To Jim, regarding LO1037
Jim,
I like your thoughts at the end of the comments to Michael McMaster, about
information almost never remaining neutral as it passes up and down the
hierarchy.
There's another side of this question which has been written to in many
previous messages, and that is the thread of story-telling. In the
business environment, I see groups riveted by the story (not case study)
in an information presentation. The Story as another type of information
filter takes the content up the ladder of abstraction to a more universal
plane from which "lessons" may be drawn.
The thread of story-telling as a learning practice in organizations is in
my mind related to your comments about information flow in general.
Certainly there are very significant instances of detail requirements in
information presentation which may defy the story-telling mode. In such
cases organizational learning is perhaps minimized. Does it have to be?
Can we return to some sense of tradition of story-telling--from many
hundreds of years ago--when form allowed deeper understanding of albeit
simple content? I suspect there's no easy answer to this, as our dialogs
indicate.
Regards,
-- Barry Mallis Total Quality Resource Manager MARKEM Corporation Keene, NH 03431 bmallis@markem.com