After carefully following several of our more intense recent threads
("Disappointment--no soul?" and "Length" among others), and also having
the experience of attempting to respond and/or start something new, only
to find myself "not aligned" sufficiently with others to elicit a
response, I'm struck once more by a phenomenon I've often observed here.
For all the fact that our common link is declared to be a shared interest
in organizational learning, and the application of those models to work
and life, we won't seem to be very good at using our LO list experience as
a way to reflect and then apply learning. Maybe I've been missing
something, but I don't often see us consciously and intentionally drawing
meaning from what happens here, and then trying to link it to
organizational life.
For example, the discussion on length of posting should, to my way of
thinking, lead us to reflect on the differences in learning styles that we
each bring to the list, and then begin to ask questions about how
organizational learning strategies might account for, and honor, these
differences. Instead, we seem to have a lot of advocacy for long or
short, or apologies for preferring one to the other. Rick has generated a
thread identifying some of the _reasons_ why list behavior ("Inner
circle") is the way it is; wouldn't it be good if we could then seek to
connect that with life in organizations?
Similarly, in the "Disappointment--no soul?" discussion, I would welcome
the opportunity to learn from you what the implications for organizational
behavior are, based on our common experience here. Might we generalize or
build a model that explores what happens in organizations when heart/soul
"breaks loose" or goes underground? Instead, we seem mostly to be
particularizing our own experience and making assertions about it.
I believe the LO list is a micro-world of organizational life and
learning, if we just "step back" and make the connections. And perhaps
others are able to do that implicitly, but for me, I would welcome
listening as we make our thought processes visible.
Ever hopeful....
Malcolm Burson
mooney@maine.maine.edu
Community Health and Counseling
Bangor, Maine
--"Malcolm Burson" <mooney@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>