Recently the McKinsey Quarterly presented an excellent case for reforms. However, by offering the gamut of solutions from customer consciousness and quantitative measures to change agents it revealed precisely why reforms fail. It is not because the transformational-change efforts are short of leadership capacity, money, and management talent. It is because the idea of reform is devoid of a guiding philosophy. Leaders can encourage the way but their efforts have to follow a philosophy that will deliver. Best practices, quantitative measures, etc., make sense only in context of a philosophy. This has been amply demonstrated by the efforts of American managers to copy Kaizen from Japan. For years they gained nothing by aping what they saw. The consciousness needed for effective thinking eluded them.
In the 90’s Peter Senge defined the concept of the Learning Organization based on the nature of man and the anatomy of success. He identified feedback was the single most important ingredient of success and defined the powerful skills it fostered. Dialogue, his panacea for learning and success, was proven in practice. It was simple enough to follow but Learning Organizations continue to be rare. The energy needed to organize and drive knowledge flow for dialogue in the daily operations is immense. Today this energy can only be provided by personnel and they are overwhelmed by political considerations, power equations established by the possession of knowledge, low trust, misguided incentives, unsupportive cultures, and heavy odds created by the pace of change and uncertainty. The present offering of IT is just tools for collaboration. They are incapable of organizing and driving feedback in context amidst chaos.
It follows that reforms are only the symptoms of the cure needed. The core need is intelligent energy that can organize and drive feedback in context for trust and teamwork. They possess the power to emerge the reality and drive responsible action in response to directions established by inspirational leaders.
In the 90’s Peter Senge defined the concept of the Learning Organization based on the nature of man and the anatomy of success. He identified feedback was the single most important ingredient of success and defined the powerful skills it fostered. Dialogue, his panacea for learning and success, was proven in practice. It was simple enough to follow but Learning Organizations continue to be rare. The energy needed to organize and drive knowledge flow for dialogue in the daily operations is immense. Today this energy can only be provided by personnel and they are overwhelmed by political considerations, power equations established by the possession of knowledge, low trust, misguided incentives, unsupportive cultures, and heavy odds created by the pace of change and uncertainty. The present offering of IT is just tools for collaboration. They are incapable of organizing and driving feedback in context amidst chaos.
It follows that reforms are only the symptoms of the cure needed. The core need is intelligent energy that can organize and drive feedback in context for trust and teamwork. They possess the power to emerge the reality and drive responsible action in response to directions established by inspirational leaders.
