Dear Organlearners,
Almost a month ago,
Thomas Struck <t.struck@bham.ac.uk> wrote:
>Every discipline itself does surely add important thoughts,
>but who will integrate them? Sorry, but accountants (one
>fragment currently in charge according to some scholars)
>are hardly right for the job.
>
>I think the integration of different disciplines is one major
>contribution of the learning organisation. Ideas may still be
>rather broad and blurred, some scholars may (rightly) warn
>about them, but that is what I would expect from thinking that
>tries to comprehend the whole.
Greetings Thomas,
You have drawn attention to a very important problem in organisational
management. When I use the concept discipline below, it is not one of the
five LO disciplines, but any other discipline.
We may model this problem by the relationship between the various organs
of a living organism. A person specialising in a discipline becomes like a
certain organ (stomach, liver, pancreas, lungs, heart, kidneys, legs,
arms, brain). But, for example, whereas the heart can never become the
lungs, a person can master more than one discipline. The person can
become first a heart, then lungs, then liver, etc. The reason is the
difference between the way the cells of the neurological system and the
cells of the other organs function. When all the heart cells are
integrated to form the heart, they can function in only a couple of ways.
But when the neurological cells are intergrated, they can function in
uncountably many different ways through selective, localised firings of
neuron clusters.
It is foolish to expect from a person specialising in discipline A to
become over night a specialist in discipline B also. The obvious reason is
that it takes many years to master a discipline "competently". The
critical, but less obvious reason is that a person's creativity becomes
easily fixed to the standard requirements of particular discipline. When
that person has to learn a new discipline, his creativity has to change.
This change is an enrichment of his creativity. His creativity must now
also serve the standard requirements of the new discipline. In other
words, the person's creativity must act like brain cells rather than heart
cells.
In order for that person to become an operational member of a LO, it is
not necessary to master the new discipline competently, unless the person
wants to accredit himself. What is necessary is that the person has to
LEARN so much of the new discipline that his CREATIVITY becomes enriched
to serve also the requirements of the new discipline. It is the back
action of this new learning which enrich the lower ordered creativity.
In the paragraph above two words have been accentuated -- creativity and
learning. Let us look deeper into them.
It is the enriched (or matured) creativity which serves as the glue
cementing the various disciplines into an integrated whole. In other
words, anything which impairs the creativity of a member of a LO will work
against the integration of the disciplines. Each member of the LO will
have to ensure that his/her creativity becomes enriched without impairing
the creativity of the others. I often have the feeling that study of
creativity forms the sixth discipline of a LO. Perhaps we can have a
dialogue on the thread:
Is creativity the sixth LO discipline?
But if creativity is the glue which integrate the academical disciplines
in a LO, what is the brush with which the glue is applied? Learning.
Learning as in the LO discipline of Personal Mastery and as in the LO
discipline of Learning Teams. Learning as the irreversible
self-organisation of the mind. Learning as the fundamental process which
results in an increase of knowledge. Learning which spans the experential,
tacit, formal and sapient levels of knowledge. Learning which apply
knowledge dynamically. Learning which is open to all facets of life. It is
critically important that each member of the LO should be commited to such
learning. Every member of a LO for whom learning is not the principal
directive will impede the evolution of the LO all the way.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>