The paradox is this: if a group of organizational leaders, nicely and
appropriately motivated by the lofty ideals of the LO, determines that a
great many processes, customer relations, service delivery, etc. will
benefit from "broadening the organizational knowledge base" at all
"levels," and then, through a good process of sharing experience, skillful
discussion, and exploring mental models comes up with a laundry list of
content areas to be widely diffused throughout the organization, any
effort to "deliver" the information runs the risk being a typically
paternalistic approach to knowledge: we know what you need to know in
order to improve the organization. On the other hand, in a not atypical
organization such as mine, which has operated for generations on the basis
of "knowledge as power to be hoarded," not only are many staff highly
acculturated to their role as passive recipients, but have been reinforced
in the notion that those "higher up" know what's best for them to know.
As a result, many are in the position of not being able to identify what
they might _want_ to know/learn/discover/become informed about just in
order to make them stakeholders in the shared knowledge base. And from my
experience, traditional training models of "needs assessment" merely
validate the dysfunctional structure.
So my question, dear friends, is this: what sorts of steps do we take to
make it possible for traditionally disempowered, knowledge-poor (in the
sense of things like basic understanding of the financial structures and
external customer requirements that drive the business) staff to choose to
broaden their own individual and common knowledge base, without
reinforcing the paternalistic structures that allowed them to languish
there in the first place?
And if this generates a good discussion, as well as providing me with some
concrete suggestions, so much the better! As I learn to become part of
this group (which I already highly value), my thanks to all of you for
your companionship thus far.
Malcolm Burson
Community Health and Counseling
Bangor, Maine
-- "Malcolm Burson" <mooney@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>