Can Organizations Learn? LO16223

J.C. Lelie (janlelie@pi.net)
Sat, 13 Dec 1997 00:19:32 -0800

Replying to LO16204 --

Replying to LO16204 --

Some time ago a dialogue about the same question took place on this list.
Skip to the next paragraph if you're not interested in my opinion. Then,
as i remember correctly, i thought then that organisations cannot learn,
only people can learn. I still think that The Learning Organisation is a
briljant marketing concept, like Windows ("what you see is what you get?",
i didn't get it) or Coca Cola ("What has coke to do with it?") or Quantum
Physics ("ever met a quant? did you like it?" - and i studied experimental
physics). It proves that you can only sell a smart idea by using a label,
a brand, a flag, a TLA (Three Letter Acronym, shouldn't i have written
3LA?) and an image. For me The Learning Organisation is just short hand
for a lot of concepts, tools, thinking, experience etc. And if people want
to believe an organisation can learn? Fine with me. And if they don't than
don't.

One of the themes became the attribution of human (or animal) qualities to
concepts like organisations, like in organisations decide, grow, develop,
go to war etc.. Another thread was something like different kinds of
learning. So i'm now in kind of "deja-lu", that strange feeling that i
have read something before. Skip the next sections if you're a
super-being.

And suddenly it dawned upon me (is this still English?) that we are all
together in a SF-story (science fiction). Because, what really is
happening, through this nice WWW (world wide web), is that thoughts (like
these lines) are created, stored, retrieved, editted, commented, stored
again, recreated, associated, re-edditted, misspeled, re-imagined,
interpreted, compared, refined, expanded, interlinked, webbed, related,
communicated, patterned, forgotten, re-searched, misused, believed,
laughed at, identified, guided, categorized, manipulated, skipped,
misunderstood, fixed, triggered, responding, corelated (where did i read
this before) like in my brain. We are like individual neurons, firing when
triggered, as a certain treshold has been exceeded. When we are "moved to
speak", we speak. When we are silent, we're not at rest, we remain at
certain "potential", ready to act.

We all store certain unique ideas, experiences, thoughts, actions,
feelings, pictures, sounds, tastes, whatever. And we are scanning the
environment for friends, enemies, problems and opportunities. When such an
interesting thing happens we can: fight, fright or type. As we have
nothing to fear, and nothing to fly from, we type. If this is true, then
we, as we dialogue inside this organism, we are also capable of learning:
storing complex behaviour, which will re-emerge when triggered by the
occasion(s) that generated the patternes in the first place. So we might
be part of a big experiment in which some super-being, super-mind,
super-stitious what-ever is trying to figure out whether we are capable of
true learning: organising ourselves in ways that makes sense for the
survival of our own body, childern, tribe, species, thoughts. This Borg is
just waiting to assimilate our thoughts, our learnings, into, into who
knows what -- scarry music -- The question that occurs to me is: how do we
call this "Milgram"? Who do we think we are? Who is this Dr. Eskow, this
Simmerman, this Karash, this

Jan Lelie

> Scott Simmerman writes:
>
> "Steve took the position that organizations are not alive and therefore may
> not have any of the attributes of living creatures. Seems a bit rigid to
> me."
>
> I do want to my personal learning organization--me-- to learn not to be
> rigid.

> "Lots of folks have been using a wide
> variety of metaphors for organizational and individual behavior from the
> mathmatical chaos stuff to the Meg Wheatly sociobology kinds of things."
>
> Yes indeed, Scott. We're going through the predictable transfer from the
> latest scientific "paradigm" to common discourse. When the apple falls on
> Ike Newton, all organizations are machines that generate heat as well as
> light, need lubrication, with parts that wear out and need replacement,
> need sources of fuel, etc.

> "Personally, I do think that organizations can learn and they they do have
> an intelligence. Certain stimuli generate predictable behavior. Starve
> them and they die. Feed them and they grow. Some of the limbs have the
> power to regenerate (take the Baby Bells, now some of the largest
> organizations in the world)."
>
> Oh, boy, Scott!
>
> Actually before a Bell can have Babies it has to marry--with stockholders
> who provide the "seed" money that allows the conception and reproduction
> to take place, so that Baby Bell can have babies bells of its own.
>
> I'm poking fun, Scott, because I think it important for us to learn as
> well our clients, and for us to help ourselves as well as our clients see
> the limits of a current position, a current metaphor, a current frame of
> reference.
>
> Our field is currently confusing itself--I think--with biological
> metaphors.
>
> But I hope I'm not rigid about it--even though I don't think my
> organization is alive!
>

Faint whisper:
"Is it AD yet?"
"About 2003 past"

-- 

Drs J.C. Lelie CPIM (Jan) janlelie@pi.net (J.C. Lelie) @date@ @time@ LOGISENS - Sparring Partner in Logistical Development - + (31) 70 3243475 Fax: idem

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