Replying to LO29806 --
Dear Organlearners,
John Zavacki <systhinc@msn.com> writes:
>Malcolm and At on GE's status as a LO:
>>>But then, as always, I welcome the thoughts of those who
>>>see it differently.
>>
>>The same here. But it seems that we agree on GE not being
>>a LO nor on the road to emerge into one.
>
>I won't take anything out of context here. You've both made
>excellent observations, but I will disagree. A learning
>organization is one in which the Vth discipline is reached through
>the use of the other four. This learning of systems thinking does
>not need to be in the head of the CEO, or the Chairman, or any
>other titular leader. It lives in the communities of practice within
>the overall organization.
Greetings dear John,
Thank you for disagreeing. It made me aware that GE mighy be a "tacit LO"
if not a "formal LO", i.e., one that has been transformed with the five LO
disciplines in mind.
But just to make sure that GE is not a "formal LO", i used Googles advance
search engine to make sure whether any of the following phrases (using 2nd
window) occur on GE's site www.ge.com The number of hits is given in
brackets:
personal mastery (0)
team learning (2)
mental models (0)
shared vision (0)
systems thinking (0)
I studied the two hits for "team learning", but they do not refer to it in
the LO sense. Also, the surname Senge does not occur even once. Thus i
have to conclude that GE is not a "formal LO".
>In GE, as in my own org (ITT Industries), there are
> communities of practice in systems thinking being built
>through the use of mental modelling, extensive efforts at
>both personal mastery and team learning, shared visions
>and values.(snip)
>
>These are the LOs within the LO.
Or "LO cells" as i prefer to call them in terms my experiences the past
year. It is these very "LO cells" which may indicate that a "tacit LO" is
emerging. I write "may" because if the "LO cells" do not "multiply and
differentiate" as in a growing organism, the organisation is not on the
road to emerge as a "tacit LO".
How to find out whether GE is perhaps a "tacit LO"? This is not easy
since we cannot expect the dedicated LO terminology to occur in the
site. But there are some words in the dedicated LO terminology which
Senge had to import elsewhere. In an appendix to the Fifth Discipline
identifies eleven essences in a LO. Two of them, wholeness and
openness, occurs profusely in information on organisations all over
the globe. For example, with the site not restricted to www.ge.com
and in the 1st window the results are
organisation wholeness (7 240)
organisation openness (129 000)
But on the site itself with in the 1st window the results are
wholeness (0)
openness (17)
The last search seemed to be promising so i studied each of these
hits. In
"GE Annual Report 1996: Letter to Our Share Owners"
< http://www.ge.com/annual96/share.htm >
perhaps the following may refer to a "tacit LO".
"Stock options--formerly held by a few hundred, now by 22,000
GE employees--provide a powerful incentive to learn and share
and work together."
"You can talk--you can preach--all you want about a
'learning organization', but, from our experience, reinforcing
management appraisal and compensation systems are the
critical enablers that must be in place if rhetoric is to become
reality."
The word "openness" occur in the sentence
"Just as Work-Out got us to a culture of learning and openness
that defined the way we behave, quality improvement, under the
disciplined rubric of Six Sigma methodology, will define the way
we work."
The report ends with
"What better time, with this "learning, sharing, doing" culture in
our blood--and with quality growing by the hour in each of our
operations around the globe--to have before us not one, but
several of the biggest growth opportunities in our history. We are
determined to seize them. We are determined to grow.
Thanks for your continuing support.
(signature)
John F. Welch, Jr.
Chairman of the Board and
Chief Executive Officer"
The second document
"GE Annual Report 1995: Letter to Share Owners"
< www.ge.com/annual95/ibb3a18.htm >
is in a similar vein. The third document
"99-287 Brandeis GE Report2"
< www.ge.com/community/fund/GEFund_CollegeBound.pdf >
is about a traing program which GE funded at the Brandeis University.
There are no other documents in which openness is used in conjunction with
learning.
John, since you stressed that the four disciplines Personal Mastery,
Team Learning, Shared Vision and Mental Models lead to deepening
into the fifth discipline Systems Thinking, I decided to use in the
1st window
personal learning vision mindset
and the 3rd window
system systems
There was 1 hit
"GE Annual Report 2001"
< www.ge.com/annual01/download/pdf/2001_GE_AR.pdf >
Here is what it said on the vision:
"Generations of GE leaders and customers will have the opportunity
to benefit from Jack's vision and commitment. What a fitting tribute."
It was said with respect to initiating the John E Welsh Learning Centre.
Well, i wrote in my previous contribution that the LO dream of the leader
is far from the organisation functioning as a LO. It seems to be the case
for GE too. I am not convinced at all that GE is a even "tacit LO", i.e.,
an organisation functioning as a LO, but not knowing it formally in the
Sengian sense. As for "LO cells", they might exist, but i got no reference
to even one of them in whatever terminology.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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