Hi Doc
Rather than trying to disagregate the response, I would provide the
following:
My coffe mug says " Don't take life so serious, its not permanent" Life,
indeed is a "game". Scientists would like to believe that there are some
natural rules as would economists and others who build systems models.
You can particpate passively as a plant or you become a lawyer or
corporate executive or even a professor. Yes the rules may be dynamic,
but many hope that they are stable, at least within our life time.
It is this element of time which is critical and I think it would be an
important issue to pursue both from the fact that the time dimension is
one that we swim in as a society and Time is a verb, not a noun. This is
a bad paraphrase of a song by a central american pop artist, Jesus is a
verb and not a noun. Also it parallels nicely with Octavia Butler's
pithy phrase, God is Change. time is the key variable. It is a
non-leverageable commodity and many think that it will be the currency
of the web.
Growth needs to be seen within this context of time. We talk about
"catastrophies" and we think about an explosion- something with a very
short half life within our experience. First, think about the Mayfly and
the Galapagos turtle and ask yourself how they see events in our lives.
How many years did it take the dinos to go extinct. How long has the US
been a country from sea-to-shining sea. Within the scope of human
existance what is the life of a corporation and why is it so important.
corporations are legal fictions. Many are predicting the demise of the
megacorp and the rise of little entrepreneurial corps. Is the "learning
organization" an extraordianary intervention to save a terminally ill
patient, the hypnotic trance of Poe's M Valdemer? This is not
rhetorical, but I have never seen anyone ask this question. What I do
see is the acceptance of "the corporation" and great energies being
exended in seeking ways to make it work, when maybe it is dead in the
larger concept of time.
Maybe we are sacrificing the State and the larger cultural values of a
society in order to save the corporation. Maybe its time for triage?
Maybe the corproation is a parasite living off the larger societal
organism?
This listserv on the LO has made the assumption that the corporation is
the base, the pond. After all, it pays wages and hires consultants, the
nurishing mother. But at what price for taking the king's shilling? Are
all these paths, TQM, Open Book, LO,... just so many "cancer cures" for
a terminally ill patient?
The questions which you ask are important. But where we take this
discussion depends on the "game". In my posting, I indicated that I felt
that some "variables" which had been ignored, are now coming into play.
Many of these are ones which are being seen only thorugh a glass darkly.
As Lewis Carroll has written, "The time has come, the Walrus said, to
speak of many things....
thoughts?
tom abeles
--tom abeles <tabeles@tmn.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>