Mariann
Firstly thanks for the compliment [I also appreciated your comments on the
wealth money distinction]
>If's comments have caught my eye today: in his example of the
>CEO dynamiting the old HQ building, seems to me we have an example of
>David Hurst's "ethically created crisis" (i.e., a crisis deliberately
>created, but done so on ethical grounds). Crises are needed, in Hurst's
>view, for systemic change.
I haven't read David Hurst's work and would appreciate the reference but I
was trying to put across the dynamite from another view. I believe [hope?]
that crisis [even ethically created crisis as I now understand the term]
is not a necessary precursor of a change. I agree with you on the power of
crisis. If though a population can see and interrupt the pattern that it
is caught in [pattern being our short hand for the complex mix of
tradition, language, unwritten rules, paradigms, culture etc etc that is
the organisational genome - or more accurately memome]. I also suspect it
works at the level of the individual. These 'patterns' produce minds from
the biological mix that is a brain, but keep those minds stuck in certain
ways of being.
In the dynamite example, as I understand the case, the new CEO sensed the
danger of a tradition becoming limiting before the company was near
commercial crisis and sought to enable such a shift; one that would permit
new rules to emerge by disenabling an old pattern. The internal
transformation programme I lived through in my corporate days achieved a
similar end by a different means, again avoiding what most people would
term a crisis.
It could be said that concern at longer term consequences [i.e. crisis, or
opportunity missed, if something is not done] is the spur for action by
the 'leadership' that start the shift but that seems to me to risk
becoming a truism.
Actually Mariann what I am advocating is very close to your punchline
>The only enduring strategic advantage is the ability
>to change the rules of the game.
How did you come to that statement?
If Price
The Harrow Partnership
Pewley Fort Guildford UK
101701.3454@compuserve.com
--Dr Ilfryn Price <101701.3454@compuserve.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>