Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog

bell at the Shoren-in temple, Kyoto, sonorous when struck…

Isn’t it odd that we so rarely examine the background to or assumptions behind our words?  This is at least so in English – I cannot speak (no pun intended) for other languages.  For example, our word ‘orientation’ – crucial for induction at the start of any new process, such as an MBA, is originally been rooted in the act of facing to the East, to the Orient,  or the Holy Land, or Mecca, or perhaps (for the more awake) China, India and Japan…? We seem to rely so much on needing a place to be in line with. Ideologies require an orientation or they remain meaningless.  So where is the orientation for the task of management? Does management struggle for an orientation? Where is its central point, or axis? Following Gregory Bateson, and interpreting Anthony Wilden, I’m going to say that – whatever else it might be – management is an open system with the following characteristics:

• A question of process and form, not matter substance
• Holistic, entirely a matter of contexts, and contexts of contexts (hierarchical and context sensitive)
• The organised and socially mediated use of information (where both-and thinking trumps either-or for productivity)
• Subject to positive and negative feedback loops (where negative feedback is the constraint)
• By its nature, open to novelty, surprise and innovation
• Communicative in its behaviours (as well as its non-behaviours, which can also be communication), and with a capacity for memory
• Every behaviour is also a question about the appropriate response for management to make

These may be a start in the definition of an orientation beyond “making money”.  ************