Replying to LO27564 --
" He struggled to keep the parcel of himself from becoming unwrapped and
scattered." Leon Edel on Henry Thoreau.
Dear Learners,
> >> In NLP 'speak' then, can you 'unpack' your
> >> thoughts a little more for me so that I may
> >> reduce the pain of my denial.
> >
> >Andrew your response shares with me that you
> >are protecting something, maybe mentally what
> >you believe to believe be so righteous that it may
> >not be discussed or even confronted. That is the
> >problem on this very chat room. Some issues are
> >taboo, and not to be challenged and this is a real
> >pity. I have often contemplated to remove myself
> >from this list because of this. It seems that there is
> >a singular focus and this is a pity rather. The very
> >openness that is purported to be, is just not the case.
> >The introversion sometimes troubles me. Hence the
> >comments I have made over the last few weeks.
> >There is often this option on many of the discussions,
> >choose my way or the highway.
> >
> >Where may ask is the freedom of expression, creativity,
> >liberty in that?
>
> Greetings dear Gavin,
>
> I personally would feel sad if you resign from the LO-dialogue
> for this reason.
>
> I have learned of openness that it is the Joker of the pack of
> 7Es (seven essentialities of creativity). One reason is that in
> the other six 7Es we merely have to increase in them. But in
> openness we have to increase in both "closedness" and
> "openness". In other words, we have to swing in increasing
> amplitude between the acts of closing and opening. We have
> to exploit the exisiting paradigm and its linearity to its hilt,
> but also have to prepare prepare us for the non-linear shift
> to the next paradigm. We have to create constructively, but
> also have to prepare us for the next creative collapse.
>
> For example, in the digestive mode/assymptote/phase of
> my spirituality (creativity-learning-believing-loving) I have
> to open up the "world-inside-me" for "food" (impulses-
> information-beliefs-care) coming from the
> "world-outside-me". But in the bifurcative
> mode/assymptote of my spirituality I have to close the
> "world-inside-me" so as to focus on inner regeneration-
> rejuvenation-revelation.
>
> Because I strongly suspect that it is the same with other
> learners, I have made peace with the fact that they close
> themselves. Should they close themselves during the
> digestive phase, they will sooner or later become very
> hungry and thirsty so that they eventually will open up to
> feed and drink again. Should they close themselves during
> the bifurcative phase, then sooner or later we will be
> informed what bifurcation happened and whether it led
> to a noble thought.
>
> It reminds me of the climate here in Pretoria. In winter it
> becomes so cold that we have to close all the doors and
> windows. But in summer it becomes so hot that we have
> to open them not to suffer in the heat and humidity.
> Likewise spiritual acts have these climatic cycles which I
> tried to depict a couple of months ago in the entropy and
> free energy landscapes.
>
> >There is a lot of longing and deep needs for
> >association on this chat room which is okay
> >but unfortunately those who are not with us
> >are against type responses is all too familiar.
>
> Another thing which I learned is not to confuse the rythm
> of openness with the invoking of LEM (Law of Excluded
> Middle), i.e. picking-sides. The strange thing about openness
> is that as it swings back from opening to closing, it inverts
> the other six 7Es too. For example, in sureness ("identity-
> contextuality") the identity becomes the context while the
> focus shift to the context as identity. In liveness
> ("becoming-being") the becoming and being will switch
> roles. In my mother tongue Afrikaans we have magnificent
> rules how to create verbs from nouns or nouns from verbs
> as well as adverbs from adjestives and vice versa when
> we begin to respond to the rythm of openness.
>
> >Andrew you know where your pain resides
> >and how it feels and how you cover it, not I,
> >because I only can know mine. I try be honest
> >about it but that is very hard too. I heard a
> >saying once." I have found the enemy and it
> >is I."
>
> Yes, it is a wonderful saying. But may I extend it with another
> one which I deeply again became under the impression of
> during the past couple of months. "I am the main obstacle in
> the path to healing of somebody, including myself, who I
> criticise as ill." In other words, if I do not take care, I am
> everybody's enemy. The "I" here refer to me as individual
> and also to the organisations to which I belong.
>
> >You may want to go inside yourself
> >and ask, what fear you are projecting
> >on to me?
>
> I wonder whether any fear had been projected onto another
> person. I got the idea that Andrew was trying to help you as
> I now get the idea that you are trying to help Andrew. But
> as I often said -- this is what the LO-dialogue is meant for
> -- to become sure what we each mean when we talk/chat/
> write to each other.
NLP doesn't impress of worry me, nor much I read about in books or meet on
street corners. Nor Ph'D's (Piled high and Deep) nor 'professorships' What
impresses and worries me at turns is 'people'. Especially manipulative,
manipulating people and/or organizations. Mr.Bin wotsisname is a very good
case in point. Let someone cleverer than us unpack that little historical
entity in the spirit of 'openness'. As for this forum I have appended
below text by CLIFF HAVENER that you may be or feel familiar with. It sets
out much better than I can to the readers here what may underpin a shared
anxiety.
"Dualism is the mechanism normative social institutions use to specialise
-- to increase predictability. It is the practice of viewing the principal
complements of any system or subsystem as enemies rather than as partners
in a larger whole. As such, it progressively divides systems into smaller,
isolated antagonistic pieces until they become battlefields of tiny
soldiers, each fighting for themselves. Think of Dualism as a slow fission
reaction in human social systems.
Dualism gives normative systems their either-or character: "Either you're
with us or against us." Because they focus on form and process, normative
systems say: "Either you look like us, you act like us, you do what we do
-- or you don't. If you do, you're in. If you don't, you're out." When the
system's objective is to reduce variance and increase predictability,
deviance and diversity are "out" -- very, very out. Therefore, talented,
creative, original thinkers, seeking meaningful work, are "out" -- very,
very out. They refuse to check their brains at the door, to mindlessly
abide by unexamined assumptions.
The movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" is a concentrated case study of
"normalizing." Xerox failed to recognize the unique usefulness of the
graphic user interface technology it had developed, and the company
essentially gave it to Apple. Hewlett-Packard failed to recognize the
unique usefulness of the personal computer Steve Wozniak had developed.
Steve Jobs failed to recognize the strength of his competitive advantage
in the marketplace and effectively gave it to Bill Gates. Every instance
is the result of "normalizing." Bill Gates proved one thing: that a
modicum of vision in a highly normative institution can produce
mind-boggling results. Since then, of course, we've watched Microsoft
become more normative and obsessed with control, which is the root cause
of its current problems.
Peter Scholtes writes:
I am troubled by what might be called the "re-dehumanization" of the
workplace. During the mid-1980s, there appeared to be a rethinking of the
American workplace. Fostered by W. Edward Deming's philosophy and other
contributors, we rediscovered such values as honesty and integrity. There
seemed to be a return to workplace civility and decency. And then it
seemed to go away. The quality movement has been reduced to a fad, or so
it appears. Many reprehensible practices of American management -- such
things as quotas, MBO, performance appraisals, creating competition among
workers -- have crept back into practice. (Indeed, many had never stopped
doing these things, but it was commonplace to at least question their
usefulness). Actually, TQM and its inevitable consequence, re-engineering
the corporation, as adopted by American business (and not in keeping with
Deming's original intent), became tools to intensify normalizing. The
final outcome was "maximizing worker productivity" as defined by
accounting terms. Contrary to its original intent, the determining
criteria of TQM became quantitative, not qualitative. It became
"normalized," which is precisely what Peter Scholtes is lamenting.
So, if you really want to create a company that attracts and holds
talented people, your challenge boils down to creating an "integrative"
system -- that is, transforming the company or business unit into an
entirely different state of being.
The Integrative Phase
The integrative phase unifies the fragments of the normative by
recognizing the system's original intent or purpose. It doesn't mean
throwing away what exists. It means discovering why it exists and then
redesigning the system, based on current conditions, to accomplish that
original intent.
An integrative system is an open system. It acknowledges that its
originating purpose was to provide some unique benefit to a principal
external partner. Figuring out the two principal partners is pretty
straightforward. In personal relationships, it's the two people. In
education, it's the provider of the information and those who use it --
typically the teacher and the students. In business, the two principal
complements are the producer of the product or service and its user. In
organized religion, it's the source of theological doctrine and the
receivers of that doctrine.
Every system is a transaction between its principal partners. In a
monetary system of business, it's the exchange of a good or service for
money. In a barter system, it's the exchange of goods or a good for a
service. In education, it's the transfer of information from teacher to
student -- or the development of the student's thinking abilities through
exercises the teacher provides.
The critical question is: For what purpose does this transaction occur?
The answer to this question tells you why the system exists in the first
place. Everything else in the system is defined by the answer to this
question.
An originating purpose must meet one very strict qualification: It must be
equally beneficial to both principal partners.
People in integrative systems understand the basis of unity between the
principal partners, even after the system has become large and materially
complex. Therefore, they can see the meaning behind its forms and
processes. They can see the relationships between causes and effects.
They know why things do or don't make sense. They know what to change and
when to change it. Unlike in a normative system, whose complexity is
incomprehensible, people can comfortably function in the complexity of an
integrative system because they have the foundation of purpose for
organizing all the details.
In an integrative, open, adaptive system, people practice inclusion of
diversity rather than exclusion. They transcend dualism. That keeps the
system integrated even after it is concretely complex. People care about
both function and form because they focus on how things are complementary,
how they "fit together." They remember that their goal is to accomplish
the system's original intent. Subsystems evolve interdependently rather
than independently.
Within the realm of human experience, there are many examples of systems
that began as open systems -- in business, in government (democracy, the
founding philosophy of the U.S. government) and in education. But an
integrative system remains open and adaptive after it is fully
operational. Therefore, it requires "integrative" people who:
· have a sense of purpose for their own lives
· are grounded in the originating purpose of whatever system they work in
· are keenly focused on "the other" principal partner
· work toward the reconciliation of antagonistic separation, the
re-unification of parts into wholes (They live to unify.) This is
"talent." The opportunity to use it is "meaningful work."
To create integrative systems in business, we have to return to the
originating purpose of "business" itself. The vast majority of people
would say that the purpose of business is "to make money." That's a
normative, closed-system definition that can't possibly be the original
purpose of business. Why not? Because it considers only the producer's
well-being, not the user's. It's not mutually beneficial. It's not a
unifying purpose.
The original purpose of business was "to exchange usefulness for mutual
benefit." This is easy to see in a barter system. For the exchange to take
place, both parties must feel they will be better off with what they will
get. In a monetary system, the producer provides usefulness in the form of
a product or service; the user, who is the potential beneficiary of the
product or service, reciprocates with a promissory note of usefulness,
namely money. Making money is the reciprocal of providing unique
usefulness. How many companies know this is the root cause of their
success? Recognizing and living it is the first and most essential
prerequisite for creating an integrative system that attracts and retains
talented people -- a culture that provides meaningful work.
The concept of an integrative system isn't new. Ever since Eric Trist
developed socio-technical systems in the early 1960s, Organization
Development professionals have recognized it, or something like it. In
recent years, new organizational concepts have been introduced with mixed
results: the learning organization, the self-organizing system, the
horizontal organization, and the high-performance workplace. In virtually
all cases, they've met resistance. In some cases, the people promoting
them were simply fired to end the threat. Others failed outright. The most
successful attempts improved communications and work flow. They increased
efficiency because that was the highest achievement possible. They
couldn't improve performance beyond this. Do you know why?
The practice of Organization Development, in any normative environment, is
confined to group work processes, by definition. These systems don't allow
what they do to be challenged, only how it's done. As a result,
organizational structure is confined to the limits set by the normative
rules of the parent system, the institution of business. That's why new
organizational structures raise false hopes. Employees know that the
things that don't work are largely due to what the organization does, not
how it does them. But they want to believe a new structure will make
things work a lot better. Their hopes are dashed when things work only a
little better, if at all. Without changing the parent system, the best
that OD can do is improve efficiency. In many cases, the new structure
enables the organization to do the wrong things faster and cheaper. At
best, it makes negatives less negative.
First comes people. Individually, they become open, adaptive, integrative
systems. Then comes associations of these people -- open, adaptive
organizations. All businesses, companies, social organizations and
institutions are nothing more than agreements between people. The
difference between normative and integrative organizations is simply what
the people agree on. In a normative system, it's a set of rules, based on
form and process, that control thoughts and actions. In an integrative
organization, it's original purpose -- making up whatever forms and
processes are most appropriate for achieving it.
Creating meaningful work, the kind that attracts and retains talented
people, requires nothing less than creating integrative systems. Anything
less simply won't work."
Nature is an 'integrative' system par excellence. At, Gavin, all ...that
phrase...two paragraphs above this one..."wrong things faster and
cheaper..."sounds like a great recipe for a recent set of disasters
doesn't it;-(
Love,
Andrew
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