Insecurity => creativity?? LO10647

Benjamin Compton (bcompton@geocities.com)
Tue, 22 Oct 1996 08:41:15 -0700

Replying to LO10626 --

GSCHERL wrote:

> Eric Bohlman stated it clearly:
>
> > risk-taking is a strategy for *changing* one's position in life,
> > whereas risk-avoidance is a strategy for *preserving* one's status
> > in life. Risk-avoidance is a strategy for success in an environment
> > where you've got it good and everything's stable
>
> To that last statement, I'd add:
> where you've got it good and everything's stable and you're satisfied.
>
> I think this one statement summarizes what our whole drive in learning
> or developing is all about. If we weren't interested in changing our
> position in life, we wouldn't want to learn, we wouldn't want to
> risk, we wouldn't want to take chances.

I have a real simple theory on change: Change is holistic and systemic;
there's no such thing as isolated change. Change impacts the whole. Many
people simply don't want to deal with rediscovering, or redefining, who
they are or what they aspire to become. Change forces us to do this.

For any person (or organization) to change effectively, they must be
emoitionally mature (so they can endure the pressures of rediscovering or
redefining themselves), and intellectually rigorous (so they can adjust
their values should they be impacted by the change -- which they probably
will be).

And of course, they need to be open to disconfirming evidence -- the stuff
that says to a person: Hey, you need to change. What you're doing simply
isn't working. (I think it was Edgar Schein at MIT who suggested that
people need to feel psychologically safe to accept this type of input. .
.)

-- 
Ben Compton
The Accidental Learning Group                  Work: (801) 222-6178
Improving Business through Science and Art     bcompton@geocities.com
http://www.e-ad.com/ben/BEN.HTM
 

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