Reply to: RE>LO v OL? LO9552
Ed:
I still don't know how to conceive of OL and LO in my own 700+ employee
manufacturing company. Maybe it's intellectual laziness. Perhaps it's like
the student in Mamet's play "Oleanna" who rants at the professor when he uses
the word "paradigm" instead of the word "model," which the student CAN
understand. In other words, I am part of oragnizational learning at my
company. It's here and happening in an explicit way. So?
We have initiated management-directed programs surrounding team work, problem
solving, data analysis (root cause), management process, etc. We recognize
that continuous improvement is not a goal but a path. Sounds nice, right?
Are we an LO based upon OL? Beats me.
I'd say that the practical and explicit manifestations of the insights and
power of this list don't come from examples of organizations where everybody
and everything hum with a great synchronicity. Here's the image I'll conjure
up:
OL generates islands of relative competency, skill and mastery. Just as the
inexorable tides and storms move sand onto and off the beaches, so these
islands shape and reshape themselves. Yes, there is an integrity to the
island core, but the changes to the surface upon which we stride make the
organizational picture shift, too.
Now, as these islands proliferate within an organization--as learning
increased in frequency and measurable results (measureable to the organization
itself)--islands grow close enough together so that a network of bridges may
be built from one to the next. The complexity of pathways is the LO.
Sands still shift; storms, tracked by satellite, still pound away; tides
remain inexorable; some bridges fall into disrepair.
Has anyone played MYST on the computer? Is it a metaphor for an LO run afoul?
Best regards,
-- Barry Mallis bmallis@markem.com Total Quality Resource Manager MARKEM Corporation Keene, NH 03431 www.markem.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>