Phillip said, among other things, that managers must be able to do the
following:
"(a) to provide the information to the system which defines its purpose
and maintains the focus of the system's elements upon that purpose (known
as 'leadership'), (b) ascertain the best forms of work organisation
required to maximise the conditions, given the nature of the purpose and
the environment in which the activity is taking place (including
evaluating the best technologies for maximising the appropriate flow of
information, (c) to scan for blocks and impediments to the information
flow and to act to remove them (including the treatment of team based
pathogens), (d) to implement programmes which help personnel to best meet
condition (b) individually and collectively (which also includes the
treatment of team based pathogens which attack healthy learning
behaviour), (e) to scan for external threats to the system which are
likely to demand further adaptation, and (f) otherwise to keep out of the
way."
This creates for me a large list of questions. What is the information a
manager provides to the system? Who is the system? Do we know what is
'best'? Does 'best' change as the context changes? Who defines the blocks
and impediments? How do we recognize them? What if people disagree?
What if managers disagree? Can one person's block be another's enabler?
Are we sure that teams are always the best way to do work? What are the
programs to implement? How do we know which are really practical to
implement? How, in a world with overwhelming communictions, do we
_really_ scan for external threats? What does it mean to keep out of the
way? How does one know when to 'get in the way'?
Sorry to have so many questions, but this is the environment that a
manager works in. The real meat of a manager's work is to find the
answers to those questions -- and many more -- and to act in a way that
aligns with the corporate vision. The way the manager acts day-to-day
creates the vision-in-action, which is a much more real entity than the
vision described in corporate planning documents.
--Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>