I see two fundamental "positions": one is the "old-leadership" (i.e.
executives, chief decision-makers, those in 'power'), and the other is the
rest of the group (organization, community, etc.) My belief is: the ones who
are most interested in fundamental change inherently come from the latter
group, as opposed to the former (and John's comments reinforce my belief).
(As a caveat, I have _heard_ folks from the former group espouse fundamental
systemic change in our community, but inherently their _actions_ are still
rooted in the old paradigm).
My judgement of the situation is that there is no real reason for the former
group of head decision-makers to _want_ to change--after all, they're the
ones in power, their egos are happy, there's no fundamental reason for them
to want to change. In the case of our community, my judgement is that they
pretty much kept quiet, carried on as before, until everyone who was really
interested in opening things up (especially on the feeling level) left the
community. I find it a very sad situation which points to a fundamental
question:
Is it realistic to think that head (or middle) management will want to
change their paradigms? (i.e. give up a lot of power). IMHO, I think it's
far, far easier to try to start a learning organization from scratch and set
some ground rules ahead of time than to attempt it in existing corporate
(and some community) structures. I guess I'm interested in people's notions
of where the leverage points are...
John Conover wrote:
>Here is the issue as I see it, IMHO. Being an executive in a company
>is probably the worst job one can have-I've been there. (You are
>always in a double bind situation in everything you do.)
Robert Levi | 4801 N. 107th St. | voice: 303/665-6679,x361
Director of Computing | Lafayette, CO 80026 | fax: 303/665-0757
Alexander Dawson School | email: dawson@usa.net | Systems Thinking Junkie