Philip
>A good point. Increasingly, power lies with those who have critical,
>relevant and "useful" knowledge, and knowledge is tied up with access to
>knowledge sources such as education, ongoing training and access to
>electonic communications such as the one we are using now. Many people
>are being left out - including a good part of the developed and developing
>world.
I think your career is showing through in your knowledge sources! There
are many other sources of knowledge, including the people who are left
out. A very good reason for leaving them out is that by inclusion they
could alter the knowledge and consequentially the power situation.
>Yes, and this is interesting because power in all its forms is part of
>life. Yet many of our most powerful people deny they in fact have any
>power over events. ( eg "I am just a humble billionaire." or "I am ONLY
>Prime Minister - I can't actually change things.") Personally, I am
>comfortable with the notion of power in itself, but the nature of power,
>who has it and how it should be exercised are important questions that we
>often don't get to. And in a learning sense, this often causes the
>failure of change and development processes. For example, middle managers
>undermining a TQM implementation or frontline workers sabotaging new
>machinery or French farmers blockading roads because. All in part because
>they have not taken part in the decisions and/or risk losing power (or
>money, which often equates to power) when the planned changes happen.
I think raise the questions about the concept of power. Is power
associated with an individual or is power an emergent property of a group
of individuals? If it can be related to an individual, does the
individual have power or are they just the focus of the power that emerges
from a group of individuals? What do people mean by power anyway?
Looking at your examples. Middle managers have the most influence on
change at a certain stage of implementation, more than the senior managers
who decided that it was going to happen in broad terms without considering
the detail. How much longer does society have to wait for senior managers
to learn this lesson or are they not bright enought to learn or are they
too arrogant or whatever? Definitly a communication problem between
layers of management.
We need to remember that the French farmers are replaying democracy as it
exists in France. I say replaying because it is replaying the French
Revolution and this is their adopted form of democracy. I see
similarities between the UK layers of management and the French society,
both have layers getting on quietly by themselves without communicating
between layers. Every now and then one layer tries to force unwelcome
change on another and their is rebellion. The advantage in French Society
is that there is respect between layers.
Roy Benford
Fulmer, UK
--"Roy Benford" <roy@benford.demon.co.uk>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>