Replying to LO30598 --
"AM de Lange" <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> writes:
> Bill, i hope that the above give some hint to the answer of your question:
> >How do we when acting as managers "manage" the
> >organization to produce certain results without coercing
> >people?
> Perhaps i am completely wrong in what you still find difficult to understand.
> Please let me know if i am way off the mark.
At, thank you for the very clear illustration using free energy. That
does help.
As for that question, that was my question about 10-12 years ago when I
was faced with the challenge, and it was, I think, working through that
question to find the answer was what helped me begin to act more as a
catalyst, as you suggest.
On the perhaps false assumption that the path I took was a generically
good path :-), I sometimes state the question as I did above without
giving the answer I found, presuming that others will get the benefit not
by hearing the answer but by figuring it out for themselves.
The struggle, the pursuing of all sorts of dead ends, and the eventual
discovery of a way forward helped me understand viscerally that there
weren't many (any?) other paths that would work. I have been concerned
that showing people the way through more directly might not disabuse them
of the notion that they could just order it and have it happen. I think
I'm taking my lead from Chris Argyris in that respect; he states that it's
an ethical and pragmatic impossibility to obtain Model II behavior through
coercion, but he doesn't elaborate.
In an interesting way, I think your concrete example of water flowing
downhill might help others discover by analogy what I was wanting them to
discover by struggle.
I'm only reluctant because I've met some (me, on occasion) who recognize
the general limitations in argument by analogy and who those reject
perfectly good analogies which they don't yet understand. To make your
water analogy work, you had to introduce child labor as a motive power. As
a skeptic, I might offer a wind-powered pump.
In my case (helping an organization move to Argyris' Model II behavior),
the ethical and pragmatic contradiction was inherent.
If I truly believe that decisions should be made freely and openly and
on testable and tested information, then how can I get away with
telling a group and the individuals in that group that they should
make a decision because I told them to?
Moreover, if I tell them that they should act that way, then I'm also
telling them there's at least one situation (the one I'm leading them
into) in which I don't believe that holds. Since I can't really
verbalize how to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable
situations in which to violate those values (except that "only I have
the right to violate that rule" -- not a very tenable stance
ethically), then I must allow for them to decide as well that certain
situations demand that they ignore that rule. That violates another
of Argyris' precepts -- holding us mutually responsible for living up
to these valuse -- and it makes the Model II behavior a house of
cards, ready to fall at the slightest provocation.
If I can't order my department to follow Model II and yet I believe
it's the right thing to do, I can only try to follow Model II myself.
That includes highlighting to others around me, including those in my
department at the time, what I'm observing, how I'm interpreting it,
and what implications I'm drawing from those interpretations. They,
individually and collectively, have the right to ignore me, to
disagree with my observations, interpretations, or drawing of
implications, or to agree. If they begin to choose one of the latter
two -- it doesn't matter which -- we're on our way. That's consistent
with the precept that the only person we can change is ourselves
(absent, perhaps, physical force).
Because this stuff is hard, I can't tell them how to do it, anyway;
I'd tell them one thing and produce other behavior myself, at least on
occasion. I can tell them what I'm trying to do and invite them,
should they desire, to tell me when they see me acting in ways
contrary to that. I can tell them some ways that might prove
effective in communicating that to me. I can tell them that I think
these ways would be effective for the group, and I can reflect back to
them at what I think are appropriate times what I see us doing as a
group.
Does that help clarify, At? Any comments or suggestions?
> To come back to the topic "Two years after 9/11". Is the USA ready for
> a pardigmatic change, but prevented by a free energy barrier? If it is the
> case, then it needs leaders who can act as catalysts. South Africa needed
> such a leader and 1994 Nelson Mandela showed just how good a
> catalyst he was.
Could it be possible that the relative isolation (geographic and language)
we have in the USA is the free energy barrier? That it's too hard for us
to see ourselves as others see us, and that our size makes it possible for
too many of us to ignore the outside?
Bill
-- Bill Harris 3217 102nd Place SE Facilitated Systems Everett, WA 98208 USA http://facilitatedsystems.com/ phone: +1 425 337-5541Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.