Marilyn Darling asks: "I have not had any experience in introducing LO
concepts into unionized settings and am beginning conversations with a
couple of clients who have active union relationships. I would be
interested in hearing about such experiences of others on the list. What
concerns have union representatives raised? Has the introduction of LO
principles strengthened union-management relationships? How?"
In a recent posting I mentioned the videoconferences featuring Peter
Senge. In "The Cornerstones of the Learning Organization" (Dec 1993) he
featured a case history in the use of dialogue in bringing about a change
in the relationship between management and union at (if I remember
correctly) a small steel fabricating plant in the midwest (St. Louis?
Knasas City? somebody please help me here...)
-- Jack Hirschfeld A kiddly divey too, wouldn't you? jack@his.com ----- Host's Note: It is GS Technologies, Kansas City. For those who have heard some of these cases over the past few years, this was formerly Armco Steel. This case is described in the very nice Fortune Magazine article "Mr. Learning Organization", Oct. 17, 1994, Pg. 117.There is quite a bit of material about the use of Dialog to achieve a dramatic improvement of alignment between union and management.
The article goes on, "Last spring the effort suffered a heavy blow. In retrospect, management says it made the mastake of not spreading the program fast and deep enough. Workers left out of the dialogue grew suspicious and fearful. John Cottrell, the labor leader who had spearheaded learning-organization ideas at GST, was voted out, and the new union leadership, headed by Steve Morrow, passed a motion banning Senge's dialogue from the shop floor. Says Morrow: 'Dialogue got different union people to say different things at different times. When you're not speaking with one unified voice, the company can see a split and take advantage of it.' CEO Cushman remains devoted to the learning organization ideal but admits that making it a reality across his company will now take longer."
There was a terrific presentation at one of the Systems Thinking in Action conferences, probably Nov '93 in which the steelworkers and management presented together. Their story was very compelling and it was clear that the experience had touched them very deeply.
The path to the learning-organization is not clear, direct, or easy.
Richard Karash ("Rick") | <http://world.std.com/~rkarash> Innovation Associates, Inc. | email: rkarash@world.std.com 3 Speen St, Framingham MA 01701 | Host for Learning-Org Mailing List (508) 879-8301 and fax 626-2205 | <http://world.std.com/~lo> -----