>Question: Has anyone posed new roles for those who had to be the
>knowers in the past; new roles which allow them to give up the
>omniscient knowing role for new fields of working? If you have, what
>kinds of roles are you describing to these folks? Do you have it in some
>form of a list? I am presently working on my own list of new roles for
>the learner and would give ample credit to those whose ideas I might
>use.
In the early days of our (Deming based) transformation we talked
about knowing organisations and coined a phrase 'I know won't
grow' which I still, 6 years later can recall easily. As we
talked about knowing and the burdens of knowing I think we
discovered their were benefits as well as costs - people reflected
on management processes and recalled stories of the 'dependency'
which they resented 'shall I open up now' 'can I have leave that
week' (when they know most of the office are off already) So people
started to look at their management processes (I suppose in many
ways in those early days it was the ones that bugged them most)
and gather 'data' from all angles and redesign them for learning
and continuous improvement. These had significant impact because
they signalled new ways of working for everyone - and made it
clearly that no-one was a repository of knowledge. So my
conclusion having reflected that I am not answering your question
but telling stories is - you can't give people the new roles - but
ask them about their current ones - I bet they hate many aspects
of the knowing role - ask them with the people they know for and
they will work our new roles for themselves... I think.
-- Julie Beedon VISTA Associates - consulting for a better future julie@vistabee.win-uk.net