I've been trying to keep up with the LO messages, but am barely keeping my
head above water. I'm torn, not wanting to miss anything, wanting to
react to many, and especially wanting to respond to those individuals who
have addressed me directly, but, really, having practically no time for a
decent perusal and response.
I've decided to make a generic contribution, and mention some of the
topics that have piqued my interest as well as, hopefully, begin a new
dialogue.
First, the new (pardon my ignorance as to what has transpired before my
recent subscription to the net).
I have just completed the second of self-organizing classes at the
graduate level. Comparing the two experiences reveals to me many
similarities. This perhaps should come as no surprise because of the
nature of self-organization in the classroom, and because both courses
have to do fundamentally with change. The first, you may recall, was
Managing Organizational Conflict and Change. The second, Organizations:
Development and Change. From my perspective, both were organizational
development classes and both incorporated my interpretation and spin on
learning organizations.
The first course, taught last summer at Boston University's Corporate
Education Center, was by most accounts very successful. I've mentioned
reporting the results of this class at the annual conference of The
Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences. The paper
on this is quite large, but I'd be happy to share it with anyone truly
interested in exploring possibilities for self-organization in the
classroom. My colleague (Steve Wolff) and I thought we knew it all after
this summer. (He had used a modified SOC approach in a core OB class at
the same time). I was optimistic about entering into the second
iteration. So was he.
The second time around, our successes were reversed. Steve enjoyed great
personal fulfillment and his students were supercharged, with the changes
he made. I, on the other hand, experienced little gratification, and was
frustrated and disappointed along with my students. The mix of students
and their readiness accounts for part of the difference, but there are
also many other subtle variables which influenced the behavior of my
classes-as-systems. Readiness, we are finding is a crucial variable. It
is hard to assess the impact of some of these other things, though we are
convinced of their contribution to class dynamics and, ultimately, how and
what we achieve.
I plan to teach the OD class, again, this coming spring semester, and will
definitely continue the self-organizing experiment. Accepting that the
importance of readiness cannot be discounted, I am changing the initial
parts of the course in order to better prepare students (trying to
countermand the "sink or swim" model). Yet, the dilemma plaguing me is
how to strike an appropriate balance which does not interfere with the
stimulus which leads to effective self-direction by students. I have been
exploring (and struggling with) a parallel dilemma: leadership assertion
by the authority figure and leadership emergence in "the followers" (in
this case, professor and students).
Any ideas will be appreciated. And, I'll keep you posted.
Naturally, some of the things I've come across in the e mail conversations
and questions have predominantly to do with learning and how to
operationalize it. My courses have certainly more to do with learning how
to learn than they do with any particular subject matter. As with many
courses involving interpersonal communication and interaction, "the
process is the content." I am fortunate in that I have the latitude to
experiment and a captive audience to work with. My students generally
accept this because they know I love them and am genuinely interested in
learning, myself, and their welfare.
It is more of a challenge to "experiment" in my direct work with clients,
who demand measurable progress and deliverables on schedule. My challenge
for the future will be to make my academic work more tangible and
applicable (generally much desired by students) and my consulting work
deeper than the superficiality of products (obviously hard to market).
Other topics of particular interest have been in the areas of leadership
(again, not surprisingly) and in partnerships and collaboration). The
recent flurry of messages on volunteerism spawn in me the connection to
the new leadership and resonate deeply with my feelings about empowerment
and responsibility.
I hope some of you "connect" with some of what I've included in this
submission.
-- Joe Hays (617) 494-2095 hays@volpe1.dot.gov