Replying to LO30466 --
Dear Organlearners,
Leo Minnigh <minnigh@dds.nl> wrote:
>> What a great pity is it not that in our organisations conflict
>> is accepted as unavoidable. Would it be the same in a
>> learning organisation?
(snip)
> What does At means with his misterious question? Are
> conflicts in LO's unaccepted, avoidable, or do (should)
> coflicts even not exist in LO's?
Greetings dear Leo,
A month or so before my reply which you responded to, the director of a
conflict management agency contacted me and asked whether i will help them
to become a LO (Learning Organisation). It is since then that my thoughts
hovered on conflicts in organisations.
I do not know how it is in the countries of fellow learners, but here in
South Africa conflicts abound in organisations. It seems that i am a
confessor because one of the first things which happens when i visit an
organisation and get a trust relationship established, is that some people
in it tell me of conflicts they got into and how sick and tired they are
for them. So, since that director contacted me i began to explore in every
subsequent conflict its relationship with a LO.
To my surprise i could attribute each conflict to the abscence of one of
the five disciplines of a LO. (Obviously, the organisations were not LOs.)
The lack of Personal Mastery seems to take the heaviest toll. It seems
that next comes Mental Models. I wish some fellow learner will make a more
formal study.
>I think that we should direct our thoughts to the bonds and
>links in an organisation. A conflict will brek a bond, or it
>avoids a bond. And if this bond is crucial for the internal
>structure of an organisation, the amount of energy necessary
>to sustain its internal structure will increase. And thus less free
>energy is left.
Leo, you have made an important conclusion with respect to the free
energy. I have been stupid. In all my observations since that director
contacted me, i have observed a lack of free energy in the people drawn
into conflicts, but did not make a connection with the conflicts
themselves as you did.
>Conflicts have the tendency to reverse the internal forces
>from tension to repulsion. And that is according to my
>opinion the reason why conflicts are the internal enemies
>of a LO.
I agree. Furthermore, as i have wrote above, conflicts are the sign that
the five LO disciplines are not operating as they should.
>A healthy organisation, which a LO is, is able to deal with
>most of the external conflicts.
I wonder about this one. What do fellow learners say? People from the LO
will know what caused the conflict, but will people from the outside party
also know it? I do not think so. Therfore i suspect that they will keep on
adding wood on the fire. The LO people will thus have to prevent them
doing it. How?
>And thus.......
>Declare war to conflicts! ;-)
It is a good thing that you added that smiley ;-)
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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