Neil Olanoff wrote:
>I especially like the organic quality of Follett's 1918 description: 'It
>comes from the intermingling of all, of my work fitting into yours and
>yours into mine." She seems to be saying that great leaders develop in
>part out of a realization of thair interdependence with followers.
Yes, indeed. She applied this not just to leadership but to all complex
social relationships, decades before people used the concept of
"co-evolution" in social systems. She called on people "not to adapt
ourselves to a situation...but to take account of that reciprocal
adjustment, that interactive behaviour between the situation and ourselves
which means a change in both the situation and ourselves." (Note the word
"interactive." She was writing in 1925!)
One other passage about her concept of reciprocal adjustment: "Trade
unionism today is not a response to capitalism; it is a response to the
relation between itself and capitalism....The concept of responsibility
takes on entirely new meaning with the introduction of the notion of
circular response into the social sciences....We can never understand the
total situation without taking into account the evolving situation. And
when a situation changes we have not a new variation under the old fact,
but a new fact."
These quotes from an anthology called _Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of
Management._ HBS Press, 1996.
cheers,
tom
Thomas Petzinger Jr.
tom@petzinger.com
<http://www.petzinger.com/>http://www.petzinger.com
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--"Thomas Petzinger Jr." <tom@petzinger.com>
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