Re: Science or Moral Values

[Roger Key <roger.key@onet.co.uk@pop3.onet.co.uk>]

Hi all

PH wrote:

>If creating the environment to enable  creativity was seen as a central
>obligation of management, I'm sure we would be 33% of the way there.
>
>I wonder if Denizens have a view on what might comprise the other 67%?


In response to the suggestion that man may or may not avoid 'work' 
and what is the difference between this and 'play'.

Two thoughts on this.  Firstly, and I cannot remember the quote - 
Hertzberg had some interesting comments about cynicism and 
irreverence being reasonable responses to absurd work.  And I guess 
that there is a lot of this in organisations.  Similarly when the 
politics become more important than the work itself then the work 
(politics) is absurd.

Second thought as to where the other 67% may lie.  As Shaw wrote ijn 
Man and Superman, the true joy in this life is being throughly used 
up.  To us plants that may look like a life time of invention and 
innovation, to a CF that may look like a lifetime of achievement 
through completed 'work'.  So I guess for an organisation there must 
be something about identifying a purpose and principles that all the 
people in the org share and then making these reality.  (Mmmmm seem 
to have heard that somewhere before...).  Of course this purpose will 
exist on many levels and will be expressed in many ways.  As John 
Seddon pointed out in the Deming Forum this year, when a call centre 
has 48% of its calls as being complaints about the business not 
keeping its promises and that these promises cannot be kept due to 
the very processes the business has in place, is it surprising that 
the staff are hacked off.  They do not need staff surveys and therapy 
they need a system that works.

Creativity.  As I understand it real creativity only exist when we 
push past the limits.  Someone pointed out the other day that 
creativity only occours at the edges - they then went on to suggest 
that for an organisation this meant the interface between the org and 
customers and suppliers - which I think is a bit narrow.  Anyway, 
when are we willing to step over the boundary?  Dissatisfaction? 
High level of risk needed?  Stacey puts forward compelling evidence 
that this only happens when the brain is in the state that children 
enter in play.  Reality is suspended.

If management sought to enable creativity they would need to enable 
an environment where 'play' is acceptable in the work place.  Where 
there is sufficient redundancy to allow flights of fancy.  The 
organisation would need to be hovering on the edge of chaos but never 
really going over...

I think if management could 'manage' that then we would be far more 
than 33% there, more like 67%?

Just thoughts
-- 

	Roger.

---------------------------------oooOOOooo--------------------------------------Roger 
C. Key				 mailto:roger.key@onet.co.uk
Prescient - The Whole as One
(44) 01639 871062                
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