Replying to LO27945 --
Dear Learners
In his reply to my 'Water' analogy (LO27945) , At de Lange wrote
i.a.:
> The purpose of business management seems to be maximising
> profits. The purpose of management in other kinds of
> organisations also seems to be maximising something specific.
> The purpose of a LO seems to be maximising learning. Perhaps
> there is something in the "hidden order" which gets all these
> different interpretations of purpose. What would it be?
Dear At and all learners
I am going to lift out two paragraphs from your answer - the above one
and another later.
It has been said that someone who does not care at all where he or she
is, can never be lost.
At first glance that statement seems strange - personally, I care
where I find myself, and thus have never really been lost. Came close
to it while travelling in new territory (against all rules and even
common sense) in a drift snow storm borne by katabatic winds on the
Antarctic, by luckily realised my folly just in time to avert very
real disaster and to return to the known route. But who gets lost
today? Probably nobody we know.
In the statement "lost" refers to being in an unfamiliar place with no
idea of how to proceed from there, except for people who have no place
to call home. Yet in a sense that statement says more about life in
general than the far away traveller in the jungle or desert or
mountains. How many people do not really know, or care, what they are
doing with their lives and therefore what they accomplish through a
lifetime of living - so much like the person who does not care where
he/she physically finds him/herself on earth?
To continue before I begin to belabour the point and risk boredom.
this saying can be extended by adding that someone who does not care
where he/she is going also does not care in which direction he/she
sets off nor what the preferred mode of travel should be. And
therefore can never measure progress to anywhere, or lack of it.
And again this applies to two levels - one with reference to where
some traveller happens to be and where or what the destination of the
journey is, if any such exists. The other being the journey we all
travel through life and with particular reference those people who
have practically nothing except old age and senility as their
destination, if they make it that far, and with no notable milestones
along the road.
[As an aside, for much of my life I lived like the traveller who does
not care where he is or the journeyer without a clear idea of the
destination. So I have first hand knowledge of what that feels like.
Now I know where I would like to be, one day, and I am trying to equip
myself for the trip that lies ahead. A good reason to be here at LO
and to stock up, because the baggage that is needed for this journey I
am belatedly embarking on is not material.]
But this also means that I have become sensitive to what destinations
other people have set for themselves - or sometimes are being driven
to reach. And the same applies to organisations - the profit motivated
business as well as other kinds of formal organisations. (At least
restricted to these for the time being in this discussion.)
Lets keep to business first, because the profit motive is perceived as
so paramount, near universal, as At observed above.
Profit, I think we will all agree, is merely a means to an end, or
perhaps to many ends - each his/her own. As with most [all??] cases
where some means gets elevated to become an end in itself, the risk of
all manner of abuses and malpractices increases substantially. I am
sure we all know people for whom exercise is no longer the means to
get fit and healthy, but has become an end in itself. Or people with
an overpowering urge to neatness or to be of assistance to others,
come what may; behaviour that goes beyond mere tidiness and
helpfulness. These activities in themselves have become their purpose
in life for these people. Means have become ends. And then it often
does not take long before other people are viewed s merely as means to
this 'new' and artificial so important 'end'. [Thanks, Andrew!!].
It would seem to me that when means become ends, the ethics that
should guide ones actions and one's relationships with others gets
confused. There is no pure guideline - of the kind one can normally
associate with true and proper ends - that serves to set standards and
norms for one's behaviour. The behaviour, or the activity, itself has
taken over control and the exigencies of the moment are all that are
perceived as being important - no longer the destination. When the
process of making money is all that matters, or when people become
excessively - even obsessively - neat, or driven to exercise as an end
in itself, or otherwise get totally confused about means and ends,
they tend to become less amenable fellow travellers through life. Some
even become obnoxious and are to be avoided.
The same applies to business. When pursuit of profit becomes an end in
itself, there is always justification for using - abusing? -
unjustifiably cheap labour, for squeezing one's suppliers to the last
minute with payments for goods delivered or services provided, and
then to squeeze that last little bit to get their prices even lower;
it becomes desirable to deliver the lowest acceptable quality to the
market, even when the means exist to improve quality at relatively low
incremental cost. But every cent now counts and selling the product
has become more important than anything else.
Rather spend more on advertising to tell people how much quality they
(think they) are getting than to deliver the real McCoy.
Which is why I believe that the normative objective for organisations
- of all kinds, and even for the individual - has an important place
in business. And in life. Whether one accepts the Golden Rule as a
Christian ethic (shared by all major religions, but the "Do unto
others . . " says it so well) or whether one simply accepts that our
long ago 'small-tribal' origins required that we live in harmony and
co-operation with our fellow human beings, or for whatever reason, it
seems to me to be the core principle that defines how we treat our
fellow human beings - as ends in their own right, not as the means to
satisfy our drive, our compulsion, to make money.
Yet, for a business, making that objective - improving its worth for
all people in its environment - its primary guideline, can be shown
also to be a recipe for lasting improved performance in terms of
profit. I will not belabour that point here neither, but it is easy to
see that if a business can become the preferred customer for
suppliers, the preferred employer for workers, the preferred place for
investment by people with money, and the preferred place to shop for
customers and clients - which is the implication of a high worth all
round, and which implies excellent 'value for money' for all who
interact with it - then over the long term it has to be very
profitable, too, in the accepted sense of the term; namely as a
consequence of good business - not as the single overriding goal.
In that opening quote At wrote,
> The purpose of a LO seems to be maximising learning. Perhaps
> there is something in the "hidden order" which gets all these
> different interpretations of purpose. What would it be?
My question to the first statement would be, "Why is it necessary to
maximise learning? What is the purpose of doing so, if the 'process of
learning' is not to become merely an end in itself?" Like profit.
And I accept the possibility that I have not been here at this list
long enough to be aware of discussions into the purpose of learning
that may have taken place long ago and that has become ingrained and
second nature among the members. [I have not thought of using Google
the way At did to scan the archives!! And I have not had time to
follow up on his results.]
Yet I would suggest that the normative directive - increasing the
worth of the organisation for all in its environment, including,
obviously, the members of the list themselves - is already being
served well here at LO. In the absence of a clear indication that this
was premeditated, it would be interesting to speculate on why this
should be so: is this because of the innate qualities of the people
assembled here, or is it the kind of outcome that can be expected when
people begin to practice authentic learning? Or is it a process of
becoming-being of the group itself that also changes people new to the
list as they become absorbed into the culture (thus to become
permeated with it as well) and become integrated into the processes
taking place here?
In a sense this is also my reply to the last question in the second
quote above. IMHO the Golden Rule lies in the position of corner stone
for a community of people that care who they are, where they are at
the moment and where they are going to be in future - as individuals
and as a community.
At later continued with:
> As I see it, NM gives form to the purpose of management.
> So what form will the norms of NM express?
Like Andrew's question much earlier, about means and ends, I will have
to think on this one before I attempt an answer.
With great appreciation to At and all here for what has been
accomplished
Best wishes
Daan Joubert
Technical analyst, market commentator and general factotum
Roodepoort
South Africa.
--Daan Joubert <daanj@kingsley.co.za>
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