Gavin -
Thanks for explaination.
> Now that I am in human resources I do the same thing, rightly or wrongly.
> I use a mental model to profile people. Now this is only a model of how we
> think & act. It it is not the real thing.
Talking with my brother last night, we hit upon why some of us have
trouble with modelling in general and mental models per se.
It has to do with "being." At first, it was difficult to put into
words...actually, it still is!
If one comes from a technological/scientific grounding, modelling is part
and parcel of the way one thinks. Modelling helps put the "thing" we are
talking about "out there" and makes it (seem) observable.
On the other hand, a different grounding - say linguistic or experiential
or? - would necessarily lead to a different conversation.
In talking with a high school assistant principal who is very competent in
many areas dealing with kids and their parents made the statement to me
that he doesn't "model" the right kind of approach, he "is" that right
kind of approach. "They know if you're the real thing or not."
I've also noticed that many learning organizational theorists come from a
scientific background. Does this make a difference?
-- George "jorge" Bartow e-mail: jorge@tenet.edu Home: http://web2.airmail.net/jorge Research: http://web2.airmail.net/jorge/research =========== 3/21/99 "Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim." - George SantayanaLearning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>