Re: Tobin Quereau's response to the Conspiritorial LO post
I may be veturing into dangerous waters here, but after reading Tobins
post I wondered if he has much experience in the lower levels of the
average organization. While the point of view expressed showed a lot of
high ideals (which I know are needed if we are ever going to get the
changes we need) never the less, you can get yourself personally assaulted
in some work arenas for nievely approaching work in this way. (hey I've
been...)
Regardless of the Vision, Mission, Goals, Objectives stated by the
company, or the high ideals that appear written in any given companies
integrity statements you have to face the facts that you will meet people
who just flat don't like you and will try to hurt you any way they can.
(sorry, but that is reality)
A lot of those people end up in management. Since management has
traditionally been about Control and Power, it draws the control freaks
and the power hungry. When someone comes along who has a little more open
mind, or a different experience, or maybe just doesn't fit in with their
idea of what belongs in "their" social structure, they will oppose them.
(please recognize I'm not slamming management... I have great managers,
but I haven't always).
Since appearances do play a role in how we are judged, putting your
opponet in a bad light or one of those "hung if you do-hung if you don't"
situations, you are able to exert power over them. So in order to salvage
the situation (and stay employed-and able to support your family, pay your
bills-stay alive etc.) a worker will go underground to do his or her work.
I know it would be great if you could go to the upper management and work
out the differences in an open and congenial manner, and in many work
environments (mine for example) that is exactly what is happening, but not
in all.
We need to recognize that there is a dark side to human nature and not
nievely think we can just go blundering in with all these neat Learning
Orginization ideas and expect the world to fall at our feet.
[thots from a low level staffer]
later...
--sysengr@atc.boeing.com (Michael Erickson)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>