This part of Ben's message really had me chuckling.....
>Earlier this week, in a management training seminar, I used this example
>in a break-out session. Whew! I'm still pulling the knives out of my
>chest! People went nuts on me. "If organizations don't exist to make
>money, then what the hell do they exist for"? one participant screamed.
>No one in the group would even entertain the idea. Stodgy farts!
I had a similar experience with a client who found this whole idea to be
outrageuos - they were American so they could write it off as a strange
British thing!!! They worked on a mission -- it was something like "we
work to meet our financial goals by ..... x.... to make money" (x is to
protect the innocent) This was my turn to be outraged - I said they had
made a money sandwich!!! These days they are moving beyond this
articulation of purpose but it really was not easy ... what have we come
to ....[At one stage they even had an eminent MIT professor come to speak
to us..... he said "you are not in the x business...... you are in the
money business"!!!!! - they all turned to chuckle at me at that point...
Julie Beedon
VISTA Consulting
julie@vistabee.win-uk.net
--Julie Beedon <julie@vistabee.win-uk.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>