01 Jun Partners in the USA

Some of you may already know that we have a long standing link in the USA with Roger Harrison, including the book that Graham Dawes is editing with Roger.

A new link was agreed in March when Linda Honold of Empowerment Systems (of Wisconsin) visited Britain. Linda pioneered radical developments in ‘self managed working’ when she was at Johnsonville Foods. This company has been described by Tom Peters as the organisation that is nearest his notion of an ideal company.

Linda left Johnsonville Foods to set up her own consultancy. Her consultancy balances ours in that she has focused especially on changes in work practices. Now that we can show the effectiveness of self managing in the learning arena we are moving more into addressing these wider issues ourselves. Despite the fact that the idea of ‘self managing work teams’ has become more popular, Linda and ourselves agree that this is too narrow a focus. Self managing teams only work in a context where the general principles of self management are accepted.

We are looking forward to joint work with Linda in developing these ideas and in running seminars and workshops linked to this collaboration.