Bruce,
I think we're in violent agreement here! We both know how destructive it
can be to go over history with people, creating a negative cycle of
assigning/ducking blame rather than a positive cycle of creating the
future we all want to live in.
I interpret your sensitivity to history as a sensitivity to the power of an
existing "culture" to resist change. When you write:
>If you ignore the past history of the company and the people that
>formulated that history they WILL repeat the problem.
I completely agree. However, I don't put it the same way. I deal with
the "past history" only insofar as it manifests itself in the present
culture. I don't care how it came to be the way it is, but I do pay a lot
of attention to the way it is -- because that's the enemy of change (as
you say.)
I also have a reaction to your next statement:
>Change has to be bought into by the people who originally caused the
>problem .... or .... the heads of those responsible for the problem are
>on stakes in front of the building.
I think creating change in an organization is a lot like fomenting a
revolution. And one outcome often is that SOME of those responsible for
the way things are end up not being very powerful in the new-minted
culture (and some end up with their heads on stakes in front of the
building.) But many others, and it's often surprising who and how many
they are, wind up embracing the change and become leaders in the new
culture.
When Coca-Cola bought Minute Maid, Coke executives were horrified to
discover that they now had, as "employees," what were little different
than slaves picking oranges in the groves. The migrant workers were very
poorly treated and Coke, to their everlasting credit, found this
unacceptable. But traditional means of fixing the problem were
ineffective, because it was a deeply ingrained cultural problem -- both
for the supervisors and for the migrants themselves. So Coke hired a
consulting group to work on helping the migrant workers change their own
culture -- and they were (inspiringly) successful! But at a certain
point, after the direction of change became clear, a Coke executive had to
have a heart-to-heart talk with the supervisors. He told them (word to
the effect): "The train will be leaving soon. It's going where we've
been telling you it's going and it will work the way we've been talking
about. When it pulls out of the station you will have had to make a
choice: either be on it (and really on board) or not. It's your choice
to make; we won't force anyone to board this train. But if you don't get
on board we will have to say, 'Goodbye,' to you. Now, we're giving you
every opportunity to get on that train. And we're giving you enough time
to learn how to function on board, and we're giving you all the help you
want to learn new ways. But I'm telling you now, when the train leaves
the station you have to either be on board, or not."
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>