My name is Rol Fessenden, and I work in the Inventory Department of LL
Bean, Inc, a large American mail order company. The Inventory Department
is about 100 people who do detailed buying under intense pressure with
insufficient information. We work in close collaboration with the Product
Development Department and the Production Management Department. However,
we have goals that are at least superficially in conflict with the goals
of some of those departments.
The environment is quite complex. My interest in Learning Organizations
is to find ways to facilitate the movement of the members of my department
toward a learning-org approach to problem resolution.
My issues are intensely pragmatic, and while I see some relevance to what
you are discussing, it may be too theoretical to meet my needs. That is
my problem, not yours, but I am looking for resources wherever I can find
them. I hope this is of value to me. I hope I may add value to your
discussions
I have been following the discussions that originated in "How much time in
meetings" and the question arose there of "natural self-organizing". It
is an interesting question, because we know that more than 99% of the
"naturally self-organizing" organisms in naure are extinct. We may do no
better than that in the long run, but I hope my organization will not
become extinct on my watch, so I am a bit leary of letting "things just
take their course". I also have literally thousands of examples of
reasonably complex situations where different small groups of 7-10 could
not come to agreement on an appropriate way to manage a particular
process. This raises serious questions about whether or not 'natural
self-organizing' is an effective way to develop a process.
Somewhere the statement was made that if people who encourage
self-organization are rewarded and promoted, then that's a good turn of
events. From a pragmatic perspective, I can tell you that it takes about
24-48 months for a good company to go bankrupt, and that is not enough
time for natural evoluton to work. Therefore, people are rewarded for
achieving the goals they set for themselves in the last 12 months. If the
corporate goal is, as it is in my company, to sell great product, provide
great service, and make a reasonable product, then my goals had better be
relevant to those goals as they play out over the next 12 months.
If, in addition, I as an individual manager believe ultimately in the
potential of the 100 employees in my department, then my hidden agenda is
to build their capacity so that more and more, the key decisions are made
by them, and not by the managers. However, in the process of building
that capacity, I had better achieve my own goals, or I will not survive,
and frankly, I should not survive.
I guess this is all leading up to my viewpoint, which is that we need to
reward those who conduct low-risk experiments, reflect on the results,
consciously learn how things -might- be organized, test their hypothesis
in ever-riskier situations, always managing the total risk, and thus
contribute simultaneously to the short term success of the organization
and to the long-term growth, all the while speeding up the process of
'natural self-organizing.'
-- Rol Fessenden 76234.3636@compuserve.com