On Mon, 20 May 1996 10:07 Terri Deems wrote in part -
> The following appeared over the weekend on the TRDEV list.
>
> > A recent incident ...
> >
> > The incident centres around a question posed by one student and
> > the groups response to the question:
> >
> > "Could any of the characteristics of our
> > western world view and current attitudes to
> > learning impede our ability to develop
> > learning organisations."
> >
> > To my surprise the almost unanimous response of the group was
> > that the question was irrelevant.
[Quote of prev msg trimmed substantially by your host...]
This case most clearly reflects the inherent weakness of programs
addressing techniques associated with "things" without having first gotten
the "people" issues of values going in the right direction. This applies
to all techniques such as LO or TQM or BPR or Work Teams which must be
carried out by people.
Our approach is to create a culture which supports any effective
technique, a value-based culture which could never commit such a
disrespectful act toward a person as happened in the example above. In
addition, if the cultural issue had been addressed beforehand, the student
would not have viewed LO as being "mechanistic, liberal, rational and
individualistic" and in violation of simple concepts like "obligation -
values - attitudes" simply because these concepts would have been
established in the culture as a prerequisite to LO or whatever.
My group has a proven prescription for creating and sustaining this value
based culture of highly motivated, committed and creative people who love
coming to work because they trust and deeply respect how the place is
being run. Acting as the above group did toward the student would have
never been done by value based people. LO or any other set of techniques
cannot be successful without the proper culture and it does not have to be
left to chance as is presently being done. The prescription is even easy
to carry out.
Regards, Joan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joan Pomo The Finest Tools for Managing People
Simonton Associates Based on the book
jpomo@gate.net "How to Unleash the Power of People"
--"jpomo@gate.net" <jpomo@gate.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>