Dear Greg and Brian,
Thanks for sharing your valuable conversation with us. It would seem to
me that one of the most important topics of conversation in around
organisational learning that we should be having is that of sustainability
in all senses of the term. That is, sustainable use of materials,
sustainable treatment of waste, sustainable energy use, sustainable people
leadership and management issues etc.
In this regard, we basically have to unlearn a whole lot of practices, and
learn a whole lot of new ones. Many of the OL tools are very useful in
doing this. One of Australia's leading business academics, Dexter Dunphy,
wrote the following paragraph on the last page of his recent book "The
Sustainable Corporation." I find it very inspiring in terms of my
possible role in promoting learning and sustainability:
"The new heresy for the organisational renewal movement (or OL movement if
you prefer) to espouse is that when we build organisations that act upon
this world we must do so not with the intent to exploit, pollute and
plunder but to renew the life of the planet and ourselves.
If we devote ourselves to communication this heresy, we may contribute to
making it the orthodoxy of the 21st century."
In regard to getting executives to listen, you wrote:
>It has occurred to me that executives will want to create learning
>organizations if that means increased profit, market share, etc.
I think the concept of sustainablility backed by hard data is perhaps one
means of creating a dialogue with executives who quite rightly need to
think in terms of cash flow and balance sheet. Some industries are
already finding that materials are no longer in limitless supply...and in
this sense, OL/sustainability and profit may come together.
Regards,
Philip
Philip Pogson
Leadership Development Strategy Consultant
Staff Development Branch
University of Technology Sydney NSW 2007
Australia
ph: +61 2 9514 2934(w)
fax: +61 2 9514 2930(w)
ph/fax: +61 2 9809 5185 (h)
mobile: +61 0412 459156
"Loosening horizonatal boundaries...calls for integration, not
decentralization; process, not function; and teamwork, not individual
effort.
When an organization is viewed integratively as composed of shared
resources, it puts an end to the structural questions about power,
authority and priority raised in the centralize/decentralize debate."
-Ron Ashkenas et al
--Philip Pogson <ppogson@uts.edu.au>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>