Intro -- George Georgiou LO13013

George Georgiou (transform@hol.gr)
Tue, 25 Mar 1997 20:23:39 -0200 (GMT)

Hi ! Have you heard from Greece ?

My country, which I love very much, is famous for its history and for its
incredible power to keep secrets. In fact there are two countries all over
the world that people can effectively keep secrets : China because nobody
speaks and Greece because everybody speaks but never says what exactly he
is been told, adding and subtacting ...creatively so the end product is
totally different and the actual real secret is kept hidden.

Trying to create a trend towards a learning organization in this
environment is a big challenge since dialogue ( a Greek word ) has been
replaced by a new one, dislogos ( a disability to undestand and to be
understood ).

I have been subscribed on the list about three months ago and every time I
study the replies I discover a mirror image of my every day questions,
problems and directions of thinking. The fifth discipline and the
fieldbook are milestones to help me put some order in my personal and
organizational inquiries ( I have read the first in 1993 ).

As a short bio I am 36 years old, Civil Engineer and I hold a DEA ( French
Master's degree )in scientific managementand multicriteria analysis
methods along with an MBA from INSEAD ( Fontainebleau - France ).My
business experience is in consumer banking including Citibank in
Greece,Italy and Germany. Currently I am heading the retail distribution
division of a bank which is the product of a merger of two young in age
banks in Greece ( Eurobank and Interbank ) as an Assistant General
Manager. In this reatil distribution division work and contribute some 450
different individuals whom I try to help so that they will discover and
create organizational and personal realities they truly desire.

My mission statement is to assist and stewart people achive quantum and
original leaps in their performance in both business and personal lifeby
helping them change their paradigms and views of realityusing a variety of
tools, techiques and methods. The results are very nice and it seems to me
that they last, applying in all areas and divisions of the bank feeding
myself and the team with faitha and courage. In the sales force especially
benchmarked results are excellent and different distribution channels seem
to act synergetically towards a common orientation and a shared end
objective. There are however significant problems in self non guided
proactive actionand therefore in innovative and creative thinking.

The focus is to create a learning principle centered consumer financial
services organization able to constantly reinvent itself because its human
capital will act for total and holistic improvement. This effort as a
process, the eperiences we have, the successes and the learning errors we
achieve and the time it takes to shift people's interests and behavior are
the themes I wish to share with you.

I know that measurement can be an illusion but it may be interesting to
create an idicator to show us the learning ability ( or disability ) or
the learning rate of an organization without been linked with the current
year end profits. Today I can only feel it without been influenced by
financials ( how for instance do we measure the ability of people to team
up ? or how do we measure people's skill to understand interelationships ?
)

Concerning areas of interest these include ecology and ecosystem dynamics,
psychology, psychometric and vocational testing and measurement, history,
anthropology and biology. These fields of science are not only of great
interest but they provide powerfull analogies and can teach organizational
and business environments to transform themselves.

I personally love highlands, forests, lakes and rivers. I adore teaching,
writing, dreaming and acting ( found that dreaming and envisioning can
beat the time shortage and 'capacity' shortage we all face when is
followed by wise action ).

-- 

George Georgiou <transform@hol.gr>

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