> The real risk of the LO philosophy is that it will follow the normal
> course for management "fads" - it will gradually prove successful and the
> sponsoring CEOs will be publicized, then it will become fashionable and
> "everyone" will claim to be doing LO, then when it does not prove to be
> the magic elixir after 12 months, something new will be tried!
>
> What can we do to prevent this trend that has happened to everything from
> MBOs to Quality etc from happening to LO? ...Keith
Let me put that together with something Rol wrote a few days back (LO8947
about Traditional Wisdom):
> We have learned from systemic thinking that we don't know the answers to
> even the apparently simple questions. Therefore, most improvement can
> only be incremental and at best experimentally identified. We are unable
> to identify the adverse consequences of almost any action we can
> undertake. That is part of the reason that we ended up with the systems
> we have now. We did not understand the adverse consequences of those
> systems when they were being implemented.
I've always believed, like many, that fads were mostly sound theories,
taken and applied lightly by a management team (without necessarily
understanding the intricacies of the theory and only focusing on the
appealing features of it).
It now occurs to me that maybe the issue is deeper and systemic. Starting
from the premise that everybody wants to do a good job, we can look at the
issue from a different angle. Using Rol's quote, one could say a major
problem with new management theories (those who become fads after a few
months) is their adverse consequences cannot be fully identified and
eventually catch up with the "implementers" (reacted upon, often not very
thoughtfully, this will end up in a whole slew of new and possibly worse
unintended consequences).
I do believe that in many cases, fads are really due to a lack of
imagination from senior management teams. But in my experience, they also
are often implemented faithfully. And systems thinking tells us to look
for weak signals of unintended consequences...That could be the part
mostly forgotten about.
Now, as Keith asks, will that happen with LO ? Will those who faithfully
implement it and understand its intricacies be able to expect unintended
consequences and read weak signals of their buiding up manifestations ?
Maybe the key is there...
Christian
--Christian Giroux lmccgir@lmc.ericsson.se System Support Manager, Technical Assistance Center Ericsson Research Inc. Montreal
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>