David Hurst reminds me, quite correctly, that it is impossible to look at
the complexity of an "organization" and see anything except confusion
unless one looks through the lens of an organizing metaphor.
In this view the metaphor-as-lens is not "true": every metaphor shows a
design by what it leaves out as well as by what it shows us.
The organismic metaphor, then, is not "true": in some cases we may learn
something of value by looking at Microsoft and using the language of
molecules, cells,entropy, ecology, cancer, and so on.
I, for one, find little explanatory value in the organismic lens. That may
be a limitation in my apparatus of vision.
I find more value in the metaphor of "culture"; the US and the world are a
series of cultures, and the rules, codes, traditions, and rituals of those
cultures do not in any way resemble those of living creatures, but they do
lend themselves to discovery by patient and empathetic study.
A variation of the "culture" metaphor is the "team" metaphor, and I find
that helpful as a practitioner. "Teams" play a "game", and how well they
do involve such variables as how well they "read" the external
environment, including the other teams, and how well they organize
internally to play the game.
As David points out, all these are different fictions, different metaphor,
with no one of them having ultimate validity. For those of us who are
practitioner the usefulness of a particular fiction, or metaphor, is in
the value we find when we "read" a particular situation through that
metaphor.
Steve Eskow
--"Dr. Steve Eskow" <dreskow@magicnet.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>