>Quick note: In my experience, the most unhealthy organizations are
>characterized by split and blaming between levels of the org.
>Professionals(?), admin. staff., middle managers, executives.
Bravo! Somebody said it (I didn't have the guts). Blaming is a
characteristic of all unhealthy systems...families, relationships.
Organizations are no different since all of the same components are
present. I ran across and interesting little quiz by UK authors Mike
Pedler, John Burgoyne, Tom Boydell in a book entitled, "The Learning
Company." The quiz was aptly titled "Organizational Toxicity Index (OTI).
While I didn't agree with all of the factors examined in the Index, it
clearly pointed to something I think we may avoid. There are many
undiscussables occurring in our organizations and they impede our progress
as learning organizations. I'm thinking that real change has to start at
the individual level with a questionning of our assumptions and a
viligence against our own defensiveness. As a manager, I continually try
to stay open to critiques concerning how I may be impacting the
organization and people. To be perfectly honest, it is difficult not to
get defensive at times, even in subtle ways. How does one begin to
discuss the undiscussables?
--Debbie Broome <debbieb@linux.plano.gov>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>