People are complicated, so organizations are too

tag(s): #link-post #random-thoughts A couple days ago I was reading a post by Javier, Transferring Knowledge. I agree with most of points made. The last paragraph stuck with me, because I think what it says can be generalized beyond only teaching: I generally feel there's a lot of "interaction" type of activities that people tend to underestimate, probably because we miss that teaching isn't just showing something or doing a demo. It's paying attention to how people actually learn, respecting their pace, and not assuming the way we learn is the universal way. If we did that more often, half our "communication problems" would probably be alleviated. The same conclusion can be applied, in my opinion, to most activities in any organization. There's almost always a mandate to make things as homogeneous as possible, to standardize. And I get! It would be chaos if everyone did things how they want in any org that is more than a few tenths of people. But at the same time, like Javier says,…