Water. An introduction. LO27981

From: Daan Joubert (daanj@kingsley.co.za)
Date: 03/14/02


Replying to LO27945 --

   Dear Learners

   In his reply to my 'Water' analogy (LO27945) , At de Lange wrote
   i.a.:

> The purpose of business management seems to be maximising
> profits. The purpose of management in other kinds of
> organisations also seems to be maximising something specific.
> The purpose of a LO seems to be maximising learning. Perhaps
> there is something in the "hidden order" which gets all these
> different interpretations of purpose. What would it be?

   Dear At and all learners

   I am going to lift out two paragraphs from your answer - the above one
   and another later.

   It has been said that someone who does not care at all where he or she
   is, can never be lost.

   At first glance that statement seems strange - personally, I care
   where I find myself, and thus have never really been lost. Came close
   to it while travelling in new territory (against all rules and even
   common sense) in a drift snow storm borne by katabatic winds on the
   Antarctic, by luckily realised my folly just in time to avert very
   real disaster and to return to the known route. But who gets lost
   today? Probably nobody we know.

   In the statement "lost" refers to being in an unfamiliar place with no
   idea of how to proceed from there, except for people who have no place
   to call home. Yet in a sense that statement says more about life in
   general than the far away traveller in the jungle or desert or
   mountains. How many people do not really know, or care, what they are
   doing with their lives and therefore what they accomplish through a
   lifetime of living - so much like the person who does not care where
   he/she physically finds him/herself on earth?

   To continue before I begin to belabour the point and risk boredom.
   this saying can be extended by adding that someone who does not care
   where he/she is going also does not care in which direction he/she
   sets off nor what the preferred mode of travel should be. And
   therefore can never measure progress to anywhere, or lack of it.

   And again this applies to two levels - one with reference to where
   some traveller happens to be and where or what the destination of the
   journey is, if any such exists. The other being the journey we all
   travel through life and with particular reference those people who
   have practically nothing except old age and senility as their
   destination, if they make it that far, and with no notable milestones
   along the road.

   [As an aside, for much of my life I lived like the traveller who does
   not care where he is or the journeyer without a clear idea of the
   destination. So I have first hand knowledge of what that feels like.
   Now I know where I would like to be, one day, and I am trying to equip
   myself for the trip that lies ahead. A good reason to be here at LO
   and to stock up, because the baggage that is needed for this journey I
   am belatedly embarking on is not material.]

   But this also means that I have become sensitive to what destinations
   other people have set for themselves - or sometimes are being driven
   to reach. And the same applies to organisations - the profit motivated
   business as well as other kinds of formal organisations. (At least
   restricted to these for the time being in this discussion.)

   Lets keep to business first, because the profit motive is perceived as
   so paramount, near universal, as At observed above.

   Profit, I think we will all agree, is merely a means to an end, or
   perhaps to many ends - each his/her own. As with most [all??] cases
   where some means gets elevated to become an end in itself, the risk of
   all manner of abuses and malpractices increases substantially. I am
   sure we all know people for whom exercise is no longer the means to
   get fit and healthy, but has become an end in itself. Or people with
   an overpowering urge to neatness or to be of assistance to others,
   come what may; behaviour that goes beyond mere tidiness and
   helpfulness. These activities in themselves have become their purpose
   in life for these people. Means have become ends. And then it often
   does not take long before other people are viewed s merely as means to
   this 'new' and artificial so important 'end'. [Thanks, Andrew!!].

   It would seem to me that when means become ends, the ethics that
   should guide ones actions and one's relationships with others gets
   confused. There is no pure guideline - of the kind one can normally
   associate with true and proper ends - that serves to set standards and
   norms for one's behaviour. The behaviour, or the activity, itself has
   taken over control and the exigencies of the moment are all that are
   perceived as being important - no longer the destination. When the
   process of making money is all that matters, or when people become
   excessively - even obsessively - neat, or driven to exercise as an end
   in itself, or otherwise get totally confused about means and ends,
   they tend to become less amenable fellow travellers through life. Some
   even become obnoxious and are to be avoided.

   The same applies to business. When pursuit of profit becomes an end in
   itself, there is always justification for using - abusing? -
   unjustifiably cheap labour, for squeezing one's suppliers to the last
   minute with payments for goods delivered or services provided, and
   then to squeeze that last little bit to get their prices even lower;
   it becomes desirable to deliver the lowest acceptable quality to the
   market, even when the means exist to improve quality at relatively low
   incremental cost. But every cent now counts and selling the product
   has become more important than anything else.

   Rather spend more on advertising to tell people how much quality they
   (think they) are getting than to deliver the real McCoy.

   Which is why I believe that the normative objective for organisations
   - of all kinds, and even for the individual - has an important place
   in business. And in life. Whether one accepts the Golden Rule as a
   Christian ethic (shared by all major religions, but the "Do unto
   others . . " says it so well) or whether one simply accepts that our
   long ago 'small-tribal' origins required that we live in harmony and
   co-operation with our fellow human beings, or for whatever reason, it
   seems to me to be the core principle that defines how we treat our
   fellow human beings - as ends in their own right, not as the means to
   satisfy our drive, our compulsion, to make money.

   Yet, for a business, making that objective - improving its worth for
   all people in its environment - its primary guideline, can be shown
   also to be a recipe for lasting improved performance in terms of
   profit. I will not belabour that point here neither, but it is easy to
   see that if a business can become the preferred customer for
   suppliers, the preferred employer for workers, the preferred place for
   investment by people with money, and the preferred place to shop for
   customers and clients - which is the implication of a high worth all
   round, and which implies excellent 'value for money' for all who
   interact with it - then over the long term it has to be very
   profitable, too, in the accepted sense of the term; namely as a
   consequence of good business - not as the single overriding goal.

   In that opening quote At wrote,
> The purpose of a LO seems to be maximising learning. Perhaps
> there is something in the "hidden order" which gets all these
> different interpretations of purpose. What would it be?

   My question to the first statement would be, "Why is it necessary to
   maximise learning? What is the purpose of doing so, if the 'process of
   learning' is not to become merely an end in itself?" Like profit.

   And I accept the possibility that I have not been here at this list
   long enough to be aware of discussions into the purpose of learning
   that may have taken place long ago and that has become ingrained and
   second nature among the members. [I have not thought of using Google
   the way At did to scan the archives!! And I have not had time to
   follow up on his results.]

   Yet I would suggest that the normative directive - increasing the
   worth of the organisation for all in its environment, including,
   obviously, the members of the list themselves - is already being
   served well here at LO. In the absence of a clear indication that this
   was premeditated, it would be interesting to speculate on why this
   should be so: is this because of the innate qualities of the people
   assembled here, or is it the kind of outcome that can be expected when
   people begin to practice authentic learning? Or is it a process of
   becoming-being of the group itself that also changes people new to the
   list as they become absorbed into the culture (thus to become
   permeated with it as well) and become integrated into the processes
   taking place here?

   In a sense this is also my reply to the last question in the second
   quote above. IMHO the Golden Rule lies in the position of corner stone
   for a community of people that care who they are, where they are at
   the moment and where they are going to be in future - as individuals
   and as a community.

   At later continued with:

> As I see it, NM gives form to the purpose of management.
> So what form will the norms of NM express?

   Like Andrew's question much earlier, about means and ends, I will have
   to think on this one before I attempt an answer.

   With great appreciation to At and all here for what has been
   accomplished

   Best wishes

   Daan Joubert
   Technical analyst, market commentator and general factotum
   Roodepoort
   South Africa.

-- 

Daan Joubert <daanj@kingsley.co.za>

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