| It
happens all too often with any contemporary enterprise that many of
the members of the team are unclear about the necessary strategic direction
of their efforts, even though they may say they are clear and that they want to
go forward with it. What
ensues is a widening gap between their stated intentions and their
actual action. This gap is filled with hidden confusions,
hesitations, tensions and even personality clashes between themselves. Hidden
confusions, doubts and delays have to be surfaced and dealt with. If this is not done, they will just erupt
at unexpected times in the near future, which will tend to undermine
the agreed strategy and render it useless. This
strategic downfall will seem almost like an accident or some sort of
fate, but it is neither; it is a direct and predictable consequence
of the real state and nature of the people who are supposed to realize
the strategic direction. People are often deeply attached to an
existential mode of paralyzing doubt and confusion. So
much so in fact that even prolonged psychoanalysis will not resolve
anything even if the team were all given expensive treatments. Analysis in fact is the wrong tool, for
it fundamentally agrees with the confusion-and cover-up game. The right tool is to create a situation
where decisive clarity or abandonment of the enterprise are the only
options. This is the first thing to be clear about. Confusion is not there to be coddled or
analyzed. It is there to
be truly cleared-up and dealt with for real, even at the risk of giving up the enterprise. The
confusion-and-cover-up game is eliminated by changing the rules of
the game. When members
of the team have to adjust their usual solution to what is now the
new rules of a new problem, which problem has been deliberately designed
for them as a group and personal learning challenge, something like
a genuine strategic direction can be unfolded with some degree of shared
success. But the time period
over which strategic clarity and successful action will emerge can
remain maddeningly prolonged. This
happens because people are often all too pleased to have an intelligent
senior person attending to their confusions, problems and personal
material welfare. They
so like it that their thing is being dealt with that they are unready
for anything else. Meetings for dealing with their doubts
and confusions become the only thing they will allow to happen. Oh so innocently they will drag out their
favourite confusions and apparently rational misgivings. There
is still a major obstacle even if the confused and hesitant people
on the team are susceptible to real clarification under new rules of
the game. Someone has to create the new rules as
well as having to be truly competent in dealing with the secretly deliberate
confusion of ineffectual people. So, we inevitably have to encounter a consultant, teacher
or assigned leader who hasn't got a clue as to how an authentic learning
situation is set up and maintained. Neither
they nor the target group has any real idea as to how a learning situation
is carried on. So you will
see that the consultant, teacher or assigned leader invariably tries
either indoctrinating the
strategically confused or makes attempts at emotional arousal. Unfortunately, these two usual methods
cannot possibly work no matter how much the confused group is trying
to make them work. But we
cannot possibly teach these teachers, consult these consultants, or
lead these leaders because they will consider it an undue loss of their
self-esteem. And, as for the strategically confused
group, anyone capable of sorting out the consultant, teacher or assigned
leader would be seen as an intruder, not a true source of rescue. So the circus goes on. The
fact remains that strategic confusion can be clarified and strategic
doubt and hesitation can be resolved. If
we want to work on practical group learning, there is something worth
getting there. That is
why we are thinking about this together right now. There
is no point in being discouraged in the face of strategic failure of
the enterprise. Something
can still be salvaged if we will voluntarily educate ourselves about
individual and group learning processes. For
instance, you might want to notice how learning works on your very
reading of this article. First, you have to give the article some
truly concentrated attention, not merely skim reading or thinking about
other things during the reading. But,
then, after having read it, you have to take a rest from it and allow
a period of assimilation in the natural light of your most real understanding. You realize that understanding is never
instantaneous, but grows in your mental background until it is ready
to emerge as genuine personal insight of your own. There
is a real confusion gap between strategic agreement and strategic action. But human beings are potentially capable
of strategic clarity and successful action. They
have inner resources they can learn to draw upon if they will allow
themselves to be shown where to look, what to do and how to go about
activating these inner resources. When
team members discover what is truly valuable in themselves and of themselves,
they discover what makes their life whatever it actually is and potentially
could be. Then their work takes on an important
new meaning. |
