>I have been thinking lately about two different states of mind in which I
>find people. There's a "pre" state which is (hopefully) different from the
>"post" state after a program. When I'm successful with a group, and I
>usually am, these are some differences I see in the "pre" vs. "post"
>states. What I'm trying to get at here is to understand the essential
>element that can make learning to model a "transformative" experience.
As it turns out, one of the "17 Laws of Complexity" which I have laid out
(not for burial, I hope), is intended to speak directly to the pre and
post. Here is the formal statement of the Law:
THE LAW OF UNCORRELATED EXTREMES
"No matter what the complex issue, and no matter what the group involved
in study, the INITIAL aggregate group opinion concerning the logical
pattern of the factors involved in the issue and the FINAL aggregate group
opinion concerning the logical pattern of the factors involved in the
issue (i.e., the views at the two extremes of the application of the
Generic Design Science, before and after), will be uncorrelated; showing
that significant learning takes place through the application of the
generic design processes."
The Law refers to the Generic Design Science because it is in the
application of that science that the definiteness required to make a
statement of a law credible is provided by that means. This is intended
to imply that others can verify this Law on their own, if they are willing
to apply the G. D. S. with one or more groups and one or more issues.
The Law was originally discovered by I. M. Kapelouzos (who, incidentally
is on one of the two Supreme Courts of Greece), and who is a social
scientist. He discovered it by examining data from many applications of
Interactive Management (the applied side of the G. D. S.). Even those of
us who had been working in these areas for more than 15 years were amazed
to see the result. We knew that there was not a lot of correlation, but
we were astounded to see that he found none at all.
Because of that work, we pursued the "before and after" issues quite a
bit. That pursuit generated the concept of "Spreadthink", in which we
were able to demonstrate that on complex issues, the views of members of
groups are "all over the map", and that this is a pervasive situation.
In view of that we pursued a comparison of "pre" lack of coherence before
in studying the "post" coherence generated by "majority view", through
using the ISM process to structure the complexity. It was from this
pursuit that the concept of "structural thinking" was finally more-or-less
articulated, and that its necessity in dealing with complexity was made
credible.
Finally it was from all of the foregoing that the four measures of
complexity were produced, and it is from all of the foregoing that the
concept of THE WORLD'S LARGEST CLASS ACTION SUIT against universities was
conceived. Whether the latter ever happens is probably not relevant to
much of anything, but maybe some of them can be scared into paying some
attention to these published results and their implications for learning
organizations.
Thanks to Rick for ringing my bell, and for bringing up this evaluatory
issue.
-- John N. Warfield Johnwfield@aol.com