Error of Mental Models? LO1974

Doug Seeley (100433.133@compuserve.com)
06 Jul 95 20:09:45 EDT

Responding to Michael McMaster in LO1947...

> My starting point is to consider a corporation or a culture as nothing but a
network
>of conversations. From there, you can identify conversations by type... The
point is
>to see their nodes, connections and interplay rather than the specific
instances...

Mike, I have used this approach quite successfully to design and implement
graphical user interfaces, carefully assessing the impact that such a tool
would have in the workplace... but eventually, the specific distinctions
which the end-user must focus on enters the design process as the content
of these conversations.... which leads me back to getting a handle on
corporate cultures and change agency..

The way I see it is that various corporate cultures, against a broader
business culture, are in the habit of making certain distinctions,
especially in the area of assumed causalities, which are often vary
limiting and even incorrect from a "broader" perspective. Looking for and
getting some sort of handle on the nature of such limiting distinctions,
enables us to help the clients break free and head for more open waters.
Now am I getting into mental models, when I focus on the content of these
distinctions??

By the way, there appears to be a very nice analogy here between the
fixidities which get constructed within corporate cultures, and the
fixidities which clients undergoing therapy encounter.

--
Doug Seeley,	InterDynamics Pty. Ltd. (Australia) in Geneva, Switzerland
		e-mail: Compuserve 100433.133 and Fax: +41 22 756 3957
				"Choice and Chance are One."