Thank you, At for your thoughts on my post.
I would like to gain some more understanding by interpretation. But it
went a bit out of control. I tried to enhance understanding by creating
summaries.
> 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.
- Trust may break down near transition points
Let's connect this to trusting. I assume that trusting a system is easy
when at or near equilibrium. It behaves in a known way. As a system moves
away from equilibrium (gets more critical) it might snap back, back to
normal, or emerge in a new equilibrium, a new, unknown state as seen from
the point of the previous system. If you haven't moved with the system,
haven't learned, weren't coached, counseled, guided, leaded or even
managed, you might end up not-trusting. Also, and i assume you'll be
familiar with this, near the transition point, there will be a lot of
turbulence, loss of meaning, unrest, which won't help trusting very much.
- Identifing with changes (and insecurity) may enhance distrust
(note: perhaps this description assumes that i identify myself with the
system; when there is no identification, i can remain 'myself' and no
change in the system can change my trust. AHA: in order to change systems,
i have to identify with the system, get involved; However, when i am
unsure of myself, of the choices i made (and these might be explicit
choices or implicit choices, based on unknown desires, values and in the
rush of the moment), identification with the system might remain after the
change (especially when the change was 'successful', and i become the
manager of the system and i tend to think the success is due to my
involvement).
This identification will give a solid ground for thinking, feeling and
acting, until .... the systems floats, evolves and a new change occurs.
This can lead to a perception of distrust, which will reinfore my feelings
of insecurity and which i might project on my boss, director whatever. As
he (or she) might also identificates himself with the system, tension
rises quickely. One of the options will be to fire me, which will reduce
the tension, but won't solve anything. Right (as a matter of fact: the
production site were i used to work and from which i was fired, will now
be closed, it was on the news last Friday)).
> It is far more complex for the emergence to happen than for the
> immergence. It is because the emergence happens contingently and not
> automatically.
- until now, in evolution, trusting the outside system was more important
You have lost me here. Do you mean it happens suddenly, unpredictable? I
assume that it is more difficult to experience the processes within
myself, then to describe a system outside myself, probably because i'm
biased towards externalising things, attributing parameters to a system,
decribing the way it will conduct, move, evolve itself and conclude that
i'm not a part of it (but who started externalising in the first place,
he?). Also millions of years of evolution have been spend in interacting
with an environment outside ourself, so some specialisation might be
expected.
> 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.
So i take it, creation will emerge suddenly.
...snip...
> 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.
- two different and interacting directions
I was talking with a South African woman (talking about coincedences) last
week and she defined learning as 'creating meaning'. So this leads me to
emergent meaning and digestive meaning. It occurs to me that this maps
nicely onto two main directions of change:
a. change (learning, creating, adapting) towards more differences or
differentiating and
not a. change (..) towards reducing differences or conventionalising.
These two counterinvent one another, meaning that, like yin and yang, the
one will generate the other. As a change agent, i try to contain these
movements as long as necessary for a transition to occur. This i think is
the great (creat :-)) evolutionary breaktrough: being able consiously to
sustain (or selecting) differentiating (or mutating) and conventionalising
(or retaining) movements; that's why i think evolution is now going at an
uprecedented pace.
- an experiment in mutating messages
As i follow this thought, trusting might be connected to having courage,
to being able to loose some meaning ... no no stop. Other route: as i
noted earlier, identificating with something or attributing emotions
causes me to trust something (or someone). This is a process of giving
meaning in a differentiating way. right. When i'm unsure of my own
emotions, feelings, attributions, this identification reassures me
quickely and it relieves tension (conventionalising). So i do not have to
address these uncertainties. However, i also become my position, role,
choices. .. where does this lead? Forget it.
I kept the previous part of the messages in, to show how mutation occurs
nowadays: in stead of expressing a genotype through combining old and
copying DNA, coding enzyms, making mistakes, selecting and retaining, now
a new expression is formed by simply typing, reading, correcting and
sending it away. The Net not even requires complete messages! Mutate
messages in stead of DNA.
> 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.
- another experiment in mutating a message
I would like to change 'you' with 'former boss' and 'former boss' or 'he'
with 'i/me' and conclude that i had to remove myself. Which i did.
> 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.)
- reframing feelings of trust by refecting yourself in an organization
OK: now try this for an imagination excercise (i'm inventing this as i
write, so please take care): experience your organisation as a mirror
image of yourself. Close your eyes and look at your organisation as if
looking into a mirror. It is as if you're looking into a mirror. Take a
few minutes and experience what you like and do not like of your image,
the things you see in this reflection (!). Note a few down, for instance:
big, safe and also unpredictable.
Now identify yourself with what you saw in the image, for instance, try to
feel, be, act big.
- If you experience no trouble in identifying with being big (as in 'big
is powerful'): you'll have trouble (distrust) with differentiating
directions of your organization, for instance with TQM, outsourcing and
self directed teams, teams that might threaten your job as an
employee/manager.
- If you experience trouble with identifying being big (as in: 'small is
beautiful'), you'll have trouble (distrust) with conventionalising
movements, like restructuring and cost cutting, that might threaten your
job as an employee/manager.
Of course, left and right will be swapped, as in any mirror image, but the
main point is: your preference (what you like) is what you see and will
determine what will generate your (dis)trust. In my opinion.
> 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?
- adapting to dynamical forces
As i experience this world, we can 'control' many forces (some call it
energies, or tensions) and thereby evolve, adapt, change, learn much more
rapidly. The forces seem to me to trick us somehow when we try to control
them. For one, we are still very much un-aware of the counter products
that we generate, especially when there are long feedback loops and weak
interactions (for instance polution problems, alpine skiing and flooding;
systems thinking helps a lot here).
And on the other hand, as we create the resistance to change as a by
product of change itself (my assumption) because we need very high levels
of self-perception (mental models) during change processes, which nobody
has taught me for sure, anomalies surely result.
Dinosaurs, i saw on television, were wiped out of exsistence by a
collision with a meteor, comet or small planetoide at a rather peculiar
place and under very unfaveraouble conditions. Just tough luck; the same
luck, that keeps big organisations together.
Take care,
Jan Lelie
> 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").
>
--Drs J.C. Lelie CPIM janlelie@pop.pi.net (J.C. Lelie) @date@ @time@ CREATECH/LOGISENS - Sparring Partner in Logistical Development - + (31) 70 3243475 Fax: idem or + (31) 40 2443225
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>