Mike Jay writes:
>I came up with a metaphor that is used by the body...we have autonomic
>(normative systems), emotional (attractive systems) and rational
>(adaptive systems). So why can't organizations?
One answer is this:
Organizations aren't alive.
Since they aren't alive they have none of the powers of living beings: they
don't have intelligence, nervous systems...They can't learn, adapt, weep, be
happy.
Human beings have the power of metaphor: to look at one things "as if" it
were another.
To look at a loved one as if she were a rose, a bird as if it were a
messenger of God...
An organization as if it were a living, sentient being that could learn and
otherwise behave as if it were a human being.
Or: we can look at an organization "as if" it were a machine, and design ,
say, a structure of government, as the Founders did, as if were a machine
with "checks and balances."
When we use the human power of metaphor to look at organizations "as if"
they were machines, or living beings, we get useful insights.
When we get confused and begin to believe that our metaphor is "true," we
risk serious confusion and error.
So it may be useful to stop from time to time and remind ourselves that
organizations aren't really alive and can't really do all the things that
people do.
So: a basketball team isn't a living being, but a rule-governed group of
living beings engaged in a certain game .
If one asks, how can a basketball team improve its performance, it may not
help to invent a new language--a sociobiological language, as we seem to be
doing here--and derive our answers from that new language that talks of
basketball teams as if they were alive..
Steve Eskow
Dr. Steve Eskow
President, The Electronic University Network
288 Stone Island Road
Enterprise, Florida 32725
Phone: 407-321-8770 Fax: 407-321-4681
email: dreskow@aol.com
--"Dr. Steve Eskow" <dreskow@magicnet.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>