Turtles Weekend
Human Systems Dynamics Institute
Circle Pines, Minnesota, USA
April
1-3, 2005
Book of Proceedings
What are the implications and opportunities
when self-organizing is the only kind of organizing that
exists?
Table of Contents
Starting the Process
Self-Organization -- All the Way Down - Harrison Owen 3
Theory Meets Practice Meets Theory -- Glenda Eoyang 6
Open Space Session
Discussion Notes
The place of freedom in
self-organizing systems 8
The Dynamics of Emergence 10
Gangs ó Police Military ó “Enemy Tribe ó “Other” 21
Power 28
Deeper Patterns and Processes 35
Guises of Self Organizing Systems 36
What does self-organization imply about wielding influence? 39
Organizational Awareness/Consciousness & Ego Development 41
How to Use Complexity and Open Space Principles on Critical Global Issues 43
Attractors and Questions 48
The relation between self-organizing systems and transformational process? 50
What is leadership (in the
context of self-organizing systems)? 53
What is Change? How do you see dissipative structures? 55
How to Attain a Worldcentric
Perspective 58
List of Participants 60
Starting the Process
Self-Organization – All the Way Down
Harrison Owen
There is an old joke about a King who goes to a
Wiseperson and asks: How is it that the Earth doesn*t fall down?
The Wiseperson replies, “The Earth is resting on a lion.” “On what, then, is
the lion resting?” “The lion is resting on an elephant.” “On what is the
elephant resting?” “The elephant is resting on a turtle.” “On what is the. . .
“You can stop right there, your Majesty. It*s turtles all the way down.” (Ken Wilber, “The
Essential Ken Wilber” Shambala 1998, pg 61)
It is turtles all the way down,
although in this case, the turtle is the power of self-organization. The notion
is a simple one. Given certain very elemental pre-conditions order happens,
organization emerges. Not by plan, not by external effort or design. It just
happens all by itself. And it happens everywhere, from the farthest reaches of
the cosmos to the smallest corners of the human community – it is all
self-organizing. Turtles all the way down.
If ever there were an
outrageous, paradigm busting, counter-intuitive proposition, the suggestion
that self-organization underlies our total life experience, including
businesses, communities, countries and that planet itself would be that
proposition. However, if we are to believe the scientists who work on such
things, the force of Self-Organization has been around ever since the beginning
– the moment of The Big Bang. By rough count that is about 14,000,000,000
years. These scientists tell us that given the right conditions, order happens,
not just order in the abstract – but very concrete, ordered things such as
stars, planets, weather systems, the human body along with all the other plants
and critters on earth. And most remarkable there is not a strategic plan nor
executive committee in sight. Everything just emerges. In retrospect the
evolution of the cosmos in all of its splendid components appears as the
unrolling of a majestic design. Prospectively, it is ultimately unpredictable.
We can only know where we are now. The future is completely emergent.
Fortunately for all the rational
planners and executives among us, the new story of Self-Organization has
largely been told in terms of the physical and non-human elements of our world.
I say “fortunate,” for if it turned out to be true that force of self
organization not only propelled the emerging cosmos, but also every human
system, large or small, a number of job descriptions, to say nothing of jobs
could well be in jeopardy. Just consider how many people are paid large amounts
of money to organize and manage things – and what if it turned out that
organization happens pretty much by itself, and management, as an exercise of
tight control, was a fruitless enterprise. One might suspect fraud!
Thanks to Meg Wheatley and
others, the notion of self organizing systems has been edging side wise into
management consciousness. But to this point it seems to have been treated as an
odd anomaly and certainly not to be taken all that seriously. Yes, most would
agree, there are elements of self-organization is every human system – but No,
they pose little threat to the professional executive or manager. After all, we
all know who organizes things around here. And it is not some vague cosmic
force called self-organization.
Despite the natural hesitance to
allow the notion of Self Organization to intrude into the world of management
and human systems, I find it very strange that somehow this minuscule corner of
the cosmic universe should escape from what is apparently a universal power. On
the face of it, this exclusion (seclusion?) would seem as likely as the absence
of Gravity. Of course it could be true, and this possibility is enhanced
by the fact that in many cases we seemingly know who did the organizing. Henry
Ford organized Ford Motor Company. And Mom and Pop organized the corner grocery
store. Our knowledge is buttressed by heaps of documentary evidence –
organization charts and official directives apparently creating the shape and
flow of contemporary organizations. And
the icing on the cake are several generations of Harvard Case Studies (amongst
others) which describe in minute detail how it was all accomplished. Case
closed. But is it?
We have ample evidence of how
the organizational titans thought things were going to work, and an equal
amount of directives and exhortations relative to how they should work.
But a niggling question remains in my mind – Is all this truly reflective of how
things actually do work? I doubt it.
Take for example the whole
matter of Organizational Charts. Presumably this is the map of how things are
supposed to happen, and when I would take on a new client (back in the days
when I actually had clients) I was always given a copy of the most recent
version by way of orientation and welcome to the organization. Almost
immediately after receiving this mother lode of organizational practice I would
be told that of course it was out of date, and in any event things didn’t quite
work that way. If I pressed the subject and asked how one actually accomplished
something in the organization the answer would always come as some variant of,
“Go see Lucy out in Accounting – she can help you out.” Now Lucy never showed up
on the Org Chart. Her position was so low and bereft of positional power as to
be invisible. But it turned out that
Lucy had been around for 20 years, she knew everybody (after all she handed out
the checks), and had a well earned reputation for always knowing the right
person to call if she couldn’t handle the problem herself. In a word, she was
well plugged into that most powerful organ in The Organization – The
Back-channel – otherwise known as The Informal Organization.
Of course it was the solemn duty
of every right thinking manager to find and destroy this aberration of
organizational design. In its place was supposed to be strict lines of
authority and accountability, with the Back Channel supplanted by Formal
Communication, all neatly described by carefully drawn lines – solid and
dotted. The picture is absolutely beautiful, but unfortunately it bears little,
if any, resemblance to the actual state of affairs. Fortunately no manager in
recorded history has ever been successful in this mission and the back-channels
are alive and well.
And should you ask who organized
the back-channels and the informal organization, the answer is embarrassing
simple – Nobody. They seem to happen all by themselves. Would you believe
Self-Organization at the heart of every organization?
At the risk being a total
heretic, permit me to offer two propositions. First: If we actually did
business the way we say we do business, we would be out of business. We say
everything is tightly organized and operates within narrowly prescribed limits.
What we do, however, presents a very different picture – and thank God for
that. My second proposition is (I think) a direct corollary. There is no
such thing as a non-self organizing system, there are only some mildly deluded
people who think they did the organizing. I take the first proposition as a
matter of direct observation. I realize it is open to challenge and I am by no
means suggesting that some sort of intentional fraud is being perpetrated.
Rather I see this as a demonstration of the power of a paradigm. The
traditional view, at least in the West, is that organization at the level of
human systems is always the product of human, and sometimes super human effort.
This paradigm is heavily supported by compensation packages, university
degrees, professional identities and associations. The cost of substantial
change would be enormous. It is therefore not surprising that the paradigm
retains its power. Given this view point
all of experience is interpreted in its light, and when anomalies occur they
are typically set to one side as curiosities. Were we able to pursue the
curious anomalies we might escape the power of the paradigm and discover that
the emperor has few if any clothes. But that would make him no less the
emperor, just different from our expectations. One might say he was now the
emperor in his natural state.
If I may follow this somewhat
risky analog one step further, I would say that the emperor au natural
is none other than the self-organizing system. Same old organization but now
seen in a different, more natural, light. And so back to my second proposition:
There is no such thing as a non-self organizing system. This is
organization stripped to its essentials. It is also organization totally in
line with all other organization in the cosmos, no longer the product of some
individual “organizer” – but rather the creature of a 14,000,000,000 year old
force. It is so nice to come home again!
So there you have it.
Self-Organization all the way down. Not a little bit, not partially, but the
whole enchilada. Bold, rash, and intemperate I am sure – and it certainly sets
our conventional wisdom on its head.
I am not at all sure how one
might go about proving such an outrageous proposition, and in fact I rather
suspect proof (at the level of 100% certainty) to be unnecessary. “Likely
possibility” would be sufficient, and then the question would be, are we able
to understand organizational function in a more robust way? And more
importantly, are we able to enhance the function of our organizations, and our
individual performance? In a word, self-organization, like Gravity, initially
can be treated as an a priori assumption. If it makes sense, enabling a more robust
understanding without multiple unexplained anomalies, and allows us to perform
at higher levels, precise truth or falsehood is essentially beside the point.
Or in more colloquial terms – If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and
looks like a duck – for all practical purposes, it is a duck. At the very least,
we have a testable hypothesis.
So given the a priori
given of Self-Organization, what do we learn and what can we do? The immediate
advantage is that we no longer have to deal with the embarrassing reality that
what we say and what we do are at some extreme variance. The informal
organization is accepted and validated for what it is – no longer the devil
incarnate to be eliminated immediately if not sooner, but rather the essential
core of organization life. Furthermore,
the Formal Organization can now be viewed for what it is – a potentially useful
map of the territory, but never to be confused with the territory itself. At
least that has been my experience. You will have to make up your own mind.
Starting the Process
Theory Meets Practice Meets Theory
Glenda Eoyang
The central question for the Turtles Weekend is this:
What are the implications and
opportunities when self-organizing is the only kind of organizing that
exists.
My fundamental assumption, at least for the purposes of the Turtles Weekend conversation, is that self-organizing is not a mystical magical thing, but a valid, observable, knowable, natural phenomenon. I propose a rather simple definition. Self-organization is:
A process by which interactions within result in coherent patterns that emerge across an identifiable unit of analysis.
This definition breaks into a number of parts, and each one uncovers a specific aspect of self-organizing as a natural process of emergence.
A process—Self-organizing happens in time. It involves observable change over time.
Interactions within—The “self” that is to organize includes subcomponents or parts of some kind. Sometimes we call them the “wholes within the whole.” These parts are somewhat independent, but they interact. Each interaction transforms each of the interacting parts and may make an observable difference in the whole.
Result in—We can observe in a variety of settings and conditions that internal interactions happen, and system-wide patterns follow. We don’t know how or why one causes the other, but we do know that when the interactions happen, new patterns can emerge. No interactions; no changing patterns.
Coherent patterns—We’ve worked with a variety of characteristics that comprise “coherence.” Here are some: reduced internal tension, meaningful, harmonious, identifiable, recognizable, rational (in a mathematical sense), peaceful. The opposite of a coherent pattern is a random one. These patterns can rest in any number of media. They can be physical in nature (colors, shapes, sounds), cognitive (meaning, metaphor, story), emotional (happy, sad, fearful), social (team, family, nation), political (neighborhood, city, state, country), economic (firm, industry, economy, spiritual (trusting, hoping, believing), or anything else in which a unit of analysis and subcomponents can be identified.
Emerge—Come to be over time.
Identifiable unit of analysis—The “self” constitutes a unit of analysis. It can be arbitrary, so that the molecule, the water drop, the ocean can all be reasonable units of analysis: selves. The only requirement is that the unit of analysis be distinguishable from any other unit of analysis, regardless of the relationship of the two in space and time.
That is what I mean when I say “self-organizing,” and the assumption we want to make during the Turtles Weekend is that a process such as this is the fundamental mechanism by which things come to be and pass away in all domains of reality. This assumption opens the door to a flood of questions that I hope we can begin to pursue during the weekend. I’m sure you have yours, and here are mine.
- How do we as conscious beings make meaning through self-organizing processes?
- What is a metaphor?
- What is grammar and syntax?
- How do we communicate meaning to each other?
- What is a conversation? What makes one “good” and another “bad?”
- What is the meaning of time, space, or mass in a self-organizing reality?
- What is ethical action in a self-organizing universe?
- How can I tell good from evil?
- How can I be held responsible for my actions?
- What is the nature of accountability?
- How can I understand conflicting ethical or moral stands?
- What does it mean to practice “organization development” if human systems are self-organizing?
- What is my role?
- What tools do I have at my disposal?
- What is my relationship with my clients and colleagues?
- What does it mean to lead? To follow? To support?
- What is the nature of my consciousness?
- Who am I, as a sentient being?
- How do I strive to improve myself?
- In what sense do “I” exist?
I look forward to our conversation and trust that our interactions will result in coherent patterns that will emerge over the course of the weekend.
Glenda Eoyang
January 2005
The place of freedom in self-organizing
systems
Convenor: Jack Ricchiuto
Freedom – ability to move, fluidity
Constraints can be inside or outside one’s head
Ralph Stacey – at the edge of chaos, there’s freedom in connections: the middle space between solid and chaos
State shifting happens when there are less tight systems
Freedom brings about novelty
Breadth of space of freedom varies by community
Self-trust drives one’s own freedom
Law of two feet exemplifies the freedom people give themselves – or not
Freedom leads to the need for responsibility
The
We’re in charge ourselves – is how we acknowledge both freedom and responsibility
We’re in charge of our responses to even situations where we lack external freedom
Sometimes our job is just to witness when people feel powerless in their situation
A key question: what is your power?
If there is no doer to create freedom, is there freedom?
From a zen tradition, there is a doer but it isn’t separate
Freedom then is the freedom to see our essential inseparability
In some traditions, we refer to perpetrator as teacher – that frees us from victimhood
Freedom is creativity; creativity is how freedom is gets expressed
Angel definition of freedom: bare-assed child with arms out in front of the ocean
What is the role of responsibility in a self-organizing system?
Blame = stuckness = lack of freedom – if it weren’t for you ….
Sometimes you’re launched into freedom when the bottom falls out
If you stay in the chaos, you reorganize into freedom
Some people fall to pieces
Naming experience can help in the transition
Effective leadership names the new possibilities
It helps to be able to articulate what we need to let go of
Like values that used to work that we now need to let go of
It helps to allow the grieving experience without getting to closure on it
It helps to give ourselves the freedom to grieve without closing it off
Allowing our story creates the space for the next, new story
Permission giving is the law of two feet
It’s giving people freedom to grieve before moving too quickly
When you allow the messiness of self-organization … it’s shit all the way up and down
What does freedom look like at
all levels of complexity?
Freedom will look different depending on where you’re at
Each is helpful; each gives people more degrees of freedom
Freedom is always contextual
In some contexts, it’s just giving people choices
The key is not to impose my sense of what freedom is
In a healthy hierarchy, the role of leader is to see more and farther
There are constraining and liberating structure
Freedom is the structure that engages – it’s a social construct, or memes that brings out freedom
OS creates new organizing principles that allows people to play with new degrees and forms of freedom
People freak when they have freedom until they get structure that
A bridge had to be anchored at both sides
Linda Stevenson – client organization is now using OS principles to run their business; the culture is now engaged in passion, responsibility and law of 2 feet
People feel more free to express themselves, interconnect, collaborate, have fun, feel trust and trustworthiness.
After OS, leaders feel freer to trust
More freedom to serve a greater whole
Freedom = permission and necessity
The more present you are, the more you see opportunities
There is also freedom of information
Employees push back on freedom because of the responsibility
OS gives people to identify and own – it’s not chaos
The Dynamics of Emergence
Convenor: Peggy
Participants: Kim, Royce, Therese, Audrey, Lois Thundercloud, Linda, Karen
Christina, Claire
Notes by Therese
A paper on the model follows the discussion.
Discussion
Who gets invited? Inviting diversity leads to greater opportunity for divergence?
This model comes out of noticing patterns I see in orgs, in an individual and collective level as we move to divergence
At an individual level, the idea is to participate with an open heart. It creates a different internal relationship, it is what Senge talks about in Presence. It is extraordinarily liberating to get this invitation
As a collective, we are invited to connect.
When individuals are really speaking from their true center, and we begin to reflect and share together, to be witness for each other, we begin to notice our place of connection. We discover we are always talking about the same thing.
We discover that what is most personal is also universal. It is this ah ha that is the realm of emergence.
I feel it in my heart, my body, my spirit: I feel the connection, it is unique.
This is realm of spirit, where we begin to sense our feeling of wholeness and connection to each other. We begin to move in to coherence. In OS terms it is coherence. . WE begin to take responsibility for what we love. You don’t have to worry about consensus so much because when we act, they are operating out of context of shared experience.
We tend to stop when the fear comes up, we see things as a mess but with this model we can step into the unknown with a degree of confidence that something will emerge from the other side.
Discussion:
It looks like it would be a good coaching model.
Does it work for you, is there resonance in it for you?
It is at the edge of chaos where the use of powerful questions that the factor leads to sustaining patterns rather than stuck chaos.
How can knowledge of this enable me (Peggy) and this small advisory group we are starting with to create the tipping point kind of conversation, to help us make decisions that can best enable the spread of a dif way of doing stories, for example.
Let’s talk through someone’s project, through the model.
One of the implications for Peggy is growing the capacity for emergence. If we get better at increasing our collective capacity for stepping in to disturbance, by recognizing that emergence is what is on the other side. Care for self, community and the whole. We build that capacity through surface. What is the work of change? To change in to orgs with capacity for emergence.
It looks like a map. A map of the territory, which is why we see so many knots around the room.
- welcome disturbance
- ask great questions, which bounds the space
- invite diversity
It’s CDE: containers, differences, exchanges
A CDE is like a snapshot in time, none stay still in any moment, all interrelated, dynamics of the model takes those three conditions transforming each other and the conversations through time.
SOS map?
Emergence or innovation?
Emergence is when something reorders itself in a higher form, a higher level of consciousness in a sense, which is a form of innovation. That seems to happen when we make the connection between what we hold deeply, where contradictions resolve themselves.
Is all emergence healthy and productive?
When you have a group of people together, there are lots of things that happen that you don’t necessarily know about in the moment but they may end up being the next Nobel prize. . . so I think we use those words elastically. . .
Powerful questions, how to get this collective capacity. . . so much of that is not just the questions what Susan Smith calls holding the fierce conversation. . .
Need to be asking appreciative questions. When I look at Wolfram’s four types, too many scattered questions. . . . the nature of the questions, what does it teach us about asking. . . .
Do the questions change? QUESTIONS take off.
Egolets. . . all the parts of our personality system that are warring and tugging but they are unconscious most of the time. . .
Threads: story and witnessing
Rel. between positive image and positive action. . . an AI takes us in to not just the telling of the story but also of being heard. We begin to build that positive image. Ultimately we reach this point of recognizing our sense of wholeness, which takes us into coherent action.
We feel our wholeness in the personal
It is a kind of deep, generative listening. . .
Royce calls it granting and giving voice. . . .
The map is never the territory. . . what Peggy has described is maybe not a map, maybe the dynamics of emergence. . .
In order for a system to replicate, two conditions. . . .needs info of what it is, it’s selfness and then it needs the info/rules by which it replicates. Which is what the DNA contains.
The DNA of emergence.
Connection, conscious awareness of self, other, whole
For many people this might be useful to get a picture of what eventually might happen. . .
New set of differences but the old differences are still there. . . .
Differentiated wholeness: rather than the mob
It is passion but in a coherent pattern that has emerged, gone from dyad to triad
Personal agendas? Some words into the model that have to do with agendas and interest. . . .
What are our priorities?
Asking the question that can engage at the level that has a conversation. . .
It is really what a good AI protocol. . . walk through them to tell a personal story. . . .
It might be an extraordinary that a way through, a way to reach a place of wholeness is to ask someone what they care about as an individual. . . .
What happens when it doesn’t work? Where have I seen it not work? Suggested questions. . . . the main thing . . . the key is the nature of the questions. . . . it also has something to do with how sincerely the question is embodied.
Intentional emergence? If it is all self org and in the same way emergence is a phenomenon that happens, there are point attractors and strange attractors and periodic attractors. . . no name for attractors that lead to autopoetic systems so what I have been wondering when does this form happen. . . so maybe this is a particular variance, the promising variant of it. . . .
Intentional means you set the conditions. . . . the question has to include and transcend the polarities, transcend the paradox.
HL: emergence happens all the time whether we like it or not but we don’t necessarily see it. . An attempt to bring the level of emergence to something more powerful, to make a bigger difference. . .how does this happen and how can we stack the deck?
What do we know about what are the questions that makes a dif? What are the wicked questions?
How can you be both more independent and more connected? The ones that call out the dichotomies. . . .they are very important because those things are very often a part of the conflict..
Questions that follow lifegiving forces, they are affective questions. . . . which is
How to build the capacity?
One of the big problems that people have is that the nature of the work that needs to be done in order to be in the middle of Peggy’s model doesn’t look like work . . . so to think in that context, what are the words, what are the thoughts that might be introduced in to that design that would help connect. . . . . so when it happens. . . .
Focusing? A ‘felt’ sense. . . teach people to recognize if something feels right or wrong. . . there is another level that the focusing is getting it. . . a bodily sensation. . . . not necessarily emotion. . . a group might get to ‘it feels like’. . .
Silence. . . . it is an accelerator, because it is a form of focusing. The middle space in Peggy’s model is a felt space, we feel it in our heart, our spirit and intellectually. . . .
One of the ways you set those conditions, you invite the group to use that criterion, then you are setting another condition.
The invisible territory is the sense of community: combo of free agency and positive action.
Let’s use a real situation like Christina’s Girl Scout project
Are there people from outside the GS systems?
Can you hope to have a national process that will lead to emergence without some community of people that represent the connection between that national meeting and what will be done at the local level?
Do you need to think that maybe you need to create a group that does not exist right now? And can the design team be that group?
What is out identity
What are our relationships? What is the information?
What’s our vision?
What is our current state?
What do we need to do to emerge?
It is holographic so it is same pattern with 12 or 12,000
New design team would happen on other side of middle of the model
Then your national folks know who are the next gen to work with?
Re: bringing in outsiders, the system needs a chance to cohere and then invite the next layer from the outside. . . . .
Virtual work? What if you did simultaneous OS’s with webcams and LCDs?
What came up at the 300 GS meet?
Online connect is probably a key to rapid acceleration.
Simple rules question for world café
You can’t depend on the existing hierarchy. . . you can’t bypass it but a new network has to emerge, a shift of power has to take place, dif level of freedom or permission. . . .
The networked organization: article by Peggy for Christina
You are shifting from hierarchy from where the orientation is to look up to an org that is about service and relationships. It is who you choose to connect with as opposed to who you are told to report. . . .
Why do they want to change? Losing market share, numbers way down. . . .
The delivery systems have made it harder for them to deliver their jewel which is leadership for by of for with girls. . . .
What are the needs of girls today?
What is it that want?
The thing that they have always known how to do is create women leaders
If you want to do research, approach it from the point of view to identify connections between one and the other, by looking at patterns of behavior and then connecting patterns that belong to the girl scouts. Any work done to find out who is joining?
The Dynamics of Emergence
I
have now shared the model that follows with graduate students in the midst of a
conflict with their institute, business people at a multinational corporation,
members of the Israeli school system, teachers in Ramallah, and Executive MBA
students and faculty in Colombia. With
each of these very different audiences, it seems to provide a perspective that
makes that oh-so-unnerving step into chaos just a wee bit easier.
The model:
The
context that causes someone to consider using OS includes a variety of
“disturbances,” such as fear, conflict, crisis as well as hope, aspiration, or
desire.
While
stepping into disturbances may feel like a crazy act of asking for time spent
in chaos, in truth it is the gateway to creativity. To find something new requires time in the
unknown, in mystery. That said, the
“space” is not limitless; rather it is bounded by a powerful question – the
theme that focuses the OS, always expressed in terms of possibilities (not
problems). This question acts as the
attractor, something that people coming care about enough to show up for the
work.
Open
Space is an invitation into exploring the unknown together. The greater the diversity of the
participants, the more likely the divergence of that exploration. The wider the divergence, the more likely
something new will surface. Since OS
invites people to follow what has heart and meaning, to take responsibility for
what they care about, it often brings out the unexpected in people. OS offers a remarkable invitation for each
person to look within, to truly ask themselves what is important to them. It takes each of us into our own place of
mystery. In addition, the collective is
gathered together at the beginning and end of each day, experiencing what is
often a new experience of connection to each other and the whole as people
reflect together.
Through
the breakout sessions, the question that attracted participants is explored
from many, many angles. Remarkably, the
same conversations begin to show up in many places. These are the threads of emergence. We begin to recognize these threads because
they resonate so clearly with many people.
Reflection in the circle of the whole often makes these emergent threads
even more visible.
For
example, in a recent OS on work-life balance, the same themes surfaced many
times in the closing circle: take responsibility for oneself; the power to say
no. Participants experienced these ideas
more than intellectually; they sensed them physically, in their heart and in
their gut. We discussed the visceral
sense that signals emergence because it is experienced at all levels (e.g.,
head, heart, body and spirit) and by many people.
This
place of emergence is the magic that we feel when an OS is at its best. I believe it is because we discover that is
what most deeply personal, what means most to us as an individual is also most
universal. In that discovery, we begin
to experience our connection to the “whole.”
This feeling of connection fills us with excitement and energy that
stirs us into action. This is the ground
of spirit.
As
new ideas, insights, leaders, and forms emerge, action is often swift and
effective. How could this not occur when
personal and collective meaning and ideas for action align? We are in convergence, where the resonant
areas that emerged from our divergent exploration coalesce. There is no need to “enroll” others; we’ve
enrolled ourselves through our direct experience. There is no need for consensus; we have all
internalized the threads that connect us, providing responsible boundaries for
action. Parenthetically, this frequently
extends to those who didn’t attend the OS event, who somehow “catch” the spirit
of the experience from those who were there.
This is a great time to hold an OS for action on what emerged to staff
projects with passionate, committed and responsible participants.
Understanding
this pattern – that stepping into the unknown of divergence, while it may seem
chaotic, when bounded by a compelling question, leads to emergence – may
provide some confidence to a sponsor who is fearful of losing control or that
things will get out of hand. It is a
predictable pattern that we have all experienced in the open space of life.
As
people experience OS events of different sizes or diversity or length, over
time, what typically emerges evolves.
Even in short, fairly homogenous OS experiences, there is the
possibility of new ideas and relationships, new connections. The likelihood of this increases with time
and diversity. With more time, generally
two days, projects are likely to surface, complete with temporary teams and
leaders. As the experience of OS is
internalized, self-managed teams, with leaders shifting according to the needs
of the group may come into being. With
frequent use, an organization may even begin to function with both leadership
and form emerging to fit the context.
As
OS becomes the conscious way of working, such disturbances often begin as
butterfly conversations in the hallways.
Eventually they make it into the marketplace of ideas, with an
invitation by someone(s) taking responsibility to convene a session and
inviting whoever cares about the issue to address it on behalf of the
whole.
My
working definition of an emergent organization offers an answer to the oft asked
but rarely answered question about change or transformation: “change to
what?” What it is that we wish to
become? This is my answer:
If
this is the work, what, in addition to lots of Open Space, grows this capacity
for emergence? My answer needs refining
to what is most essential. Here’s what I
know of the territory:
As
I narrow these ideas to what is most essential, I know it begins with welcoming
disturbances, asking powerful questions, inviting people who care, inclusion of
diversity – particularly the unlikely participants, and inviting people to take
responsibility for what they care about.
I think the rest of the practices mentioned reinforce and nurture the
capacity for emergence.
And
that, so far, is my story.
Peggy Holman
Gangs Police
Military “Enemy”
Tribe “Other”
Convenor: Lisa Heft
Notes-taker: Lisa
Heft
Participants: Meg Salter, Harrison Owen, Karen Davis,
Jack Ricchiuto, Cindy Wilcox, Audrey Coward
Notes:
Lisa: Some of the work I do is in prison…which would be in some peoples’
definition a closed system (or some might try to stuff all the openings to try
like crazy to close it) but is really an open system and a self-organizing
one. And within this supposedly closed
system there is an amazing marketplace of information exchange, flourishing
creativity, even within everyone’s outward ‘agreement’ that these things don’t
and can’t happen (like ‘there are no drugs in prison’ - but you can get ‘em --
like ‘there is no interpersonal nourishment in prison’ but you find it, and so
on. So it seems to be restrictive but it
can only restrict certain things.
Meg: I have no experience working with the military or police forces but
despite that total ignorance I notice you (Lisa) used the word up front
‘closed’ system and I think it may be more a difference between recognizing
self organizing and that these are the people (the wardens, the guards) we choose
to help us exercise restraints on behavior regarding whatever actions or values
we deem to be inappropriate. They are
not a closed system - they are the arm of ourselves that says thou shalt not do
x (x varies by culture) -- so they have a role of helping to keep the container
whole, solid, firm.
Harrison: They’re the white blood cells of society and white blood cells
eat things (and sometimes the wrong things)…
Meg: Right, and how much authority and or power the white blood cells
have can vary by culture or level or whatever but I think we have to recognize
that they are us. And for example good parenting techniques are a out laying
and enforcing of some boundaries for safety and protection.
Harrison: I heard something else going on there when I heard the word
“closed” system as if these things open/closed were absolutes. More to the point when we start seeing the
world as a self organizing system that is not that we are not seeing system constraints --there are system
constraints in self organizing systems.
I suspect we need to do a lot of thinking about initiating conditions, sustaining
conditions and terminating conditions
-- and around all of that there are constraining conditions. And your environment is inevitably at some
point constraining and by same token the freedom is infinite. I haven’t worked in prisons but I have worked
with entities that are warehousing mental health facilities and what was
amazing to me was it’s all fractal. You
can be on a totally ‘closed’ mental hospital ward which is in constant dialogue
with the external environment and within itself has an infinite range of
expression - is it a closed system? yes… does it have system constraints? yes…
do those system constraints push behavior in one way as opposed to another one?
yes.. but with that, its infinite.
Meg: I wonder why we normally call those places closed systems -
‘closed’ is really from the perspective of the speaker of these words who might
feel that the constraints are inappropriate.
We are looking at it from different perspectives and feeling that
perhaps constraints that may have at another time or in another context once
have been relevant, those constraints are overdone and no longer relevant.
Harrison: That’s the view of the liberal. Conservatives would look at exactly the same thing might want to call it closed and the reason is that if it ain’t closed it (the thing we’re uncomfortable around) might get out. There’s a sense that what do you do with nuts -- well, there might have been some part of a reason that you put nuts in the insane asylum to protect them from harming themselves or others… but the real truth for the vast majority of the system is that we really don’t like those people because there is only a really teeny difference between them and us - and if I we