On Tue, 23 May 1995 BIRRED@dnr.state.wi.us wrote:
[material snipped]
> 3. > Do we have to be respectful of the TAO?
>
> No, we don't. But we shouldn't be surprised when the rest of the world
> doesn't cooperate with our myopic behavior. The Tao *is*, and will always
> be, regardless of whether we try to understand it or not. The two best
> questions I know of to make sense of this are: "What does this
> organization need, given its current state of development and the nature
> of its environment?" and "What does this organization's environment need
> from it, given the trends and possible futures it faces?"
>
> Any thoughts out there about this? Are these questions so broad as to be
> meaningless?
I don't think there is any problem with the questions. They are at the
heart of what the Future Search Conference model is designed to consider
(among others), and that process can be very effective in organizations.
I think that the critical issue to be aware of is _who_ is attempting an
answer to the questions. It can be essential to know that bit of
information in order to make some sense out of the response. I am more and
more impressed with the future search model in that it goes as far as it
can to get "the whole system" into the room and dialoguing about possible
answers to these important questions.
-- Tobin Quereau quereau@austin.cc.tx.us