Stop making lurkers wrong LO8190

Dr Ilfryn Price (101701.3454@compuserve.com)
Thu, 27 Jun 1996 20:04:54 -0400

Replying to LO8130 --

Hello Winfried

Your thoughtful letter was most useful.

=======start=======
How about slowing down a bit?

Or how about making a kind of Sub-list where snails like me are able to
join-in-action. The quick guy's and girls can than lurk on this
"Snaillist" or slow down and join. And snails like me can continue to lurk
on the Turbolist and learn and learn and learn. Maybe some day they become
a Turbo as well? Or maybe some Turbo finds out that it feels good to take
some more time between stimulus and response and joins the Snaillist.
=====end=======

As a 'turbo-poster' who worries that he suffers from 'engage fingers
before brain syndrome' I worry about replying staight away - what a good
idea if it does not impose more load on Rick who makes this list what it
is.

I will say also that your

>Honestly spoken I am a bit afraid that (in a while) Non english native
>speakers are not welcome anymore on this list. I hope I am wrong!

struck a chord. Reduction of linguistic, and hence cultural diversity is,
IMO, one of the threats to the global future on a par with more obvious
environmental problems and may be even greater!!! [I will defend that view
if I have to as a native welshman whose 'land of my fathers' has suffered
700 years of English lingusitic imperialism].

So is there a way of allowing multi=lingual postings. If some of us cannot
understand them tough. Various problems occur but the only one that I
could see as valid was my perception that the delicate filter which Rick
offers the list - sending back the odd message etc. - is a key
contribution to its success.

Just a thought Rick but do you have any 'Johannas' who speak other
languages [i.e. people of equal facilitative skill who could
internationalise the list a bit.

TO MOVE ON

You also got me thinking Winfried about the Turbo phenomenon. I hope I
'turbo-post' because

A. It is so interesting

B. If I get behind or leave things I will never catch up [whoops - danger
of can't stop talking there]

I also recognize [and had been thinking about it before] a possible
beginning of an 'addiction to posting' or 'shifting the burden archetype'.
There certainly seems to me to be a danger of a re-inforcing system
driving up the number of contributions. The end result might even be a
'tragedy of the commons' as we overload our host.

So I thought - what about voluntary code of practice where I limit my self
to one post per evening.

BUT

THERE ARE SO MANY FASCINATING CONVERSATIONS GOING ON. I have had today's
dose of 4 digests and want to respond to all sorts of things.

But then

Many of them are discussing similar things [Digest skimming has some
advantages]

Out of this dilemma came a thought:

"What if we had fewer threads and more multi-thread type posts?". I can
see problems but every system has pluses and minuses. What follows - in a
spirit of contribution and experiment - is an attempt to respond to other
interesting posts in one message.

Bill [? digest deleted as this idea took shape]

You were talking about dynamiting buildings and asked

> With most employees, the cynicism is so deep, due to program - du-jour ad
>nauseum, that blowing up a building is likely to be laughed at rather than
>make an important
>point.

Yes. The example was an attempt to illustrate the general point of
dramatic signals which interrupt such a 'normal and norming' culture. Any
such signal must have integrity.

------------------------
Mariann: Root Cause LO8133

>From my perspective, we've had nearly a century of organization practice &
>theory based on Weber's powerful ideas of bureaucracy
<snip>
. Hurst's position, as I understand it, is that the inertia of
organizations means that a "crisis" is essential - whether imposed from
outside the organization, or induced from within, including the perception
by members that change is urgent because of senior management demands
(e.g., GE's Jack Welch saying businesses must be "#1 or 2, show a plan for
how to get there, or risk being divested). The short form is, bureaucracy
says "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Hurst suggests instead a
perception that over time, ANY good solution will become "broken" because
the environmental fit upon which it is predicated, degrades with time and
change. Since much human cognition favors habit, and since organizations
are typically predicated on "continuance," some impetus to change is
needed, which Hurst calls "crisis."

It seems to me that the most serious hazards are not so much the
patterns that can be recognized easily as entrapment, so much as those
that appear successful as never before.>

We may be discussing different meanings of 'crisis' [connotations of
'threat' for me] and of 'pattern'; a term I use - probably wrongly - to
express the idea of a selfish corporate *memome* that seeks its own
survival by holding the collective system *stable* [sorry this is too long
already to go into details]

>Thomas Kuhn's
scientific revolutions ideas hold here, too: the sheef mental efficiency
and comfort of established ways of thinking reinforce them and help to
maintain them for extended periods of time. It is a rare person, a rare
organization imbued with the courage and curiosity, as well as the slack
resources, to constantly experiment. There are some examples - 3M comes to
mind - of firms that constantly recreate themselves, encouraging
creativity.>

Yes though I go further and argue that the established 'ways of thinking'
have, without forethought, designs of their own. David Hull [Science as a
Process Chicago University Press] has written a brilliant study of Kuhnian
ideas examined against the evidence of biases and fashions in the history
of biology. He concludes that the whole thing can be interpreted as
Natural Selection operating between competing paradigms. IMO no student of
organisational systems should ignore it.

Actually this ties back to linguistic imperialism - see above - because,
especially thanks to the Internet - English and the meaning biases it
carries risks becoming a dominant memome, the 'dinosaur' of our lingusitic
eco space.

------------------

======start========
From: "jpomo@gate.net" <jpomo@gate.net>
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 16:56:13 +0000
Subject: Complexity and Values LO8144.

SNIP

Just a comment that the Bible indicates that the Holy Spirit put a set of
values into each of us.

SNIP

Unfortunately, most of us do not realize that others interpret our actions
as reflections of our values. We don't realize this because much of our
behavior was developed before we understood, if we ever did, "values".
Mostly, we copy our behavior from what we see around us selecting on some
basis what we like best or what is necessary to conform and reduce
criticism.
==========end===========

Joan

Thank you for this.

It has been occurring to me recently that most major religions give their
believers compelling reasons for espousing, and in the majority of people,
living to sets of values. A few months ago I facilitated a meeting, in
England, for a multi cultural group of employees of an Americain company
one of whose stated values is 'to honour God in all we do'. [ANOTHER WAS
GROW THE BUSINESS 20 % A YEAR - shades of praise the lord and pass the
ammunition]. The group included muslims, agnostics, a buddhist, atheists
and several sects and nationalities of christians. After some hours of
debate a distinction emerged between 'God' [big G white male version] and
'god' or 'a god'. By the end of the afternoon the degree to which the
group declared their vision of honouring the small 'g' version began to
alarm the management [who and whose company were not BTW stuck with the
big G version].

The problem - as it occurs to me - is that these self same 'big G God'
values that have enabled so much have also caused so much. We may have
abandoned burning heretics at the stake or excommunicating them to eternal
damnation but we have [as Problem People has revealed] invented some other
ways of penalising heretics in our organisations which 'worship' their own
deities.

Is there another way - engaging the power of honouring a small g god -
without having to grant her some sort of divine power?. I honestly do not
know, and I do not think this is an original enquiry but it seems real to
me.

The nearest I have got to exploring other ideas on the subject in my own
readings is to realise the existence of a philosophical tradition labelled
'secular humanism'. It seems to me I am enquiring about the possibility of
creating 'secular spirtualism' [Come in Terri you started some of this in
'off-line' posts].

Apologies anyone to whom this has occurred as a 'dump'. It started out of
an attempt to respond to some interesting questions posed by Winfried,
became a challenge to myself, to respond to 4 digests in one message, and
ended with me clarifying, at least to me, some questions that have been
haunting me for a while. It is 1.00am and if this does not fit Rick - send
it back. I will understand. I have to turbo send it or I may wonder
whether to bother.

See what you started Winfried. How would this look in Dutch.

God/god knows whether fingers have lead brain.

Regards to all.

If Price
The Harrow Partnership
Pewley Fort Guildford UK
101701.3454@compuserve.com

-- 

Dr Ilfryn Price <101701.3454@compuserve.com>

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