Buy Insight Edge: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Evolutionary Management by Ervin Laszlo (ISBN: ) from Amazon's Book Store .
Table of contents
However mathematicians are likely to assert that "anything that shows up as naturally as this in the mathematics has to be all over the place" Stewart , p. And the literature on chaos can cite examples that appear to validate this claim. Another is the propagation of turbulence in fluids. In the field of chemistry, Prigogine and colleagues won the Nobel prize for work showing that under appropriate conditions chemical systems pass through randomness to evolve into higher level self-organised dissipative structures — so called because they dissipate unless energy is fed in from outside to maintain them.
It has been used as the basis for an approach offering an alternative or at least a complement to Darwinian natural selection as an explanation of the ordered complexity of living organisms. Complexity itself is centre-stage, rather than an emergent property of research in particular disciplines, at the Santa Fe Institute. At SFI, set up in as an independent research centre, scientists some of them eminent from a range of disciplines — physics, biology, psychology, mathematics, immunology and more - have engaged with computing expertise to conduct interdisciplinary work on the behaviour of complex adaptive systems.
They have built models which can be interpreted as representing biological, ecological and economic phenomena. All of this is undoubtedly an exciting journey of intellectual discovery, which already boasts very significant achievements. Some distinguished authors even believe that this work already represents a watershed for natural science, ending three centuries since Newton of determinism see Prigogine But why should it be of interest to managers? The next section considers the arguments which have been advanced for the extension of these ideas to the role of management. Management and complexity theory.
This outline will centre on the work of Ralph Stacey: Justifications of the significance of complexity theory for management generally start from a description of the pre-existing state of management theory and practice, which stresses its unacknowledged but self-imposed limitations, its tunnel-vision. These limitations are, subsequently, shown to be transcended by complexity-based thinking. Such accounts include the occasional straw person set up the more resoundingly to be knocked over, but there are also palpable hits on juicy targets. Given that the key finding claimed for complexity theory is the effective unknowability of the future, the common assumption among managers that part of their job is to decide where the organisation is going, and to take decisions designed to get it there is seen as a dangerous delusion.
Management, afflicted by increasing complexity and information overload, can react by becoming quite intolerant of ambiguity. Factors, targets, organisational structures all need to be nailed down. Uncertainty is ignored or denied. The management task is seen to be the enunciation of mission, the determination of strategy, and the elimination of deviation. Stability is sought as the ultimate bulwark against anxiety, which might otherwise become overwhelming.
All of these managerial reflexes, many of them seeming unassailably commonsensical, are we shall see quite counter-productive when viewed from a complexity theory perspective. Let us summarise some of the received wisdom about how well-managed businesses and the public sector agencies which emulate them should proceed. There should be a Chief Executive Officer presiding over a cohesive management team with a vision or strategic intent supported by a common culture.
The organisation should stick to its core business and competencies, build on its strengths, adapt to the market environment, and keep its eyes focused on the bottom line. All completely wrong from the perspective of management writers influenced by complexity theory. This kind of management theory and practice, Stacey and others tell us, bears the hallmarks of the over-rationalist thinking which has dominated since the triumphs of Newton and Descartes.
The organisation, like the universe, is conceptualised as a giant piece of clockwork machinery. The latter was thought to be, in principle, entirely predictable; and good management should be able to get similarly reliable performance from the latter. Discoveries by the theorists of complexity and chaos show that even the natural world does not operate this way — and this revelation of the role of creative disorder in the universe needs to be taken to heart by managers. The consequences, as Stacey comprehensively summarises, are to turn much management orthodoxy on its head: The list is longer.
What lessons, it is claimed, does complexity theory teach managers? These can be divided, loosely, into two categories: The latter, of course, derive at least in principle from the former. The general lessons concern how learning can be fostered in organisations, how they should view instability, and the negative consequences of a common internal culture. The need for an emphasis on learning stems from the central finding of this theory — that the future is in principle unknowable for systems of any complexity.
If we accept that we can have no idea of the future environment, then long-term planning becomes an irrelevance, if not a hindrance. That is, it is not enough for managers to adjust their behaviour in response to feedback on the success of their actions relative to pre-established targets; they also need to reflect on the appropriateness, in the light of unfolding events, of the assumptions the mental model used to set up those actions and targets. This sort of learning cannot easily take place within an organisation which puts a premium on maintaining a common culture.
This is not an atmosphere in which searching re-examination of cherished assumptions can thrive — rather the reverse. For an organisation to seek stable equilibrium relationships with an environment which is inherently unpredictable is bound to lead to failure. The organisation will build on its strengths, fine-tune its adjustments — and succumb to more innovative rivals. Successful strategies, especially in the longer-term, do not result from fixing an organisational intention and mobilising around it; they emerge from complex and continuing interactions between people.
Management complexity theorists emphasise, rather, the importance of openness to accident, coincidence, serendipity. Strategy is the emerging resultant. Rather than trying to consolidate stable equilibrium, the organisation should aim to position itself in a region of bounded instability, to seek the edge of chaos. The organisation should welcome disorder as a partner, use instability positively. In this way new possible futures for the organisation will emerge, arising out of the controlled ferment of ideas which it should try to provoke.
Instead of a perfectly planned corporate death, the released creativity leads to an organisation which continuously re-invents itself. Members of an organisation in equilibrium with its environment are locked into stable work patterns and attitudes; far from equilibrium, behaviour can be changed more easily. So far so good, perhaps. Their motherhoodicity lies in their generality and non-specificity, their sense of being unchallengable within the offered framework of ideas. If you accept the relevance of complexity theory to the managerial condition, then you must also accept the package of systemic categorical imperatives which are embedded in it.
As Wheatley says, the first step required is an act of faith. There are thus two reasons for paying close attention to the actionable proposals — for managerial structure, strategy etc. The first is that managers are thereby provided with a subjective reality test. Managers who can say, after due reflection, that these concrete proposals are plausibly beneficial will feel less inclined to be sceptical, more inclined to accept the general stance as well as the specific recommendations; and vice versa. The second, of course, is that it is through the specifics that change in management practice will be effected.
Stacey makes a key distinction between ordinary and extraordinary management. It employs a logical analytic process involving data analysis, goal setting, evaluating options against goals, rational choice, implementation through the hierarchy, monitoring.
This is planning and management based on a shared ideological consensus, with control at its centre. Competent ordinary management is necessary if the organisation is to deliver cost-effective performance. Extraordinary management , by contrast, is what is required if the organisation is to be able to transform itself in situations of open-ended change.
The problems and practices of ordinary management have been repeatedly addressed in management texts. What is innovatory is the concept of extraordinary management. Extraordinary management requires the activation of the tacit knowledge and creativity available within the organisation. This necessitates the encouragement of informal structures — for example, workshops round particular issues or processes, with membership drawn from different business units, functions, and levels.
Formation of these groups should be essentially spontaneous, provoked by paradoxes, anomalies and conflicts thrown up in the process of normal management. They need to be self-organising, capable of redefining or extending their remit rather than being bound by fixed terms of reference. Under these conditions group learning can occur, and its results inputted as arguments to the broader management process.
In the necessary absence of hard evidence, arguments in favour of new assumptions and directions will be analogical and intuitive, and the process of decision making will be political as champions attempt to persuade others to their point of view. Stacey does not propose that ordinary management should drive out extraordinary management. His case is rather that both are needed in viable organisations, and they must be enabled to coexist. There is, however, an intrinsic tension between the two modes. It follows that one key task of senior management is to manage these boundaries. It needs also, eg by mid-career recruitment or job rotation, to ensure that there is not a single homogeneous organisational culture.
It should take steps to promote an active internal politics that is both open and broadly democratic in style. Senior management should not espouse a unique vision or long-term plan, but should rather promote the conditions for the emergence of an evolving agenda of strategic issues, and aspirations. It should intervene only selectively, and then at sensitive points; to do so effectively it needs to have an understanding of the qualitative patterns of behaviour which such intervention could produce, without wishing to control it to a preconceived path or believing that it could.
In effect management needs to combine permissive style with abrasive challenge. If necessary it should provoke conflict through ambiguity, deliberately steer away from equilibrium, intentionally escalate small changes, amplify rather than damp down the effects of chance events. The role for analysis in extraordinary management is extraordinarily limited. While the whole purpose is to ensure long-term survival, there is no long-term plan and precious little long-term planning.
The strategic role of senior management is largely to facilitate processes of dialogue which can lead to innovation, rather than to preside as final arbiters over an elaborate analytic process. Stacey in particular relegates rather cursorily even those tools which might be thought to be consistent with extraordinary management eg simulation, scenario analysis to a marginal role, if any. This downplaying of analysis is asserted rather than argued.
Nevertheless it clearly stems from the very firm distinction which Stacey draws between rationality and creativity. For him rationality is fine, and necessary, for handling routine business, but is just not up to the job of sense-making in poorly structured situations. There is, however, evidence to support the common-sense observation that in practice rationality and creativity are notkept in such tidy compartments.
Shallice has demonstrated that dealing with novel situations involves complex cognitive processes which have many rational elements. How new are the lessons? These lessons constitute an ambitious agenda for change. Explicit claims are made to have identified managerial imperatives for the survival of organisations. Implicit at least is a claim to have a more adequate characterisation of the threats and opportunities confronting organisations and their managements than has previously been articulated.
It is therefore appropriate to evaluate the achievement of the management complexity writers on two fronts: These two approaches will be taken in this and in the following section. The general question of novelty has two components. Are there important features of their analysis which have been previously identified and prioritised, but from other management research perspectives or traditions?
And have disciplines peripheral to or outside management taken narrowly generated other proposals for handling these issues which the complexity writers ignore or unreasonably dismiss? On the first of these Stacey repeatedly cites other management researchers who, despite working in very different conceptual frameworks, have reached comparable conclusions. This programme is often presented as in radical opposition to managerial common wisdom — which certainly helps it to grab attention.
The evidence that elements of their diagnosis have been reached independently by others portrays the message in a more reassuring light. There is clearly a difficulty here — the contradiction between having your cake and eating it. In assessing the novelty of the complexity perspective we need also to take account of the claims for priority in certain areas which other approaches could lodge.
Writers like Vickers and Schon took related systems concepts into broader social discourse a generation and more ago. Etzioni is another thinker who anticipates some of the complexity-based insights. His mixed scanning approach to planning is an attempt to encompass the paradox that organisations need both control and innovation.
Stacey holds that systems contributions pre-dating the complexity revolution are irredeemably trapped. They operate within the stable equilibrium paradigm, and are wedded to notions of efficiency, effectiveness and control. They are thus outdated by the new findings. Such literature as does exist, in a number of other disciplines, on disorderly processes in organisations, emergent strategies, dialectical evolution etc. The managerially relevant claims for complexity theory are thus large. In their demotion of pre-existing systems insights, and in a number of other respects, they rest explicitly on the authority of science.
We should look next at the solidity of this foundation. What is the evidence? It hardly needs saying that there is no formally validated evidence demonstrating that the complexity theory-based prescriptions for management style, structure and process do produce the results claimed for them.
These results are generally to do with long-term survival, a phenomenon not susceptible to study using short-term experimental methods. Such evidence as is adduced is almost exclusively anecdotal in character. The stories range from improving tales of successful corporate improvisation, to longer accounts of organisational death wishes or of innovation which bypasses the obstruction of the formal hierarchy; there are also approving quotations from business leaders.
The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is most persuasive to those who experienced the events in question, and to those who are already persuaded. For others it can be hard to judge the representativeness of the sample of exhibits. This is especially so if, even unintentionally, different standards of proof or disproof are used for different sides of an argument.
Such distortions do occur in Stacey Thus the advantage of opportunistic policies is supported by presenting examples of success, while the perils of formal planning methods are driven home by examples of failure. Yet obviously opportunism has its failures, and analytic techniques even have their modest achievements — which are not cited.
In the absence of a conclusive case based on evidence of organisational success, it is not surprising that great weight is placed on the authority of science. Wheatley has it in her title — "Leadership and the New Science". Merry relegates it to his sub-title, but in the plural: These are liberally peppered with phrases like "Scientific discoveries have shown that…" or "The science of complexity shows that…". The illustrative examples provided are commonly of natural rather than social or managerial phenomena — the behaviour of molecules when the temperature of liquid rises, a laser beam, the weather….
This invocation of natural science comes out clearly in a passage on page 11 of Stacey A list of Nobel and other eminent scientists who have developed "the science of complexity" is presented. So far this science has "focused primarily on the evolution of life and the behavior of chemical and physical systems". However "it is not only to natural systems that this science applies; as I will show in Chapter One, we too constitute such systems".
These systems which "we" also constitute are complex adaptive systems — precisely those to which the findings of the "new science" apply. If we are to accept the argument from scientific authority there are a number of links in the argument. First we have to accept that the "findings" do actually apply to the natural systems which natural scientists have investigated.
Then we have to accept that these findings can be generalised to all such systems. Then we have to accept that organisations let us leave individual humans out of it do constitute systems of the same kind. And then we have to accept that findings can be transferred across from one domain to a quite different one. This could be a long haul!
Peter Senge and the learning organization
We should start with the least problematic element — the solidity of those natural science results in their own domains. There are indeed a considerable number of findings which have passed stringent tests of scientific validity. We should ignore any ultra-Popperian objections that all scientific results can only be provisional, a spur to refutation — or we will have no solid ground to stand on. Stewart provides a good source of such examples — the weather of course , ecological cycles, fluid dynamics, chemical clocks… Experiments are only possible in some cases, but in all observations of real world events fit patterns consistent with aspects of complexity theory.
What follows from this is that complexity theory is a field within which some surprising and diverse results have been found, leading on to some further intriguing conjectures. What does not follow is that any such result necessarily applies to all situations which share some of its structural features for example, mathematical structure.
They are the outputs of computer simulations. Typically some simple laws of behaviour and interaction are postulated, and the computer is used to see how the operations of these laws would translate into long-term development or macro-behaviour. Krugman shows how aggregate patterns of land use eg the formation of multiple business districts, racial segregation could result from individual responses to purely local conditions.
Stacey reports a wide variety of simulations, mostly produced under the auspices of the Santa Fe Institute, in which simple rules of individual behaviour generate replications of the flocking of birds, the trail-laying of ants, the dynamics of organism-parasite systems…In each case the computer tracks the way in which such simple laws, if they were to hold, could produce patterned order. Evidently such demonstrations, absorbing though they may be, cannot constitute proofs that these laws are indeed the cause of the observed behaviour.
Indeed Kauffman in the introduction to his page volume, stresses that "this is not a finished book …Premises and conclusions stand open to criticism. Mittleton-Kelly recognises a further need for circumspection which arises in essaying to transfer complexity theory formulations from the natural to the social domain. Behaviour in the former may be assumed to be governed by laws; in the latter, awareness of a claimed law may itself generate changed behaviour.
In this crucial respect, social systems including organisations and their managements are fundamentally different from all other complex systems. It can be seen from this that scientific authority is an unsafe ground for asserting that specific results from complexity theory necessarily apply to organisations, or that complexity-based lessons constitute imperatives for management practice.
Krugman , on the concluding page of his exploration of the relevance of complexity theory for economics, states "at this point I have no recommendations to offer. Both tendencies can be amply illustrated from a single work — Stacey Let us start with generalisations. Stacey makes a series of strong assertions about the range of systems which come within the remit of complexity theory. It is not quite clear how one could either substantiate or refute such a claim — but as organisations are social rather than natural systems we do not have to address this question.
However the pronouncements on organisations are in the same vein. Following an account of nonlinear feedback systems operating "far from equilibrium" p. This is broadened out in a passage pp. The argument is that "almost all interactions in organizations between individuals, or groups of individuals, take on a nonlinear feedback form"; as a result "every business" is a web of such feedback loops; and the scientific discoveries of complexity therefore apply.
In his later book - Stacey — the remit is extended still further: There are some concealed mathematical booby-traps along the route which this argument has just traversed. Consider two of these. The first is that not all non-linear dynamical systems exhibit chaotic behaviour. Many are quite happy to settle down to stable equilibria, on which an infinitesimal difference in starting conditions has only an infinitesimal effect.
Whether we get chaos or not depends critically not only on the form of the equation but also on the parameters defining the strength of the feedback loops. Evidence that the feedback parameters in the whole array of social systems listed above do in fact take chaos-generating values is absent. The second difficulty is that the mathematical work cited by management complexity writers is virtually all about deterministic chaos. That is, the unpredictability arises, as explained in Section 1, without the need for any randomness of input or process. The weird and wonderful results of mathematical chaos theory which have so gripped the public imagination all stem from this type of formulation.
Recommended For You
However it is surely indisputable that in the real world of social processes and organisations to be managed, probabilistic elements abound. Sadly perhaps, under what is called stochastic chaos strange attractors fail to manifest themselves and consequently these more realistic situations have attracted much less theoretical attention. Intuitively, we may understand this result as the buffetting of random shocks knocking the system out of the delicate entrapment of the strange attractor.
Systems return to a stable equilibrium, or retreat indefinitely from it. The edge of chaos, on which so much management complexity writing is predicated, is abolished. Indeed the strength and generality of the assertions based on complexity theory merge into a sense that its findings are non-negotiable.
We hear of actions which "managers must take to be successful"; and that "managers need to embrace this new frame of reference" both in the Preface to Stacey We find that "human organizations…must operate in chaos if they are to be continually creative" p. There can be concern, though, when the new frame of reference supported by appeals to science generates prescriptions for management control, management style and culture, risk taking behaviour, skill enhancement…The pervasive message is that corporate survival depends on how well management internalises the complexity perspective.
If it is unwarranted and it is to say to managers "Take these actions because science has discovered that they are necessary", does that dispose of the matter? Can managers safely put away those rather daunting books with complexity in their titles, and get on with managing by the seat of their pants or by the recipe of some less scientific guru? Though one cannot prove that the claimed results about creativity at the edge of chaos, versus controlled extinction in an equilibrium state apply to the management of organisations, there is another way in which they can be relevant. This is the route of metaphor or analogy.
There is of course a difference between the two. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a name or descriptive term is transferred to some object to which it is it is not properly applicable. I quote the Oxford Dictionary. Metaphor is an entirely legitimate device. It can be a way of illuminating certain phenomena in a novel way, so that routine understandings of their significance may be enriched or replaced by interpretations based on the quite different field to which they are juxtaposed.
Literature would be impoverished without it. So, quite possibly would science. Any influence it may have over policy will depend on the vividness of the metaphor, and on the plausibility in the real world of organisations of any inferences for practice that the metaphor seems to imply. For example, economists or perhaps politicians used to make frequent use of an automobile metaphor to describe macroeconomic policy — applying the brakes, a touch on the accelerator. Yet noone would have proposed that this metaphor, doubtless helpful to understanding, could justify designing economic institutions based on the big end or tyre valve.
An analogy carries rather more clout. An analogy consists of some assertions of similarity or difference between corresponding elements in two different systems, and about the sets of causal relations operating within each system Hesse Generally the analogy is used to connect a well-understood domain to one in which understanding is less developed.
In the light of this, could the management complexity writers, deprived of ultimate natural scientific authority, nevertheless claim that the results they draw from complexity theory hold for management by analogy? The requirements for this would be. If the answers to all these queries are positive, then the analogy may reasonably be used to articulate a theory in the new domain. But it does not prove it to be true. Validation of this new theory can only come from empirical work in the new domain. This may seem unduly stern as a set of requirements.
The five that Peter Senge identifies are said to be converging to innovate learning organizations.
- Knowledge Capital: How Knowledge-Based Enterprises Really Get Built!
- An Accidental Atheist.
- Fretboard Roadmaps - Blues Guitar: The Essential Guitar Patterns That All the Pros Know and Use.
- CODE Magazine - 2007 Sep/Oct;
- Similar authors to follow.
- JSTOR: Access Check!
He adds to this recognition that people are agents, able to act upon the structures and systems of which they are a part. It is to the disciplines that we will now turn. The Fifth Discipline provides a good introduction to the basics and uses of such theory — and the way in which it can be brought together with other theoretical devices in order to make sense of organizational questions and issues. It is the discipline that integrates the others, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice ibid.
However, it is necessary to highlight one or two elements of his argument. First, while the basic tools of systems theory are fairly straightforward they can build into sophisticated models. Peter Senge argues that one of the key problems with much that is written about, and done in the name of management, is that rather simplistic frameworks are applied to what are complex systems.
We tend to focus on the parts rather than seeing the whole, and to fail to see organization as a dynamic process. Thus, the argument runs, a better appreciation of systems will lead to more appropriate action. We tend to think that cause and effect will be relatively near to one another. Classically we look to actions that produce improvements in a relatively short time span. However, when viewed in systems terms short-term improvements often involve very significant long-term costs. For example, cutting back on research and design can bring very quick cost savings, but can severely damage the long-term viability of anorganization.
Part of the problem is the nature of the feedback we receive. Some of the feedback will be reinforcing or amplifying — with small changes building on themselves. Thus, we may cut our advertising budgets, see the benefits in terms of cost savings, and in turn further trim spending in this area. An appreciation of systems will lead to recognition of the use of, and problems with, such reinforcing feedback, and also an understanding of the place of balancing or stabilizing feedback. See, also Kurt Lewin on feedback. The systems viewpoint is generally oriented toward the long-term view.
They only come back to haunt you in the long term. The five disciplines can be approached at one of three levels:. Each discipline provides a vital dimension. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. It goes beyond competence and skills, although it involves them. It goes beyond spiritual opening, although it involves spiritual growth ibid.
Mastery is seen as a special kind of proficiency. It is not about dominance, but rather about calling. Vision is vocation rather than simply just a good idea. People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode. But personal mastery is not something you possess.
It is a process. It is a lifelong discipline. People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. And they are deeply self-confident. It has deep echoes in the concerns of writers such as M.
Scott Peck and Erich Fromm The discipline entails developing personal vision; holding creative tension managing the gap between our vision and reality ; recognizing structural tensions and constraints, and our own power or lack of it with regard to them; a commitment to truth; and using the sub-conscious ibid.: We are often not that aware of the impact of such assumptions etc. The discipline of mental models starts with turning the mirror inward; learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world, to bring them to the surface and hold them rigorously to scrutiny.
If organizations are to develop a capacity to work with mental models then it will be necessary for people to learn new skills and develop new orientations, and for their to be institutional changes that foster such change. Moving the organization in the right direction entails working to transcend the sorts of internal politics and game playing that dominate traditional organizations.
In other words it means fostering openness Senge It also involves seeking to distribute business responsibly far more widely while retaining coordination and control. Learning organizations are localized organizations ibid.
Such a vision has the power to be uplifting — and to encourage experimentation and innovation. In mastering this discipline, leaders learn the counter-productiveness of trying to dictate a vision, no matter how heartfelt. Visions spread because of a reinforcing process. Increased clarity, enthusiasm and commitment rub off on others in the organization. Where organizations can transcend linear and grasp system thinking, there is the possibility of bringing vision to fruition.
It builds on personal mastery and shared vision — but these are not enough. People need to be able to act together. When teams learn together, Peter Senge suggests, not only can there be good results for the organization, members will grow more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise. To the Greeks dia-logos meant a free-flowing if meaning through a group, allowing the group to discover insights not attainable individually….
When dialogue is joined with systems thinking, Senge argues, there is the possibility of creating a language more suited for dealing with complexity, and of focusing on deep-seated structural issues and forces rather than being diverted by questions of personality and leadership style. Indeed, such is the emphasis on dialogue in his work that it could almost be put alongside systems thinking as a central feature of his approach.
Peter Senge argues that learning organizations require a new view of leadership. He sees the traditional view of leaders as special people who set the direction, make key decisions and energize the troops as deriving from a deeply individualistic and non-systemic worldview In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations were people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models — that is they are responsible for learning….
Many of the qualities that Peter Senge discusses with regard to leading the learning organization can be found in the shared leadership model discussed elsewhere on these pages. For example, what Senge approaches as inspiration, can be approached as animation. Here we will look at the three aspects of leadership that he identifies — and link his discussion with some other writers on leadership.
The functions of design are rarely visible, Peter Senge argues, yet no one has a more sweeping influence than the designer Integrating the five component technologies is fundamental. However, the first task entails designing the governing ideas — the purpose, vision and core values by which people should live. Other disciplines also need to be attended to, but just how they are to be approached is dependent upon the situation faced. While the notion of leader as steward is, perhaps, most commonly associated with writers such as Peter Block , Peter Senge has some interesting insights on this strand.
He came to realize that the managers were doing more than telling stories, they were relating the story: One of the important things to grasp here is that stewardship involves a commitment to, and responsibility for the vision, but it does not mean that the leader owns it. It is not their possession. Leaders learn to see their vision as part of something larger.
Telling the story in this way allows others to be involved and to help develop a vision that is both individual and shared. By and large most managers and leaders tend to focus on the first two of these levels and under their influence organizations do likewise. By attending to purpose, leaders can cultivate an understanding of what the organization and its members are seeking to become. One of the issues here is that leaders often have strengths in one or two of the areas but are unable, for example, to develop systemic understanding. It is about fostering learning, for everyone.
Such leaders help people throughout the organization develop systemic understandings.
complexiteit - hetnieuwedenken
Accepting this responsibility is the antidote to one of the most common downfalls of otherwise gifted teachers — losing their commitment to the truth. Leaders have to create and manage creative tension — especially around the gap between vision and reality. Mastery of such tension allows for a fundamental shift.
It enables the leader to see the truth in changing situations. Peter Senge writes for practicing and aspiring managers and leaders. Peter Senge, while making use of individual case studies, tends to the latter orientation. The most appropriate question in respect of this contribution would seem to be whether it fosters praxis — informed, committed action on the part of those it is aimed at?
This is an especially pertinent question as Peter Senge looks to promote a more holistic vision of organizations and the lives of people within them. Here we focus on three aspects. We start with the organization. Here the case against Peter Senge is fairly simple. We can find very few organizations that come close to the combination of characteristics that he identifies with the learning organization. Within a capitalist system his vision of companies and organizations turning wholehearted to the cultivation of the learning of their members can only come into fruition in a limited number of instances.
While those in charge of organizations will usually look in some way to the long-term growth and sustainability of their enterprise, they may not focus on developing the human resources that the organization houses. The focus may well be on enhancing brand recognition and status Klein ; developing intellectual capital and knowledge Leadbeater ; delivering product innovation; and ensuring that production and distribution costs are kept down.
As Will Hutton Such conditions are hardly conducive to building the sort of organization that Peter Senge proposes. Here the case against Senge is that within capitalist organizations, where the bottom line is profit, a fundamental concern with the learning and development of employees and associates is simply too idealistic.
The need to focus on knowledge generation within an increasingly globalized economy does bring us back in some important respects to the people who have to create intellectual capital. Productivity and competitiveness are, by and large, a function of knowledge generation and information processing: A failure to attend to the learning of groups and individuals in the organization spells disaster in this context. Organizations need to be good at knowledge generation, appropriation and exploitation.
This process is not that easy:. Knowledge that is visible tends to be explicit, teachable, independent, detachable, it also easy for competitors to imitate. Knowledge that is intangible, tacit, less teachable, less observable, is more complex but more difficult to detach from the person who created it or the context in which it is embedded.