I think Clyde's points are valid. It seems to me that personal learning
is a precondition for organizational learning, necessary but not
sufficient. What processes, encounters, situations are required to
compound learning for organizational benefit?
Con Kenney
>>The members may be learning, but that does not imply that
>>the organization is.
>
>An organization is merely a framework or structure within which PEOPLE can
>come together to pool their talents, resources, and energies to create
>something larger than themselves which has value to some other customer
>group. When we take the people out of the organization and treat the
>framework as if it has a life, culture, or anything else of its own we
>begin the all-too-familiar process of dehumanizing the members of that
>organization (thinging). We treat them as if they are simply numbers and
>not the very lifeblood ... the very soul ... of that organization. When
>that happens, I believe that the organization has effectively signed its
>own death certificate with the date to be filled at a later time.
>
>Consider this, when an organization says that it wants to be a learning
>organization, then starts laying its PEOPLE off indiscriminantly, how can
>it be a true learning organization? All of its learning resources have
>been stifled ... those who are laid off are now gone and those left behind
>are scared to do anything to draw attention to themselves lest the same
>fate befall them.
>
>Just the musings of someone who obviously doesn't get it (in a corporate
>sense).
>Clyde Howell
>The Howell Group
>Aiken, SC
>OrgPsych@aol.com
-- ckenney@worldweb.net (Con Kenney)