Fritz was a key source for many of the ideas in the "Fifth Discipline"
about personal mastery and vision. "Corporate Tides" is dedicated to
Peter Senge. The book also seems to be a dialogue-in-print that Fritz is
having with Senge about some of their points of difference.
I especially enjoyed Fritz's comments (Chapter 16) about the contrast
between:
- activities that produce a lot of talk about LOs, but don't actually
result in one, and
- activities that produce an actual LO (without much talk about learning
per se going on).
He seems to think these are almost mutually exclusive. I think he might
be right.
He is an advocate for the use of structural tension to create learning.
Structural tension, Fritz says, is the force that arises from the
discrepency between current reality and where an organization wants to be.
He sees this an an organizing principle that, by its nature, leads to self
correcting adjustments and learning as a natural by-product.
LOs, in his view, are not things to be created for themselves, and he
describes how learning processes can actually make situations worse when
taking place outside the context of structural tension.
I've found Fritz's ideas very useful, especially when working with senior
executives and line managers who sometimes lack the natural affinity for
the five disciplines and the
think-about-your-company-as-if-it-were-a-jazz-ensamble that their HR and
OD colleagues share.
Applying this perspective to the dilemma raised by Paul Foley in LO 10809
(paraphrased as: "how can we switch senior management in bottom line
oriented companies on to the possibilities of OL when their time horizons
are extremely short") suggests possibily the last thing to do is to wave
the five disciplines in front of them - suggesting, possibly, a life long
course of study - and, instead, directly apply selected (or sequential)
learning tools to help define where the organization needs to go and what
its current situation really is.
And then build on those results.
As I've become comfortable with the idea that creating a LO is not an end
to itself, the measurement problem that several recent posts have
discussed, becomes easier. Focus attention on measuring how well an
organization reaches its objectives, and then assess the role of OL in
achieving these. This is the kind of issue that cries out for an
experimental approach. Find two parts of an organization with similar
aims. Apply OL in one division, allow the other to proceed as it usually
does. Then examine closely the results achieved and how they actually
happened.
Fritz's views on shared vision also resonate with my experience. He
thinks it is a myth that, for a vision to be widely shared, those doing
the sharing must feel they are its authors. Example: it's doubtful
President Kennedy used polling or consensus-building techniques before he
articulated NASA's vision of a person on the moon before the end of the
decade.
Fritz goes on to say that if a particular vision matters more to us
because we had a hand in its creation, then either its intrinsic value
must be in question, or we vision-creators are focusing more on our egos
than our shared vision.
Bob Tomasko
RMTomasko@aol.com
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>