David Birren writes:
>JAMES H. CARRINGTON wrote:
>
>>>What then, you ask, is the bottom line?
>>>Money.
>
>This may be true in the private sector. In every sector, the bottom line
>- or a piece of it - is often the status of a particular individual.
>Margaret Wheatley says that organizations exist in order to protect the
>status of individuals, and I've seen this at all levels of organizations,
>from the CEO level all the way out (not down) to the front-line worker.
>Money may be one criterion of effectiveness and efficienvy, but if we ask
>what really motivates people, I think we'd find a strong thread of
>identity - the need to maintain one's self-esteem and the respect of one's
>co-workers, to have a secure place in the organization.
SNIP of the rest. David's responses to James' singular commentary on
"bottom line" deal nicely with all of the LO and values issues we need to
address to move into the next generation of our species. The only comment
I want to make here is taken from Joseph Juran's "Managerial
Breakthrough". Juran makes some excellent points about the socio-economic
framework of the organization and its resistance to innovation. In light
of David's Wheatley perspective and James' profit perspective, Juran would
say that the way to communicate with top management is in their own
language, and that language is the language of money. In other words, if
you have P-L responsibility, you can improve your position admirably with
a LO orientation, but you have to make it understood by taking on the
linguistic persona of the financials.
That's not what it is, Alice, it's just what we call it.
--jzavacki@wolff.com John Zavacki The Wolff Group 800-282-1218 http://www.wolff.com/
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>