On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, Virginia I. Shafer wrote:
> I say let them wallow a while with their feelings of loss of control.
> They never really had it to begin with. What you propose is to satisfy
> their need to exercise power over another. Let them learn cooperative
A person can have different, even conflicting, views of white-collar
worker downsizing, the spread of internet tools or the activities of
global financiers depending on their perspective and the roles that they
play and their respective goals.
Organizational learning facilitators could focus on their clients loss of
well being resulting from white collar downsizing or they could focus on
their clients gains in time, energy and freedom that present the pristine
opportunity to set a direction of contribution to other people.
A goal for organizational learning facilitators is to increase
clients well being and to figure out how to deliver services that
increase the capabilities of their clients, get their clients to
adapt to their environment and build win-win orientation.
Global contrarian investors could focus on the elimination of shareholder
value resulting from their manipulations of global financial markets or
they could focus on the freeing up of capital in those financial markets
that allows new entrants into those financial markets.
A goal for a global contrarian investor is to "buy low sell high" and
to figure out how to invest in the securities and assets of entities
(companies, organizations, families, individuals) that are experiencing
significant changes in their environment that have an adverse affect on
the perception of entity future viability by entity stakeholders and the
public (potential stakeholders).
Internet company stakeholders could focus on the users of Internet tools
that are "misusing" the tools or they could focus on the users that get
to pursue activities that create real passion in their lives by
circumventing standard control structures.
The goal for Internet company stakeholders is to bring "power to
the people" and figure out how to deliver services that allow "web
surfers" to select the people and information that they want - using
internet mechanisms to function as "simplification mechanisms" that allow
people to find high quality information expeditiously and efficiently
and to make decisions with that information.
Each of these roles require or have "rules structures", sets of
beliefs, or mental models that allow or prevent continuous attainment of
their respective goals and results.
_________________
Simplification mechanisms" allow groups to simplify and/or manage the
complexity in their dealings, cooperations or collaborations with other
people or groups. [Simplification mechanisms are sometimes known as
"incentive traps".]
Simplification mechanisms in financial markets are stock market
indicators such as industrial averages and prices for individual stocks.
The price of a stock allows people to get a quick "view" of the current
and future viability of the organization. It is a conglomeration of many
different factors.
[I think someone else on this list mentioned this.]
Simplification mechanisms in industries are corporate control
hierarchies. The corporate hierarchy structure is a set of social
constructs and agreements that allow key decision makers to leverage
their time by allowing the corporate hierarchy to filter and select the
information that those decision makers make decisions with.
_______________
What you are proposing, getting them to learn to adapt to their
environment or adapt their environment, isn't the easiest thing in the
world. A lot of movie scripts are based on this "limit".
I've been working about 10 hours a day for the last 3 years to
learn to adapt or adapt to my environment and I still haven't got it
right. It's going to take a while before I can get others to do this.
It will be very easy for learning-org facilitators to fall into
"defensive routines" amidst all the changes and chaos unless they figure
out beforehand who they want to work with, their criteria for who they
want to work with, how they can increase their capabilities to create
products/services that meet other entities values.
I think learning org facilitators should define their values or what's
important to them regarding the people that they want to work with, then
select people to work with by refusing to work with anyone that doesn't
meet their criteria.
Andrew Moreno
amoreno@broken.ranch.org
--Andrew Moreno <amoreno@broken.ranch.org>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>