> From: dtsddss@dot.state.ga.us (Doug Simpson)
>
> Kevin Kelly's book Out of Control has led me to conceive of the
> enterprise more as an ecology that evolves, and less as a machine
> that is designed. This metaphor would cast us change agents as
> gardeners not engineers.
Welcome Doug!
I've read "Out of Control", too, and found it enlightening. I recommend
the book to anyone interested in the evolutionary paradigm (i.e., the
original learning process), and in expanding that paradigm beyond what
happens with "natural" selection.
Looking at learning through the lens of evolution theory might be really
fruitful - I like your use of the concept of ecology. One thing that has
struck me as we've talked here about individual and organizational
learning is that there is some debate about how organizations learn - even
whether talking about organizational learning is reifying the "system".
Perhaps we could use some of the concepts that deal with ecological
systems and how they evolve to talk about organizational learning.
Just some thoughts.
- Jeff
--Jeff Brooks <BrooksJeff@AOL.com>
I just want to highlight the evolutionary framework as the original learning paradigm - natural selection _is_ learning.
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>