Michael McMaster wrote:
> I'll take on only a piece of this for now. That is to strongly
> oppose the idea
>
> > On the other hand, does
> > down-sizing, which creates insecurity and instability, contribute to
> > increased creativity?
>
> and its following question
> > How would I structure insecurity and instability to increase
> > productive creativity?
>
> Creativity is a response to change. It does not occur at equilibrium. It
> does not occur much, either, in conditions of insecurity and instability.
> That is, human beings do not get noticeably postively creative in those
> conditions.
>
> (Yes, we can say creativity occurs when non-living systems or structures
> approach instability but that is another of the confustions between living
> and non-living that leads to blind alleys and worse.)
>
> Saying creativity is a response to change doesn't necessarily have ANY
> implications for what management should do. Change is a constant in our
> environment, in our internal states, in life itself. We don't have to
> make it. Our power emerges when we are present to it, awake, aware.
Henry Bergson, in his "Creative Evolution" makes a distinction between
things that are "made" and things that are "created".
We make things by manufaturing the parts and assembling them. If we design
them adequately, made things will work as we intended, but their existence
will depend on our efforts to maintain them. This process may be fast
depending on the amount of energy we apply to it.
We create a thing planting a small seed caring it. The seed gathers matter
and energy from the environment and organizes them to form an organism
that has its own life. This is a process that takes its own time and we
don't have much control over it.
Our industrial culture is biased to solve problems through "made"
solutions but not all problems can be solved by them. Sometimes, people
are frustrated with management approaches based on the creation paradigm.
We should avoid choosing automatically (ideologically) either to "create"
or to "make". We should choose according to the circunstances. For
instance, ISO 9000 certification seems closer to "making", while LO seems
closer to "creating".
Durval Muniz de Castro
Fundacao Centro Tecnologico para Informatica
Campinas Brasil
--Durval Muniz de Castro <durval@ia.cti.br>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>