Linear thinking LO22878

Gavin Ritz (garritz@xtra.co.nz)
Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:19:35 +1300

Replying to LO22863 --

Dear All

I am going to get my pound of flesh in because this dialogue is at the
heart of the problems in most organisations, that if you do something i.e.
cause there will be a direct linear effect, being a systems practitioner
this could not be further from reality, often is difficult to know which
came first the cause or the effect. The western languages are structured
in a very linear way, I suppose that is how western peoples think, maybe
that is how our brain is structured. System science is based on the
feedback loop which simply means that the output of the system is returned
as part of the input, with time delays in-between. This off course forces
us to stop thinking in a linear way, once one is onto the causal loop idea
everything begins to take shape as loops or spirals and forces one to
think outside the normal linear way. Linear thinking is detrimental to
long term survival of organisations.

To develop an effective LO one must have the systems loop, between output
performance and performance capability (skill & knowledge) and this must
be measured as an interval variable. This gets rid of the linear
organisational thinking.

Kindest
Gavin

-- 

Gavin Ritz <garritz@xtra.co.nz>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>