Dear John,
>First, are you actually asking questions to be answered
>or just posing something for us to think about?
What a question! I always thought, that any question is firstly something
to think about. I would not value an answer with respect to the question
asked, but with its power to lead to more or other questions.
When I start a to write a mail, then I usually don't do it in order to
prepare for some questions I want to come up with at the end. Instead, I
catch a trigger of thinking in a previous mail and follow the course of my
thinking. Often, I arrive at other questions, questions about something I
notice is unclear to me, or causes obfuscation in my thinking, or also
questions which allow me to see what I have written before in a new light.
This is a very satisfying feeling, because I have arrived at another
starting point.
>If you are asking questions, I'd like to try to answer some of them.
John, I have described what I may call a learners mode of writing. At de
Langes writing may I call a teachers mode of writing. At discovered a
beautiful garden he loves to visit again and again, showing it to others
pointing to items which help those accompanying him to discover the
richness and the beauty, but also the relevance and importance for our
lifes.
If you'd like to try to answer my questions, you are so welcome, either in
the learner mode, when you think there is more in it for you then you are
aware of right now and when you think that writing may help to find some
of it - or in the teachers mode, sharing what you have come to learn to
love.
It puzzles me that you are requiring "If you are asking questions".
>Second, if you are asking questions to be answered, would you mind >trying to ask them again in a slightly different way. I'm just not sure how to
>respond right now and hope you can help me. Thanks a lot.
With your "second", I suspect, that an activity like "answering questions"
makes you to think of answers in an expert mode. I mean, you ARE an expert
of system dynamics. But being an expert does not mean to communicate in an
expert mode. It is also an excellent position for teaching, especially
when you reached your expertise through an ongoing love affair with system
dynamics.
John, I very much like the careful way of treating me as a leaner. You are
sensitive, that answering questions for the sake of the answer (the
knowledge one asked for) does not fit well to the way I asked my
questions. You are right. And because my questions were the outflow of a
creative process, I am not able (and willing) to reformulate them in a
way, that they can be treated as requests for knowledge.
In my questions, I am wondering whether any mathematical system dynamics
(even in a non-mathematical form of surface - loops and diagrams) are
closer to linear algebra then to what ever it is that makes powerful
leaders so powerful. I used Demings term "profound knowledge" or with the
last mail of At, I would like to point to the issure "dignity". I am not
saying that the answer is clear or that I was asking a rhetorical
quesiton. In this sense, I am not even interested in an answer. I just
liked it as a starting point for thinking and anybody who catches that
ball may lead us the next steps.
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>