>So, companies should encourage good flocking... To me this means a
>continuous variety of new contacts and a good chance to talk with them.
>Arie suggested that training programs are good flocking: bringing together
>people from different units, provided there is a good bar at the site!
>Job rotation is another vehicle to promote flocking.
>
>I identify strongly with Arie's picture; it matches what has felt
>effective to me at several points in my career.
>
>I see friends leaving large organizations in favor of smaller ones to get
>more freedom for innovation and (I suspect) better flocking opportunities.
>And, companies downsizing, with more performance pressure on the
>survivors, must mean less chance for flocking. Some people look towards
>the virtual organization, assembling people for tasks from a floating pool
>of insiders and outsiders. All these, in my understanding of Arie's
>theory, represent real threats to learning in large organizations and
>therefore threats to their long-term survivability.
I would like to add one piece to the puzzle: the more the company's
members communicate with the stakeholder the beter they can flock. This
means in my eyes that learnig partnerships with customers, suppliers and
other stakeholder are extremely necessary to learn.
I would hold against the arguent that downsized companies have less
chances to learn .. they must have some slack to provide a facility to
learn but the more market pressure a company has to suffer the better the
chances are that the company learns something relevant .. big inefficient
companies got lots of stack and opportunities to discover each other's
mental world but the customers are not necessarily in the center of this
exchange, sometimes they do not benefit at all...
-- tb@knipp.de (Thomas Bertels)