Management Fads (Habits, skills & time) LO9528

BrooksJeff@aol.com
Tue, 27 Aug 1996 19:55:24 -0400

Bill Richardson (LO9493, 96-08-26) writes:
<< Replying to LO9421 --

Jack wrote...
> Not long ago I attended a session with Peter Senge where he expressed the
> view that *unlearning* the "intuitive" ideas about balance, angular
> momentum and system dynamics which we learn when we learn how to walk is
> the hard part of learning how to ride a bicycle.
>
In all seriousness, it only recently came to my attention that anyone had
ever had difficulty learning to ride a bicycle. It appears that what you
are alluding to is a concept of "universality v applicability". >>

Bill,

"Universality v applicability" is an interesting thought, though I wonder how
that would make one thing relatively easy to "unlearn" and another thing
difficult. I think that the important dimension is probably time - riding a
bike takes place in real time, and the balancing, etc., has to be done
"automatically" - without much conscious thought. The automaticity that such
skills entail means that they are difficult to break apart into their
component parts ("unlearn").

This makes me think about time in general - microworlds tend to speed up time
so we can see patterns that normally take too long for us to notice. With
habits (of behavior and of thought) we need to slow time down so we can see
how to break a pattern apart. Just musing....

-Jeff (BrooksJeff@AOL.com)

-- 


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