John Dicus hits the nail on the head IMHO:
> Many years ago, I was asked to be part of a team to learn about TQM and to
> re-teach it to my large organization. As I learned, I realized that there
> was something much larger and more wonderful happening than I had
> realized. Our organization had decided which of Demings' ideas they would
> adopt and how they would interpret them. They had little tolerance for
> hearing about Systems Thinking and Learning. I don't say this with blame.
> I later realized that when a holistic philosophy of change is presented to
> a broad group of people, they will hear what each is able to hear as well
> as well as what they want to hear.
>
> Organizations may not have enough background or depth of readiness to be
> able to hear the full bandwidth of the new message. What if Quality
> Circles, Participative Management, TQM, Reengineering, Cultural Diversity,
> Organizational Learning, and Self-Organization are more alike than
> different if we look at their potential -- the intent and depth and
> breadth of each of them. What if the differences between each, and the
> perceived value of each, are due to our ability and readiness to hear what
> each offers? Further, what if the failures (where there have been
> failures) have been due to persons picking and choosing and interpreting
> the holistic philosophy in a more narrow, private way?
This is what I wrestle with each day, gaining more food for thought, and a
little more understanding perhaps, along the way. The "buzz-words" that
are used so often are obstacles to increased understanding, because we
"have to" see them as "-ISMS" and we must use the lingo that comes with
the package. I think John is so righ when he says the differences are not
so different, but subject to too many individual interpretations which
give the appearance of differences. Thanks to John for his post.
--Regards, John Constantine rainbird@trail.com Rainbird Management Consulting PO Box 23554 Santa Fe, NM 87502 http://www.trail.com/~rainbird "Dealing in Essentials"
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>