Chris Macrae asks about some breakdowns or what I would call "disconnects" --
>Whilst out for a walk it dawned on me to ask a question about how
>marketing (or whatever is your keyword for sustained value adding) got
>broken from organisational systems and then it occurred to me to ask how
>did system relationship dynamics get broken from organisational leadership
>
>The raw questions are as follows. Assuming nobody disputes these
>breakdowns, what do you think was the first vicious slip and is there any
>way you see of recovering organisations now that they are compounding so
>many transactional loops that you might have to go 50 deep to find one
>relationship loop struggling for air
>
>Some Big Puzzles
>
>How did marketing (or your word for sustained value adding) get out
>marketed by:
>Quality
>Measurement
>Knowledge
>& Responsibility
>
>How did living system dynamics get detached from :
>quality (eg how did Nist/ Baldrige permit this)
>Knowledge Management
>& (Community) Responsibility
Your question about breakdowns implies a previous connection. I don't
know that any of those aspects of organizations were ever connected in the
first place, except by chance and even then only rarely and incompletely.
Organizations are, to my way of thinking, contrived systems. They have a
structure and an architecture and a form and function that are at least in
part of an intentional nature, that is, they are the result of someone's
design and thus reflect someone's purpose (truth be known, probably many
purposes on the part of many people). But our knowledge of such matters
is extremely limited. We do not, as far as I know, possess the knowledge
or the know-how to construct perfect organizations and keep them that way.
We putter, we tinker and, occasionally, we get something right (i.e., it
works as intended and there are no offsetting unintended consequences).
And so we add to our store of knowledge and our stock of know-how. Even
when we do manage to connect one or two or even a few of those aspects of
organizations, our tenure is always temporary. Thus, no matter what we
achieve, we are not going to be there to sustain or maintain it forever.
Sooner or later, what has been done will be undone. What was learned will
be forgotten or was never widely known in the first place and so it will
remain lost or, at best, some day be discovered anew. That's not all bad.
If all puzzles were permanently solved there would be very little for us
to do.
Your question also raises at least two others: How might we connect those
things? What keeps us from doing so?
Regards,
Fred Nickols
Distance Consulting
nickols@safe-t.net
www.nickols.us
--Fred Nickols <nickols@safe-t.net>
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