What is lost by chauvinism LO15049

Bill Harris (billh@lsid.hp.com)
Fri, 19 Sep 1997 08:01:03 -0800 (PDT)

Replying to LO15040 --

Ray Evans Harrell wrote:

> I wonder how much expertise and knowledge is lost when various
> Internationalist Philosophies march across the world removing people from
> their contexts and making them forget what their peoples have been working
> at solving since the beginning of time. I mean this in a political,

and

> I relate the lack of care that encourages such proselytization to
> chauvinism. It can come from a lack of insight in any culture. Often,

Ray,

Thanks for your insights into this question from an artistic point of
view. As usual, I learn a lot from your writing, even when I don't reply.

This message speaks to me, too. I've often seen a company look for "best
practices" which they can bring in to make their processes better.
Perhaps more deadly, we sometimes try to "give away" our best practices to
other, related communities (perhaps other parts of our company) to help
them achieve what we think we've achieved.

I've seen those efforts fail a lot, sometimes because they just wither and
die, and sometimes because they generate active resistance and rejection.
I've come to believe that our "best practices" are, as you indicate,
adaptations which enable us to deal effectively with our problems _in
light of our local values and history_. When we rip out the adaptation
and pass it along _without_ the values or the history (or even an
acknowledgement of their importance), the adaptation seems destined to be
rejected.

This topic is of personal interest to me and, so it would seem, a
significant concern of any learning organization group like this mailing
list. If this claim be true, then copying what other do isn't quite
enough to tranform a group into a learning organization.

> Middle Eastern roots, we tend to think that chauvinism was also invented
> in the West. But the inability to appreciate uniqueness or appreciate
> differences is worldwide as the following story illustrates.

Thanks for the reminder. Perhaps it's a symptom of our chauvinism that we
think we invented the concept? :-)

Bill

-- 
Bill Harris                             Hewlett-Packard Co. 
R&D Engineering Processes               Lake Stevens Division 
domain: billh@lsid.hp.com               M/S 330
phone: (425) 335-2200                   8600 Soper Hill Road
fax: (425) 335-2828                     Everett, WA 98205-1298 


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