Re: Organisational thinking LO3433

Willard Jule (75272.3452@compuserve.com)
26 Oct 95 19:23:30 EDT

Replying to LO3408 --

Michael McMaster wrote

"Maybe it will be profitable to consider that a major source of the
emergence of intelligence from cells is the communication structures
between them. I'm not an expert on this but the impulses and the
systems by which they enhance or dampen effects as those impulses
move through the system is a key part of what emerges.

In organisation, the analogy may be language itself. The language of
an organisation is what amplifies or dampens various messages and
signals and the intelligence - and learning - are facilitated by the
language (including its patterns and structures) and constituted by
the language."

In your analogy, I suggest that spoken or written transmitted words (use
of language) is an analog to the impulses and that the way people respond
to the language is what dampens or amplifies its effects. So the analog
for systems is culture. In my use of that word, I mean the collection of
acceptable and unacceptable behaviors that have become the organizational
norms.

In this model, learning arises as multiple manifestations of communication
come together in a dialogue way and someone is able to suddenly see
something from a new perspective and then translate this new perspective
into action to create something that this particular assemblage of
manifestations of communication could not create before.

(Manifestations of communication is meant to include people, things
living, and things animate (machines) and inanimate. I view them all as
manifestations of a communication process.)

--
Willard Jule <75272.3452@compuserve.com>