>Hi everyone!
>At the moment I am working on a manual to help and support the integration
>of new employees in a company. I work in an IT-consulting-company with 40
>employees.
>Have you got experience or know literature about introducing and
>integration of Newbies? IMO many manuals talk about security, rights and
>working-time but forget the importance of this job for the learning
>organization.
>Do you think that the culture of a company should be experienced or
>explicit explained?
>We could think how we can analyze the inclusion-code, systemtheoretical
>spoken. Maybe the researches about cultures of companies deal with
>integration theories.
>best regards
Dear Ragnar,
May I open with Mary Follett's inspirational advice with this respect to
integrating the new person to the existing -but maybe shifting
organisation of persons, whatever the 'forms' each take;-)
"The teacher is not one who has lived and the student one who is going to
live, but that both are living now, in the present, that it should be
fresh life meeting fresh life."
I have always found asking telling questions not just telling answers is a
nice deep way to form an open and kinder integration.
A while ago I was with a trainer of racehorses.
Paul has, and still does, train racehorses here and in America where he
told me he was in charge of the stables of one of the richest owners in
America.
Paul's father and his father before him bred horses, trained horses and
rode horses in Ireland. It was, so to speak, in his blood.
Although in the 'work' we did together formally I was taking the role of
the tutor and Paul was in the role of the learner, as an inveterate
learner I just has to ask him, - " How do you know when a race horse is
happy?"
"You don't!" came the unexpected reply.
" But with all your experience you are telling me..."
"No, it isn't that you don't know or sense the state of the horse, but
horses are not "happy", they are CONTENT. I mean a horse that is happy is
'content', -that is the way it is with a horse."
"So, how do you tell if a horse is content?"
"Well, if a horse is content he will often stand with one front leg sort
of crooked, and he will hang his head down, sort of looking at the ground
close."
"That makes me think he would look depressed."
"Sure, but that is how it is with a horse, for a horse."
Then I asked Paul about what happens when a horse goes to a new stable; I
asked what happens between the horses when the new horse is around the yard
early on.
" They will call to him, and they will communicate their friendship in all
sorts of way, like they are supporting him."
"And does the horse respond to this?"
"Nearly always."
"That is remarkable Paul. -May I come and visit the horses at the yard one
day, maybe even bring some people with me to meet these horses of yours?"
"Yep, sure, that would be fine."
There is (I find) in animals a 'spareness', and 'economy of being' that is
very fit for life. Very poised.
I am beginning to appreciate or glimpse if not fully understand and see
how it might be that animals have no 'need' of a state of happiness,
principally because they do not long for things as we do and so create
unhappiness.
They are not driven, as we so often seem to be.
For them, 'seated' in their own existence, as they seem to be, 'grounded'
as they apparently are in some other reality with the world -the dualities
of our comprehending world do not exist.
For them contentment is a kind of superior 'middle ground', a 'reality of
and in reality', that possibly speaks to those with an ear to listen and
an eye to see and a desire to feel for it of a kind of 'peace on earth'-
If not 'heaven on earth'.
A sufficiency unto itself; both in and of life.
Anyway, a beauteous mystery.
I do not know if this helps you as an example of 'organizational
researches about cultures of companies deal with integration theories.'
Maybe you should ask the 'Newbies'?
For me a sad sight is a horse alone in a field; I will always stop and ask
him how things are.
Heart to heart and eye to eye.
No matter the distance that he wishes to put between us, I find a truth in
him, in that.
Best wishes,
Andrew Campbell
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