On Sun, 3 Dec 1995 OrgPsych@aol.com wrote:
> Replying to LO3960 --
>
> I have seen what is, to me, a potentially distirbing trend in much of the
> dialogue here. That is the tendency to try to fix "in stone" exactly what
> something is and what it will produce. One example of this is the
> definition of a learning organization. Another example is the whole
> subject of teams.
Like many, I see this as inherent in human language. Not that it can't
be surmounted, but that it's not likely to be, in individual cases, until
somebody (like yourself, in this instance) raises the point. Our
_default_ behavior, until the point is raised, is likely to be as you
describe it below:
> Each person, and each group, learns in its own unique way. This way may
> share some common characteristics with the ways of others, but it is still
> unique to the particular person or group.
[snip]
> My point in all of this is that the basic question for me is "what does it
> look like?" This does not mean what SHOULD it look like? Nor does it
> mean what is the IDEAL? I mean simply that any given concept applied in
> any number of organizational contexts will yield that many different
> manifestations of "what it looks like."
I think that of all the ways people learn to communicate (having first
discovered that they're not), this is one of the most central and
crucially important.
It's often overlooked. It seems an obvious point, in reflection, and yet
-- as I'm sure you've often observed too -- at work, in real meetings,
it's a question we often see people trying to avoid or bypass, or being
embarrassed by.
Why is that? If I were cast among a group of people whose language I did
not speak, I would have to learn their language. I would have to learn
it by repeatedly finding out "what does it look like?" for each of many
many words. And then idioms too, and the common figures of speech in the
language, whose meaning would not be apparent from knowing the
meaning of their constituent words.
It is very tempting to believe that among a group of people who all
speak, let's say, English, no such process is needed.
But that is not true. That process, in some measure, is _always_ needed.
Even between any two people taken at random. Especially with general words.
Terms such as 'team'.
So what happens, often, is that instead of devoting some time and effort
to establishing "what does it look like" for their critical terms, a
group will attempt to do this by fiat. Everybody looks around the table
and they all assure each other, by a sort of verbal handshake, that they
are all "speaking the same language".
What's really going on, of course, is that the group is promising that
none of its members will raise any "What does it look like?" questions.
--
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen jamzen@world.std.com
web residence at http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
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--
Jim Michmerhuizen <jamzen@world.std.com>