>From Michael Bremer cgcmike@aol.com
First I want to thank At de Lange for his response to Steve Eskrow. The
openness was moving and certainly talks to a significant event in the New
South African and world history.
In a message dated 11/11/99 1:04:25 AM, At de Lange writes:
>You believe that "discussion" and "debate" are needed to clarify that
>insight. I believe it too, but have discovered on more than one occasion
>how deadly it is to the "open-complex dialogue" when done in a manner
>ignorant to how detrsuctions happen.
In a narrow slice of the world, compared to the changes referred to in the
above correspondence, I had an interesting experience with what At
describes as
>...the stages "dialog," "discussion," and "debate."
This occurred at a high tech company in Louisiana. It involved a group of
people working on improving a manufacturing production line. Most of the
members had never worked on a "team." It was a joint union and management
team. We did our job as a group, implemented a bunch of changes, reduced
cost, improved cycle times, etc. That was not the interesting part.
One of the team members, a safety engineer, noticed that one person in the
area we were observing was cutting cardboard boxes with knife without
wearing a safety glove. When we returned to our meeting area Jim said, "I
am going to write that person up for not wearing a glove."...(this is a
union shop)...It cast a pall on the group. We moved into a discussion of
what is the purpose of our group? We agreed that we were asking people to
be open about their problems, to share improvement ideas and to let us
observe how they regularly do their work. Once we revisited our purpose
Jim agreed to forego the write-up and talk one-on-one to the person on
shop floor.
The next day as we were going through a "quick" feedback session, Pete,
one of the shop floor members said, "I think we need to stop the Nazi
tactics!" Again a pall came over the group. After asking for
clarification Pete indirectly indicated his remarks were about Jim's
write-up comment. Again we had to revisit the facts. We pointed out that
Jim did not do the write-up and talked one-on-one. After a few minutes
Pete apologized for expressing it in such strong terms. A hard thing, and
noble thing for him to do.
I want to relate this experience to the dialog, discussion and debate
context in that it is often important to avoid losing your cool (temper)
over the way people express themselves. These were two hard headed guys.
They were used to stating their opinions in strong words, usually before
they had time to think through the ramifications of those words. This
entire group could have fragmented and simply gone through the motions
after either incident. But they didn't. The group took time to give
people space, clarify (an important part of discussion and dialog) and
offer alternate ideas. Surviving those conflicts helped this group grow
and turn into a team.
To cap it off. At the end of the week Pearlie, a black line worker said,
"It's too bad that the company (indaba) had to wait until I was 54 years
old to ask me to think. I really appreciated the opportunity to do this
and learned a lot." Now one of the interesting things about this quote is
Pearlie is really 62 years old.....the other more powerful statement
speaks for itself.
>Here in South Africa the majority of black people are very fond of what
>they call "indaba" -- a dialogue in which all participants express their
>views, but always conserving the status quo, avoiding any change in any
>order. It is the prerogative of only the "indoena" (the senior
>management) to do make any such ordinate changes.
I have had many run in's with the "indoena" during the course of my
career. Now I am one, I'm not sure if that is a reward or a punishment.
At's words about staying in touch with the "indaba" are critical to
sustaining change and to our future success. Some indaba are inside the
organization others are outside, we call them customers.
Thanks again for your openness and sharing that correspondence,
Michael Bremer
Flow-Works, Inc.
(an intellectual capital provider company)
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