Wheatly Dialogue LO10414

LCHALUPIAK@NICKEL.LAURENTIAN.CA
Thu, 10 Oct 1996 10:57:38 -0500 (EST)

Replying to LO10397 --

Hi everyone,

I just have to jump in on the most profound thread for me on this list for
a while... the Wheatley dialogue.

Sherri @sherri@maloufinc.com quoted from Wheatley
> Because information from the outside plays such a small role in our
> perceptions, Maturana and Varela note something quite important for our
> activities with one another. We can never direct a living system. We can
> only disturb it. As external agents we provide only small impulses of
> information. We can nudge, titillate, or provoke one another into some
> new ways of seeing. But we can never give anyone an instruction and
> expect him or her to follow it precisely. We can never assume that anyone
> else sees the world as we do.

What goes together with this statement is the observation that even the
tiniest effort can have an enormous effect on the larger system.

Wheatley(*1) refers to the experimental mathematical modelling of weather
systems, where complex results anticipated for North America, were
dramatically altered, simply by factoring the movement of a butterfly wing
in Tokyo. That "pulse" of information can still make an enormous
difference..... but it is unlikely that we can anticipate precisely what
effect we can have on others.

This observation gives me strength on the days when it seems that my
efforts are going nowhere, and the attempts to bring Learning Organization
principles are being encapsulated in an entropic bureaucracy. Then I will
find out that one little ripple started in one area, had absolutely no
effect on where I *wanted* it to have effect, generated a change in
someone else who has taken the initiative to make things better in another
area....and the pulse goes back to me, giving me strength and confidence
again....

It is an "awesome" recognition that one is part of the whole, that one's
perception is never complete... and a humbling recognition of the serious
responsibility one has to operate from the perspective of trying to make
things better.....even if your perception of what is "better" is probably
flawed and incomplete.

Sitting softly in the loop,
Lisetta Chalupiak
Laurentian University.

(*1):Wheatley: Leadership and the New Science... and I can't quote the
page, because I have lent out the book again, and it is so dog-eared and
read, that the pages are becoming ragged.

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LCHALUPIAK@NICKEL.LAURENTIAN.CA

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