While the content of your post in 4170 is useful and interesting, I don't
believe it meets the challenge of finding an anomaly and devising a new
explanation. My example in 4152, while intrinsically less interesting,
comes closer. Let me explain why your post falls short, as a way of
making my point that we talk a lot ABOUT busting paradigms but have
uncertain skills in doing so.
It is not an anomaly, to you and the rest of LO, that training has no
effect. An anomaly has to be unexpected, part of the noise that we in LO
normally don't hear. Training failure, exactly because it is "well
documented", is expected. The training salesman may create contrary
expectations, but LO scientists know better. Perhaps the anomaly is not
that training fails, but that increasing investments are made in it. We
do assume that top managers are somewhat tuned into reality, and that they
wouldn't pay more for something that has no effect. The anomaly has to do
with top managers making bad purchases. [I'm following my own rules. I
criticized, then offered a positive alternative that gets past the
criticism.]
The rest of your argument has an interesting twist. You say that
complexity foils the existing simple-minded approaches. Then you say that
any "answer" you might offer, because it reduces complexity, is no longer
dealing with the problem, hence is not an answer. The result is that you
aren't required to give an answer, and that any answer offered by others
is judged false exactly because it is an answer. I don't think that this
is playing by the rules.
I also think that you have set up LO as a straw man. Systems thinking has
been offered as a way out of the forumla thinking that we all agree is not
working. LO is clearly more sensitive to complexity. Here's an
alternative: Perhaps LO is correct in its analysis, but it is based on an
assumption that an analytic consciousness can act appropriately.
Discursive reasoning is the problem. In the face of complexity, synthetic
situational awareness is the proper basis for action. Those who 'balance'
and 'tune' self-select and form a shared awareness. They build judgements
without reasons. It's systemic and learning oriented, but no longer
rationalistic.
A statement of the new paradigm will seem highly dubious, such as the one
just offered. Almost everything that you said is quite comfortable and
easily explained in this group. It doesn't struggle to make the LO group
see what it currently doesnt't see. An exception might be the point that
"we don't understand when LO is appropriate and when it is not."
Anyway, the only point I wanted to make is that finding an anomaly and
changing a paradigm is an unusual and unsettling activity (the experience,
not the description). Like most other groups, LO conducts normal science,
which is a fine thing.
-- kent_myers@smtplink.sra.com