Genene Koebelin asks:
>So, are you saying that you shouldn't infect an organization with new
>ideas which are vague or unclear?
Genene, thanks for struggling to understand me and for asking the
question. Sending messages to an organization that are vague and unclear
is probably not a good idea, unless your objective is to destabilize the
organization. [Note: Sometimes that is a goal -- as Kurt Lewin wrote
many years ago, change first requires "Unfreezing."]
However, the real point I was trying to make was quite different. It is
precisely the precise, clear messages that are the most "dangerous" for
all the reasons you described -- people can learn from them, act on them,
take them further, etc.
Therefore, one must be very careful about sending precise, clear messages
into an organization -- careful about understanding what the effect of
receiving these messages will be! Steve Jobs, at Apple, was quite sure he
knew what the effect would be of sending precise, clear messages from his
skunk works (producing the Macintosh) -- it would disrupt the entire
AppleII organization, making it less able to do its (current) job of
improving, manufacturing, and marketing the AppleII. It wasn't until the
Macintosh was built, and tested, and market tested, that he allowed the
clear message of change into the "old" organization. It would have been
suicidal to have sent the message sooner.
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>