>But I question what the system is if it isn't 'us', that is the people who
>are in the community in question?
>Here and elsewhere on the list we seem to be trying to 'lay blame' on
>something that makes organizations dysfunctional. And the, seemingly,
>convenient and non-threatening answer is 'the system.' To me the only
>discerning part of all communities are 'us' the people in them. Therefore,
>I reason that we are the cause of our organization's dysfunction.
>To the position that the system is bigger than all of us, therefore our
>dysfunctional behavior is reaction to something we believe we cannot change.
For me an organisation is a complex adaptive system which exhibits emergent
behaviour, often unexpected behaviour , that we equally often don't enjoy
the results of [oops-appalling grammar!] As michael implied, it's not
blameable on the people in it, at least not easily. It's a systemic thing.
And this isn't a defeatist stance; it is realistic stance : as I said in
an earlier post- maybe just maybe, we can understand it, thanks to complex
adaptive system theory, and work to change it.
this will not be easy.
thank you, bill, for the chance to express these 'dear to my heart' type
thoughts.
--from Arthur Battram, organiser of the LGMB project 'Tools for Learning', which helps local authorities to apply complexity concepts to learning. apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk "complexity is in here... and simplicity is out there...if we want it to be..."
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>