Continually Producing our Organizational Context

Two weeks have passed, since my last posting. As I walked in to school this morning, realizing this gap, I first asked myself why? Why have I been filling long days the last two weeks with other work rather than sustain this Blog? Insight struck. I allowed to OBTC Blog to fall out of organization while keeping in all else that mattered at the time. I name this "continually pro ducting our organizational context", for the sake of discussion.

The task was always there outside of my orbiting attentions. It simply did not reintegrate it into the use of my time and meager talents. By leaving the Blog task out there, all my organizing work was focused on what I did allow - some routine, much not. Reconnecting with this task, I revise the organization context of my work by now including this Web-based technology in what I have to work with. This brings along with it a whole suite of unrealized tasks still ahead for me, as we set the OBTC program into final form, solicit proceedings pieces, and so on. Momentarily, something will call my attention away from all things OBTC, and I will recompose the organizational context in which I exist still again.

So what am I offering here? An early morning theory of management and organizational behavior.

What we tend to teach as managing of organizations is that our learners, as managers, will see to it that others have an organization in which to perform what they think it takes to keep the business running. What I see now is the fallacy of this presumption that managers are makers of organizations for others. Each of us makes our organization happen for ourselves moment to moment. Each of us produces the social context we believe we need to go from this moment to the next. When we think we are seeing a single, unitary organization in action, what I propose is that we are actually seeing is the result of each choosing to include the others in the context each creates for themselves to get the most out of the moment.

I picture it this way. There are 100 humans whom we think are being a company. Take a snap shot of 100 orbits. I'd guess that a best case scenario would be that 80 or so would be thinking of the whole and taking care of the whole, while meeting their own needs. Blink, and it can drop to 55, blink again, and if more realize they need to put organizing tasks back into play, it goes to 70. And so on.

Well, I will stop. Maybe there will be comments on this one?