Disappointment -- No soul? LO11768

Johanna Rothman (jr@world.std.com)
Thu, 9 Jan 1997 21:48:20 -0500

Replying to LO11711 --

At 1:32 PM -0500 1/7/97, Sherri Malouf wrote:

>Why is it so diffcult for us to deal heart-to-heart?
>
>Isn't part of the attraction of LO that Senge and others have found a way
>to include the human soul in organizations?

A lot of the heart-to-heart stuff deals with spirituality. Spirituality is
extremely difficult to discuss for a variety of reasons:
1. Spirituality is not the same as religion, but many folks have integrated
the two for themselves.
2. It's extremely personal, and therefore scary to discuss.
3. I'm not sure how spirituality evolves for other people, but for me it
evolves in spurts. So, what I think today is not always the same as I
thought yesterday. The basics are the same, but the upper levels may change.

Take all these things together, and you realize that is is really hard to
share mental models among people. That makes it even harder to talk about,
and you end up with people getting angry or offended at each other.

I agree that when you think about systems (the people, their processes, and
everyone's varied reactions to processes) that you have to consider the
human soul. But, I don't agree that focusing on the soul gets us to the
heart of the discussion (if you'll excuse the pun).

I think one way to include the soul is to explain the systems, and expose
the mental models. The explanations may take different forms, depending on
how you understand what I say. And, that explanation is best done in
person. You can't see me right now, and pick up the cues of what I'm trying
to say by my body language. If we met in person, we could come to a common
understanding much faster and much easier than by email.

That said, I'd like to see some of the human discussions here shaped more
by causal thinking, or the effects of delays on the system, etc.

Johanna

--
Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.  URL:http://world.std.com/~jr/
voice:617-641-4046    fax:617-641-2764       jr@world.std.com
Management Consulting for High Technology Product Development
 


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