LOs_and_Metanoia - "Good Enough" LO27124

From: Artur F. Silva (artsilva@mail.eunet.pt)
Date: 08/08/01


Replying to LO27081

Hello Dear At:

At 12:22 30-07-2001, At wrote:

> I have read your article several times because in my first reading I got
> the gut feeling that you meant "complex enough", but articulated it as
> "good enough". I wanted to make sure of my gut feeling. Now I want to ask
> you pertinently, did you not actually had "complex enough" in mind?

As far as I am aware the answer is no :-(( My objective was more modest.
But now that you referred the point, I agree that a good enough method
must also be complex enough.

> The two essentialities which I
> found to be most seriously impaired in positivism, were wholeness and
> openness.

Yes, I agree. Please note that those two are also the most stressed by de
Geus in the concept of Learning Company.

> Consequently the name "creative recipe" is for me a misnomer. A recipe
> involves an automatic application of a specified formula. Perhaps the name
> "creative organiser" will tell more what I have in mind. So please
> substitute "creative organiser" for "creative recipe" in all my comments
> above.

First, I like much more the concept of "creative organizer" that the
concept of "creative recipe". I am glad you have changed the name,
yourself.

But I still have a problem even with "creative organizers" -- how can we
falsify the organizers someone proposed (self or other)? That is, how do
we know if a mismatch results from bad application of the organizer or if
it proves the the organizer itself is not very good or adequate?

> Yet, dear Arthur, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. often advance with
> leaps forward when someone with sufficient creativity in them puts forward
> a speculation which on first encountering seems to be that of the
> crackpot. After some discrediting, sometimes for many years, some of these
> crackpots became acknowledged as paradigm shifters.

That's true, and can also be applied to org studies. I will try to prove
in another post that we have already available some such organizer that we
are not using effectively (for instance, Argyris and Schon's Model I).

> Your points are fine. I would like to add some too, but my reply has
> become too lengthy. However, I have to mention one thing. I have learned
> far more of a particular complex system by making comparative studies
> between that system and others of different kinds than a critical analysis
> of that particular system standing on its own.

That's a very important point, At.

Khun also stressed that the authors of profound paradigm shifts in science
were almost always young or new to the field. The problem is that the
"exemplars" and "organizers" of a certain scientific community (especially
when it has been educated in the strict specialization of the positivist
epistemology) are not enough to give a new "organization" to the studied
field. People coming from different perspectives frequently are more able
to see from a different perspective or paradigm. And in this days one must
use many different perspectives at once. That is, by the way, one of the
things you do very often in your own posts ;-)

Best regards

Artur

-- 

"Artur F. Silva" <artsilva@mail.eunet.pt>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>


"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.