Hello
I'm Michael Erickson, an illustrator/Analyst/modeler working for
a major aerospace firm. I've been involved in Computing Architecture
designs and Business Process Re-engineering projects for over 5 years.
I've been exposed to systems thinking/Learning Org ideas for most
of that time, and am now actively applying them to my work teams and
organization.
Being that I work with graphics, I find myself changing how people
think about their ideas-just by "showing them what they are saying". I
often find myself in the middle of a design team-where everyone is
agreeing. I draw pictures of what they think they are agreeing on and
get out of the way as quick as possible because 9 times out of 10 they
discover that what they said wasn't what they meant (and things get a
little tense and noisy for a while).
While I understand and can build a lot of the formal models that
analysts and engineers use to build computing and business systems-I
find that the plain old Cartoon gets to the heart of the matter (motives
and thought processes) most directly and exposes the mental models and
areas of ignorance or confusion that would come back and haunt the
designers of whatever we are building a long (and very expensive) way
down the path. Have you noticed an increasing dependance on "Dilbert"
cartoons to express ideas previously only grumbled about?
In any case, I'm very interested in the discussions I've been
looking at in the LO web pages, and would like to enter into the
discussion myself as is appropriate. I see there is a lot of very
practical experience out there-that I need to tap into.