Reply to CrbnBlu@aol.com:
>When multiple organizations can employ the same "formula"
>and produce everything from amazing success to abysmal failure,
> and multiple organizations can employ very different "formulas" and
> produce everything from amazing success to abysmal failure, it leads me to
> suspect there is something else operating here of which the practitioners
> and healers are not aware. Any ideas?
I think it is essential that organizations look beyond the "formula",
because as Gene points out, it can result in success or failure. Why is
this?
We need to look at organizations and organizational performance as
"emergent properties and behaviors" that result from the interplay of a
wide variety of factors both inside and outside of the organization.
Superimposing what works in one organization will not necessarily work in
another organization because the system elements and interrelationships
are different.
This in itself seems pretty obvious. What is difficult is for
"practitioners and healers" to recognize these differences and understand
how the internal and external dynamics will affect the ultimate outcome.
A key concept that seems to be difficult for many practitioners to get a
handle on is that an organization is a living system rather than a
mechanical mechanism. This misconception comes from a couple of hundred
years of applying the "scientific method" to everything from physics to
sociology. With a mechanical system, you should be able to plug in a
component that works in one system and have it work in a comperable
system.
With a living system, however, it's not quite that simple. For example,
you can transplant a human heart from one person to another, but even with
the closest matches, there are rejection problems that need to be
overcome.
One mechanism that we need to start looking at for our organizations is
that of evolution. As we struggle to cope with an increasingly complex
environment, we need to become engaged in "adaptive systems design". In my
mind, this goes beyond the learning organization as we currently talk
about it.
Typically, we end up discussing the human component of organizations when
we talk about the learning organization, but it goes far beyond that in
that there are other, equally significant elements that must be taken into
consideration. (For more information on organzational structures, emegent
behaviors, evolution of technology, and other related topics, you are
welcome to drop into Applied Futures' web site at
http://www.neosoft.com/~appfutr?)
We need to get past the homocentric paradigm that places us in the center
of everything and recognize that we are to the point where our
organizations, our technologies, and many of our other artifacts have
reached a level of complexity where they truly have taken on a life of
their own. I believe that we have reached a point in our evolution where
we as human beings are on the verge of forming (or perhaps already have) a
truly symbiotic relationship with our technological and economic systems.
No longer do we as humans have absolute control of these systems. At the
same time, they do not have absolute control over us.
Evolutionary pressures are driving us as a species further and further
into that symbiotic relationship and breaking out of that relationship
would be devastating to the human population.
Regards,
Peter von Stackelberg
Applied Futures, Inc.
-- PeterVS1@aol.com WWW -- http://www.neosoft.com/~appfutr/