Dave Birren wrote...
** begin Birren's msg **
Gene Bellinger told a story about how much his client learned from talking
to him for three weeks. Andrew responded with the story of the
boilermaker who fixed the boiler with a single tap of his hammer and then
billed the customer as follows:
>For tapping the hammer $ 1
>For knowing where to tap $ 999
The difference between the two stories is that in listening to his client,
Gene in effect enabled the client to learn something, whereas the
boilermaker kept his knowledge to himself. What an elegant example of
what a learning organization is and is not.
** end of Birren's msg **
Good point Dave. In addition... Andrew described a 'mechanistic' system,
while most of us believe that learning organizations are much more
'biological', and therefore more complex, non-linear, interconnected, etc.
If simple, mechanistic solutions like knowing where to 'tap' an
organization actually worked, then Reengineering[and all other mechanistic
interventions] would have been raving successes.
Einstein said sometyhing to the effect, "Make all problems as simple as
possible, but NOT more simple." Andrew overshot this rule by just a tad.
;-)
Valdis Krebs
Krebs & Associates
Los Angeles, CA
[my current email address inflow@eworld.com will expire 3/31]
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>