I am not experienced in the business world, Keith, but I wonder if your
statement about the goals of a business being to "make profit, and
generate acceptable ROI and Cashflows" isn't something like saying the
goal of a person is to "survive". Surely these goals are important, just
as surviving is in personal terms, but it seems to me that much unhealthy
activity in a larger sense can be spawned if these are the "primary"
goals of an business. Would it not be advisable to consider these the
minimal level of goals and then move on to more comprehensive and creative
goals as soon as possible? While this requires dealing with ambiguity
directly rather than avoiding it, I would think that "the broadest level
of support and commitment by stakeholders" would come in these areas of
(forgive me) vision and values rather than survival.
I am moving into territory here which is fraught with unknowns on my part,
but I wonder how you and others with experience in these areas see this
idea.
Tobin Quereau
Austin Community College
quereau@austin.cc.tx.us
On 17 Apr 1996, Keith Cowan wrote:
> The issue of dealing with ambiguity must be a very big problem for
> organizations. No one likes to hear the answer "It depends". Yet many of
> the issues we are dealing with do not have simple answers.
>
> It would appear to me that the successes in making change relate to the
> ability to decompose the problem into manageable chunks and gain
> commitment to move on them in a timely fashion by enlisting the braodest
> support and commitment possible from the stakeholders.
[Quote of prev msg trimmed by your host...]
--Tobin Quereau <quereau@austin.cc.tx.us>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>