Hi Micheal,
You wrote:
"I see that Jan is beginning to come to terms with the possibility
that organisations think. " Stopped reading here.
No way. I wrote that I like to use the brain metafore in thinking about
organisational change. This metafore seems, amongst others, to have the
limitation that people also think that organisations think. The same seems
to be true with the machine metafore: when used, people start to assume
organisations to be machines. And even worse, when you consider the use of
the phrase "organisations think" to be harmful, you are accused of
adhering to the machine metafore. It is not either-or, nor neither-nor.
I would even go further: I even try not to use the phrase "Learning
Organizations", because this also tends to imply much more than I intend
to imply. I'm not Humpty Dumpty, remember. Organizations do not learn.
People learn. And people are able to transfer their experience and
knowledge to others in a number of ways. My concept of the learning
organization (there I've said it again, I'll put quote around it next
time) has been derived from Argyris's paradox:
(I quote this without looking it up)
When we define learning as the detection and correction of errors, then
learning is key for corporate improvement. However, when we try to learn
from others in order to control their behaviour, learning may be
inhibited.
An organisation, grown out of the free choice of individuals to
co-operate, to work together towards a common goal, "sometimes" seems to
have a side effect of trying to control its members. So control seems to
slip in. Which in turn starts to kill of learning. Why? For a number of
reasons, but most of the time I trace it back to the archetype of shifting
the burden and fighting symptons. One simple way to shift the burden of
trying to reach consensus is by attributing the solution of that common
problem to The Organisation. The Organisation thinks its best for you to
.... (fill in the blanks, I'm hearing in my head a song by Genesis: To go,
go-ho-go-ho).The easiest way to defend these kinds of thought control
seems to stem from the idea that an organisation "thinks" for you. Or The
Party. Or The Revolution. Or Big Brother.
So, to recap: the thought that "Organisations think" is an
oversimplification, harmless at first, but when used addictive and in the
end lethal for thinking. Immers, if my organisation thinks, why should I?
In my humble opinion this is the holy grail of organisational learning:
learning without controlling behaviour.
There probably is some kind of uncertainty relation here: the more
learning, the less control; the more control, the less learning:
Delta(learning) times Delta(control) is greater or equal to something to
do with complexity.
If I wasn't so pressed for time I would have read more from your mail.
Thank you any way. It gives me something to chew on on the way back.
-- Jan Lelie 10073.1213@Compuserve.com