Rol wrote:
> participate in the activity together (rare occurrence)? Reflection, for
> example, does not result in me knowing exactly what Bill will do in a
> given circumstance the next time it occurs. This is, therefore, not the
> same as 'practice' as it occurs in symphonies and sports teams. practice
> in those environments gives very high levels of certainty about what
> people will do in given circumstances.
When you mentioned this, it reminded me of a very special time in my work
life. There was a significant period when I was in a manufacturing
organization that had twice yearly offsite "planning" meetings and that
spent lots of time talking about values and the like. In that period, I
felt (and think I could have substantiated with examples from the time)
that you could have posed hypothetical problems to two of us from
different parts of the organization and we would have told you essentially
the same way to address them. In hindsight, those meetings (the twice
yearly ones, the intermediate ones between the main ones, etc.) _were_
practice in your sense, I guess. We didn't actually go through the
motions of doing things, but we did talk at length about issues: what
values we held, what our long-term direction was, and the like.
It was a very good time. Thanks for reminding me.
Bill
PS: In fairness to my organization, it's pretty good today, but the time
I'm talking about was especially intense in those attributes Rol was
describing. BTW, little of that material was written; it mostly came
through an "oral/aural tradition."
-- Bill Harris Hewlett-Packard Co. R&D Engineering Processes Lake Stevens Division mailto: billh@lsid.hp.com M/S 330 phone: (425) 335-2200 8600 Soper Hill Road fax: (425) 335-2828 Everett, WA 98205-1298Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>