>I believe that there are those that need or want the vision poured into them.
>Now, do they believe in the vision or accept it. We have people with
>many diverse backgrounds and needs. What drives one person is not what
>drives another. A farmer told me that there are many kinds
>of seeds; those that grow in warm climates and those that grow in cold. Seeds
>that require drought, flood, and fire. Seeds that need carefully prepared soil
>and those that can be tossed into rocks. Each one unique.
David, I love you analogy. It just show that trying to explain difficult &
often complex concepts of LO may require different tactics and strategies
to address the diversity in a system, or "variety" -to use a cybernetics
term from Stafford Beer. Variety is a measure of system complexity,
because it counts the number of possible states of a system.
There are several strategies to explain and explore concepts and analogies
I think, are one of the most elegant ways and the examples tend to "stick
in your mind"
ie. motivation is to vision
like planting is to seeds
One axiom that Beer points out is that the variety of the environment
greatly exceeds that of the operation that serves or exploits it, which in
turn greatly exceeds the variety of management that wishes to regulate it
or control it.
In hindsight this is very obvious but as your example above points out, we
often forget it.
"Vision" is just one of those system "attenuators" or resistors used to
balance or cut down to the number of possible states that the reciever of
information can accommodate.
>In my work, I have to continually ask myself what is it that motivates others
>to come to work each day and produce and improve and learn and grow? Do they
>all subscribe to a shared vision that is one in the same as our company's
>leaders? I think not. Many may share the vision of good living standards, or
>putting children through college, many may love the relationships with their
>co-workers (a sense of family), and many may be here to learn all they can and
>grow. And there are those individuals who, through cultural upbringing or
>personal priorities, prefer to be given the vision or direction. Are these
>people poorer performers? Are they bad model employees? Not necessarily.
And filtering or attentuation works in the other direction, back up to
management too !
My two cents on making vision a part of the overall "vialble system"
I enjoy your insight !
-- Walter Derzko wderzko@epas.utoronto.ca