In a message dated 97-03-03 20:19:22 EST, you write:
> At a company one of the strong assumptions revealed by the management team
> was: "fellow managers are guilty of corruption". This came from a fairly
> down-the-line diagnosis based on Argyris' method.
>
Was "guilty of corruption" defined?? The way I use Argyris' method is to
make certain that the group gets to "Directly Observable Data." What is
it that leads people to this theory or belief? To start at such a high
level of inference could be explosive! But then again, to start here and
get people to "unpack" the data or evidence for corruption might prove
very fruitful with some good facilitation!
> The question I have is: are such issues (and there are others of a similar
> gravity), which imo are career threatening to senior management and
> potentially explosive to the entire organisation, suitable subjects for
> learning via improving the quality of conversation amongst management?
I think that if the belief is out there, to not talk about it is just to
continue in denial BUT I wouldn't open a conversation until I knew what
leads people to have such an inference. To do otherwise would at best be
frustrating - the worst could be managers changing behaviors that were not
the ones that lead to the belief - how will they know???
That's my opinion...
Bill Gardner
Manager, OD
Advanced Micro Devices
wpgardner@aol.com
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>