As an addition to Flemming's post about Learning Orgs.
Senge wrote a most marvelous book, yet the most often heard comment was, it's
a great philosophical work, but what do we do on Monday morning. As a result
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook was published in 1994 which is a more "do it"
oriented work.
There is also a learning organzations newsgroup, learning-org@world.std.com.
This newsgroup is sponsored by Innovation Associates and moderated by Rick
Karash, rkarash@world.std.com. I have forgotten how to subscibe but if you
send mail to Rick I'm sure he will provide info.
To Flemming's point about Learning Organizations being one of the prevalent
buzzwords. I commented to the learning org list that I was not looking
forward to the next century, as the progression looks like:
Formula Fifties
Sensitive Sixties
Strategic Seventies
Excellent Eighties
Nanosecond Ninties
LO Oh's
Something Senge tried to avoid with the first publication, yet, the momentum
is gaining. In each of the aformentioned decades there have been numerous
organizations that have employed the fads with marvelous results, and just as
many, if not more, who have experienced miserable results. And, at times
things have even gotten worse. We seem to have this knack for taking a form
and turning it into a formula which we apply rather mindlessly (as it is "the
answer") and then when the formula doesn't produce the expected results, we
think there must be a problem with the formula (for it couldn't be us now
could it) so we discard it and move on to the next. Michael McGill wrote a
very insightful book in 1988 called "American Business and the Quick Fix." It
is a wonderful treatment of the whole concept of organizaitonal fads.
For those seeking a deeper understanding of systems there are two other
elements of the holy trinity in addition to Innovation Associates. First is
Pegasus Communications, which publishes "The Systems Thinker" 10 times a
year. It is a newsletter dedicated to evolving understanding from a systems
perspective. The newsletter is in its 6th year of publication. I have read
every issue, anxiously await each new issue, and would highly recommend it.
The newsletter has a tendency to bring to the surface some rather
non-commonsense perspectives on why things work the way they do. You can send
e-mail to Kellie T. Wardman at pegasus@world.std.com or call (617) 576-1231.
The final element is provided by High Performance Systems with a product
called "ithink." This is a piece of software (mac or pc/windows) which allows
one to actually model and simulate the system maps as described in Senge's
book and in The Systems Thinker. The software is a product of the mind of one
Barry Richmond, from Darthmouth I understand. I get the impression he wanted
to do process simulation and couldn't find an appropriate tool so he and some
others built one. It is really an amazing piece of work. ithink allows you to
map, model, and simulate. It forces one to explicity state their assumptions,
and in a very non-judgemental fashion, it says, if this is what you believe,
then this is what the future looks like. There are times when I watch the
results emerge and it gives me chills. It quite often shows that my thoughts
are very incomplete and even quite wrong. For more information on ithink
contact Carolyn Hammerquist at HiPerfSys@aol.com or
x0858@applelink.apple.com. You can also call, (603) 643-9636. If you send
Carolyn a well intentioned e-mail you can probably get her to send you a demo
of the software. Be sure to indicate whether you want a Mac or PC/Windows
version (oh, by the way, you can move the models back and forth between the
two environments).
Sorry to be so long, but Flemming, being the straight man he is, just set me
off and this is what came out.
Gene Bellinger
CrbnBlu@aol.com
I guess I'm not quite done. Senge's book was a real turning point in my
perception of the world. Since reading his book I have scoured out most of
his references and find them to provide some additional comprehension.
Personal Mastery - Robert Fritz
Team Learning - David Bohm
Shared Vision - Max de Pree, Marjorie Parker
Mental Models - Chris Argyris, Donald Schon
Systems Thinking - Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Charles
Hampden-Turner, Jay W. Forrester, Donnella Meadows, Peter Checkland (you can
probably tell I liked this part).
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