Intro -- Alison Glover LO10736

Alison C. J. Glover (acglover@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au)
Mon, 28 Oct 1996 21:01:08 +1100 (EST)

A lurker de-cloaks!

I'm a part-time Master of Technology Management student, a partner with my
husband in a (very) small "green" building company, and also work
part-time for a small hi-tech manufacturing company. Of all the hundreds
of books and articles I have read while studying, The 5th Discipline was
the one that I found most inspiring - the one that had me leaping around
the room and yelling "Read this! It's brilliant!". Of course, this
probably just proves that the LO concepts fit in well with my "mental
models" - my backgound is in physics (lasers), so I always want to know
"why" things happen. And having trained for several years in a formal
style of karate, I have experienced the benefits of discipline.

I have found LO concepts very useful and practical in my personal life and
in our small business. As the other company I work had coincidentally
employed a consultant who used some LO principles, I have also been
considering how they might be used there. The company has two major
shareholders, both of whom work in it. As one loves the idea of becoming a
"learning organisation" and the other appears to think it's a load of
academic whoffle (euphamsism inserted here!), this has been quite.....
interesting.

I would be very interested to hear from anyone else who has tried LO
practices in small organisations. If small companies survive - and so many
don't - they have to learn, too, but it can be very hard when short-term
financial problems dominate most of the company's thinking (as opposed to
thinking about solutions for those problems).

I agree with the idea that managers have to be part of organisational
change, not just to impose it on others. But one problem that I have, is
that having gone through some major changes myself in the past 18 months
or so (and having made previous changes such as emigrating to Australia),
it's hard to think back to the point of view of those who have not yet
seen that changing the organisation means that they will have to change
too.

Alison

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"Alison C. J. Glover" <acglover@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>