Steve Kelner writes of three levels of competencies he sees in groups and
declares:
>I find that using this model you can pretty well analyze the
>characteristics of a group down to the ground.
Steve, I don't doubt that you can. However (and this goes into other
directions, so I won't pursue it completely here), analyzing
characteristics is essentially a "static" description of groups. In my
work, which is about helping groups change, I don't find that static
descriptions help very much. What I need are dynamic descriptions,
process descriptions (to use Herbert Simon's term), that show where the
leverage is for improvement and how to work the levers.
I find that, when you try to help a group "work their levers," you are
dealing with things that only exist at the level of the group, not at the
level of individuals. You are dealing with the nature of the interactions
among the individuals, the norms of the group, the inertia of an
established group (tendency to keep doing things the way they have been
doing them), etc. And group-level (especially systemic) interventions are
very effective in helping people deal with these dynamics while
individual-level interventions are not.
I find it's a little difficult to explain why. Perhaps one reason is that
events happen so quickly, the "environment" changes so rapidly, that by
the time one has worked with enough individuals to affect the behavior of
the group as a whole it's too late; the ship has missed its opportunity to
turn into the new channel.
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>