Rol Fessenden wrote...
>Many people feel a strong need to plan and organize before they begin to
>act. And some projects, especially complicated but well-defined ones, are
>more prone to success under this philosophy.
>
>However, other people have a strong need to act and make something happen.
>Provided this action is accompanied with reflection, this is a powerful
>stimulator of learning, actually far more powerful than the former method.
Without quite saying so, Rol touches on the distinction between work that
is best performed when "prefigured" and work that must be "configured" if
it is to be performed at all. Much routine factory work fits the former
model, and much research, design engineering, and certain kinds of systems
development work fit the latter model.
There is a wonderful book on this subject titled, Plans and Situated
Actions, by Lucy Suchman, who is, I believe, a social anthropologist and
was (might still be) a researcher at Xerox PARC. I highly commend to you
her book, which begins with a snippet about the differences between a
mythical Portugese Navigator, who plans and charts a course and then hews
to it, and an equally mythical South Sea Islander, who simply hops in a
canoe and heads West.
These are, of course, the very same differences Rol raises.
Regards,
Fred Nickols
The Distance Consulting Company
nickols@worldnet.att.net
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
--Fred Nickols <nickols@worldnet.att.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>