re: Cross discipline connections...
I believe that there is a "convergence" occuring in the assorted fields of
knowledge where previously "specialization" was the rule. I personally
bring a lot of "right brain" thinking to a number of more traditional
"left brain" oriented groups (I say this knowing that the right/left brain
idea is rather complex and can't be used as a blanket view of how the
human mind works... but it's a usefull analogy for this case).
I have some theology credits in my college "bag of tricks" as well as a
lot of hands on experience Rock and Ice climbing, Summer Camp work and
from the time I spent as a nursing assistant in Retirement homes. Having
had a man die in my hands, experienced near miss rock fall and a whole
host of loose ideas from everywhere that permit me to understand and
utilize the learning organization concepts as presented here.
While I think that some sort of stage measurement of Learning orgs (like
the CMM Maturity model) could have some use when you are searching for
where you fall in the grand scheme of things, I find such things require a
large amount of good judgement to define and use. When learning some new
thing most of us ask "what steps do I take?" or "what is the process?" and
while that is all very good, it only represents the lowest level of
understanding.
It's very important to get past the list/recipe/process level and get down
into the "why" level of understanding. The staged models are often looked
at as a recipe or list and organizations that compare themselves will
often see themselves as being up a lot farther than they are-because they
don't understand all they know... they only have the "list" level of
understanding.
Understanding comes from living (milage). Living isn't just performing
tasks on a list. The field of metrics (process measurements) often bring
us all down to the list level, and I find that disturbing even though the
intent is to create some understanding about where our knowledge falls in
the grand scheme of things.
later...
Michael Erickson
--sysengr@atc.boeing.com (Michael Erickson)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>