Replying to LO29317 --
Greetings Rick,
You began this thread thus:
>As always, my inbox has interesting questions... Here's one:
>
>>I am currently studying learning organisations. I am very interested
>>to know what you feel are the future trends associated with the
>>learning organisaion concept?
Enter Vana - in LO29322
>What I see happening within organizations (whether they intend to apply
>LO principles or not) is a snowballing case of organizational forgetting,
>corporate alzheimers, or institutional amnesia...call it what you will.
...snip...
>Smart organizations have already realized this growing crisis and are
>taking steps to capture corporate wisdom before it walks out the door. I
>have thought the problem would peak in about 10 years. My colleagues
>insist it will mushroom out of control within 5. Who can tell in this day
>and age?
>I am certainly interested in finding organizations that are taking
>proactive and innovative steps to document the wisdom of their workforce,
>especially among older and long-term employees at every level in the
>company (not just the senior managers).
>And remember folk I am factory floor
At's turn in LO29330
>Vana, the crucial issue here is that once the wisdom gets documented, it
>is not LIVING wisdom anymore, but merely DEAD information. What is needed
>is living interaction between the wise and the unwise such that learning
>is promoted ...snip...
>>And remember folk I am factory floor
Re-enter Vana in LO29338
>I certainly agree with this statement. My only thought in the matter is
>that in doing NOTHING to document or capture the wisdom of the past,
>organizations are certainly doomed to repeat their failures and miss
>opportunities. ...snip...
>There is no perfect solution as long as we live in a mortal world.
>Knowledge and wisdom resides in people. People move on. They die.
>Certain things die with them...but not ALL knowledge must die. Some can
>be retained and passed on through others. The question I am posing is
>whether any organization is seeking to do this systematically,
>deliberately, and strategically.
>Like I said, I am factory floor. We are ISO accredited, have documented
>90% of our transactional knowledge in Standard Operating procedure
>format. Each document resides in a database and has a criticality rating
>that determines the review frequency. We also have the process whereby
>the users of the SOP have the ability to request a change to the
>procedure for improvement, safety, environmental issues. We therefore
>have the ability to collectively improve our product continuously. Our
>customer is king!
>At our process engineering and technological levels of the organisation
>successive encumbents have left a rich trail of data/information during
>their individual sorjourns with the company. It is their for those of us
>left to help their successors turn in to knowledge to ensure the company
>stays in business. A downsizing is indiscriminate you see. It leaves
>great gaps in the working knowledge and we have had several of them in my
>time with the company. Without our (in many cases badly used) repository
>of data and information we may well have disappeared before now.
>At strategic level we are no worse than any other organisation of similar
>ilk (that I can see) in what is essentially conversational learning (as
>opposed to documented) yet in understanding what measurements need to be
>taken at these levels against what needs to be done to keep us viable -
>adherence to SOP's (at all levels), process changes (at all levels),
>strategic planning (at all levels) is as inept/as good as it is with the
>median organisations.
To speed up my explanation (lest I be here all night) let me cheat a
little and change tack to listen to Alan in LO29269:
>Dear AM et al,
>This thread reminds me of a university professor I met while studying
>occupational hygiene.
>He made the comment that he couldn't understand, why when he recommended
>a change to work practises in a (factory) workplace, the practices
>reverted back to the former, a very short time after he had left the
>site.
>I asked him who he was dealing with, on these occasions, and he answered
>- 'the foreman'. He thus demonstrated a total ignorance of the effect of
>the management hierarchy, and its resistance to change.
>This professor is a highly paid academic, working in a complex field and
>influencing Australian manufacturing industry. He has no conception of
>what it is like to work in a factory (or probably any other normal
>workplace), yet he is teaching students how to deal with safety
>management in workplaces.
>When you look at the sources of his information, most of the tomes he
>would use as source material, are written by people similarly out of
>touch, some are medical practitioners, many are similar academics. Most
>of these people don't even understand the basics of occupational hygiene.
>I realise I am probably making assertions which might seem a bit
>incredible. If you don't believe me, ask a safety professional to define
>the term 'safety'. My definition is 'a situation or condition where risk
>is minimised to a level tolerable to all stakeholders'. Ask him what he
>thinks 'operational risk' is. My definition is that there are four areas
>which have tradeoffs between them (quality, safety, environment,
>security), it is the risk associated with business processes. These are
>not commonly accepted definitions within the profession (YET) !, and they
>are not the answers you will get from most occupational hygienists or
>managers. ...snip...
Well said Alan, rather like the way I think.
Regards,
Dennis.
--"Dennis Rolleston" <dennisr@ps.gen.nz>
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