Length of contributions LO12180

Scott Simmerman (74170.1061@CompuServe.COM)
Fri, 24 Jan 1997 19:19:32 -0500

Replying to LO12145 --

Bill Harris wrote in LO12145 that:

>There was once a speaker on creativity here who had us, his audience, take
>five minutes to write a poem on love. We then had to read it to the
>person next to us. (snip) The exercise of getting outside one's comfort
>zone was exciting, broadening, and generally helpful. I guess that's what
>learning is all about.

For some. But I've been in sessions where I have seen people "lock up"
and refuse to participate in such "learning environments", especially when
one takes it multi-culturally. Asian issues of "face" easily come into
play in a negative way, for example, causing a whole host of problems for
people in the session. Or the one person out of alignment with the others
becomes the anchor point for other stuff.

Generally, it makes GREAT sense to avoid some of these kinds of "public"
pressured situations. I'm constantly reminded of the statistic that 50%
of any group is below average and thus has a sensitivity to failure. And
the words "recite poetry" personally gives me the shivers -- so I'd
probably write some bawdy limerick - There once was a man named Rick, who
they said had a great big tick... (ha!)

Anyway, my take on learning is that it needs to be in as safe an
environment as we can build, where people can most certainly experiment
with novel ideas. And I also think that learning is so individualized
that different people get so many different things from one simple
exercise.

Joke: Two caterpillars are sitting on a wagon and a beautiful butterfly
floats by. The one caterpillar says to the other, "You'll never get
me up in one of those things."

Learning: I got nailed when I thought I knew that there was only one
answer -- I've now got a list of 43 different responses (including "My
mother was a moth.") But a key point is that we all have potential.

My take on this thread is that the learnings are much too individualized
and different to quantify or qualify or even categorize. I get a LOT from
the list, as do most of us. But my LOT is different from Sherri's LOT or
from At's or Rol's or John's or Michael's.

Sometimes, the one-liners give me a hoot. And sometimes, the long post's
like Chau's original one a year ago or At's of two weeks ago leave me
captivated.

I think the richness of this LO list is BECAUSE of the diversity of
topics, posters, approaches and thinking patterns. And I'm glad that Bill
expresses and feels comfortable expressing his opinions of disagreement
with Ben's thinking.

Long live the King. The King is dead. Ain't life wonderful?

For the FUN of It!

Scott J. Simmerman
Performance Management Company
3 Old Oak Drive
Taylors, SC 29687-6624 (USA) 864-292-8700
SquareWheels@compuserve.com

-- 

Scott Simmerman <74170.1061@CompuServe.COM>

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