Learning organizations, impacts and longevity

[David Adams]

Kenoli,
The most difficult questions may be the most precious ones, and whom among
us does not live with the one you have voiced? It strikes at a deep level of
dilemma, for me at the very meeting points of human integrity and of one's
daily survival. So it's a big emblem, an archetype of a question, a Faustian
kind of issue. I had a window of time today, and a sense that I should spend
it with your question; so I took it with me, held open in the basket before
my heart (and along with the good dog Spot), on to the hill here on a
medicine walk.

It was a clear afternoon, with slightly stronger than limpid sun, and an
inkling - just the flavour of an emerging expectation - that things might
just begin to be becoming ready to stir again with growth.... The whiff of
that impending excitement made everything seem utterly beautiful and
sacred - geese wheeling down from the sky to feed on a field across the
valley in a noisome and orderly tumult, colours melding and shimmering, a
whole energy of peaceful beingness. (If you looked hard you might also see a
little figure, a question and a dog.)

What came into the basket? Feelings, some seeing, perhaps some learning.
Bits of sorrow for times when courage faltered, self consciousness came and
chances of a greater vision were missed. The world is different from my
choosing - bracken is not a 'nice' plant; it grows healthily by poisoning
the ground for everything else, but not quite everything for the foxglove
thrives with it, and rowan, too if it gets big enough first. Choosing
values. Business is growing so fast as a system of partial values; humans
who so resent and reject their subordination to God, trade their better
selves so easily, so unthinkingly and quickly, urgently for material
promises. The good dog Spot offers total loyalty for food (his predecessor
would die for chocolate), and deer eagely chew up the most promising and
tender seedlings. A client once asked, How much is enough? There is no limit
that I have seen; only what people decide or have to accept.

Humanity is gripped by hunger; the well fed are even hungrier than the poor,
a hunger for everything material, spiritual and beyond every fulfilment that
is so big it could/may destroy us.  Moss grows further and further out over
the grass each year as the climate gets wetter - among a million signs that
our living outgrows the garden of our evolution. Is my hunger for a better
way any different? Can I hold the question about a better way in depth, in
truth, in power and without judgement, so that others can take it up of
their own choosing? Can I really do this and be fed by doing so? Who is it
that holds this question?

There is more to do on this...

David



----- Original Message -----
From: "kenoli Oleari" <kenoli at igc.org>
To: <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 9:16 PM
Subject: Re: Learning organizations, impacts and longevity


> Lin -- I'm hoping for some more thoughts from the list, also.  This
> issue affects us on a difficult level, because most of the consulting
> work that is available comes from a perspective that only takes into
> account the immediate internal needs of a client.  This affects the
> way we make money.  It is the unusual client that moves to a higher
> level in its thinking.  Some of our icons like Meg Wheatley have
> decided to stop practicing for this reason, but they are at a point
> in their career when they can either afford this or attract plenty of
> other kind of work.  I'm noticing how many of my colleagues accept
> whatever work is available and get good at it and then periodically
> melt down feeling like what they are doing is not feeding them.  Some
> even get confused and surprised and not sure what to do when a client
> comes along that is willing to take a broader perspective.
>
> As world citizens, it is an issue for us about how we are going to
> carry the dialog about the future of the planet forward in our work.
> After all, where else does this work get done than in our everyday
> lives.  And yet as hired consultants, the system seems to place the
> decision about how this conversation is focused in the hands of the
> people hiring us, people who have a very rarified interest and who
> are financially driven to look at the situation with a different
> priority than that of the global system.  This is especially
> important for those working predominantly in a business setting as
> business is having a greater and greater influence on the future of
> everyone and everything.  It is not as though business goes on in one
> place and then the work that affects our futures goes on somewhere
> else.  This is it.
>
> Kenoli
>
>
>
> >Hi Kenoli:  you have given me so much to think about.  I don't have the
time
> >today to really think through your comments or to add anything - however
I
> >thought it important to post with you that the issue of putting walls
around
> >the ' whole ystem' of a company (a contradiction in terms) so that it can
> >exclude issues like environmental degradation and exploitation of local
> >populations has sat brewing with me for some time and I've pushed it to
one
> >side.  So now its out !   I'll get back on line in a couple of days - in
the
> >meantime, I'm looking forward to hearing from our OS colleagues.
> >
> >Lin Grist
> >Chrysalis Consulting
> >UK
> >
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>
> --
> Kenoli Oleari, Horizons of Change, http://www.horizonsofchange.com
> 1801 Fairview Street, Berkeley, CA  94703   Voice Phone: 510-601-8217,
> Fax: 510-595-8369, Email: kenoli at igc.org (or click on:
mailto://kenoli@igc.org)
>
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