Compassion & Sense of Beauty LO14848

Tadeems@aol.com
Thu, 4 Sep 1997 23:39:51 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO14833 --

David wrote,

>I was struck...by the strong spiritual tone of his [Senge's] words and by
>the way they echoed taoist or zen philosophy.

Definitely. And,

> Essentially he pointed out that the essentials of the whole complicated
> business of developing a learning organization boiled down to the
> simplicity of developing those inherent human qualities latent in all of
> us, which allow us to experience a sense of compassion and beauty for the
> world around us.

Simplicity is central here; too often, we complicate things far more than
they need to be. I don't know as the qualities he spoke of are 'latent'
or not; my experience has been they only become latent when the people
enter a workplace that works hard to discourage those aspects of ourselves
which make us most fully human.

> Could it be that one of the many reasons why so many OD practitioners
> experience difficulties and obstacles in making the learning organization
> really happen is that the focus of their interventions is not orientated
> enough towards developing these "soul" like qualities?

Part of the difficulty is that we do indeed try to "make" this happen,
rather than focusing on the removal of barriers and allowing a more fully
human workplace to emerge. The cultivation of an educative environment.
And as I've said before, I am struck with the convergence seen in the
research, practice cases, and popular literature which all point to
similar answers to the dysfunctions of work, learning, and life. Study
LO's, radical humanism, OD and org transformation, workplace ecology,
spirituality of work, working with soul, adult psychology and development,
biology, physics, etc., they all point to the same qualities,
characteristics, ways of being and becoming. (right back to Ken Wilber's A
Brief History of Everything).

We've already seen in some research, though, that the *reason* e.g.
companies embrace a more soulful or humanized approach to work greatly
impacts whether or not sustained change is achieved. Places that begin
mouthing words about spirituality and soul as simply one more
"value-added" (what is that, anyway???) program, typically don't see much
in terms of any lasting results. If the reason for embracing these ideas
is to simply enhance profit, then we can be sure we'll see them tossed out
in the near future in favor of yet another management trend. Places that
have made these changes for real (or who have always operated this way)
recognize that there is "right work," and there is "wrong work," and
leaders within these companies strive to create a more humanized
workplace, a more natural, vital workplace. One result of this is strong
profits. But the profits are not the end-goal; right work is the goal.

And this leads back to questions from last year on this list: Do we live
to work, or work to live? And what is the purpose of a company's profits?

-- 

Terri A Deems tadeems@aol.com

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>