I’ve been thinking about this post by Seth Godin for a good while now.  I’m guessing that Godin is thinking about the topic of how we respond to organizations on a scale larger than the simply-personal.  But ultimately, organizations are people.  And like it or not, everything is personal (in some way or another).  Organizations can’t learn lessons unless the people in them do.  And too often, there are no viable feedback loops for those who most need to learn something.  Godin writes:

Perhaps it makes sense to embrace, “now that I know what I know now, I can make a new decision based on new information and do this instead.”

“Now that I know what I know now” is a great idea.  I mentioned something similar to this back in this post from January.  In that instance, it was more about self-knowledge, but even self-knowledge is connected to organizations.  That’s especially true if this assertion by Godin holds up:

We often become what we do, as opposed to simply doing what we say we would when under duress.

It is possible, I believe, to do and become something good, but the first step taken is important and every step after that should be as much in the right direction as possible. And most people leading most organizations are probably too busy making sure the boat doesn’t sink to care about steps in even a slightly wrong direction.