On Fri, 9 Jun 1995 Ron2785@eworld.com wrote:
Replying to LO1590 --
>
> Re LO1576, in which Geoff Fountain passed along his colleague Dick
> Harral's take on the ever-popular silver bullet (or, as someone once said
> in a slightly different context, "the ever-retreating bonanza") that will
> alter corporate culture: Dick's notes, reactions, ideas, questions, were
> a welcomed fresh breeze into this discussion. To take but one example:
> *"Values that would make us viable over time..." and how to uncover and
> agree to them*: that, and everything it implies about -- yup --
> organizational learning and organizational purpose was alone worth the
> price of admission.
I LOVE THE NEW METAPHORS. I JUST WANT TO CHIP IN WITH A FEW MORE.
"FIGHT METAPHOR WITH METAPHOR". HAVING JUST DISCOVERED THE DESCRIPTION
OF "MUSHROOM-TYPE MANAGEMENT", I.E., "KEEP THEM IN THE DARK AND FEED THEM
S---", I AM PROUD OF MY EXTENSION OF THIS CONCEPT:
THERE IS SOMETHING CALLED "LASER-AUGMENTED MUSHROOM-TYPE MANAGEMENT". It
is just like plain old mushroom-type management with one exception. You
shine a narrow laser beam down into the mushroom patch which furnishes the
only illumination to be provided, and which markets your own concept to
the exclusion of all others, pretending that no others exist.
> It makes this reader want to burrow around and come to some real
> understanding about those implications, about whether there is such a
> thing as organizational values that are immutable (as well as more than
> fancy poster art), and about creating critical masses that exert the right
> kind of gravitational pull. Anyway, thanks to Geoff and Dick. I suspect
> working with them is a treat.
>
THE ONLY OBVIOUS IMMUTABLE ORGANIZATIONAL VALUE IS SURVIVAL IN THE SHORT
RUN.
-- JOHN N. WARFIELD JWARFIEL@GMU.EDU