Smash the Buddha!
I enjoy exploring ideas. And one of those ideas is SALT. My feeling is that in the Constellation it has become something that we cannot challenge and that we cannot develop. I am reminded of the Buddhist idea, "If you think that you have found the Buddha, then smash the Buddha!" I fear that for the Constellation, SALT has become the Buddha.
One of the challenges that is put to me is that SALT is a 'state of mind'. And I sense that the implication of this is that it is not open to debate, to challenge or to analysis.
In this article I explore the idea that 'SALT is a state of mind'.
As a starting point, SALT is an acronym that leads to a set of verbs. And a set of verbs is a set of actions. So I guess that sitting within these verbs is a state of mind that encompasses the collection of verbs. One challenge would be to articulate the state of mind that gathers together this collection of verbs.
So here is my attempt of a statement of MY mind with regard to SALT:
"Communities have the capacity to respond to the challenges that they face. And they have that capacity because they learn from their experiences. And I cannot be passive in that process because I, too, learn-and-share."
For me, I think, that state of mind leads to the acronyms of SALT.
Two examples
But a state of mind is by its nature passive. It does not necessarily have consequences. But it does form the basis for action. I want to illustrate the route to action through 2 examples.
The concept of 'AIDS Competence' or 'Life Competence' is a state of mind. We give a definition of it on our site http://www.communitylifecompetence.org/en/95-vision-and-mission. This state of mind seems to me to be a description of how we view the world. It doesn't DO anything. By itself, it produces no action. Historically, the state of mind of 'AIDS Competence' led to the Self Assessment Framework. This was a methodology that helped us on the road to AIDS Competence. It led to a tool. In fact, it led to several tools. And after quite some time those tools were linked together to make a process.
Another state of mind that I've been involved with might be called that of the 'Quality Management System'. I have used the quotation of Konosuke Matsushita in the past. I don't know that I've thought about it in this light before, but I think that it does define a state of mind:
"We are going to win and the industrial west is going to lose. There is not much that you can do about it because the reasons for your failure are within yourselves. Your firms are built on the Taylor model. Even worse, so are your heads—with the bosses doing the thinking, while the workers wield the screwdrivers. You're convinced deep down that this is the right way to run a business. For you, the essence of management is getting ideas out of the heads of bosses and into the hands of labour."
But how do you exploit this state of mind. I think that the first thing that happens is a set of tools that allow you to explore the idea. The internet will lead to a long list of tools that seem to flow from this state of mind. Try 'quality system tools' in a search engine to get a long list. But out of these tools come processes. A definition of a process in this context might be 'a set of steps that provide a route to the implementation of a state of mind'. Again you can find endless discussion of such processes by putting 'quality system' on 'quality circle' in a search engine.
The route from 'state of mind' to 'process'
I think that to move from a state of mind to action we create tools and then we create processes based on those tools. At the end of the day you may be able to say that but at the time it never feels like that. You go round loops as you experiment with tools and modify processes based on those tools. But I think that the progression is useful. The state of mind is an insight into how the world works. The tool helps you move in the right direction. The process gives you a methodology that lays out a route to the destination.
Over the years, here is one thing that I've learned. People often buy into the process because they like the results that they've seen (usually somewhere else). So they implement the process without engaging with the 'state of mind'. This route leads to conflicts of interest throughout the organisation and to ultimate failure.
I think that my concern is that here we are sitting with the converse problem. We have the state of mind, but we are failing to develop tools and processes to allow people to gain the benefit from that state of mind.