In an article on Building a Learning Organization, David Garvin speaks about how inspite of investing a lot of money on Continuous Improvement programs by businesses, most of them fail. This according to him is because of rigidity of the organizations, which are not able to unlearn some of the stuff they have learnt over the years when they were successful. And, when the going gets tough, these organizations try to apply the same rules in a different game. As they invest more on the improvement programs, without unlearning or begininning to open up to radically new ideas, they only become adept at applying the old rules more efficiently, which take them nowhere.
The psychologists term it as conditioning. I am sure everyone of us have read about Pavlov's experiment with his dogs. Just as the dogs were conditioned to react in a particular way to a particular situation, out reactions to most of our daily situations doesn't say much about ourselves. Do we condition ourselves to react in a particular way for any given situation? Our reaction might not be as simple as that of a dog's, its still a reaction nevertheless. Or, do we think about stuff rationally before coming up with conclusions? I believe not many of us fall into this category. Isn't David Garvin taking about the Pavlovian Behavior, but with respect to an organization?
Physicists term this as inertia. Inertial force can be a very powerful one. I for one know personally, what it can do? Its again the same when you think about it. We have our own set of ideas and notions about things. Whatever new situation might come up, we try to come up with an explanation that satisfies all the axioms that we might have. If we further think about this, any natural phenomena becomes supernatural when we don't have an explanation. Again, when a person does something that defies logic, he is either elevated to the level of God (this still happens in our country) or ostracized. It takes a whole lot of effort to break out of the ideas that we have. Or is it just the enery required to come out of our mental inertia? Isn't David Garvin talking about the same Inertia that might have built up in an organization.
Most Eastern philosophies talk about this in one form or the other. Take our own aphorism,
'Aynthil valaiyathathu Aymbathil valaiyuma'
'That which doesn't bend at 5 won't bend at 50'
'Thottil pazhakam sudu kadu mattum'
'Old habits die hard'
Isn't this the same principle that David Garvin is talking about? We can again call this inertia or conditioning or whatever one might come up with. Isn't it interesting to note that everything is the same though we call it by different names. Wait, am i talking about Inertia or GOD? If we can have so many names for a force like inertia and see it in so many different forms, how do we even try to package GOD within one religion or one form and fight over it? Think about it.
I don't have enough time to post all my thoughts. Will post the remaining in the next post.
C Karthikeyan
2 comments:
In my opinion, 'Intertia' should not be equated with God, rather it should be equated with the intensity of adherence to a belief, however factitious. Ancient mythology would have equated breeze with a God - meditating in a cave, who would be blowing smoothly. There would be people paying obeisance to it too. Now, the tough part is to come with a logical framework which would explain low pressure points, wind path etc., but a tougher and an uphill battle is on one ownself to be convinced that the structured logic is the right methodology and no other, which explains the phemenon of breeze. And in places where the logic fails, we have to ponder and dig a bit more deeper.
I have not equated Inertia and God, rather, have tried to show how even a very elementary force like Inertia is seen differently from different points of view. And I myself see Inertia as conditioning, the physical force itself or anyone of those myraid forms depending on how I want to see it. Keeping this in mind, I don't accept about the absolute relevance or absolute irrelavance of any particular belief system, Since what I believe true today can become false tommorrow. Talking about the belief system, the earliest beliefs in human history centered around the worship of animals and elements (Rigveda, the earliest of vedas is centered around the worship of Indra, the leader of the elements). As we gained more control and knowledge of surroundings and nature, the belief system moved on from nature worship to abstract ideas with each particular idea given an identity (atleast this is how i see hinduism). Though I accept with your point that structured logic is a right methodogy, i find it hard to accept that it is the only right way, for the simple reason that there is nothing that is absolute. The spirit of inquiry and the ability to question ones own belief system is paramount in the pursuit of life.
Karthikeyan C
Post a Comment