10 years in education
developing measurements to understand peoples' level of capacity, skill,
understanding, or performance. I can say one thing with confidence: It
is extremely difficult to develop measures that are unambiguous and are
difficult to manipulate.
Whether we like it or not measures and audits are threatening to people.
And as a consequence people invest at least as much time protecting
themselves from the outcome of the measure or the audit as they invest in
learning from the outcome of the measurement process or the audit.
My learning is that it is extremely difficult to develop unambiguous
measures or audits.
Measures and audits are not necessarily significantly different from each
other. They both depend on what is in the heart of the measurer or
auditor, and less on the actual measures and audits themselves.
Rol
>Malcolm I'm not sure if audit has technical meanings to you which it
>doesn't to me. However, there is one communications and knowledge-sharing
>implication of an audit process of primary concern to me: namely that it
>is pervasive in its organisational influence, the way it requires all
>people to contribute through its measurement or systemised process, the
>way it drives people's behaviours (what they areewarded or penalised
>for), what performance is thought to be and what the overall culture etc
>does, the way it effectively over-trumps any learning or knowledge
>process that isn't approved as an audit..
--"Rol Fessenden" <rol@fessenden.net>
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