Hello all,
On Sun, 27 Jun 1999 10:10:47 John Gunkler wrote:
>When I'm trying to learn something, a very wise
>colleague and mentor of mine once taught me to "play
>dumb." He did it by example....
This approach works well for myself as well, except I'm not playing. I'm
often called in to build some kind of cartoon representation of what's
going on in a system or organization, and because I know nothing, and am
totally dependant on my informants, I'm often able to tap a level of depth
that the "experts" don't touch.
(imagine my surprise)...
Cartoon depictions have the added advantage of emphasizing the human
(emotional) dimension, which often prompts people to identify with the
cartoon character enough to "data dump" what it's like to be that person
(up to their neck in aligators or something similar). It's strange how
un-related people (from different organizations or groups, will begin to
"talk with" each other - rather than "talk at"... and we find some form of
dialgue (in the David Bohm sense) happening-resulting in common ground or
system connections being found that weren't obvious before.
so playing dumb and tapping that vast resevoir of knowledge is a very
smart thing to do...
at least it works for me...
Michael Erickson
michael.n.erickson@boeing.com
http://members.tripod.com/~Michael_Erickson
------------------------------------------------------
-"we toons may act rediculous, but we're not stupid!"-
--------------------------Roger Rabbit----------------
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com>
Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>