Regarding your Fire Department example:
I think I agree with you. I came into a graphics group to replace a man
who was known throughout the company as THE Graphics guy, who could make
your proposal or material come to life. He was in heavy demand, and now
he was retiring from THE BIG DEAL program of the company.
I sat with him for a month, trying to learn some of what he knew, and
found his approach (while certainly a milestone in many respects) to be
filled with a lot of limits and problems. When his job became mine, I
immediately changed almost 3 quarters of it-much to the surprise and
objection of some of his compatriots.
It turns out, that there was usefullness in "losing" some of the
knowledge this fellow held in his head, not because he was bad or wrong,
it was just that the world had changed and THE WAY, that he had pioneered
operated in a paradigm that had run it's course. He had stopped learning
and had not adapted to the new... so there was usefullness in his move to
other things (fishing, etc.).
Now thats not to say I was the greatest replacement, but I have brought
things to the group that they had not discovered or considered before, so
like in the Fire Dept example-things are still moving and growing.
So maybe Ivan is right, that the downsizing isn't causing LOSS that
matters in all cases. If handled well, it could result in a "clearing of
the thought processes" by removing those "stuck" in some older or less
viable (in the current world) viewpoint about how work should be
accomplished.
Later....
Michael Erickson
On Wed, 12 Jun 1996, Dr. Ivan Blanco wrote:
> For some time I have also said that in case of downsizing and
> other actions, companies tend to lose port of the knowledge that might be
> crucial to them. Now, I am reconsidering my thinking a little bit. What
> if companies don't really lose too much? Or what if the lost of knowledge
> is just a very temparary thing?
>
> I left the Fire Department and considered that I have left an empty space
> there. But when I go back to visit or to help in some other capacity, I
> found out that they are doing things in different ways, or that they some
> new things to be learned that I didn't know when I was an active member.
[part of quote trimmed by jr]
--Michael Erickson <sysengr@atc.boeing.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>