Replying to LO29915 --
Dear Organlearners,
Chris Macrae <wcbn007@easynet.co.uk> writes:
>Fred, I like most of what you say. If for example MBAs were
>taught how little we knew about building systems I would be
>very happy because there would be a lot less assumed certainty.
>Perhaps we could have our aforementioned centres of inquiry
>or ignorance rather than knowledge excellence etc instead of all
>the posh vocabularies of management which we sound so sure
>that we know how to practice living systems in ways we do not.
Greetings dear Chris,
I was following this topic with much interest, trying not to participate.
The reason is that the topic "How did organisations break these links?"
can also been interpreted as "How did organisations break their
wholeness?" All the responses so far had this "broken wholeness" hovering
in the back ground.
But i decided to participate because you pointed to the MBAs with their
excessive "assumed certainty". I want to extend it to the training of most
professionals like doctors, engineers, lawyers and psychiatrists. Their
training is such that it involves a particular field of expertise. They
assume that within that field their expertise allows them to operate
accordingly. Most of them allow readily a second opinion to show that they
do not operate hocus pocus.
However, what they intrinsically assume is that whatever they do in their
field of expertise, it has little, if any, consequences outside that
field. When they do get confronted that there may be consequences outside
their field of expertise, they simply call for an expert on the field in
which the consequence may reside. In most cases that expert will also just
shrug his shoulder, making the consequence one that has not yet been
researched. I call their mode of operation the "tyranny of the experts". A
bunch of different experts on a complex system is in no way better off
than somebody who is not expert at all. The reason? They are blind to
wholeness.
Sometimes, when observing a bunch of different experts having to work
together, i think that the specialisation of knowledge into different
expertises is the worst thing which could have happened to organisations
and their wholeness. They find it difficult to work together in an
interdisciplinary manner while there is no sign at all of
transdisciplinary work. They are oblivious to all the links which they
break and the holes which they rush through.
>We now have superpowerful organisations but their systems
>care is probably as random or impoverishing as any other
>organisation.
I have met several people who have worked for tens of years in an
organisation which began small as a tightly knitted system, but who
finally resigned close to retirement because of a system which have become
too impoverished to bear. Only yesterday i had a talk with a man whom i
first met more than thirty years ago at the agricultural research
institute where i worked. He had such a joyfull nature. But through the
years he became sullen and grumpy. Yesterday he was his own self. He would
have retired at the end of the year. But the chemical company for whom he
worked just became too oppressive to keep on for the last year.
This company grew by leaps and bounds, following the steps of mergers and
takeovers until it has become one of the largest of its kind in our
country. It seems to me that with all these profit driven mergers and
takeovers its system thinking had to become so impoverished. It has become
a conglomerate of systems. Should it have been a LO, this would not have
happened. Perhaps this gives some viewpoint on your remark:-
>There's a double bullet - namely how networks of organisations
>now compound each other's traits. Unless we do raise our open
>awareness of system of systems, the outlook that I see is extremely
>depressing economically and socially. We owe our kids something
>better to look forward to.
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
--"AM de Lange" <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za>
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