Role of Evaluation in LO LO9539
Hal Steinbeigle (hals@unm.edu)
Tue, 27 Aug 1996 21:35:55 -0600 (MDT)
On 26 August Keith Cowan wrote:
>
> I believe this is the root of executives' difficulties with adopting a LO
> style. They have few ways of measuring whether their actions are having
> any real effect. If nine managers in Rol's company try to encourage the
> individual initiative like Rol did, there would likely be 9 ways this is
> attempted with 9 different outcomes. Because the managers have their own
> individual styles, the interaction will produce different results. Add to
> that the employees' individual styles and you have an exploding number of
> outcomes: 9 managers each with 9 employees will result in 81 "flavours".
>
> Measuring is only practiced infrequently through surveys and these are
> vague by their statistical nature. Tighter "control" would disempower the
> managers by checking up on them in real time. So the change process when
> it comes to "style" is unmanageable because the results cannot be measured
> in the timeframe needed to make any corrections. This is what gives Rol
> the flexibility to try what he wants in managing. But it hinders any
> corporate wide change. It is similar to throwing the concepts at the wall
> and hoping some of them will stick. Long term change is possible through
> repeated indoctrination and through selective hiring and firing, but, even
> this is hard to measure.
Responding to this portion of Keith's message I would argue that if
executives have difficulty measuring the effects of their actions it is
because the evaluation is poorly conceived, poorly executed, or poorly
interpreted.
I don't believe the organization can truly learn unless it evaluates various
programs effectively and regularly.
Hal Steinbeigle
University of New Mexico
hals@unm.edu
--
Hal Steinbeigle <hals@unm.edu>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations
For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>