> I was referring to a system as in Peter Senge's definition... in my words,
> a pattern of behaviour, conditions and events which interrelate and
> reinforce each other. People are intrinsically woven into such a system
> and are not separate from it. To fix something that's wrong, you need to
> understand the system and look for levers in the system.
>
> Which comes back to the answering the original question - just "fixing"
> the people or changing the people won't help. The people become part of
> the system and are affected by it.
>
> While I've been writing this, Mary Apodaca'a message LO8908 has just
> arrived. For me, she has summed it up beautifully in her quote from the
> 5th Discipline in answer to her own question:
>
> "...different people in the same structure tend to produce qualitatively
> similar results...The causes of the behavior must lie beyond individuals."
Stanley Milgram performed a well known experiment some years back in which
test subjects were asked to shock other subjects (confederates) in a
supposed attempt to learn the effects of electric shock on learning. A
surprising 65% took the shock level to the serious injury/death level,
simply because they were urged to by the experiment controller. This
experiment has been replicated numerous times in a variety of situations
with pretty reliable results. The lesson taken from this is that people
will comply with requirements that they would otherwise not do, simply
because someone with assumed authority asked (told) theym to do so.
Put people in a broken system and they will tend to do actions which they
would otherwise object to, simply because "that's the way things are done
here."
This doesn't take away personal accountability or responsibility in these
matters. It DOES, however, point out that a broken system can
significantly influence people to do the "wrong things." It can also
influence attempts to change the system. After all, if they system is
broken, that would mean that they, as members of the system, are somehow
"flawed" ... and that can't be.
Systems are formed by people. Usually, though, systems are originally
formed by other people and inherited by the current members. It takes
unusual courage to challenge a standing system, even when it is obviously
"wrong."
--Clyde Howell orgpsych@csra.net
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>