In the moment - we learn, we teach

It was my pleasure to talk at some length the other day with Bill Torbert. We are preparing for his OBTS Webinar on Friday, April 25th at 2:00 PM EDT. (Webinar registration is linked on the OBTC Web page). I cannot begin to do justice to Bill groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of organizational dynamics, but I do have this abiding thought, looking back at this call.

Action inquiry, a cornerstone of Bill's works, IS entrepreneurial teaching, entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurial practice.

How so?

First, because we inquire. We don't tell, we ask, for we are willing to risk others seeing us as seekers for creating new knowledge, not just purveyors of our own congealed knowledge.

Secondly, it is entrepreneurial because we are IN the action while inquiring. The first source of information is ourselves. We count on the keenness and authenticity of our own perceptual powers. Secondary and tertiary sources come into play, but we are fully engaged, steeped in exquisite subjectivity, forming and reforming our beliefs on the fly.

We are scholars of the moment, in the moment, for the benefit of the moments to come.

How might this make us better teachers of those who practice to keep business in their lives?

My hunch is that we model the way effective managerial practice actually happens in what our students call "real world" time (vs on our academic time). I am taking my OB classes to a tiny new business that started up next to our campus last April. The two founding owners will tell their story. It is how they have put this new business on the face of our Earth as an Act of sheer, unremitting, whole-body, mind, and spirit action inquiry. It started five years ago with the question, "What if we were to combine a Laundromat and cafe and open it next to a large metropolitan college campus?". We will share a moment of action inquiry with Laury and Jesus on April 15 at the SpinCycle Laundromat and Cafe.

Of course there is value in research done by standing outside of the action - surveying, counting, cataloguing, writing the descriptive case. This seems to produce the sorts of codified knowledge of OB that editors and reviewers allow to be published. So be it. While the form of scholarship grinds along, I'll keep my teaching centered upon action of "humans being organizations". I'll relish the ambiguity of not yet knowing for sure why things go the way they seem to in the pursuit of common objectives. I'll hope this also rubs off on my learners.

Perhaps this could be considered entrepreneurial scholarship? What do you think?