Information comes at us whole. It then gets divvied up into problems that need to be solved and tasks that need to be done to move the business forward. But problems don't exist as such: they're created by managers, and they're created with language.
A problem has no necessary correlates in perceptual terms or even in established cultural conventions; they are created by managers.
Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way, like the problem of cause and effect. Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.
In large organizations, individual decisions tend to be reduced to trivial choices, and thus "freedom to" is rendered virtually insignificant. Once reason is buried in technological imperatives, it is beyond debate or discussion. Individual responsibility and intelligence tends to become marginalized, and the result is irrationality.
Language is first of all a system of representation, a means for sorting and manipulating the plethora of information that deluges us throughout our waking life, which suggests that what managers really manage is meaning. Communication is what language does, not what language is. Seeming to us no more than the glass through which we see our world, language is in fact the subtle, many-layered lens that created that world--the lens without which all that we know would dissolve into chaos.
Systems thinking offers a language that begins by restructuring how we think. Reality is made up of circles but we see straight lines. One of the reasons for this fragmentation in our thinking stems from our language. Language shapes perception. What we see depends on what we are prepared to see. Western languages, with their subject-verb-object structure, are biased toward a linear view. If we want to see system-wide interrelationships, we need a language of interrelationships, a language made up of circles. Without such a language, our habitual ways of seeing the world produce fragmented views and counterproductive actions--as it did for decision makers in the arms race.
The feedback concept illuminates the limitations of our language. When we try to describe in words even a very simple system, such as filling a water glass, it gets very awkward. This is precisely why a new language for describing systems is needed. If it is this awkward to describe a system as simple as filling a water glass, imagine the difficulties using everyday English to describe the multiple feedback processes in an organization. Language does not effectively capture certain complex feedback loops, where a cause can be its own effect and where, though no designing hand is at work, stable patterns nonetheless do emerge as what works outlasts what does not.
Systems thinking is equally important to working with mental models effectively. Contemporary research shows that most of our mental models are systematically flawed. They miss critical feedback relationships, misjudge time delays, and often focus on variables that are visible or salient, not necessarily high leverage.
The discipline of team learning involves mastering the practices of dialogue and discussion, the two distinct ways that teams converse. In dialogue, there is the free and creative exploration of complex and subtle issues, a deep "listening" to one another and suspending of one's own views. By contrast, in discussion different views are presented and defended and there is a search for the best view to support decisions that must be made at this time. Dialogue and discussion are potentially complementary , but most teams lack the ability to distinguish between the two and to move consciously between them.
The source of defensive routine, according to Argyris, is not belief in our views or desire to preserve social relations, as we might tell ourselves, but fear of exposing the thinking that lies behind our views. "Defensive reasoning," says Argyris, "protects us from learning about the validity of our reasoning."
Perhaps the single greatest liability of management teams is that they confront complex, dynamic realities with a language designed for simple, static problems. Management consultant Charles Kiefer says it this way: "Reality is composed of multiple-simultaneous, interdependent cause-effect-cause relationships. From this reality, normal verbal language extracts simple, linear cause-effect chains. This accounts for a great deal of why managers are so drawn to low leverage interventions."
Life comes to us whole. It is only the analytic lens we impose that makes it seem as if problems can be isolated and solved. When we forget that it is "only a lens," we lose the spirit of openness.
Information can be defined as the right knowledge to take effective action. And critical information is often embodied in attitudes, expectations, and events. In short, it's not quantifiable.
To say that language labels reality is one thing. To understand that
reality shows up in language is something quite different. And the distinction
between these two is as important as the distinction between problem solving
and creating. So long as the Operating Group at Citibank was viewed simply
as a mechanical support group for the customer-contact offices, as banking
tradition dictated, little change took place. When John Reed viewed it
as an independent, high-volume production operation--and called it a "factory"--which
designed and controlled its own processes and products in the style of
a manufacturing organization, something quite different took place. Once
the fundamental shift in perception--in naming--took place, then appropriate
personnel were immediately able to be found--professional production management.
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