John Zavacki wrote:
>Deming, Covey, Senge, and all of their disciples are
>ultimately readable. There are no bifurcated emergences with overtones
>of digestion.
John,
thank you for writing! Don't stop asking from time to time questions,
which I interpret to mean: "Hey, Winfried, what are you doing here on the
list, what are you spending your (and wasting my) time with?" I know, you
don't mean me personal but I can very well relate your mail to my presence
in the list.
You made me think and that's what came out of it:
I imagine a plane (portfolio, matrix...) made up by two axises.
One axis is called "form" and goes from totally unreadable to ultimately
readable or from boring to thrilling.
The other axis is called "content" and goes from highly destructive to
highly constructive.
On this plane, one may sort in the various authors and you get the typical
four quadrants, into which a plane divides, when one apply two axises. In
this case:
A: constructive and thrilling (Deming, Senge, Covey as you mentioned, I
would add Goldratt and At de Lange - there is no need to agree on such
assessment, but deviations may lead to dialog and mutual learning
experiences; true for deviations on the other quadrants as well)
B: constructive and boring (problem: if the form doesn't appeal, it is
difficult to assess the content)
C: destructive and thrilling (this should be our real enemy!)
D: destructive and boring (the same difficulty to assess as in B but easy
to say, forget about them)
Isn't this a nice little toy? I just invented it here on the spot.
Lots of possible anchors for discussions, debates or, more constructively,
dialog.
Let's for example compare my plane with Coveys one. Is it too far fetched
to identify Coveys importance-axis with my content-axis and Coveys
urgency-axis with my form-axis? Whether something is important or not is a
matter of its content and whether something is urgent is a matter of the
form in which that content appears.
It's the ultimately readable Covey who advocates quadrant B to be the most
effective one. By the time, the issues in B develop their own, inherent
urgency directly out of their importance, which is totally different
compared to the "outer" urgency, which issues have, that are forced on you
by "circumstances". To provoke even more: Were it not for the lessons I
drove from Covey, I wouldn't have started to study At de Lange. And what
is only a hint on the roots in the appendix of Senge (11 essences) is at
the center of interest for At de Lange.
Another interesting aspect of the authors in my plane is, that they move.
Such movement reflect the learning of the one using this instrument. Some
authors which I wouldn't have cared about a few years ago suddenly become
thrilling. The destructive roots of other authors whose contributions I
judged to be highly constructive before become visible.
>There are changes in behavior and level of knowledge. The
>greatest challenge in any leadership role is the understanding of these
>changes.
I hope, this is what I wrote about and I am happy if a managed to
contribute a little bit.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>