Rol Fessenden <76234.3636@compuserve.com> wrote:
<snip>
RF> 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.
RF> 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.
Facilitation is a very overworked term. You are essentially entering into
a negotiation with your department to get them to participate in a program
that you think they will benefit from. How do you do that?
Depends upon your negotiating style. My style is to first understand the
viewpoint of those with whom I am negotiating. That way, I know what parts
of the plan they are going to go for (and why) and those that they will
oppose (and why). That gives me the playing field. Are those things that
they oppose important enough to fight for? If so, how can I change them so
that they are less contentious, and what is the cost? And so on. I'm sure
you have gone through these kinds of steps in the past in different
issues. Adapt your negotiating style to "facilitating," and see where it
takes you.
Does this sound like a reasonable idea?
<snip>
RF> 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.'
Folks have been reading about artificial life, and how evolving systems
can develop skills much more quickly than once supposed. Last week it was
fractals, the week before chaos, and so on. Don't be too enthralled by
this noise unless it withstands a reasonable test of time. I like four
years to test the worth of ideas. That's a quorum through the
undergraduate mill. Then, the professors have to come up with new ideas to
impress the freshmen. But then I'm a bit of a cynic.
-- # Hank Heath # Vice President # Medco Systems, Inc. # 3 Eves Dr # Suite 304 # Marlton, NJ 08053 ###################### # Consultants for # small business ###################### # HankHeath@aol.com # ph: 609-596-1028 # fax: 609-596-8650