I am responding here to Debbie
>In studies I am currently undertaking it is this confusion of terminology
>that is creating a lot of problems for organisational learning. They end
>up with more but not useful information and apparently no system for
>distilling it.
My name is Glen,
I find Debbie's point about "useful information" to be highly important.
What I often see happening in situations where a group or an individual is
attempting to solve or create something is this process of making things
too complicated.
One of the tools I would use in my thinking and research comes from
statistics called principle components or factor analysis. The simple
basics of those two investigative tools is to attempt to narrow down what
variables effect a situation the most. Inherent in the model is that there
can be hundreds if not thousands of possible influential variables.
However there are usually variables that will "load high" or have the bulk
of the influence over a situation.
I often get a little frustrated reading some of the contributions to this
list because I see a pattern of making "things" too complicated. Basically
I see the old "beating the dead horse" until there is nothing but a tail
and some teeth left.
For example the time being spent over discussing similarities and
differences between information and knowledge. For me that process of
debate seems like mental masturbation which provokes images of Hamlet
spinning in emotional angst.
I hope this is recieved as a casual observation,
Glen
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