We cannot know + control, + understand all the outcomes that may / will happen. This is where judgment & using process (actions) while examining results (outcomes) shows that great things can happen when a group of intelligent people works together with the proper context & tools. This is innovation & people working to their full capacity.
- Work is interactional
- Systems-Drive-Behavior. When your Organization Design & Work System is broken you will see broken outputs… people will continue to try & succeed in spite of this brokenness.
- Knowledge of what works & how to improve it – is interactional & understood in shared stories of why & how, who, & what happened
- Trying to capture “Best Practices” then export them to workplaces, processes & people that are different from where that best practice happened can lead to fads & panaceas.
- Breakthroughs happen when people combine share or co-develop multiple pieces of knowledge from ‘what works’ + ‘what does not work’
- The more layers of hierarchy & management you have pushing on the work. The more people create short cuts & work around to get the work done.
- The people who are involved in the work are generally the experts in the work. Information should be shared with them & they should have resources + autonomy to decide what to improve.
- It helps to have a manager who is “big enough” & a company that is Trust Attracting
Positivist Paradigm vs. Naturalist Paradigm
| Positivist | Naturalist |
| REALITY is single, tangible, & fragmentable. | REALITIES are multiple, constructed, & holistic. |
| KNOWER & known are independent, a dualism. | KNOWER & known are interactive, inseparable. |
| TIME-free & CONTEXT-free generalizations are possible. | Only TIME-bound & CONTEXT-bound working hypotheses are possible. |
| Inquiry is value-FREE | Inquiry is value-BOUND |
- Lincoln & Guba Naturalistic Inquiry 1985 page 37.
Isn’t this some post-modernistic woo-woo garbage?
I don’t think so…
- There is NO denial of reality external to human thinking
- NO claim about ‘eternal souls’
- NO ‘Magical Serum’ that will cure all that ails ‘ya
- NO claim that you can attract your desire through visualization & actualization
- NO excessive positivist belief that negative thoughts repel progress
- NO assessment that places you into behavioral boxes stripped of any context
- NO relativism argument that ‘how things are’ within your work is OK because some collective agreed that it is OK.
- NO mention of quantum energy with a weak understanding of what that means.
- what did I miss?
It is putting work into the hands of experts regardless of rank within the organization
Moving towards an ecological theory of working & flourishing in changing environments where diversity of ideas, skilled knowledge & stories of ‘what works’ allows for improvement to work.
This Naturalistic Paradigm, I hope, is a Trust Attracting solution.