Dear Organlearners,
When Terri Deems originally reported about this Reluctant Group, I thought
about them along the same lines as Winfried Dressler
<winfried.dressler@voith.de> below. Not surprisingly, he admitted
> (At de Lange: I made a brief case study on wholeness out of this below.)
In other words, he saw the essentiality wholeness to play an important
role here. This is the first time he had to articulate his tacit knowledge
on theis essentiality - a courageous thing to do. He wrote:
> My question behind is however, how to associate with tacit knowledge in
> order to support emergences by means of wholeness. Thus I wrote on a tacit
> level. It is not necessary to explain: If it works, fine - it served as an
> intermediate state. If not, don't explain, but try something else. I am
> wondering whether you can accept this as a valid mode of communication?
> Well, now I am not talking directly to the case, but to the LO-list, so I
> will try to give some information on the path, my thinking took (probably
> only understandable for those, who read the contribution about "Wholeness"
> by At de Lange a few days ago):
I myself did not answer to this problem of the Reluctant Group since
my time is limited - I cannot answer in email to everything which
interests me. I merely answer to it in my mind, rushing a thousand
times faster than typing my thoughts on screan. But Winfried's
contribution compelled me to do so.
This relucatant group is definitely not unique. It is quite common.
Teachers in school or pastors in church often experience this when
they have to replace a popular predecessor, especially when the
predecessor became dangerously close in acting like a cult leader. It
also happens frequently when complacent people are freed from the
dictatorship by the one (the dictator) or the few (the olicgarchy).
For example, it is now happening in Russia to those who did not mind
the communist rule or white South Africans who did not mind the
apartheid rule.
Winfried wrote:
> Another assumption is, that the essentiality "wholeness" is impaired. The
> team became fragmented. It is in a state of "plasmodial" organisation,
> begging for a leader. But there may be good reasons not to allow Bill to
> take over the leader position. Wholeness may have been the problem already
> before: Due to the good inner relationship the team may tend to become a
> purpose on its own and so fragmented from the rest of the company.
I saw it in the same way. Wholeness among the team memebrs themselves
developed much more than between the team and the rest of the
company. In fact, I suspect that the wholeness among the team
developed much more than the other six essentialities among the
group. The reason is that they channeled their depence on these other
six essentialities (with respect to the company activities and
not their group activities) through the group manager. For
example, when they wanted more sureness, he provided for it. When
they had to deal with the otherness in the company, he dealt with it.
(I will not be surprised if the leader was some of a cultist figure.)
Thus we have the associative pattern
rest-of-group * unique-group-manager * rest-of-company
It is very much like the pattern with which teaching begins:
learner * teacher * subject.
But, whereas in the case of teaching the teacher's goal is to let
this pattern evolve into
learner * mouthpiece * subject
where the learner self select the mouthpieces (unlomos) in order to
master the subject, it seems that the group manager did not have a
similar goal. This is typical of a cult leader.
> To overcome fragmentation, the team and the company must re-associate. The
> intermediate state required for this association is the leader. The task
> of the leader is to establish wholeness in this case, thus she must have
> mastered the required degree of wholeness to take over the leadership of
> the plasmodial organisation and thus to form a new team. Otherwise she
> will be rejected further on.
All solutions can be categorised in two broad categories,
constructive solutions by way of emergences or
destructive silutions by way of immergences.
An example of the latter category is to break up the group
completely and redeploy each person at a different position
in the company.
Winfried gave an example of the former category.
I will go a little bit further than Winfried. I personally think that
the new manager must take up much more the role of a teacher, not by
controling them in terms of their dependence on her, but facilitating
them to be become more associated/united with the rest of the company
in terms of all the other six essentialities.
Winfried writes:
> So far my view of the situation.
>
> May be the clue is somewhere else.
> May be we have just another case study on immergence.
The reluctance of the group is a very clear sign that their "free
energy of creativity" (their capacity to create) in conjunction with
the rest of the company, is very low. The only way to elevate their
"free energy", is to let them experience emergences - to experience
that they can interact creatively with the rest of the company and
not merely the group manager. Redploying them will not ensure de
facto future emergences and thus their healing.
Because of their low "free energy", every creative situation which
has potential for emergences, become the breeding ground for
immergences. This happens when the ability to employ the seven
essentialities has been seriously impaired. It will remain like that
until the members of the group have improved on their ability to
employ these seven essentialities.
It is the task of the new manager to make use of each such an
situation to guide each member of the reluctant group to become
constructively creative again.
> > The yin-yang relationships espoused by Jungian theorists or even Hindu
> > ascetics is not applicable to the work place.
>
> I don't support any dogma. I try to understand the framework of At de
> Lange. And I share my thoughts coming into my mind while doing so.
Winfried, cults operate by means of dogmas. A dogma is the result of
a deliberate fragmentation of the associativity pattern X * Y * Z. If
X represents the dogma, then no extended interpretation (the
* Y * Z) part is allowed. Only X * X * X ( a sort of in-breeding) is
allowed.
However, there is, for example, a most interesting correspondence
(X * Y * Z) between the Yin-Yang pairs of eastern philosophies (X),
the force-flux pairs responsible for entropy production (Y) , and
the thesis-antithesis pairs of dialecticism (Z). Becoming aware of
this asoociative pattern breaks the dogmatism which operates when
each are considered in isolation.
We cannot claim that opposites (different beings) and responses
(different becomings) to them are not applicable to the work place.
In fact, opposites and responses to them are essential wherever and
whatever organisation changes. Now, opposites are the essence of an
entropic force while the responses to them are the essence of an
entropic flow. We might claim that entropic forces and entropic flows
are not applicable to the work place, but then our claim merely rests
on not allowing any learning of these concepts. But is this denying
of the learning of something unusual not the essence of dogmatism?
> > This group is dysfunctional and requires restructuring.
>
> The group is dysfunctional, yes, but I doubt whether restructuring will
> help. Restructuring assumes "Being-Becoming" to be impaired - the group is
> dead as a group. For me, restructuring is an emergency-stop + start anew.
> Unfortunatly people carry their old experiences with them. They will find
> another possiblity to direct the open issues until they are settled.
I agree with you Winfried. The memories of old destructive
experiences without the healing effect of constructive experiences
correcting these destructive experiences, are potential explosives,
capable of future destructions. To redeploy people with such memories
(mental explosives) in the rest of the organisation is very
dangerous.
> I am very interested in a short feedback at least to my private mail. What
> do you think: Am I right to share such thoughts with the list? Did I loose
> you somewhere? How far are you willing to follow? Do I have a point?
> Although following this path of thinking is a great adventure for me, I
> have to take care not to loose contact to reality, at least your reality.
Winfried, you are right, we cannot dare loose contact with reality.
But reality is not only a being - it is also a becoming. Furthermore.
all the instances (species) of a generic chance does not happen at
the same rate. Some species chance slowly while others change
quickly.
That is why, for example, we have leaders and followers. Leaders
should make sure that they do not dissociate themselves from their
followers. But the same applies to the followers. They also should
make sure that they do not dissociate themselves from their leaders.
Sometimes some a discovery or invention is so novel that it becomes
very difficult for both leaders and followers to allign themselves
with it. This is known as a paradigm shift. Thinking in terms of the
seven essentialities has definitely been a paradigm shift for me.
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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