>I might also point out that it would be good to use to understand
>the paradigm of internal consultants who have their own paradigm
>about the incompetence of the executive team.
Over the years, I've seen this "paradigm about the incompetence of the
executive team" over and over.
It's not just from internal consultants, but external consultants, product
design groups, the field vs. the HQ, etc. I've also seen a fair amount of
the reverse: in which the management team sees the incompetence of the
engineers, the sales people or sometimes of everyone but them. This
paradigm of incompetence or lack of respect is a real impediment to
mutual learning.
It seems to me that in a learning organization people at all levels and
roles would have more respect for each other and for what people are up
against.
Much of our work starts from a viewpoint that, when two sides reach
opposite conclusions, there must be a difference in what data they are
seeing, how they are interpreting the data, and in their mental models
about how things work. We try to make both sides right by finding the
conditions underwhich their conclusions would make sense, and enrich
everyone's learning thereby. This helps build mutual respect, but
requires a certain amount of mutual respect to get started.
Richard Karash ("Rick") | (o) 508-879-8301 | Mac * Flying
Innovation Associates, Inc. | (fax) 508-626-2205 | Systems Thinking
3 Speen St, Framingham MA 01701 | rkarash@world.std.com | Std. Disclaimer