Stellar black hole within an organization –within multiple organizations

From: Michael Mulligan

Date: Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:59 pm Subject: Re: [Root_Cause_State_of_the_Practice_II] apparently safe systems can drift into failure




What's the book?

I could make the case that all genocides are generated by scarce resources. The population begins to feel the results of scarce resources –begins to feel they are being unfairly victimized, gets angry, with a political leader coming to the scene flipping the anger onto a subset of the population or neighbor. It is like taking candy from a baby. So are our brains hard wired by evolution to bond together when faced by scarce resources, are predisposed to violence in order to eat –with a skilled leader able to take advantage of this shortcoming? What’s that mean to our modern organizations?

Well from what I’ve seen, it could be looked as in the event horizon of a black hole star. We know the gravitation power of the star sucks light back to itself. From what I understand, that on the other side of the horizon nothing matters, not even the question of what is on the other side. I guess all the properties of the universe breaks down even including time and space.

So, as the problems of a facility increments up, you get the culture to increasingly “rule up” –it eventually leads to an avalanche. By ruling up, I mean the organization across a host of individual and bureaucratic manners begins to limit internal and external transparency –they limit transparency by a set of rules –those that are documented, and those that agreed upon by the individuals. The rules that limit communication are applied over and over again you get to the point that it is internalized. You get into these cold mechanical logic systems –and new information in the worst systems is never allowed in, and the truth is never allowed out. Once you get to the point of no return –much like an avalanche, there is nothing you can do to stop the process until the energy is expended.

Of course, the event horizon can be a continuum, but is it razor thin. Once you are standing on that horizon –you really can’t tell how close you are to the beginning of the avalanche -might have already started that can’t be stopped. Even when you put together in you mind that a future accident is a sure thing, there is nothing you can do to interrupt it because it might have already begun, and the bureaucratic system is automatically set up to block out all information that an accident is around the corner –or begun.

So let say you wake up inside one of these systems, whereby you pose a question asking is a accident around the corner -has it begun– the immunity of the dysfunctional system is already fully geared up, thus there is a huge immunity response such the person who begins to question the system rules is quickly isolated and thrown out. So everyone in the system then recognizes that a non believer will be thrown out.

I can make the cause that the dysfunctional system has infected similar other systems –whereby they have influence the regulators and the politicians. This organization has become extraordinarily dangerous tothe surrounding and society in general.

So a person who has perceived that something is wrong knows enough to go to knowledgeable outsiders –might not realize that the regulator, media and politicians are already been co-opted. So you go to the regulator to make a complaint before the accident –the regulator has already been trained to not accept any new information or you must have absolute quality of information that nobody has.

A person who is a wake in this system has two choices –he either believes that he is the last sane person inthe world or that the he is the only one who is insane.

Do you understand what I am saying –when you get into one of these black holes –none of us has the prior experience or education to recognize what we are in, never mine be able to interact with the system –never mine that there is no independent entities skilled at recognizing, coming in and retraining the organization –don’t forget all the otherorganizations…regulators…politicians…into becoming healthy again.

So can two unrelated dysfunctional organizations come together –then come up with a generic virus to co-opta bigger part of our political system?Thanks,mike mulliganHinsdale, Nh