Dear organlearners,
Jan Lelie <janlelie@pi.net> writes in LO15525 in reply to:
> Tom J. Clifford who wrote:
> > We all need to keep up with skills in today's
> > marketplace. Are we headed for a world where the organization as we know
> > it will disappear,
>
> The organization as we knew them have already disappeared, however the
> building (and mental models) still remain. Use them as the decors for the
> dance.
>
> > to be replaced by mostly freelancers?
>
> I used to work with one of the biggest organisations in the world, proud
> on trying to become a learning organization, on creating an
> enterpreneurial spirit; and was fired as i worked in that enterpreneurial
> spirit, because my boss also thought that these two concepts can not exist
> at the same time and together (he told me: "you can not behave like an
> enterpreneur and work in a big organization. No, that is not conflicting
> with corporate policy, this is the correct interpretation of that
> policy").
Jan, I admire your courage for speaking out on why you had been fired. We
can learn a very valuabale lesson from your experience.
Intrepeneurship and innovativeness are part of "aha" or revolutionary
creativity. It happens far form equilibrium. The very conditions which
drive the system far from equilbrium so that an emergence can happen, also
favour immergences. That is why we speak of the bifurcations which will
happen far from equilbrium.
It is far more complex for the emergence to happen than for the
immergence. It is because the emergence happens contingently and not
automatically. There are seven contingencies which have to be satisfied
sufficiently. They are also called the seven essentialities of creativity.
Since each essentiality is complex, the seven of them together are
immensely complex. Thus the development of the bifucration into an
emergence is a complex issue. If the bifurcation cannot lead into an
emergence, then it will automatically lead into an immergence. Treating a
bifucation as something simple will definitely lead to an immergence.
Furthermore, creativity is not only about revolutionary changes which
happens far from equilibrium. These revolutionary changes have to be
followed up by evolutionary changes close to equilibrium. During the
evolutionary digestion, the new emergence gets quantitatively embodied by
feeding on the environment. Thus the evolutionary stage prepare
digestively for a new evolutionary stage. In is impossible and thus
contracreative to conflate revolutionary ("aha") creativity and
evolutionary ("hmm") creativity into the same thing.
If we accept the tenet that "to learn is to create", then we have these
two major phases also in learning. Thus we may speak of emergent learning
and digestive learning.
Jan, I think that your former boss could think only of evolutionary
(digestive) learning and revolutionary (emergent) production. He had no
idea of revolutionary (emergent) learning and also no idea of evolutionary
(digestive) production. Therefor, he could not establish a coherent
framework which would involve both the concepts" learning organisation"
and "entrepreneurship". Since you have created anomalies in his framework,
you had to be removed.
I can also imagine the big organisation P... you are speaking about. Big
organisations take somewhat longer to immerge (get removed themselves)
when they pamper anomalies. Because of their bigness, they camouflage this
immergence by hiring and firing people. We may call it the Azazel culture.
(We learnt a lot from Ben Compton, Novell and the Azazel culture.)
When global conditions out of their control force them to move far from
equilbrium, these very anomalies will soon cause their downfall
(immergence). If they cannot resolve the anomalies, they cannot adapt. How
can they escape the fate of the giant dinosaurs if they cannot adapt?
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>