LO friends:
A week or so ago, in LO 27866, Rick Karash inquired about the "Central
notions and challenges" to the Fifth Discipline/Learning Organization
model, and followed it a few days later with the following report (in
part) from Peter Senge:
> The five disciplines approach is hardly the norm for addressing
> organizational improvement and change... So there must be a lot of
> people who disagree!
> Two particular groups with challenging or opposing notions:
> 1. Those who simply emphasize some other thing. There are many such
> responsible voices. Gary Hamel, C.J. Prahalad, Michael Porter et al on
> strategy; or Ed Schein and others on organizational culture and culture
> change. There are many approaches to organizational change that don't
> pay attention to the 5 disciplines.
I've been pondering this. It seems to me that all modern organizational
interventions, such as the L-O approach, or the alternatives of the
leaders above, seem almost always to display a version of the Hawthorne
effect when first used in the real world. That is, anecdotally there
always seem to be stories of transformed relationships, new vision,
dramatic improvements in efficiency or productivity, etc. These then
become the stuff of case study "proofs" of the efficacy of the particular
model.
But I've noticed a number of examples (British Air and BP come to mind,
but I'm sure others of you can quickly cite others) of companies whose
"success stories" appear in the promotional materials of two or more of
the consultants who each rely on different change models such as those
above. Several explanations occur to me, chief among them that no single
change/intervention model is actually sufficient to effect long-term
change, so that "sequential" intervention using different models is
necessary. As a long-time and committed practitioner of LO approaches,
that leads me to ask,
"What evidence is there that any particular approach, including LO,
actually produces long-term results that are demonstrably better or
longer-lasting than any other?"
I welcome your thoughts and evidence.
Malcolm C. Burson
Director of Special Projects
Maine Department of Environmental Protection
mburson@mint.net
--"Malcolm Burson" <mburson@mint.net>
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