>Tom Peter's is perhaps another but different example, the difference being
>that he has admitted his shortcomings and grown, when he discovered that
>many of his "excellent" companies didn't stay that way long.
Something to keep in mind about all that; namely, that there probably is
no lasting, let alone permanent set of excellent companies. Yet, we learn
from exemplars even if their status as exemplar is fleeting. Think for a
moment about four of the eight qualities of excellence that Peters and
Waterman codified in their book:
A bias for action
Stay close to the customer
Stick to your knitting
Autonomy and entrepreneurship
These have penetrated the management psyche...it is difficult to read much
of anything in the business or management literature without seeing the
words or a restatement of them.
So, while the list of companies that Peters and Waterman used as exemplars
might not be as good as it once was, the ideas they extracted from
examining those companies are with us still...and rightly so, because they
are darn good ideas and there is much to be learned from trying to put
them into practice.
>Clearly to me, the answer is no, we cannot do better, because we are not
>interested in doing so. The LO terminology is philisophically rich but
>essentially bankrupt (as happens to many fad type ideas). Typically this
>happens not because the concepts or ideas are faulty, but because the
>demagoguery of the originators required to get a hearing eventually gets
>taken on by the disciples, who can't pull it off....they end up talking
>the words, sometimes without those words having meaning.
We have words in our language for use in referring to the exemplars or
models of excellence and to their followers: paragons, and epigones.
Peter Senge fits the first category in relation to learning organizations.
I'll leave it to others to apply the latter label. But there is something
here that goes beyond the issue of a follower's competence or qualities in
relation to those of the leader or paragon. That something is the
diffusion of innovation, the adoption, spread, and adaptation of the "good
ideas" articulated by the paragon.
No one can do what Senge does except Senge. No one can do what Deming did
except Deming (and no one can do what Bacal does except Bacal). But good
ideas, even if less than perfectly implemented, are well worth the effort.
And, in the end, their adoption, spread, and adaptation yields great
benefit. After all, what good would Gutenberg's press do us today?
In the end, that disciples are often less gifted and talented than those
they follow bothers me very little. That good ideas bring with them the
occasional "snake oil" salesman (and saleswoman) as well as inept and
unscrupulous practitioners bothers me a little but my limited Latin
vocabulary does contain these two words--"caveat emptor"--and so I don't
worry a lot about that. I'm prepared to pay that price to reap the
benefits of innovation.
In the Goodale post (LO18908) to which Robert was responding, Goodale
wrote:
>"How, for example, will managers know when their companies have become
>learning organisations? What concrete changes in behavior are required?
>What policies and programs must be in place? How do you get from here to
>there?
That leads me to pose a question to the list...
Is anyone aware of efforts to tie Learning Organization kinds
of things to the innovation component of the balanced scorecard?
What I'm getting at, of course, is using that component of the balanced
scorecard as a kind of pry bar for getting LO kinds of ideas and issues on
the agenda and, at the same time, put to the practical test of putting
them into practice.
Regards,
Fred Nickols
The Distance Consulting Company
nickols@worldnet.att.net
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
"The Internet offers the best graduate-level education to be found
anywhere."
--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>