Replying to LO29502 --
Dear Organlearners,
Jan Lelie <janlelie@wxs.nl> writes:
>Perhaps we should talk about the "Evolving Organisation"
>as the successor to the "Learning Organisation". Evolving
>Organisations know that they exist in relation with their
>own environment. They - we - are being shaped, formed,
>created by their -our - environment and thereby reshape,
>reform and recreate their and our environment.
Greetings dear Jan,
Just out of curiosity I decided to use Google's advance search engine
with
evolving organisations
to see what Internet has on it. I got 377 hits which surprised me. I
studied a few dozen of them, but little worthwhile came up. Perhaps
fellow learners may have a look at
< http://users.wmin.ac.uk/~coakese/knowledge/bit98.htm >
< http://www.venturemagazine.co.uk/highlights/0103/05-evolving.html >
which is about the best which i could uncover before getting tired.
It seems that the "evolving" is used merely as a descriptor without any
thorough study of what an "evolving organisation" involves like Senge
did for a "learning organisation". So i decided to use Jan Smuts' insight
that "increasing wholeness"=holism is crucial to evolution. Thus with
wholeness holism
added into the third window i got but 2 hits! They did not tell what an
"evolving organisation" is.
On the other hand, with in the second window
living organisation
i got 455 hits. I expected much more. With
wholeness holism
added in the third window they reduced to 13 hits. A fine article by
Michael Jones is "Leading Living Organisations" at
< http://www.pianoscapes.com/LLOmain.html >
Two other articles which i also found stimulating were at
< http://www.we-are-church.org/forum/forum6engl.htm >
< http://www.oikos.org/vincautopo.htm >
For "learning organisations" i got 22 700 hits and adding in the third
window "wholeness holism" it reduced to 216 hits.
When people think of "learning organisations", "evolving organisations"
or "living organisations", is it not strange how few of them also think of
wholeness as essential to such organisations. What is it which makes
them blind to wholeness and the need for increasing it in the organisation?
I decided to see if there is anything on "blind to wholeness" on Internet.
I got 2 hits. The one is a beautiful excerpt from John Denver's
autobiography "Take me home" at
< http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/win98/ov_win98planetpoet.html >
I enjoyed it immensely. It reminds me of exploring a desert. After about
a day or two, wholeness "creeps into me" by the very sensations caused
by my five sense organs. However, in the other hit
< http://quis.qub.ac.uk/ethno/piera1.htm >
the author attributes this blindness to individualism rather than a lack of
proper sensations.
What is an organisation when it is blind to wholeness and thus cannot be a
learning, living or evolving organisation? Perhaps it is a "dying
organisation". Again out of curiosity, i searched Internet for "dying
organisation". I got 62 hits! From them it is clear that nobody want to
belong to a "dying organisation". How can an organisation without
wholeness prevent its dying? I think by the many external support systems
which it makes use of. Its like a patient in an ICU. The person would have
died were it not for all the external support systems keeping him/her
alive. Perhaps it is these external support systems which make people
blind to wholeness. Is it not that they give us improper sensations by
which wholeness cannot "creep into us"? I do not know for sure, but i have
my hunches.
I would like a dialogue on this "blindness to wholeness" very much.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.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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