Replying to LO28417 --
Hello all of you who are working hard and managing efficiently; and all
who are not working nor managing; Feel free to skip this message.
Making progress seems to be at hand. The issue seems to pivot around
self-management, self-empowerment, self-control, self-responsibility,
self-learning, self-subordination, self-cooperation. I thought the
core-issue of the paradigm-shift was splitting two concepts, but it might
be that it is the fusion of two.
We need others to learn about ourselves. We learn through experimentation:
we ake some of our behaviour and project it on others and see what
happens. Or we take in something we experience, some behaviour of others
and try out how it feels. In doing so we create groups and transfer
emotions and feeling to the group. It started in the small family group,
then it goes on in the peergroup and it ends in large groups, like
corporations and nations. The learning process itself is nice and
stimulating, because we develop ourselves. But we've also got to learn
things about ourselves that are not nice. What is puzzling however, is
that some of the things we do not like - of ourselves - , we get back in
ways we do not like. What to do now? Blame ourselves of blame the group?
We found a solution: we blame another group!
For instance: we have to do some selfmanagement and correct some of our
own "bad" desires, things, notion, ideas, situations and dreams (jealousy,
inadequacy, weakness, lust, anger, angst, insecurity, solitude, stuckness,
you name it, but perhaps also: super power, overacheivement, original sin,
karma, parents or family, history of the nation or people we're born into,
anything will do). The response we get is that some of these desires and
dreams are "bad", so we think we are "bad". In stead of accepting that we
sometimes have "bad" feelings and desires, we start to "blame" the other -
perhaps the managers, for creating these bad feelings. It happens almost
automatically. In the long run, the others cannot handle the "bad"
feelings, and have to give effective feed-back ("I notice you doing this,
this generates with me a feeling of "badness", how do you perceive this"
or self-recoginize that it is all-right and normal to have bad feelings,
everybody does. The problem arises from the self-management of the "bad"
feelings) and feed the "bad" feelings back. There is no pleasant way of
giving this kind of feed back, so we tend to postpone it. (Or we have to
learn it and it takes time) Which makes it worse. Or, as we are also
self-aware and in the process of learning, the "bad" feelings are
projected on other groups. The other group can do the same, so we end up
in a situation were there are two - or more - groups that blame others for
their own bad feelings AND feel good about that. Sounds familiar?
So we have created a lot of tension, because we blame other groups for
"bad" feelings, habits, thoughts, actions (or onactions) that we have but
do not allow ourselves to have. And they blame us. In the beginning these
process work well and produce a complex interaction that actually produces
a lot of wealth, speaking in action-reaction terms ... as long as we do
not touch the wire that is connected to the fuse that will spark the
dynamite of the dynamics of the system. This tension has to be released
now and then in wars and conflicts - did you ever wonder why they're still
with us - were we re-enact the Good Guy Bad Guy metaphore. (Legenda: the
bad guy usually steals the woman from the good guy. Why? Because both have
"bad" feelings about this woman). This systems of large corporation that
fight each other - it is called "free market" - is just another way of
releasing the tensions we have ourselves. The harder we work and the more
efficient we manage, the sooner they come back to haunt us.
But of course, the shadow resides within ourself. By attacking the bad
feelings, we do not make them "good". In fact, we have "bad" feelings just
to have good feelings too. So the resolution lies in creating or
recreating the choice: you can have your cake and eat it, but not at the
same time. This doesn't imply that when you've choose the cake, you cannot
decide to eat it later. And when you've eaten it: bake a new one! Do i
choose to manage now or do i choose to be managed AND be aware of the
choice when it is appropriate. Do i choose to belong to this group or do i
choose not to belong AND be aware of the choice that you can do both. A
group is not a cake. Learn to ask yourself on the fly, with one foot in
the situation and one outside: "am i in, or am i out" and step out - or in
- once a while; noteably when you're stuck.
The very differences between people that we recognize only in others and
that help us in creating the basis on which individuals can meaningfully
form a group plus they way in which we organize this exchange of
differences enables a self-referential system that as a whole works to
allocate the differential tasks necessary for the overall well-being but
also reinforces ways of perceiving others and other groups that seems
different from us in ways that threaten the fabric of the whole. There is
no solution to this issue just living with the choice - or: lving is
choosing.
Hmmm, if i had had it my way, it surely would have been differently not
so,
Keep up the good work,
Jan
AM de Lange wrote:
> Yes, the organisation is paralysed and I am paralysed too. Allow me to
> describe my own paralyses.
>
> How can I stop people from being controlled and even battered by this
> Tsunami of information? By presenting them with a Tsunami of information
> as I do on our dear LO-dialogue? ;-) No that I cannot do because it will
> not work. So in this sense I am paralysed very much.
>
> But I am not paralysed completely. I have mention that I am part of a team
> on a small project in that organisation. In that project I see my task to
> guide everyone incolved with it into authentic learning.
>
> Since he reversed the facts going back into the past to obtain data for
> extrapolating to the future, he made the assumption that managing the
> organisation is a reversible process. He as once a practising chemist
> should have known better. Any irreversible reaction going into the wrong
> direction has to be complemented by another irreversible reaction to steer
> its subsequent outcome into the right direction. Trying to reverse an
> irreversible reaction requires too much hard work for which the
> organisation does not have the free energy.
--With kind regards - met vriendelijke groeten,
Jan Lelie
LOGISENS - Sparring Partner in Logistical Development mind@work est. 1998 - Group Resolution Process Support Tel.: (+31) (0)70 3243475 or GSM (car): (+31)(0)65 4685114 http://www.mindatwork.nl info@mindatwork.nl
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