Starting Dialogue LO6208

James McKinley (leaders@gulftel.com)
Sun, 24 Mar 96 17:47:27 -800

Replying to LO6167 --

> John Paul Fullerton (jpf@mail.myriad.net)
> Fri, 22 Mar 1996 09:25:45 +0000
>
John writes:
(snip)
> The other thought was that it seems to me that there must be people
> within a dialogue that somehow "help it along", whether intentionally
> or through the influence of dialogue and what it involves. In order
> for people to "give themselves" to the process, they must know what
> it is. Dr. Deming said something like, "without theory there are no
> questions; without questions, no learning; hence without theory there
> is no learning." In relation to trying to follow the guidelines of
> TQM, it made much more sense - real sense - to me after I learned
> something more toward the theory of TQM rather than the "14 points"
> and "the general idea".
(snip)

Here is the Deming quote from "The New Economics":

"Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no
questions to ask. Hense without theory there is no learning" Dr. W.
Edwards Demings

[Host's Note: Prodded by John Warfield here on the LO list, I've been
reading Charles S. Peirce. I think Peirce's philosophy of knowledge
creation through application of the scientific method supports this
notion very strongly, unless I'm mis-reading Peirce. When I introduce
this idea in management seminars, it's seen as radical; most people seem
to believe that there are unambiguous answers in the data that don't
depend on any theory. Or, that if there are to be answers upon which we
can depend, they should be unambigious answers from data.

-- Rick Karash, rkarash@karash.com, host for LO...]

--
Jim McKinley
Excellence in Leadership
leaders@gulftel.com
 

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>