>>Are you saying that the L.O. community tends to think
>> that every successful organizational change effort must have a
>> "learning organization" or "learning disciplines" component?
Mike responds...
>This question would not be sufficiently provocative for my
>intentions. I would expect the community to answer "Yes" but, framed
>this way, I would also agree.
I answer this *no* and would not be surprised if there are others out
there who agree with this view. After all, Art said organization. There
are many organizations who make continuing successful adaptive change
without involving the hearts and heads of the majority. If only a few are
acting to experiment and create together, I do not use the words
*organization* and *learning* together.
>"Successful change" and "learning" are a tautology for me.
Making distinctions:
Generally agree at the adaptive level of learning. I gotta add
organizational beside learning when I define successful change over
multiple decades and that the change is also generative in nature. Even
more specifically, when I speak of learning how to learn more rapidly, it
converts to continually enhancing organizational capacity to generate
useful and applied new knowledge.
Then, my mind moves to a model that says organizational learning is
successful *generative* change, shaping new markets, finding new uses for
existing products and services, or inventing new products and services
resulting in new markets. This is how they create their future.
There is some differentiation I make (but will not here) about number of
people involved, timeframe for success, and adaptation plus generation
which causes me to distinguish different levels of organizational
learning.
>Few of these, because they live in a culture which creates an
>unchallengeable aura around shared vision, are able to even consider
>that the positive experience and even lasting gain may have nothing
>to do with the intention or the result (shared vision) but can be
>solely attributed to the event of people talking together about what
>mattered to them - about their intentions and aspirations and values.
Are there people out there (wherever there is) who believe *truly* shared
vision gets created without talking about what matters? In effect, pour
the passion into people's' hearts and minds for them? If this is
approximately right, I need to change a couple of explanations about
shared (versus sharing) vision in a significant way.
(Help me here, Michael and others. It feels like I'm in the naive state
again. I'm at a loss like I was in the recent past on another topic
(asking questions). You and others contributed greatly to my new way of
asking questions which has worked extraordinarily well so far. Measure -
no one has gotten mad at me for asking simple questions in the past month.
THANKS!!)
Have a great day!!
-- Dave Buffenbarger Organizational Improvement Coach Dow Chemical Company dwbuff@aol.com (517) 638-7080