On Mon, 10 Nov 1997, Rol Fessenden wrote:
> It is interesting within a business for example, how many people will say
> that their department is very, very good, but some of the other
> departments are not. You see the same in villages where neighboring
> villages are suspect, of course we see too much of this among ethnic
> groups, and we clearly see teachers going through classification of
> children in classrooms. Most of it results in negative outcomes, but it
> certainly seems deeply buried.
Tying this in with the discussion on democracy, we also see that most
Americans are quite dissatisfied with Congress as a whole, but usually
quite satisfied with their own Representatives and Senators. The old joke
goes "what do you call three statesmen and 532 scoundrels? Congress!"
Similarly, it's a common belief among Americans that American workers in
general have a poor work ethic, but most American workers believe that
they personally have a good work ethic. I suspect that the underlying
problem here can again be described by an old saw: "the easiest job is the
one you don't have to do yourself."
Ultimately, I think the problem in all these cases is a lack of systems
thinking, coupled with what I call "anti-developmental bias"; we expect
systems (whether or not we regard them as such) to spring forth in their
final form. We don't appreciate all the intermediate stages, and we
assume that the structure of what we're dealing with is fixed and
unchangeable. We grumble that we need better results, and we yell at
others to come up with better results or else, but we demand that those
others not do anything significantly different to create those improved
results. Occasionally we'll allow someone to try something new, but only
if they can do it perfectly; we assume that if they make any mistakes the
first time they try it, they must be incapable of doing it.
A couple years back, some early-grade elementary-school teachers came up
with the idea of encouraging kids to write by having them do a lot more
writing than usual, and not correcting all their spelling mistakes; the
idea was for the kids to get their ideas on paper first and worry about
the mechanics later. Most people responded to this by puffing themselves
up with self-righteous indignation about how this was letting kids do
wrong without consequences (as if misspelling a word was some sort of
crime). They'd blandly point out how difficult it would be for a kid to
get a job if he used "creative spelling" on the application (excuse me,
we're talking about 6- and 7-year-olds, who don't normally fill out job
applications).
What completely escaped these people is that all the proposal amounted to
was letting kids learn to write the same way they learn to talk. *Every*
single parent, even the strictest one imaginable, lets their kids "get
away with" talking "incorrectly" as they learn to talk; a parent who
attempted to correct his child's first words would be quite rightly
regarded as a monster. Nobody could *ever* get a job if they talked in
the interview the way a two-year old talks, but nobody thinks that's a
problem because, well, it just isn't one. The fast majority of kids grow
up able to speak "correctly" even though their early babbles not only went
unpunished, they went *rewarded* by the delight their parents expressed
when they started speaking.
Yet somehow we assume that most other human capabilities don't require a
developmental process. We assume that either you're born with them or
not. We expect immigrants to learn to speak English, which by itself is
quite reasonable, but we expect them to learn it instantly, which isn't.
But of course, learning a second language is something most Americans have
never done themselves, so naturally they have no appreciation of the
amount of time and effort it takes. If we try to change a business
process, we expect to see a substantial return in profits *the very same
quarter*.
--Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@netcom.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>