Replying to LO27832 --
Dear Organlearners,
Mike Thomas <mike@pathwaylearning.com> writes:
>Some where in the cobwebs the term "Closed
>Environment" lurks in relation to LO, but I cannot
>remember the full meaning. Can someone help?
Greetings dear Mike,
I also remembered it because I wanted to respond to it, but since the
person indicated he would be signing off from the LO-list, I decided not
to write. I had to search for it. You will find it at:
"Employee Ranking Systems LO17553"
< http://www.learning-org.com/98.03/0313.html >
The phrase "closed environment" is for me personally an illusion. A system
is defined by its boundary/wall/"whatever-it-is-called". On the outside of
the boundary is the environment. The boundary and its inside forms the
system. It is the system which controls its boundary, not its environment.
A system can be material or mental or both. An individual human and an
organisation of humans are examples of material-mental systems. The
material boundary of an organisation of humans is defined by its list of
members. (I am not thinking of other physical assets too.) But few systems
thinkers seem to be aware that by defining the mission and vision of an
organisation, its mental boundary gets established.
Many kinds of things can move over the boundary of a system. Some kinds
move into the system, some kinds move out of the system, some kinds move
in both directions and some kinds are prevented to move in or out. Thus we
cannot ever speak of a system fully closed or fully open. The system is
always to a degree open between fully closed and fully open.
It is dangerous for living as well as learning systems to be too closed or
too open. For example, think of your own body as a living system. Its
boundary is a tough skin on the visible outside and soft membranes on the
inside like the mouth and the lungs.
The membranes of the areoli in the lungs are actually too open. Any kind
of gas can diffuse through them in both sides. In a clean environment such
as pristine nature the gases ogygen, carbon dioxide and water vapour move
through them. But humankind has learned how to make very poisonous gases
like hydrogen cyanide HCN and phosphine PH3. They move just as easily
through the membranes of the areoli. It is because that our lungs are too
open that these gases ahve been used to kill humans, sometimes alledgedly
legally such as in excecution and warfare.
In human organisations the management team, or CEO if the organisation is
too hirarchial, decides upon the degree of openness of the organisation's
mental boundary. In far too many cases their decision is too low a dgree
of openness. They do this to create WITHIN this too much closed system a
closed environment FOR THEM, but not for the other members. It means that
the organisation itself becomes their environment and not that to the
outside of the organisation. It can also be called the comfort zone of the
management team or CEO.
How do the managers create such a comfort zone? Foremost by their
ignorance to what a boundary is supposed to do for the system. I have
studied the mission and vision of many organisations, some multinational
and some even global. The will of the mangement team or CEO, but not of
the members, can often clearly be seen in this too a closed boundary.
We may tend to think that the closed environment as the comfort zone is
very real. It is still an illusion because the members of that
organisation frequently make mental contacts over this strict boundary
which the management team commanded. It can even happen in organisation as
large as a nation. Sadly, in this case the people of that nation may share
in this comfort zone through the very process of democracy.
If the managers of an organisation can create a comfort zone, can a human
do it too? Yes. It is done by mental models (mind sets, mental blinkers).
Too many mental models (too low a degree of openness) can be just as
dangerous as too few mental models (too high a degree of openness).. Too
many mental models lead to the stubborn personality whereas too few lead
to the fundamentalistic personality.
It is most interesting to observe where Peter Senge places openness, one
of the 11 essences of a LO. The 11 essences are:
PERSONAL MASTERY
being
generativeness
connectedness
TEAM LEARNING
collective intelligence
alignment
MENTAL MODELS
love of truth
openness
SHARED VISION
common purpose
partnership
SYSTEMS THINKING
holism
interconnectedness
He places it under Mental Models! Perhaps he tried to avoid using an
essence more than once. This might happen if he is of opinion that they
are independent of each other. But should they depend on one another, it
actually invites us to use an essence more than once. Thus I would
definitely have listed openness also under Shared Vision.
I want to warn you fellow learners against the following mistake which I
made self. A person through many experiences may discover how a certain
concept has far reaching or endless consequences. Any such a concept with
endless consequences is invariably related to one of the 7Es (seven
essentialities of creativity). For example, a person may begin to think of
"change" as such a "concept with endless consequences". This change is
nothing else than the "becoming" of liveness ("becoming- being"). The
concept may even be one of the fool blooded 7Es like wholeness or
openness.
What then happens next, is for this person to try attributing every good
thing to that concept as ON and every bad thing to that concept as OFF. It
also happens in organisational management. For example, with respect to
openness as the "concept with endless consequences", the person will argue
how the good things in the organisation are the consequences of an open
system while the bad things in the organisation are the consequences of a
closed system.
Not one of the 7Es can ever function as an OFF/ON switch. Each of them
function with some degree between the OFF and ON as the lower an upper
limits. This is a direct consequence of the two essentialities
fruitfulness and spareness taken together. For mental systems, whether of
an individual or an organisation, to become more creative, each of these
essentialities have to increase degree by degree. It happens by a process
which Goethe called "Steigerung" -- a degree increase in one essentiality
and then a degree increase in another one, etc. The closest we can get in
English to this concept "Steigerung" is to think of a dance, flowing from
style to style with seven styles in all possible.
It is a pity that in the human sciences "all get attributed" to this
"concept with endless consequences". Not only did it give the human
sciences a bad name, but also does it opens up the possiblity to keep on
practicing it for opportunistic reasons. In the human sciences it is
creative humans which are studied by creative humans. If we do not get a
grip on creativity, then these human sciences, including organisational
management, will keep on getting a bad name.
This "all get attributed" to this "concept with endless consequences" is
perhaps the worst Mental Model operating in the human sciences. It points
to the fact that something is essential to human creativity, but it never
moves further by finding out exactly what is essential to human
creativity. The 7Es had been my own humble attempt to get rid of this
Mental Model.
While reading through this reply to correct its grammer where I am capable
of, it struck me that this reply can easily be taken as the Mental Model
of "all get attributed" to this "concept with endless consequences". In
this case the concept is the "7Es". However, fellow learners long enough
on our LO-dialogue may remember that I often wrote on the 7Es depicting
"form" whereas "content" is depicted by "free energy", "entropy
production", "force-flux pairs", "order/chaos", "digestion", "bifurcation"
and "creative collapse" to mention seven of several things.
To explore this "form and content" and to share it with fellow learners is
my actual Mental Model which I call the "art of deep creativity" ;-) Thus
I often forget to stop thinking seriously ;-)
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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