Self-Organization???? (to Peggy)

[Artur F. Silva]

At 01:25 11-12-2001, Peggy Holman wrote:

>After looking closely at 18 approaches to changing human systems for The
>Change Handbook, my own conclusion is similar to Ralph's.  What I have come
>to believe is that the choice of approach has more to do with chemistry
>among practitioner, method and client than anything else.  They all have the
>potential to transform.  Further, I've concluded the choice of process has
>much to do with the beliefs of the practitioner.

I could not understand, Peggy, if all the 18 have the potencial to be useful to
create good meetings or if they have the potencial to profoundly transform
the organizations where they have been applied.

If it were the second hypothesis that you stated, I would like to know
if you are telling your opinion or if you have researched (action research?)
enough cases of companies that applied those methods to conclude that.

The point is that my information until now went in a different direction.
For instance, see the interview with Peter Senge to Fast Company in 1999
in http://www.fastcompany.com/online/24/senge.html.

The 1st question was "What's your assessment of the performance of
large-scale change efforts over the past decade?"

Senge answered (in part):

"My own experience at MIT and at the Society of Learning (Sol) has mostly
been with big companies. How much change have they actually accomplished?
If I stand back a considerable distance and ask, 'What's the score'" I
have to conclude that inertia is winning by a large margin. Of course,
there have been enough exceptions to that conclusion to indicate that
change is possible. I can identify 20 to 30 examples of significant
sustained change efforts in the SoL community. On the other side of the
ledger, there are many organizations that haven't gotten to first base
when it comes to real change and many others that have given up trying.
When I look at efforts to create change in big companies over the past 10
years, I have to say that there's enough evidence of success to say that
change is possible and enough evidence of failure to say that it isn't
likely. Both of those lessons are important."

So it seams that change is not easy and probably not all methods are equal.
By the way this was an interview after the publication of "The Dance of Change"
where some methods and disciplines were not so empathized as in the past and
some new ones were referred - like the concept of Communities of Practice
and the OST methodology ;-)

Regards

Artur


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