On Saturday, August 02, 1997 12:03 AM, learning-org-approval@world.std.com On
Behalf Of Thomas Benjamin wrote:
> "Maybe migration to a learning organization should be concerned with
> figuring out to substitute the current emphasis on routine learning with
> greater encouragement of value-added learning. Value-added learning
> discoveries are spurred principally I believe through "downstructuring":
> a removal of organizational rules and policies such as job descriptions,
> arbitrary promotion policies, politics and so on prevent each individual
> employee from realizing their full potential."
>
> I have not found any one yet who agrees to this.
Thomas,
If I interpreted your meaning correctly, I subscribe very much to what you
are saying about de-structuring (down is hard for me<g>). In studying
complexity, CAS and leadership, what I am finding is that "to the extent
that we remove barriers" we can expect increased error, increased
iteration, increased levels of emergent activity, higher levels of
creativity, increased innovation, increased information flow, improved
knowledge transfer and greater levels of learning.
In another words we begin to improve @ improving!
I would say that if structure goes up and by that I mean increased
policies, increased rules and more clearly defined roles, then all the
things in the above paragraph slow...
So if you can handle the stuff that destructuring "allows" then perhaps I
could subscribe to your value-added learning theory. I know that we
become much more adaptive when structure is lowered. I wish I had
research to back this up, but you'll have to settle for intuition at this
point.<g>
So what I'm saying is "I agree with you!" Now there's two.
--mike jay quarterback@msn.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>