Chris1112k@aol.com makes an interesting reference to Marg Wheatley's
work on chaotic systems:
>...I was also struck by her picture of systems without boundaries, or, more
>precisely, with boundaries that set themselves through the iteration of
>the system (whatever that means!).
>
>...Finally, Wheatley says that local instability results in global stability,
>as the system sorts itself out autonomously, based on the governing ideas
>(called strange attractors in chaos theory) and the free flow of
>information.
>
>I look forward to organizations with self-organized boundaries, high
>autonomy locally, and clearly articulated governing ideas. I think they
>will get results they intend and achieve their purposes.
Chris, this is a nice summary of a highly desirable end point of that
theory. Now can you share with us how that might be a different
organization as an LO than one with leadership and empowerment? Is it the
self-organized boundaries that is the differentiator?
I can think of some real world examples of this organization. The creation
of movies, the creation of a large RFP response, and, perhaps, the
extinguishing of the oil fires of Kuwait. These are all projects. None
have any obvious LO characteristics to me. Yet I am hard-pressed to think
of examples of businesses (as distinct from projects) that display even
these characteristics, let alone those of an LO! ...Keith
--Keith Cowan <72212.51@CompuServe.COM>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>