In reply to Bill Ayers who writes:
>As to your third question, in my view asking these kinds of questions is
>absolutely necessary for creating learning organizations because it forces
>us to start to surface our most fundamental (and therefore most important)
>assumptions/mental models: "What's the role of government?" "What is the
>public good and how can we determine it?" "What's the purpose of
>business?" "How do the public and private sectors best work together for
>the common good?" "Are there some businesses that no one should be
>allowed to conduct?" "Can we conduct sincerely non-self- interested
>dialogues?" and so on.
>
>I too struggled with whether to send this as a private e-mail back to you.
I think my reticience is because there are very few of us "government
types" on this list and our particular differences do not seem to be in
the mainstream of interest. Perhaps we can generate some opinions from
others by staying on the list with these conversations.
I am happy to see another local government professional on this list.
Your last paragraph raised some interesting issues that I have been
working on here in Plano, Texas. For the past three months, I have been
facilitating an internal team that has been deliberating the concept of
implementing Managed Competition in a Learning Organization environment.
I think the two are definately related, because competing requires asking
the very questions you pose above. If we don't examine our basis systems
we will keep perpetuating the same ineffectual solutions. If you would
like a copy of the now finished paper send me a private e-mail and I will
get a copy to you. We are presenting to our Executive Team on Monday,
October 21.
--Deborah Broome City of Plano 1520 Avenue K Plano, Texas 75074 e-mail: debbieb@linux.plano.gov PHONE: 972-461-7122 FAX: 972-423-9587
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>