As is his repeated practice, Michael McMaster has sliced open the shiny
melon to reveal the sweet and juicy pulp inside. In replying to LO10751,
Mike addresses Rick thus...
>Rick,
>
>Thanks for sharing your notes on Senge's talk. I am delighted
<snip>
>The last paragraph of your post is the one that I'd like to pick up.
>
>>In our organizations, where are the researchers? That is, who in our
>>organizations is practicing a disciplined approach to discovery and
>>understanding with a commitment to share? Until someone is doing this
>>there will be no org learning.
>
>The phrasing implies something that is still below organisation and
>community. That is, the question isn't, I think, "who" (located in a
>"someone"). The question is, "What practices and structures are in
>place that call for, cause, acknowledge, measure, reward, etc.
>organisational learning?"
He is speaking here of having practices and structure in place... i.e.,
creating the environment for learning.
Mike then goes on discuss his view that the absence of thinking about
organizational issues (or giving them sufficient credence or importance)
by senior managers is an impediment to organizational learning, and then
continues:
>I don't have the time or the capability of reviewing all the posts to
>this list which would be useful to the questions raised in Senge's
>talk but if someone wants to take it on, they will find some very
>good stuff on distinguishing "the learning organisation" from
>"organisational learning", on "communities for learning", "practice"
>and "knowledge" as well as the distinctions of "the nature of
>something that learns".
>
>I think this points to the richness and developmental nature of the
>dialogue on this list.
I was struck by this comment. To me, it demonstrates how difficult it is
for us as individuals to adopt new ways of thinking, even when they are of
our own design. Notice that, from Mike's point of view, many
contributions and elements of learning about organizational learning
already exist in the archives of this list, but it lacks a "who" to
"practice a disciplined approach" (as Rick would paraphrase Senge).
However, when we look at this through Mike's own lens, we might ask:
Wouldn't this list be more useful to the society at large if it embodied
some organizational structures and practices which lead to organizational
learning?
If, like me,
you agree with Mike that the aggregated experiences and ideas input to the
LO list archive constitute significant contributions to the understanding
of organizational learning,
then,
what can we do to establish structures for capturing this knowledge to
make it useful?
Some time ago, John Paul Fullerton designed some approaches to make
researching within the archive easier, and Yogesh Malhotra, on his web
page, has pointed to many ways in which the data can be connected (not to
speak of the OLC home page, the Stanford SLOW page, the Albany LO page,
and others that have been cited on this list). But where is the
"community of learning", the "community of practice"?
I'm not sure exactly what Peter Senge said, but Rick's notes regarding the
"proprietary" nature of consultant's work point to one of the biggest
obstacles, in my opinion. By the nature of things, consultants and
practitioners often find themselves treading the leading edge, but the
"community" has to wait for the best-selling book, the marketing brochure,
or the self-trumpeting magazine article to find out what has been learned
there.
--Jack Hirschfeld All the lonely people, where do they come from? jack@his.com All the lonely people, where do they belong?
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>