Dear Organlearners,
Bill Harris <billh@lsid.hp.com> writes:
> It's interesting (to me) that I've just been formulating over the last few
> weeks for myself that I am more likely to engage in defensive behaviors,
> including blaming others or playing the victim, when I don't have a
> strategy for dealing with the situation in which I find myself. That in
> itself seems sufficient to explain my behavior in a number of cases.
You voice exactly my own struggles. Even now knowing how how not to become
a victim, I often find myself affirming myself as victim. Luckily, in most
cases I manage to free myself from this pathology.
> > Not all individuals or organisations who fail to learn, invoke Azazel. I
> > have made another observation, namely that those who learn from their
> > failures, almost never invoke Azazel. But those who repeatedly fails to
> > learn, invokes Azazel with a remarkable regularity.
>
> Perhaps one thing that has been helping me is a focus on action learning
> using a form that Bob Williams gave me (Bob: you're on this group,
> right?). I do observe that I am getting better in some specific areas,
> but in those where I still have significant gaps in my skills, I'm still
> prone to moves towards defensiveness. For me, putting things down on
> paper (perhaps in a journal, but I'm finding Bob's form more useful these
> days) has been quite helpful.
I see it more general. Putting something on paper is merely one of many
creative activities. What we should do, is try to become creative in as
wide as possible manner in those faculties in which we are still very much
inferior.
> Thanks for that last insight. Perhaps my focusing even more on learning
> from my failures is a significant key to my moving further away from
> defensive behavior and towards growth.
Thank you very much for your kind words Bill. This thread (How does a
nation learn) is so dear to me that I will feel very sad if it dies out
soon. I merely wanted to stress, at this point, that sacepgoating is a
symptom of learning not taking place for both an individual and an
organisation. There is another thread on organisational learning (Can
organisations learn?) which is also extremely interesting and on which I
would have loved to contribute.
One of the question is whether organisational learning and individual
learning is the same thing. If I would answer that question it would be a
simple no. However, although they are different, scapegoating is a common
symptom when neither of them happens.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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