Hello, Rol:
I read with interest your introductory message, wherein you refer to your
desire to move your Inventory Department in the direction of learning
organization concepts. I have a few thoughts for you that I find
particularly useful. But first, a dram of background.
I'm an internal consultant for a large, decentralized state agency
undergoing the beginning of a major reorganization. I do a variety of
staff work, facilitate meetings and analytical exercises, and generally
ask a lot of questions. I have a shallow background in modern management
concepts, and dabble in Eastern thought. My favorite management text is
the Tao Te Ching.
I meant to title this "discernment" because I think that's the critical
focus for someone wrestling with cultural conflict, as you seem to be. I
mean, on one hand, the organization you're in has a short-term and very
practical perspective, while you correctly see the need to take the long
view. Plus, as you say,
>we have goals that are at least superficially in conflict with the goals of
>some of those departments.
My first thought is that you are swimming in too small a pond. Your
department is only a part of the entire organization and I fear that many
of your learning efforts will bump up against that environment. That's
not to discourage you, but rather to be aware that to make lasting
progress there will have to be a cooperative aspect to the evolution you
propose. To your credit, you have the courage to say "This can start with
me." This may be an opportunity to learn tolerance (he says, looking in
the mirror).
So what about discernment? The crux of my point is that one must see
deeply into an organization to understand what it needs, and the critical
question is: "What does this situation call for?" Our usual tendency is
to ask "What do I want?" and that usually causes trouble. The most
important thing is to step back, away from one's own desires, look at the
organization from as many perspectives as possible, and see through all of
its layers into the core. This kind of seeing takes you to the land of
culture, where often unspoken values and mostly unquestioned assumptions
are the dominant forces.
To see how they interact and produce visible behavior is difficult and
frustrating: difficult because it takes great concentration and discipline
to see past one's own involvement, and frustrating because one often wants
to grab people by the collar and show them how simple their own problems
are. What I find especially helpful is to remind myself that people
(including myself) are heavily invested in their own "stuff". I have to
listen to them closely in order to choose the correct consulting strategy,
which lies somewhere on a continuum from asking gentle questions about why
they think something's happening to explaining in detail where they've
gone wrong. My choice of strategy often fails, but my percentage is
improving.
One of the ways I use to understand what I see is to explicitly abandon
dualistic thinking and adopt a unitary, organic approach. When I see
conflicting behaviors I (try to) remind myself that they are not
inherently contradictory, but rather different aspects of the same, larger
reality. (Reference here to that other great management/life text,
Jean-Paul Sartre's _Being and Nothingness_, a treatise on the complexity
of life and a powerful exercise in resolving its apparent contradictions.)
Resolving those differences has led me to a number of profound insights
about my own agency's values, which lately has begun to spread among a
small circle of open-minded staff.
OK, so where does this lead? For me, the payoff is in the insights. The
more deeply I see the true nature of this, or any, organization (including
myself), the more accurately I can apply diagnostic and remedial tools.
So my advice to you would be to become the best diagnostician you can,
while at the same time getting the broadest exposure to management
concepts and practices. Not necessarily depth, but scope. And adopt a
mantra of tolerance and forgiveness; you'll have many opportunities to use
it.
Now, I'd like to apologize for offering unsolicited advice and being
preachy in the process. I'm speaking here as much to myself as to you.
If some of it isn't useful for you, just take what you like and leave the
rest.
And good luck.
Dave
-- David E. Birren Phone: (608)267-2442 Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources Fax: (608)267-3579 Bureau of Management & Budget E-mail: birred@dnr.state.wi.us"Our future is to be food - Wisdom's gift - for what comes after us." -- Saadi (Neil Douglas-Klotz)