Ranking.. Even here.. LO17291

John Zavacki (jzavacki@greenapple.com)
Thu, 5 Mar 1998 06:07:49 -0500

Replying to LO17287 --

You may have your tongue in your cheek on this one, Steve, but the questions
have some merit.

Steve Eskow says:

>Is Rick Karash our leader here? If so, are there people in this discussion
>who believe that our group and our discussions would be improved if his
>role and powers were ended? (He has used his power to prevent one of my
>messages from being published: should he have this power?)

1. Rick as leader: is Rick leading, facilitating, or just acting as gate
keeper?

2. He's prevented two of my messages from being published since I've been
on the list. One was a missent private message which would have
embarassed both myself and the intended recipient (a bit of "mentoring" on
style and attitude) and the other was an arrogant, pompous nonsensicality
I should have read before I pushed the send button. (Thanks again, Rick!!)

3. This is a moderated list, meaning, yes, he should have this power, if
this is to remain dialogue. (We might ask Rick to not moderate for a
week, let everything through and then decide if it's "power" or good LO
protocol.

>Anyone can post here, regardless of the quality of his or her messages.
>Would the quality of the discussion here be improved if we were ranked: by
>Rick, or a committee?

4. I think we all rank on the list. We all have the power to delete,
ignore, privately flame, praise, or have non-LO dialogue, or arguement. We
don't have the power, however, of affecting another writer's economic
system,.

I don't use ranking in my organization. I concentrate, instead, on trying
to determine whether or not an individual is out of position, in need of
coaching, counselling, teaching, training, Is it all objective? Probably
not, We're all systems variables and our behavior effects the outputs of
the system, the balance of the system, the ability of the system to
respond to change. When I find it beyond my power to reach someone living
with a mental model that is not consonant with the goal of the system, I
need to go to my personal gatekeeper, facilitator, moderator to see if the
message I'm about to send is itself consonant with the common goal. We
call that part of organizational learning management.

John

-- 

"John Zavacki" <jzavacki@greenapple.com>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>