Dear Organlearners,
Fred Nickols <nickols@worldnet.att.net> writes under the
subject: "Pay for Performance" in his reply LO21353
>I'll give it one more shot, using a different example, and then
>I'm going to drop it.
>
>My original concern was about reification in particular, and the
>sloppy, unthinking use of language in general. I believe that
>language shapes thought and thought shapes behavior; as we
>speak, so we think; as we think, so we act.
Greetings Fred,
While following the dialogue on topic "Pay for Performance", although
not participating in it, I was continually aware of a number of
different issues being tackled under the same umbrella. These issues
will certainly pop up again in the ongoing dialogue on the LO-list. It
happened in the past and often under different subjects.
The issue which gave the unbrella its handle, is how to measure or
evaluate performance. This issue is as old as barter. Its resolution,
after several millenia, seems to be still far way off. The issue
pivots on a simple fact: That which is of high value to one person may
be of low value to another person.
Another issue concerns the question "Can a group of people act as a
whole?" This issue is about as old as the former one. This issue also
pivots on a simple fact: wholeness is essential to constructive
actions. I want to make two comments on this issue:
In the aftermath of getting rid of the ideology of apartheid, trying
to reconcile people on the basis of bringing the truth to light, many
people who applied for amnesty, discovered in one way or another that
the motivation "for the benefit of the group" fails as an excuse to
condone wrong (destructive) actions. Even the Truth and
Reconcilliation Commision (which is required by law to give amnesty
when it has been established that a wrong action was commited for
political reason) often steps on its own toes because all political
reasons is nothing else than "for the benefit of the group". Thus an
important lesson to learn from all the hearings before the TRC and its
own proceedings, is that there is more to group dynamics than merely
wholeness.
The second comment is not on the issue itself, but concerns apartheid,
mentioned in the first comment above. In a couple of months """South
Africa""" (South Africans ;-) ) will go to the ballot box again. As a
result the political temperature (indicating more chaos) is rising.
One favourite technique now to disqualify another political party is
to claim that the party wants to revive apartheid. The fact is that
only one (the HNP) among more than fourty political parties has a
policy based on "apartheid". That party has the support of only 0.1%
of the population! Is it not extraodinary how fast a nation can learn
if it WANTS to?
The third issue is the one identified by you (Fred) as reification.
You write:
>The language used in relation to organizations is, in my view,
>is used in terribly sloppy ways and leads to thinking of
>organizations as though they are people, replete with human
>characteristics. Organizations don't think, people do.
>Organizations don't laugh, cry, or feel sorrow or joy, people do.
>Organizations don't do things, people do.
The description above is powerful and poetic. Should I add one
sentence to it, the result becomes of utmost importance to our
dialogue:
ORGANISATIONS DON'T LEARN, PEOPLE DO.
What does it entail for the LEARNING ORGANISATION?
I will now try to show what is one of the patterns underlying Fred's
argumentation. (My friends in the departments of botany and zoology
will love this one.) Take Fred's argument above and substitute all the
occurances of the word "organisation" with the word "plant". Study
again the argument. What conclusion can you make? Biologists call this
manner of articulation when refering to any biological species other
than humankind "anthropomorphism" (Greek "anthropos"=human,
"morphe"=form).
Anthropomorphism is a very complex and thus by its complexity a
powerful mental model. Its influence range from theology (articulating
properties of God like the Father) to the physics of fundamental
particles (for example, beauty and charm numbers). The hot question
is: Can we get rid of anthropomorphism in our reification? My answer
is no.
It has to do with the essentiality wholeness
("associativity-monadicity") since reification is an emergent
phenomenon. The associativity pattern X*Y*Z of wholeness requires that
when each one (the X) of us wants to associate with anything else (the
Z) in reality to gain in wholeness, we have to make use of an Y, the
"umlomo", mouthpiece or mediator. It is not only futile, but also
destructive, to try and exclude the human as an umlomo. On the other
hand, it is also futile and destructive to use the human exclusively
as umlomo. To obtain harmony, the umlomo has to meander through all
possible "things" of reality. It is interesting to compare this last
sentence to the etymology of reify, namely Latin "res"="rei"=thing.
The umlomo plays a very important role in our knowledge (an emergent
phenomenum itself) of anything. Its simple message is that we have to
understand anything through all things.
A second pattern underlying Fred's argumentation and which I have
worked up to in the last paragraph, is the process ("becoming") of
learning with the outcome knowledge as structure ("being"). This
points to the essentiality liveness ("becoming-being"). Again we have
to seek harmony to understand. The harmony in this case is to become
aware of a chain (string) of "becoming-being" and not merely one link.
For example, I have written a number of times on the four ordered
substructures which I am aware of in my own knowledge, namely
experential, tacit, formal and sapient knowledge.
Language comes into the picture at the third level (formal knowledge)
like any other form of expression (music, sculpture, technology,
etc.). A serious problem for me whose mother tongue Afrikaans is
different from English, is that I often have to investigate which
English word I must use to translate a word in my own language, or
vice versa. For example, in the thread on empowerment, my own mother
tongue has nine distinctive words for the English word power, for
example "mag" (etymologically related to "might"), "drywing"
(etymologivally related to "driving") and "vermoe" (ability) among
others.
By now some of you should have got the idea that by using each (of the
seven) essentialities, we may uncover additional patterns underlying
Fred's issue of reification. This will give us some overview on
reification. But the seven essentialities concern merely the mechanics
or form of creativity. What about the dynamics of creativity which is
concerend with things such as energy, entropy, free energy, chaos,
bifurcation, order, edge and equilibrium? What role do they play in
reification?
Lastly, all these things are integral to my own systems thinking which
connects entropy production, creativity and learning to one another.
What should we call the result? One possibility is "deep creativity".
There are also other kinds of system thinking, each with its own
peculiarities like my own system. Each of these systems has much to
say on the issue of reification. And what about the uncountably many
mental models giving rise to the various kinds of system thinking?
Fred wanted to give another shot at reification and then drop it. He
finishes with
>Anyway, I don't see that this thread is head down any
>particularly productive path so -- except for one last
>remark -- I'm going to stop flailing away at what is probably
>some hobgoblin of my own making.
Let us surprise him with a symphony of learning. Remember that the
following is at stake:
ORGANISATIONS DON'T LEARN, PEOPLE DO.
What does it entail for the LEARNING ORGANISATION?
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>