Hi James McGarrahan,
Thanks for your reply to my note suggesting that the story of Evans
Carlson and the Raiders constitutes evidence of a learning activities
taking place within the Marine Corp. I think that your reply raises a
number of interesting issues:
1. One has to be very careful in ones definition of the organization.
We are looking at complex nested systems and it is very easy to lose
focus. Indeed the whole concept of a learning organization raises a lot
of tough philosophical issues. It is an oxymoron - rather like saying
amorphous shape or process structure. Indeed I think of organization
as the past tense of learning: the still shot from the movie! That is,
an organization, i.e. any stable system of relationships, is an outcome of
processes which include what we call learning. Alternatively, learning
is one process whereby relationships are changed and a group of
individuals/subsystems becomes an organization. Often I feel that instead
of asking What is a learning organization we should be asking When,
where and how do systems of relationships change adaptively? And all the
time we should bear in mind that what we mean by learning within
individuals is not the same process as learning within organizations! It
is an analogy and I am not sure how closely the two levels map on to each
other. Some have suggested that an LO is an organization within which
individuals can learn, a context for learning, but this seems rather too
focused on one level to capture the kind of learning that allows the
organization (as opposed to the individual) to survive.
2. I think you have to hold very tightly on to your unit of organizational
study as being the Marine Corp. The Raiders were an example of how, when
and where the Marine Corp learned something they illustrate the context in
which individuals learned activities which were later adopted by the
Marine Corp. I understand that many of the Raider practices were later
incorporated into the Marine mainstream. How did this happen? Was it
individuals who had once been Raiders who went back into regular units and
changed them? Or did regulars become converted by their example? I think
that it is very important to understand this transmission process.
3. I think that I am reacting to your shift of focus to the Raiders as an
LO and to your argument that because they were disbanded and didnt adapt
they couldnt have been an LO! Firstly I dont think you can jump levels
like that (from Marine Corp as a whole to the Raiders as a unit) and
retain the integrity of the analysis and secondly I dont accept that
organizational death is necessarily evidence of failure to learn! Quite
the opposite - if learning is a process, then a pure learning organization
cannot exist! This is not just a philosophical point: the work I have done
on the first industrial revolution suggests that the more innovative the
community, the less likely they were to survive intact! For example, the
Quakers who supplied an enormous number of entrepreneurs in the revolution
have scarcely survived as a religious movement. Yet they transformed
English society in the process. Similarly, the Raiders had peformed their
function and there was no longer a need for them. People have tried to
argue from time to time that the Marines have played a similar function
within the U.S. military establishment!
4. Anyway, what is the it that stays the same and allows us to say that
the organization has changed/learned/been renewed? This question too
raises all kinds of deep philosophical issues. It cannot be anything
tangible, for people, formal structures, physical facilities, equipment
etc. will all change. In the case of the Marine Corp it would seem that it
is the shared mission, values, stories and traditions which define the
organization, that constitute the it that remains the same. If this is
the case, then Evans Carlson and the Raiders still live on, waiting to be
reincarnated in a new learning organization at any time!
-- Best Wishes, David Hurst Speaker, Consultant and Writer on Management dhurst1046@aol.com