I enjoyed your posting (below), Julie, as usual. I resonate with much of
what you are saying and especially the refreshing way that you convey
what you are thinking about.
There is one aspect I would like to reflect on further, however, and I'll
isolate that part for this message.
On Sun, 4 Feb 1996, Julie Beedon wrote:
> change needs to start somewhere??? - unless it could just emerge??
I think this is a key point to consider.
> at the end of the day only 'people' can change.... the change to them as
> individuals may mean that they change the system... which will have wider
> impact....
I wonder if this is entirely the case. Many times, it seems to me, the
system changes _before_ the people change and that is one of the problems
we face. By focusing on individuals and how they change we may be looking
at the cart and not noticing the horse which is heading down the road at
full speed.
I would suggest that it might be the people who change last for the most
part, and the system--which is much larger than any one organization in
it--that is busy transitioning to new states before we are even aware of
it.
> how do we decide where to start....? my sense is that we need to continue
> to develop ways of bringing the whole system together.... top, bottom,
> middle, inside, outside, etc... and work to understand how the whole
> interacts... how everybody's problems create a system mess..... and stop
> trying to start top down... or bottom up... or middle out... but work on
> the whole simultaneuously... oh but... this might need leaders who are
> prepared to do this ... oh dear now where do we start!!!!
This makes a lot of sense, since we may not know where to start as
individuals, but we may be able to figure something out as a group that
takes into account more of the complexity which confronts us.
One alternative which is also attractive to me is to do all of these
things at once--start at the bottom, middle, top, outside, _and_
everywhere as well. This has the advantage of giving everyone a chance to
take a part of the action and come up with some results. Hopefully by
working at all of the edges (a la Uri Merry, Mike McMaster, Doug Seeley,
etc.) we will begin to precipitate the essential changes that need to
occur so that we can find them by their results. But maybe this is what
you were saying to begin with...
Anyway, the puzzle is intriguing and the process challenging. At least we
can try to have some fun as we work on it.
-- Tobin Quereau quereau@austin.cc.tx.us -Info: learning-org-approval@world.std.com or <http://world.std.com/~lo/>