Marketing multiplies value upwards for everyone in a community when it identifies the relationship connection that waves positively through all others. Markets need innovation architects who raise the bar beyond amplifying within the current system. They facilitate changemaking to a higher order system - one capable of spinning round more abundant value. As far as my experience goes over the last 30 years, the minimum configuration necessary for sustaining entrepreneurial revolution involves a triangle of flows not just one relationship connection. In tensely productive and demanding systems, risk is ever-present that one of the 2 sides of a relationship will lose their nerve or start overpowering the other. A triangle is the minimum subsystem offering the opportunity for each coordinate to mediate the other two so that goodwill and core purpose compound positively through time.
David
Thank you for your book
I have become as john von neumann would say "obscenely" interested in decoding how systems (and networks as systems times systems) condition behaviours; at a quick glimpse I noticed your integarted stakeholer argument but wonder if you have one simplest map of
*how you analyse metrics/rewards as impacting behavuous over time
* how you look at flows of what communications/questions/info are permitted or banned across departments as wella s from the outside stakeholders in
for me metrics and flows explain whether any systems of people relationships and actions are sustaining expoentially up or about to crash expoenentially dows, and this can be modelled both at single organisational system levels and at whole global sector levels
this is work I have been doiing with alan mitchell for over a decade now but which I now realise muhammad yunus has published -and bangladesh practices and networks - the simplest sustainable models of
I am next in london around may 28 -say if you have time to meet; our bottom-up system roads to dhaka culminates in an all day dialogue with dr yunus on june 29
http://yunusforum.net - we welcome any representation there -if people are unable to come but have a one-pager they want circulated because they feel it colaboratively helps with micro-up modelling which for me is the only kind with a chnace of sustainaing what man integrates, then we welcome understanding how to do that one-pager justice on the day and in any before after networking
chris macrae
Any system of human relationships is spinning around its contextual gravity. The first big question before anyone gets involved in an organisational system is:
WHICH WAY-spinning goodwill, sustainable growth and trust for all, value multiplying?-spinning illwill, loss for most people and increasing dis-trust, past a critical stage death of all value connected to the system?
This question becomes ever more vital to everyone involved in a networked age where connections between systems spin each other faster and bigger (ie more globally) as well as consequently having ever more disproportionate local impacts
POST-INDUSTRIAL
Death-of-Distance Era Q1 (origin, The Economist 1984): Will networks by 2024 become the most imaginative time on earth for all beings or the most viciously divided?
As if our current
immaturity of systems governance isn't risky enough for our world of people:--pattern rules show that goodwill and badwill systems attract each and multiply each other's kind --before we matured into a service or learning economy, organisations were not formally believed to be living systems: instead of relationships,performance reporting was dedicated to transactions; instead of connections, separability was the main mathematical assumption of tangible accounting; instead of investing in the future qualities of human beings, people were decreed to be costs and only machines or lifeless things could be booked in as investments...--unfortunately, when personal computers hit every managers desk, the first killer application was the spreadsheet which drowned all managers in their only common language of numbers geared to destroying relationship integrity.So its quite urgent that today we find the cure in the form of a game all people can play at the same time. Imagine sitting round a table with gravity at the centre. What chairs relate to the gravity and what tensions between the roles -inputs served or output demands - determine the system's spin? That's the question
We suggest this starters for 10 though you can edit the language into ever richer detail whilst remembering that if you take away one chair from the table, this is an assumption. If your assumption is wrong you will no longer be able to see truly which way the spin is compounding nor how fast nor how to intervene if the spin is going the wrong way 5 inputs left and 5 inputs right
1 how individuals serve a company/gravity and what they most need from it2 how groups of individuals serve a company/gravity and what their customers most want from it3 How the leadership team serves a company/gravity and what the owners want from it4 How global business partners and suppliers serve the company/gravity and what they want from it5 How local societies serve a company/gravity and what local societies want from itNB This is a molecular structure which can zoom micro (intra) or macro (inter) so that mapmaking can see through system of systemsNote how our mathematician put chairs round the table in a way that maximises transparency. It is possible to argue that for much of the 20th C's industrial age (where current accounting still assumes that machines made productive difference not people) then only the coordinates K3 and V3 came to the fore. Capitalist nations successfully accepted this from corporations as long as they contributed fairly to taxes and were communally overseen by public organisations led by governments.Value multiplication got a bit more interesting when the service economy took over from the industrialised product (lifeless things) one. Now all coordinates up to 1-3, K&V are mutually involved. For example machine and financial capital become less and less important the more customised service depends on the time and competent-learning and emotional intelligences that employees invest (also discussed in some emerging economics theories as entrepreneurs, interpreneurs and knowledge workers). Still value in a service economy traded in ways that was mainly zero-sum - as a customer consumed a service it was used up.
Now when we include coordinates 4 and 5 the magic of going above zero-sum economics truly comes into play:-we have people learning that multiplies in use-we have worldwide codes that can be digitally replicated wherever they provide useful orders to machines or alerts to peoples-we have the chance to openly trade diversity's sources, see many more innovation patterns where wholes make connections that can be planted to compound far more worth through time than separate parts or separate periods of time (bringing us to another quality of learning that its value often appreciates on an exponential learning curve as any parent can testify to)Urgently, we suggest, a game like that pictured, needs to be rehearsed at every age level. It will help your family and you detect which organisations to invest your time or other commitments to and which to stay away from. And through that knowledge we have every chance of connecting all of the world's 6 billion beings in the most productive and humanly inspiring age that people have ever connected.
knowledge shoutouts
when founding a university in India, Gandhi
1 2 chose as its motto: Knowledge is that which liberates us.
His views of how to lovingly/peacefully change huge systems (eg India's restoration of its own nation) is very relevant to us today for 2 reasons. Gandhi was probably one of the three most socially and trust networked people within living memory. Today any child's future depends more than ever on collaboratively knowing how to be connected within value multiplying networks of people. Secondly social entrepreneurs eg
1 2 3 and those who believe that we will only sustain life by restoring a peoples economics not just an economics of the global big gets bigger tend to unite in understanding Gandhi's systemic advice first
I ask that this group explores knowledge of system connections, NOT of management by parts. Unfortunately the 20th century increasingly separated specialisms including those of measurement professions to reward them as pieces thinkers not mappers of the big integrating picture. If in doubt of my accuracy, ask any postgraduate mathematician to review that with you.
This combined with networking's
death of distance revolutions - see also
entrepreneur frappr - are putting all our future generations at ever greater risk until or unless we collectively and consciously respect the relationship dynamics of systems
I realise the following is quite long. If there is a section that you feel needs slimming down, please do say so that I can do that here and improve our communal dialogue
I work/map with people on (living) systems every day, including some that have global impacts. I find this a useful patter rule or definition to begin with
"A system compounds disastrous consequences (including its own death and all
that may impact) over time if you do not wholly understand every lively force
that is intimately connected with it." Failing to understand has 2 critcal
aspects:
excluding some connection that is organic to the system
compounding conflicts between different organic coordinates of the system
I believe it's not too big an exageration to say whatever you feel is the
biggest disaster that is out of control today is a system one. This is because
living systems as I am trying to define them are always compounding
exponential consequences forward as a function of how conflict free or how
conflict ridden arcitectural investments made in them already are. (I have
used with Gary Hamel's permission a leadership architecture language of brand and knowledge as trust or distrust communications structures for 13 years now -
readers of his book competing for the future may recall he coined the term
startegy architecture there; also organisation desigh is in my view a synonym
of organisational architecture)
Most of the people governing our largest systems today have no information on
what they are compounding forward because accounting as currently defined in
the perfect maths of separation not connecting through time
http://exponentials.blogspot.com http://valuesystem.blogspot.com
There are two more rather big kinks
Most living systems are not defined by themselves but with their interfaces
with larger macro, inside micro, or inter (some call this the holic property
of systems)
Worse what the networking world does is multiply all sorts of systems that
were previously separated by distance but which communications now makes
intimately connected
I am aware that building architecture is an interesting construct - we can ask
is it a living system, or connecting together things (which are less subject
to some of the definitions I have given them)
but beware in 2 respects:
to the extent that building architectures have caused diseases be these
legionnaires disease, falling down in conditions less adverse than expected,
or the depressions of badly designed tower block coucil building - clearly
architectures do impact life ; and pattern rules interest me most when they
decode what life values of architecture
architectures with algae solaroofs are the world's best chance of clean
energy, water, air- and understanding why I say this is a deeply collaborative
system mapping game which we have started to play at
http://www.frappr.com/algaeworld
for all of the above reasons human trust-flow, openneess and transparecy of boundaries are critical constructs if sustainability of anything human is going to reach as far as century 22; George Orwell and other scifi writers were never wrong in suggesting that pervasive computing technolgy linking around the globe could compound only one of 2 end-games - one the greatest human life has ever experienced through all our 6 billion beings, and one very dark or deadly. Tjis is a system crisis. For that reason, editing down or mapping through around a context what I have tried to explain until it is simple is a useful exercise if anyone has the time
sincerely
chris macrae wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
How dark are those who rule over us by separating apartheids wherever the future's sustainability flows need connecting
here is a conversation on this going on March 2006 at
kwork.org the number 1 knowledge discussion/reformation space populated in large part by those who speak the American language (wherever it differs from the Commonwealth English whose globalisation mission statement bradcast from end 2005 on is
please stop humanity turning on itself)
Hi
yes I know -am quite intimately networked with people in 50+ collaboration knowledge cities and villages - one half of the entrepreneurial world who would systemically vote for collaboration as the number 1 advantage because in a transparently networked world - it's the only sustainable system of leadership; we are at war with the other half (often inside ourselves or viralised by what the computer spreadsheets) and will need every Gandhi practice from satyagraha to win-win-win for our next geneartion's quality of life, cut read: life!
how far back do we need to go to exorcise the raven of darkness you speak of caused by those who are either blind to the existence of human relationship systems or willfully deny them as a the service economy's complex means of social controlling those under them?
2004: Thomas Friedman wrote the most popular future history ever - the
world is flat: collaboration is the new competition; green is the new uniting
red white and blue;
http://clubofbethesda.blogspot.com and even the Presidents 21 Gathering Stormers went back to
the orginal future history I co-authored with my dad in 1984 to understand how
death of distance's story of the future of human life is that 7 waves will hit
the generation 1984-2024; each of which collaborates sustainability
exponentially up, or spiralling downwards ends future generations:that's how
the system connecting globalisation will outcome; ask any mathematician from Einstein, Von Neumann down
photosynthesis clean energy, learning opening school age alumni networks up,
risk prevention (or resilience) especially around each global sector's most
disaster waving externality, ending systems that compound underclasses in any
global village on this planet, social entrepreneurs replacing nationally
conditioned world bank aids -all of these are charted from our 1984
perspective in our book that was the first future history of networking; all
become unturnable round within a decade or so as we foretold eg
http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html#Anchor-Changin-27687 http://www.valuetrue.com/home/gallery.cfm go back 30 years to 1976 or 140 odd : 1976 was when my father started his
Entrepreneurial trilogy in The Economnist; 1840s was when The Economist was
founded by one of that century's world champions in social entrepreneurship;
James Wilson demanded that the people take back the corn laws and capital
punishment as the 2 blocks to 19th century British Empire-leadership ever
becoming anythning more sustaining than slave trading; preneur is from the
French take back as in when society takes back its fraternite (collaboration)
and liberte (freedom) from those who are controlling asssets in ways that are
conflicting with all the peoples being productive and
sustainable
or bo back to 1935 when my dad and Peter Drucker were in Moscow and did not
like what they say when what rules is the power of big to get bigger; or go
back to 1920 when Gandhi founded a university in Ahedeabad with the mission
statement: Knowledge is that which liberates us ... think about that , why
would anyone in this group want to manage liberation?
chris macrae
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk http://worldentrepreneur.blogspot.com http://collaborationworld.blogspot.com http://clubofahmedabad.blogspot.com http://www.frappr.com/gandhimba http://exponentials.blogspot.com http://goodwillwars.blogspot.com http://www.frappr.com/entrepreneuror map 40 million other
bookmarks when you google
+knowledge +collaboration +city
Quoting Jerry Ash
:
Hi Again Everyone.
Forgive me for my enthusiasm, but I love sharing the meaningful lessons
of ancient tribes with other people.
I'm currently reading one of the latest Gear novels--People of the
Raven--and thought of my previous post when I read this passage:
"How could the Raven People have gotten it so wrong? Everyone knew that
Old Woman Above carried the sun across the sky on her back. But
somehow, the story had begun to circulate that instead, Raven had
stolen the sun from a box in Old Woman Above's house and that he *flew*
it across the sky each day. Nonsense!"
Jerry
previously
Subject: Cross-Organizational Collaboration - All Shapes and Sizes
Hello again everyone.
Tomorrow we begin another STAR Series Dialogue, this one with Elizabeth Lank, a seasoned KM specialist with Collaborative Working located in Ascot, Berks, U.K. Please help me welcome her by jumping in early to this conversation.Elizabeth's name pops up just about everywhere and it has been teasing my interest for years. But not until recently when Graeme Burton, Inside Knowledge Editor, made her the cover story for the February 2006 edition did I make finally take action. I asked her to follow the IK report with a turn as STAR Moderator and she leaped at the invitation even though I was running a bit behind and was giving her short notice. I have since learned that high energy and enthusiasm are the keys of her character.Elizabeth Lank is an independent specialist who works with public, private and voluntary sector organisations to help them improve efficiency and effectiveness through greater cross-boundary collaboration and knowledge sharing. Based in the U.K., she has recently published a new book on collaborative working across different organisations, entitled Collaborative Advantage: How Organizations Win by Working Together (Palgrave Macmillan 2006). Please buy it through the AOK Bookstore:http://www.kwork.org/Store/featured.html#Lank
System Mappers
A is for
Ackoff -why Einstein warned of the extinction scenario if humans failed to invent their way into higher order systems needing thinking outside the current system's box; why global networking is a higher order challenge connecting all 6 billion beings in a race to innovate survival ;why societies are most at risk to professionals who lose their hippocratic oaths to connect & care
Anderson - how to put sustainability (valuing life) back into every business case, why there is greater profitability at the top of
mount sustainability, and why we should all simultaneously demand transparent maps for how one business's waste outputs can be another organisation's resource inputs, and multiply other courageous networking learning by decalring that it is time globalisation set about internalising externalities
Allee - more clearly than anyone else on the planet, Verna maps how value exchange theory provides the new holon interface and (as yet missing) micro-economics structures of the networking age. Of course, the same holonic molecule is the key to the 21st C door of sustainability investment networks, futures of pensioners, as well as macro-economics and inter-economics (such as connecting 2 industry sectors that had been separate). Leaders who do not know of this mapping capability are in a Bayesian statistical sense bound to compound the destruction of global corporation value over time.
M is for Macrae, NormanHis future history surveys in The Economist demonstrated what sorts of forecasts can be made becasue systems are already spinning. In the early 60s, Consider Japan showed that as Japan was already on a quality exponential with selected products including microelectronics and cars, and at that time with labour over 5 times chepaer than its international competitors in these markets, it was a sfae bet that Japan's economy would go into almost exponetial growthBefore more of Norman's lifestory of future history mapping as one of the 20th C's senior economic authorities, we note there are a handful of other future historians who have identified new patterns that are already spinning so brilliantly in one place in the world, that they are statistically likely to spread everywhere in the future. These include Naisbitt Megatrends (though these did play to some extent to stories the media wanted to adopt), Drucker all the deep future opportunities of knowledge work, and Tofler's waves.
Next Norman surveyed what future systems could structurally fit
preneurs : 1976 Entrepreneurial Revolution...1982 Intrapreneurial Now ...Today Sustainability Investment Entrepreneurs on whose next 5 year track record of successes
1 2 3 the whole humanity of globalisation dependsTo see why this system prediction has been known since 1984, your first introduction would need to browse the short extracts of the book that I co-authored with
Norman extracts 2024 Report - the book Norman & Chris Macrae wrote in 1984 timelining changes that globalisation and networks would caues all transparent people communities to unite and search for:
Changing communications, and what makes people distant, bossy, etc
Changing national politicsChanging economicsChanging employmentChanging educationYour editor's first mapping with his own discovery of the holon of value exchange theory forecast where the interacting false logics of 20th C communications agencies and measurement professionals were going to take the combined waste of global accounting and global advertising. Although the conflicts were identified several quarters before the meltdown, there was not time to retrain 100 top managers who denied that their organisation's multibillion valuation could be zeroised by compound destruction of trust-flow. This ultimately burst at the demand coordinate of society that was disgusted to see the shredding of true and fair behaviours, notably that society had entrusted in licensing partners to a quasi-professional monopoly. The cost to the youthful dotcom economy of "built to flip" auditing -and where globalisation could now be heading in integrating humanity's societies - was and is many orders of magnitude greater than the demise of this mathematically careless professional elite.
If we look at the top picture's value exchange tensions from a sector or sector* sector perspective, we see that there are 45 main elasticities to synchronously cross-examine to see whether the sector is compounding value for all or desruction for all. Each elasticity between pairs of coordinates is at risk of snapping or being snapped if it is pulled too hard or quality changed in some way. Also each is a route of trust-flow that may go any way round though some powerful people at the top communicate or measure as if the flow is only controlled one way. This illustrates why there is so much conflict resolution mapmakers need to systemically prepare for - whether we are looking at the macro future of the sector or zoom down to any individual value exchange holon within one of its biggest organisations. The mapmaker needs an open catalogue of what other whole systemic methods (open space, emotional intelligence, socila network mapping surveys etc) can most suitably intervene depending on what elasticity is found to need repairing first. and/or how repairing one elasticity will wave systemically through many of the others in win-win-win ways. Strategy, operations, and other budgeted activities impacting intangibles valuation, network transparency or compound multipliers of sustainability investment now depend on knowing what state the human relations configuration is at, before leaders decide on next steps.
B is forBuckminster Fuller -Final ExamBunzl - Simultaneous
D is also for Davies, Paul - his prophetic speech on the systemicworldwide collisions of religion and science from Westminster Abbey 1995 also provides a bridge to Einstein's higher world of harmony for all humankind
extract
Yet among the general population there is a widespread belief that science and theology are forever at loggerheads, that every scientific discovery pushes God further and further out of the picture. It is clear that many religious people still cling to an image of a God-of-the-gaps, a cosmic magician invoked to explain all those mysteries about nature that currently have the scientists stumped. It is a dangerous position, for as science advances, so the God-of-the-gaps retreats, perhaps to be pushed off the edge of space and time altogether, and into redundancy.
The position I have presented to you today is radically different. It is one that regards the universe, not as the plaything of a capricious Deity, but as a coherent, rational, elegant, and harmonious expression of a deep and purposeful meaning. I believe the time has now come for those theologians who share this vision to join me and my scientific colleagues to take the message to the people.
Paul Davies is Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia and the twenty-fifth recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which hereceived on May 3, 1995 at Westminster Abbey. His books include The Mind of God, God and New Physics, The Cosmic Blueprint, Superforce, and Other Worlds.
D is for Drucker
His system perspective of a knowledge working world is often misquoted so read one of his last scripts on the subject available in this
2001 update from Drucker 11 Nov 05
ObituaryIf you have a story on the greatest management writer, mail wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
J is for joint ideas to be communally reworked
when I first saw
these archetype diagrams in the early 1990s, I though the Senge school was so cool, but since it hads never connected its whole chnage view with mapping
valuation and leadership goverance, it now seems to me that there is still more doodling to be encouraged everywhere if boardooms are to have a true view of the future
1 2 3 4
M for Maciariello - his systemic analysis of one man's learning curve is an amazing biographic tour de forceIts every system student's great good fortune that he applied this writing to Peter Drucker - the world's number 1 economist of how entrepreneurs, knowlede work and societies webbed together in a networked world compound value multiplcation , be this sustainably up or degradationally down. Time will tell, and the years
2005-2010 will likely pattern what globalisation compounds
O is for Owen, Harrison and Open Space (Technology) as well as its 50000 conflict resolution or innovationcase experiences including current foci on Practice of peace
we are co-creating a special section on this here
W is for Wasjman-Lewis (Deep Democracy) -Myrna Wasjman, George Lewis
Integrating everyone's viewpoint in the system's most actively harmonious way
Over at ValueofWeb - we aim to explore new constructs of webworld. One of these is learning games. Within this family , we need the simplest and most dramatic we can find on why system thinking needs to be debated all over the world if humanity is to be suistainable. I realise the following is a bit naf- how would you replace it?
Worlds Worst
This is one of the simplest but deepest mathematical games you will come across - tell me others at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
2 questions in one:
when I say : what's the worst scarciest thing you have seen peoples of the world do to each other (or stand by and let happen):
what is it?
and
can you think of some opposite force that makes the scarciest thing likely to happen more and more often
example (note I wish I could word this in a non-controversila manner but that is only becasue I am by nature a shy person; in a world that celebrated thos who raised big questions caringly I dream that the shy and the extrovert would both free each other's excesses);
in my view which I could link with my heros including Gandhi and Einstein, terrorism is the scariest thing man does to man; if religions are pathways to true humanity (living your life to maximise the difference you can enjoy serving), my number 1 for a value uniting religions of the world would be zero terrorism;
however, I don't believe terrorism would be so likely to spread all through the world if more people at the top of the world's biggest organisations posessed the courage to be openly questioned about the rules they are operating; instead many of these people spend more an more of their organsiation's money blocking questioning; when we look at what 21 vital global market sectors are compounding, it is less and less productivity and value for more and more people; such loss of hope of progress- such systemic destruction of human freedom and happiness- is a root causes of every other bad consequence including terrorism whether man-made or nature's destabilisation
this analysis needs to be discussed everywhere the word democracy is spoken; and yet by and large the media is not doing this: why because it too has become governed by the same blind men at the top of power who do not have the courage to be transparently questioned
if the world is to be served by networks expert at disaster prevention, then all this suggests that those who select and reward experts in tehse netwokr must not be those people who are the top of powerful organsiation but those people who are most deeply trusted in diverse communities- one reason why I am pasionate about any method anyone has of mapping global billages as a way forward of progressing humanity, cross-culturally, loving diverse contexts, caring for those with the smallest voices (including our children) and not biassed just towards the images that powerful men wish to project
mathematically, we can map how both extremes multiply each others blindnesses and badwills
Now stand away from the example I have chosen
if you can think of one trouble that really disturbs you and then an opposite force that may be in the same causal loop (even if its people have exactly the opposite constitutional intents) then you will have freed yourself from being stuck inside a system box rather than being able to put your head above it to gain some fresh air; sadly nothing in our schools seems to give us any practise at this "lift your head" above the conflict box exercise; I will be delighted to detract that remark if you can link me to school learning games that do
chris macrae, wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
follow up exercises: what's your favourite search of "beyond the box" --- 00 0 1 2 3
various other sustainability games are featured at SoSgames
we also interesting interactive futures for:
grid games as ways of seeing through who's socially networking who
children's games of consequences
SIMPLICITY please
every few years I come across a hiostorical dialogue
the story is the same : practitioners know that an organsiation is ony working systemically if its making the expoential future of productivities and demands simpler
so why do so many wail about complexity. Its a warning signal:
perhaps people at the top are anot auditing all they need to systemically - is teh company auditing emerging risks in time to resolve conflicts or discnnects
has the comany fallen victim to some global consultant or professor who has a fancy view of systems that does not interface with other systems theory (ie is not oractically systemic)
has the company or industry gone down a wrong crossrodas that it now cannot turn back on because it perceives the lega costs of admitting a msitake (even one when there was at the time no certain evidence) horrendously costly
is there somethiung that society preneurially needs to take back before a new wave of innovation or cross cultural integraity can move through people
here's an example of an old track - you can see that practioners plea for simplicity
Defining & DiscoveringSimpler FutureWorkWhat ideas do you have for rethinking how we spend our tomorrows?If we threw out some of the most basic assumptions about how we have to structure companiesand how we have to get work done, what would that look like? What points did Simplicity make that you'd like to echo or challenge?
Collaborate, participate and jump in here[28] Lélio Heriberto Nascimento <
simplicidade@minasprev.com.br>
Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais Brasil - Tuesday, January 30, 2001 at 05:40:44 (CST)
Caro Bill Jensen, Desenvolvo há 2 anos uma consultoria voltada para a Simplicidade. Começei com uma palestra que se chama "Qualidade de Vida Através da Simplicidade", onde procuramos mostrar às pessoas como adquirir qualidade de vida através de coisas simples que existem dentro de nós. Tomei conhecimento do seu trabalho há pouco tempo quando adquiri o seu livro e também junto à esta pagina na internet. Fiquei muito satisfeito de saber que outras pessoas estão propondo simplicidade ao mundo. Gostaria de trocar algumas experiencias com você para divulgarmos mais o significado da simplicidade nas nossas vidas e nas nossas organizações. Visite a nossa página www.minasprev.com.br/qvida, lá tem a palestra que ministro. Analise-a e nos dê retorno. Lélio H. Nascimento
[27] Tony DiMarco <
tony@bonnie-vee.com>
Phoenix, AZ USA - Thursday, August 31, 2000 at 07:36:13 (CDT)
As I look thru the comments in this section, as well as throughout the site, it strikes me that so much of simplicity (like many things in life) rests upon trust. I'm wondering if maybe we're already seeing the future of work -- on the level of trust -- at Epinions.com. They have what they call a Web of Trust. In real life, if a friend always gives you good advice, you trust his/her opinions even more in the future, right? Epinions works in much the same way. There's an electronic grading of people's views -- Very Trusted, Somewhat Trusted, Slighlty Trusted, etc. I'm wondering if, in the future, organizations will be more public about the current ratings that go on in "the meeting after the meeting" and at the coffee pot and by the water cooler? I wonder if going public with brutally true and honest views, would accomplish -- as it does it Epinions -- a much higher level of trust for those that pay attention to what the group does/doesn't value. All because the "real" conversations are brought out into the light of day for all to see.
[26] Drumm McNaughton <
drumm@mcngrp.com>
- Sunday, August 06, 2000 at 15:29:58 (CDT)
[More reflective about how we spend tomorrows, than a business solution...] The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable. A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the backyard patio with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it. I turned the dial up to listen to a Saturday morning talk show when I heard an older sounding gentleman, with a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whoever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles". I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say..."Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital." He continued, let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities." And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles." "You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me Tom, I'm getting to the important part. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight. Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time. It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again." You could have heard a pin drop on the radio when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work that morning. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. Oh, nothing special, it's just been a while since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles." HAVE A GREAT DAY AND MAY ALL SATURDAYS BE SPECIAL!!!!!!!!!
[25] Chris Macrae <
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk>
Washington, DC, USA - Tuesday, August 01, 2000 at 06:22:24 (CDT)
(Don't know if this builds upon or ignores and goes the opposite direction of the privacy thread, but...) Our 21st C brandknowledge community would love to promote a multidisciplinary register of all research projects that are under way which connect with our community idea of the brand. Our means for doing this includes www.brandknowledge.com and the newsletters that connect the world's community of brandknowledge, and any webs they connect to. So please do keep informing us of any research, webs or other forum that connects with our vision for brand leadership. We'll passionately "net-promote" any schools of thought or action that match our vision of 21st C brandknowledge.Sincerely, Chris Macrae, author, Brand Chartering: How brand organisations learn living scripts
[24] Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
Camden, ME USA - Monday, July 24, 2000 at 16:42:55 (CDT)
If you've ever heard Bill Jensen speak about "tomorrow," you know he believes the most critical and final frontier for changes at work has to do with privacy. "This issue is bigger than just whether or not companies can or should be examining every one of your keystrokes," says Bill. "Way bigger!" For anyone interested in learning more, a great place to start is a piece Ira Glasser, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union at the launch of the ACLU's web site, March, 1999: "We clearly have our work cut out for us to derail what has been an endless stream of proposals that attack our privacy rights. And although many believe widespread dissemination of our data is harmless, the ACLU believes that what they do know, CAN hurt us . . . the Fourth Amendment still protects the privacy of our homes, but personal information isn't exclusively stored there anymore . . ." You can go to http://www.camcon.org/glasser-set.html#quote for the entire passage.
[23] William Dunk <
advisors@beecom.net>
New York, NY USA - Monday, July 17, 2000 at 18:40:32 (CDT)
Twenty or thirty years ago I saw a play on Broadway about hospices. One chap, who was dying, stepped forward to give a touching soliloquy. He explained how he got to know his buddy and roommate. "You see, I got interested in what he was doing. Which, it turns out, was nothing. But he was doing it so well!" We used to do nothing in July. And more emphatically we did nothing during the dog days of August. Even new York's psychiatrists put aside their lucrative practices in August, clustering instead in eateries at the end of Long Island. But now we are too busy. Ironically, the avant garde among us are relearning how to do nothing. La dolce far niente. The Nike proposition is in trouble, as we figure out how not to do it. If you'd like to think about rethinking how we spend our tomorrows, please check out The Global Province www.globalprovince.com. There, we talk about kids 15 to 21 who visit a meditation center to chill out. Tom Canning, our global laureate, talks about the loss of his martini lunch in "Pensioner's Lament," but, drawing on the genius of his Irish ancestors, continues to use his comic pen to burst the balloons of headhunters and other corporate appartchik, who are much ado about nothing. The arguments for sitting back in our chairs are many. We ourselves are impressed with the idea that when you are doping less, you may see more.
[22] Bill Jensen <
bill@simplerwork.com>
Morristown, NJ USA - Saturday, July 01, 2000 at 09:45:44 (CDT)
Hi! Just wanted to vouch for PopTech (previous entry). Camden Technology and TED conferences (www.ted.com) are about the only two events I know of that are truly bringing together the absolute brightest and best and addressing how our future will come to past. Not in a way like the World Future Society (of which I'm a member) which is a lot of yakyakyak about trends. PopTech and TED bring in the people who are inventing the future today and help dummies like me see how all the tools and trends interconnect.
[21] Anthony Citrano <
anthony@poptech.org>
Camden, ME USA - Sunday, June 25, 2000 at 08:07:37 (CDT)
Item: A robot is being created that will have intelligence equal to that of a six-month-old baby. --Item: Terrorists will soon have the ability to unleash a biomechanical virus that could destroy life. --Item: Religious scholars believe that technology can spark a new epoch of faith. Who is talking about all this? What are you supposed to do about it? In its fourth year, Camden Technology Conference emerges as the "must-attend" event for thinkers, do-ers, influencers and investors who need to understand the currents and set the course for society's complex and precious relationship with technology and its impact. I'd like to invite you to join hosts John Sculley...Bob Metcalfe...Tom DeMarco...Conference Chair, MIT's Michael Hawley...in an intimate setting to share, network, learn ... and decide: What are you going to DO about the future? The Fourth Annual Camden Technology Conference: POP!TECH 2000: Being Human in the Digital Age is October 27-29, 2000 Camden Opera House, Camden, Maine The current program for POP!TECH 2000 is at http://www.poptech.org. Thanks, Anthony Citrano President, Camden Technology Conference
[20] Clive Elms <
Clive@Mountainview.co.uk>
London, UK - Thursday, June 01, 2000 at 18:30:04 (CDT)
Question for those thinking about how we will spend our tomorrows: Would you agree with the argument that profit patterns (the unique way a company makes it profit) now need to be understood and anticipated much more dynamically than ever before? If so, who in your organisation is currently and actively responsible for work on profit patterns and what business and research processes do you use to anticipate changing patterns? Can you give a (disguised) example of a profit patterns insight that has stimulated organisation-wide change?
[19] Jim Rait <
james.rait@btinternet.com>
Knutsford, Cheshire England - Monday, May 01, 2000 at 06:03:58 (CDT)
As we break up existing organisational silos into smaller market facing groups that are project oriented then we get advantages. However we could lose on some core competences as we spread it too thin to have critical (people) mass to keep it leading edge. How do we enable cross group fertilisation where the personal desires are to deliver to the market not to exchange information?
[18] Bill Jensen <
bill@simplerwork.com>
Morristown, NJ USA - Friday, April 28, 2000 at 07:32:38 (CDT)
I felt it was important to post the preceding review of Simplicity. While it isn’t exactly glowing, the reviewer makes really good points. I believe Simpler FutureWork will come from a perspective that is much higher than I wrote about in the book. And, if only this reviewer came out from anonymity, we could learn a thing or two from him/her. He/she clearly grasps deep info-sharing and techno issues that many of us do not. But I think the real issues remain. It’s important for the entire population -- not just wonks like this reviewer -- to understand: That they are being shafted because almost no one but human factors engineers is looking at things from the user’s perspective...That we are still lightyears away from Navigation/Fulfillment/Time becoming as mainstream measures as customer and performance measures...And that one of the key reasons that "companies have no idea how to analyze customer info" is because so little within the company is user centered. If it was, senior execs could no longer ignore the din that comes from the people closes to the customer. These people have no problems analyzing the voice of the customer! Finally: (...Although I started work on Simplicity about 5-7 years before the Cluetrain Manifesto was even conceived...) I would agree that their Manifesto is "worthy of fearful analysis by senior execs." As many at this site, on Amazon, and in discussion groups have noted, Simplicity is Cluetrain 2.0 -- because it gets into how to implement their lofty (and important) ideals.
[17] From Anonymous Amazon.com Reviewer <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
- Friday, April 28, 2000 at 07:13:53 (CDT)
After delving into John McKean's outstanding "Information Masters", this book seems far less profound. The great difference between the two books is that while McKean produced thought provoking illustrations of the current information analysis and usage void in corporate America, this author produced rather high-level (if more conversational) analogies that, in my view, fail to ask (and answer) the difficult questions surrounding true competitive advantage. For example, in ranking working complexities, "customer needs" failed to make the Top Four. While this outcome was based on exhaustive research, the author appears to overlook the probability that the reason this crucial business driver was ranked so low is simply because,as McKean points out, companies in general have no idea how to analyze customer information. It is not considered a complex issue simply because hardly anyone is truly able to put their arms around it from a strategic standpoint! The author also writes at length about the value of prototyping, and designing "backwards" (i.e., from the user's perspective). Again, this approach is certainly nothing new - frustrated human factors engineers know all about it! Overall, the concepts expressed in the book make a lot of sense, but are not revolutionary. The author clearly felt that the "Cluetrain Manifesto" was worthy of fearful analysis by corporate executives. In summary: 1. IT (aka "technowonks") and Senior Management (since when did these entities develop a relationship?) had better involve front line users 2. Measures of three key "netgener" needs (ease of navigation, fulfillment, and timeliness) will be just as important as customer and performance measurement (are these well-worn ergonomic needs limited to Netgeners?) 3. Users will wield far more power in designing tools and support mechanisms.
[16] Bill Jensen <
bill@simplerwork.com>
Morristown, NJ USA - Tuesday, April 25, 2000 at 05:53:43 (CDT)
Just had an awesome conversation with Mark Van Clieaf [mark@mvcinternational.com (416) 489-1917 ] What Mark and some of his alliance partners are up to is further quantifying and qualifying the issues covered in Simplicity. Mark has identified seven (7) work levels of complexity. Mostly the criteria are around decision-making and the skills one needs as you move from level to level. For example: Different skills, like pattern recognition, are needed if you are engineering products for superior execution or if you are creating new business models. Work like that of Mark's group is extremely critical to building tomorrow's user centered companies!
[15] Chris Macrae <
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk>
Washington DC, USA - Saturday, April 15, 2000 at 12:52:47 (CDT)
The Journal of Brand Management has just published a special issue : 21st Brand Knowledge - Human Relationship and e-branding. The connecting idea of this issue is: Community of Promise and Trust. Promise (what a company uniquely makes/outputs) and Trust (the measures/feedback that interactive stakeholders use to value relationships with the brand/company) are core organisational/network value creation drivers. Community is the overall leadership construct embracing such issues as: win-wins between different stakeholders as the way true communities grow net-age connections/transparency of knowledge between internet (your external channel), intranet (employee channel), extranet (network partner competences), (mega) netmarket (global industry's value web) Probably the most work of all is needed to understand/change how owners measure trust. Apart from useful financial health checks (eg cash flow), I suspect we need to segment owners' motivations (from short-term total disinterest in brand's community to long-term care) and only then come up with the difference of relevant measure. I'm heartened by (my understanding that) the complexity/simplicity's move in this direction as well as globalization academics (eg Fukuyama), corporate identity gurus (eg Allen) and opinion leading practice web-consultants (eg Siegel and McGovern)
[14] Jeff Logan <
jeffl@defpr.com>
Cambridge, MA USA - Sunday, April 02, 2000 at 11:31:49 (CDT)
THE BASICS WILL FOREVER DETERMINE OUR TOMORROW’S: The key conclusion of the new research report by Primary Knowledge, "State of eBusiness ROI 2.0" points to some real basic needs. Out of 25 distinct ROI initiatives, "Understand the Profile of the Highest-Value Customer," jumped to Number One. There are two important findings behind this. 1) Simplicity’s call for an emphasis on meaning-making and sense-making continues to be universal and critical. 2) While e-business execs continue to deem many high-ROI initiatives as "mission critical," the actual progress in implementing those initiatives lags far behind. Maybe this, again, supports Jensen’s quote in Simplicity: "Change all you want, just know that implementation happens at the speed of sense-making."
[13] Kim Robins <
kim@irga.com>
Chicago, IL USA - Sunday, March 26, 2000 at 14:54:17 (CST)
One of the places where you can see some of future that Jensen laid out in Simplicity -- today -- would be at the Ernst & Young conference in Paris this April, "Embracing Complexity: Exploring the application of complex adaptive systems to business." Among the talks: "Beyond Planning, The Evolution of Strategy" by strategy Gary Hamel and social scientist Josh Epstein (relates to Jensen’s Chapter 5); "The Art of Simulation" by Brookings Institution (relates to Jensen’s sidebars on simulations); "Success in the New Economy" by Roger Lewin, author of Soul at Work -- one of the other books that Amazon.com buyers of Simplicity also buy.
[12] Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
Oahu, Hawaii USA - Saturday, March 18, 2000 at 10:22:33 (CST)
About a week ago, a senior exec at AT&T announced his resignation. But according to David Isenberg, a respected (or disliked, depending on which side you’re on) gadfly for the telecomm industry, the real story was in the fine print. The senior exec was joining an internet startup called TeraBeam Networks. TeraBeam will use air, instead of fiber, to transmit information at high speeds, in what some call fiberless optics. The question remains: Bandwidth looks like it’s heading towards the predictions of tripling every year for the next 25 years. But, since (as Bill Jensen pointed out in Simplicity) execution travels at the speed of sense-making, where are the efforts to triple our ability to make sense of all that noise every year for the next 25 years? To whom do we turn for the new model of organizational effectiveness within a tsunami of data, noise and choices?
[11] Bill Jensen <
bill@simplerwork.com>
Morristown, NJ USA - Sunday, March 12, 2000 at 12:43:30 (CST)
Hi! The outpouring of support and ideas I’ve heard since Simplicity was published (only a fraction of which are represented here) is amazing! Thanks!!! As I continue to think about the new models that are emerging to create a new future I see just as many, if not more, exciting possibilities coming from the field of education. Two examples 1) Capella University, www.capellauniversity.edu, is a completely virtual institution, offering both undergraduate and graduate programs, that is so far ahead of many others, that (sshhhhhhh!) Harvard Biz School is quietly studying them to figure out what to bring back. 2) Another is InterClass, www.interclass.com, that has been founded to take business learning to the next level. When we begin to understand that we should be studying educational, learning and information sharing environments to find the new corporate structures for tomorrow, we might actually begin inventing tomorrow today!
[10] Chris Macrae <
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk>
Washington, DC USA - Thursday, March 02, 2000 at 15:55:54 (CST)
CONTINUATION... Hi.Hugely important link (imo) is the Rifting article at http:// www.fastcompany.com/online/32/sgodin.html Hypothesis I'd love to debate with anyone concerned : Real 21st Century leadership must put something before measurement and diligent planning - Reading about Rifting at the same time as two excellent books on complexity/simplicity theory (Simplicity by Bill Jensen and Soul at Work by Roger Lewin) also proves to my mind why the balanced scorecard, brand equity measurements and other diligence-boardroom processes are in danger of blinding your company's leaders at the very moment that real leadership and organisation-wide chartering decisions need to be taken (a moment which due to the internet/intranet is likely happening about now for almost any big company you know) RIFTING What's a rift? It's a big tear in the fabric of the rules that we live by. It's a fundamental change in the game, one that creates a bunch of new losers -- and a handful of new winners. Most people who build important businesses build them on a rift, usually one that they find by accident, and usually only once. Sometimes, after they've succeeded once, they fool themselves into thinking that they're so gifted that everywhere they look, they can see a rift. The problem for established companies is that when faced with a rift, they have to make a choice. They can't please all three constituencies -- employees, customers, shareholders. And, faced with that choice, most companies just say maybe. They wait. They hope that the rift will go away, quietly. They confidently project that the startups that are jumping into the rift are overvalued, overhyped, and sure to fail.
[9] Chris Macrae <
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk>
Washington, DC USA - Sunday, February 20, 2000 at 10:15:08 (CST)
[Excerpted from posting @Amazon.com] "Simplicity"...is both shocking, obvious -- and arguably the key to Cluetrain Manifesto’s magic box. Surely the key to knowledge will only be turned if a company’s organisation helps every employee to filter out which of this information is: 1) actionable for that employee’s purpose, 2) needs to be shared with another employee whose shared purpose it is to action it, 3) is noise that needs to be filtered out so that employee and company concentrate on their focus....Simplicity and Cluetrain Manifesto are fingering the biggest leadership issue confronting the current generation of human beings. In 1984 Norman Macrae of The Economist wrote The 2024 Report -- one of the first futures books to portray the enormous social and business wealth to be created by the internetworking age. My father was wrong to predict that the summit of this advance for humankind would be happening circa 2024. It will happen in this decade, or stall for a generation if leaders don’t get simple and get clued. And everyone can be involved now in this outcome. To rediscover human common sense in the digital age, we need to connect up openly curious thinkers and leaders.
[8] Kim Robins <
kim@irga.com>
Chicago, IL USA - Saturday, February 12, 2000 at 08:37:25 (CST)
Bill made it clear in his book that the future puts people, not technology first. However, new tools are popping up everyday that help us better understand where people are coming from and what they need. One I’d highly recommend is MindMan, http://www.mindman.com , a pretty cheap tool that helps groups of people do mind mapping over the internet. If you’re not familiar w/ mind mapping, think of it as a spider web that shows the connections and frequency between ideas and information that people are sharing. I think if we stop thinking of these kinds of tools as one-offs, and start thinking about how they might be incorporated into how we actually build companies, we might be heading toward "leading through navigation."
[7] Robert Jansen <
robert.jansen@cardhealth.com>
Auburn, WA USA - Sunday, February 06, 2000 at 18:42:42 (CST)
Great book. This will change not only how we do work; but, how we value each other's time.
[6] Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
Morristown, NJ USA - Tuesday, February 01, 2000 at 07:58:23 (CST)
Recently, some of our teammates at The Jensen Group had an awesome meeting with Peter Moore at Inferential Focus. He’s heading up a real interesting community, The Human Capital Forum. The HCF is what the future of work is about. They are exploring how we move from "communities of wealth" to "communities of meaning." At this point, the group is kept small, with a limited number of sponsoring organizations and collaborative/alliance partners. The sponsors lay out projects--"here’s what we’re interested in learning"--and the alliance members--highly successful practioners with their own firms--set aside braintime to develop new solutions and explore problems in new ways. Stay tuned! We’ll report on HCF’s progress here. Or email us for sponsorship info.
[5] Kim Robins <
kim@irga.com>
Chicago, IL USA - Thursday, January 20, 2000 at 14:14:11 (CST)
I’m a college student and I want to add to what Bill said in chapter 14. If the company that wants to hire me DOESN’T involve me in how they restructure the organization, I won’t work there. Period.
[4] Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com >
Milano, Italy - Sunday, January 16, 2000 at 11:19:55 (CST)
What Ken [2] and Miles [3] are referring to is in Simplicity, Bill envisions a future where senior execs will no longer be in control of restructuring their companies. There’s too much too fast for any senior exec to do it well. Instead they’ll develop processes and knowledge clusters where the workforce themselves (the people closest to the customers and real-world changes) propose restructuring opportunities and the senior execs manage a portfolio of restructuring projects. (Essentially approving and funding the proposals. Like a venture capitalist.)
[3] Miles Stobaugh <
miles@knowledge-corp.net>
Kansas City, KS USA - Saturday, January 15, 2000 at 17:02:32 (CST)
Although Bill Jensen said in Chapter 14, that he "wasn’t predicting the future," I think he nailed it. I can’t imagine that we won’t move in the direction he advocates...Senior execs acting like VCs and the entire workforce deciding on a daily basis how to restructure the company. Go simplicity go!
[2] Ken Compton <
ken@mmmlaw.net>
New York, NY USA - Saturday, January 15, 2000 at 16:59:10 (CST)
Right now, Jensen’s right—-our companies aren’t capable of creating user-centered knowledge packets that help everyone work smarter. Cuz knowledge management is still too into the codifying, collecting thing. (Tom Davenport, of Andersen’s Consulting Institute for Strategic Change, calls this Knowledge Management, Round One.) Most of Jensen’s book is pointing the way to Round Two.
[1] Simplinaut Joe
simplinaut@simplerwork.comMorristown, NJ, USA
Hi! I’m Simplinaut Joe and my role in all this is to facilitate, poke, prod, question, push, pull, laugh (let’s never take ourselves too seriously here), and engage everyone in the ideas and collaboration at this site.
Note: This workspace was restructured in early 2000, after the release of
Simplicityby Bill Jensen. For ideas and dialogue that occurred before Simplicity's release, see below.
Ron <
rsanyal@attglobal.net>
Vancouver, Canada
If technology progresses at forecasted levels, efficiencies realized should produce requirements at virtually no cost. The need for wealth therefore diminishes. Are we therefore moving towards the development of a new socialism?
Tino Rossini <
T.Rossini@aci.on.ca>
Canada
Love the stuff so far. The study and this site bring forth several prescient points:
1) Yes, we have not harnessed the technology, and people are merely playing along, deeply confused.
2) There is a lack of clarity in general, there is too much information noise and clutter. It’s a huge effort just to get through the info.
3) If the organization is confused, can you imagine the customer of that organization? Ultimately, all business must create a customer and customer satisfaction
It’s nice to get your act together in the business, but it’s more important to create simplicity for the customer. Our future work is to bring all the business/customer issues together as this site has done for simpler work.Tino
Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
West Point, NY USA (EST)
As evidenced by placements in Fast Company magazine and a whole lot more, apparently this outfit ain’t our father’s U.S.Army. They’re working on really cool, non-command-and-control stuff! PS: While Frank is a wonderful (and real) guy (I know him from other chat spaces), does anybody else see the humor in a Frank Burns submitting a piece that relates to the army?
Frank Burns <
frank@tmn.com>
Arlington, VA USA
Based on all the scanning [I've] done in the U.S. Army's "deltanet" think tank, there are two streams of ideas that [eventually came] together [around teamwork and new conclusions about sharing knowledge.]
First, the pyramid, that classic structure for the military and every other large organization, would give way (fortunately) to the self-organizing network of self-organizing teams.
Second of the two streams of ideas was that new networking technologies would permit, actually accelerate and drive, this shift. In fact, we'd already seen this movement in the military.
This U.S. Army DeltaNet thinktank, for example, started using e-mail and on-line conferences in late 1977. Imagine that! One of the most classically hierarchial structures in the world was using on-line networking technologies TWENTY years ago. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at that fact, given that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was the first organization to fund research in packet-switching that led to the Internet.
But back to the story. Our mission in DeltaNet was to uncover knowledge and spread it around. (Sounds like "knowledge ecology" to me.) The whole project got started because an Army 4-star general named Don Starry (yes, peculiar name, given this subject) asked Colonel Dandridge M. (Mike) Malone to form a study group to take a look at systems theory, and in particular the "living systems theory" promoted by James Grier Miller, and report back to him if there was something there that the Army could be taking advantage of -- more than we were.
Mike Malone put together the requested "study group" and after a lot of studying, went back to General Don Starry with a report we'd all contributed to that was titled "x=h".
The "x" being the mysterious "x" in the equation our study group was asked to solve for, the essence of the difference between current performance and potential performance. The "h" came from Shannon's suggestion of that as a symbol for information.
Yes, that study reported that there was a direct connection between performance and information. X=H
(Frank originally posted this note in a KE Fair on-line discussion.)
Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
Binghamton, NY USA
Martin…Let us hope so!
Martin Silcock <
martin.silcock@wedgwood.com>
Stoke on Trent, UK
Re: Business trends in next 2-3 years, global and local. My suggestions are:
1. A breaking down of boundaries between organisations and an increase in cooperation between organisations to leverage brand values and corporate assets and competencies.
2. Growth of virtual global networks of individuals sharing information and knowledge leading to accelerated creativity and experimentation.
3. Growing irrelevance of static, linear planning processes inside companies and growth in scenario "wind tunnel" learning, to cope with unpredictability and complexity of global and local environments
4. Heirachical structure in organisations becoming liabilities as need to become responsive to changing customer demands increases. Will cause stress for those who manage by hands off delegation, but relished by the leader who is with their people in the trenches. Leadership by consent.
5. Fragmentation of marketing audiences making mass marketing approaches less effective. Businesses that responds with "empathic marketing" (ie. stand in their users' shoes) will anticipate the future better. Empathic marketing will be built from "deep consumer understanding", goes beyond "relationship marketing" -- which tends to be purely transactional -- and sees the consumers' world from a "human systems" perspective.
(Martin originally posted this note in an OC Network on-line discussion.)
Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
Berkeley, CA USA
I wonder if the heart of the matter is web-context-systems, schema and cognitive styles…or we’re just not willing to do the hard work to tailor our utterances to match the needs of the other person?
Laurence J. Victor <
nuu@azstarnet.com>
Tucson, AZ USA
I have studied the psychology of sharing complex conceptual schemes and sharing across paradigms, and feel that many of our...perceptual systems make it difficult to share over time.
We have the propensity to come to closure quickly, for "survival".
I agree with Herbert Brun's views on the limits of communication: to communicate you must tailor your utterances to match the processing system of those to whom you communicate. Brun recommends "anti-communication", where the intended recipient of a new idea agrees to be open to having their information processing system altered through interacting with utterances from the sender that can only be comprehended if the recipient develops new and appropriate processing systems.
Terrence Deacon in his recent book, The Symbolic Species, presents a case (for what I call intuitive learning) where we (as babies and as adults) absorb iconic-lexical associations which are later holistically & subconsciously organized into web-context-systems that give them meaning. Deacon contends that "meaning" is not found in an association of an icon with a lexical symbol, but that through that symbol it activates a great part of the web-context-system. {my own terminology, not Deacon's}
I also find that the levels of cognitive style presented by Robert Kegan in The Evolving Self (1982) and applied in his later book In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life (1994) presents a reality of individual differences that must be attended to. People at lower levels of...cognitive style schema simply cannot comprehend communication of relevance from those from higher levels.
What I sense is that there are some fundamental aspects of humans re perceiving, learning, and sharing that need to be considered as context for continuing progress in Knowledge Ecology applications.
(Laurence originally posted this note in a KE Fair on-line discussion.)
Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
Manhattan, KS USA
Karl Eric raises some great issues. I’m not sure whether this site will solve something that has to be addressed within our accounting system. Until bookkeepers find ways to quantify the value of people’s ideas and knowhow (AKA: Intellectual Capital) we’re going to be wrestling with this one for a long time.
Karl Erik Sveiby <
karlerik@sveiby.com.au>
Brisbane, Australia
[re: Connections and the necessary measurements...] I regard measuring in this field as an invitation to dialogue, not a system for controlling performance. Unfortunately most efforts tend to have the control aspect in them and they therefore will fail, because our organisations do not need more control.
As kick-off for a dialogue, metrics are excellent, because they force us to define relationships and be stringent in our approach. Last but not least they will help managers understand how the causal relationship between people and profit looks like in their own company.
I have, however, met few practitioners who enjoy both the art of measuring and the art of managing knowledge.
At this early stage of knowhow in measuring intangibles we need people who have the qualifications to develop measurement systems in their companies, but who also understand the problems involved in measuring intangibles and reporting this fuzzy stuff. They have to be pioneers, willing to accept the hardships involved in arguing their case to doubting accountants and financial officers.
(Karl Erik originally posted this note in a KE Fair on-line discussion.)
Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
Little Harbour Deep, Newfoundland
Mike’s hit a really important point. Since first publishing the study, we’ve come to figure out he’s exactly right – what we believe will create simpler work, simpler companies and a simpler future is resolving how the interplay of internal and external issues are addressed. Mea culpa for not choosing the words more care carefully in the originally study.
On the linear thinking-thing…Think we need to work out a better way to talk about this. (Fellow simplinauts, please help.) We need to find a way to say that leaders do have certain accountabilities for creating some form of ORDER that still allows for, and encourages, EMERGENCE.
PS: Mike knows a lot about this area. He has ties to the Santa Fe Institute and has written, The Intelligence Advantage: Organizing for Complexity.
Michael McMaster <
Michael@kbdeam.demon.co.uk>
You’ve created a good site for dialogue. Congratulations.
Two specific pieces of feedback on the study:
1) The phrase "sources of complexity" followed by the four items you list don’t quite relate to my own understanding of complexity. That is, as you’ve said in other parts of your site, complexity is internal rather than external – it isn’t "caused by conditions." I’d probably resolve this by saying it is both or the interplay of the two.
2) Several of your proposed solutions…
Integration is the ability to have everything we know at one place, at one time, so one person can make a decision that leads to success
Leadership must include accountability for organizing the raw materials for making choices … strike me as "I disagree." There seems to be no room in your statements for emergence, the wholeness of the organization and that linear concentrations are the answer.
These are not trivial comments AND I want to leave you with my commendation for your work and for the site.Mike McMaster
Simplinaut Joe <
simplinaut@simplerwork.com>
Valdosta, GA USA
By the way…Yogesh is the brilliant mind behind BRINT.com, THE place to go for knowledge management resources and ideas.
Yogesh Malhotra <
malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu>
Pittsburgh, PA USA (CST)
With the advent of the communities of practice interconnected by global networks, one can sense a new kind of intelligence... a collective that is larger than the isolated individuals or the computer networks that connect them.
Increasingly, with greater access and sophistication of technology and the redefinition of work suggested above, we may see emergence of such informal communities of practice. One may ponder: "Are organizations of self-selected individuals with shared interests less real than the more formal, traditional organizations that we are familiar with?"
Not necessarily if one observes the contrast between the traditional organizational forms and the more recent 'emergent' virtual communities on the index of knowledge sharing and creation of new knowledge.
There is an argument that most traditional reward and incentive structures that underlie the structural and control frameworks of most organizations may only result in temporary compliance. Individuals would still do [or at least long to do] what provides them with personal satisfaction and personal happiness.
Given increasing interest of the new generation of knowledge workers in the quality-of-life issues, it seems that most individuals are trying to seek a better balance between self, family, work and society, while coping with the increased strains of global competition.
In any case it is a debatable question if the intellectual capital may be listed on the firm's balance sheets - given that such assets can walk out of the door along with their 'keepers.' Firms can exercise control on their 'intellectual property,' however it is dubious that they can exert the same kind of control on their 'intellectual capital.'
In the final analysis: real knowledge belongs in the minds of the individuals... and so does creation of new knowledge for breakthrough innovations.
(Yogesh originally posted this note in a KE Fair on-line discussion.)
Harlan Cleveland <
cleve004@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Minneapolis, MN USA
The way I think of it, most "group decision processes" result from the exercise of individual intuition - especially by the person framing, and announcing, the group's decision.
In some societies, where decisions are made "by consensus," someone (usually an "elder") is, by consent, supposed to formulate the group decision. He or she (the best practitioner of this art I ever witnessed in action was a woman in Samoa) picks - by intuition - the psychological moment in the meeting to look around the circle of arguers and say something like "What I hear you all saying is..."
What "consensus" is then offered may be a true agreement, with no reservations. More often, there are shades and degrees of agreement and disagreement, and each participant has to decide whether his/her stake in objecting to the consensus-announcement is more important that his/her interest in not making the consensus-announcer (or other relevant members of the group) sore at the objector for holding up the decision process.
The timing of the decision-announcement is crucial - and is often, in my experience, essentially intuitive. Too early, and the leader will be criticized for unwillingness to let all points of view be heard. Too late, and the leader begins to written off as indecisive.
When is just the right moment to put forward the "group consensus"? That can be partly a rational judgment, but it's mostly an intuitive guess, tempered by knowing something about each of the personalities crucial to a consensus that "works." That doesn't everybody in the room -- or the organization, the nation, or the world.
Years ago I floated a definition of "consensus." See if you can improve on it: Consensus is the acquiescence of those who care [about the particular decision], supported by the apathy of those who don't.
(Harlan originally posted this note in a KE Fair on-line discussion.)
stuart smith <
kibt@zipworld.com.au>
Sydney, NSW Australia (CDT)
This is a great resource. I'm a newcomer to this site and intend making good use of it. Australia is still to have the fundamental changes to the way we design, build and fit out buildings. Office design is still dictatorial. Even the design specialists can't grasp the future. That's where we come in. Go forth and create the future. www.zipworld.com.au/~kibt
William Munn <
wmunn@aol.com>
Warner Robins, GA USA
YES, YES, YES....things have got to be tied together with the fact that we are all human and are starving for interaction on all the best possible levels. I was never one to be afraid of asking questions and after almost 50 years of life I still keep right on asking them! This is a great idea...and always has been to.... ....simplify!!!
Paul Morrison <
pmorrison@omega-performance.com>
Cambridge, MA USA
Test.
Bob Guns <
floprobe@earthlink.net>
Summit, NJ USA
Hi!
I am interested in ways of collecting continuous real-time knowledge from customers - the most valuable knowledge of all- for corporations.
I have just interviewed 25 CKOs across North America, and have completed a book (Faster Learning Organizations) on what I found - the roles, responsibilities, competencies, challenges of CKOs, etc. I am now reflecting on the next stage of research to further explore this new role of knowledge managers and discipline of knowledge management. Any ideas?
(Bob originally posted this note in a KE Fair on-line discussion.)
Noel Dickover <
ndickover@ver.lld.com>
Herndon, VA USA
I'm interested any dialogue about this stuff. My job is that of an organizational change expert. I'm very interested in communication and control issues as they relate to information and knowledge management -- my masters is in cybernetics. My undergrad is in anthropology. Let's talk!
Amir Fazlagic <
amir@ringnet.com.pl>
Poland
This site is full of very inspiring work. I am trying to establish myself as a knowledge management consultant in Poland (probably the first one) and am grateful for this inspiration. I'm hoping to start a website for knowledge management in Poland soon.
First Considerations
For governance of or practice with systems theory
This is an open source document. I am delighted to add in smarter (or more simply woprded) considerations if you want to mail them to me at
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk .
I am taking approach of a graduate in mathematics (as far as I know the only subject that is wholly defined by is this theory systemic)
1 There are liars, damn liars and statisticians.
As a postgraduate in statistics I start with this because I feel it defines a mathematician’s Hippocratic oath.
Never oversell a measurement system if it is going to be used to select human beings or in other ways judge people’s lives, put them at risk if your assumptions are misunderstood etc
Sadly, many measurement professions that I have met in big business do not seem to apply this rule. In making their own business case, the devil and the details have been taking the hindmost ever since the spreadsheet spawned far more numbers than time people afforded to questioning what assumptions each number was determined by.
I am not going to name these professions here. It may be safest to assume any profession whose numbers you rely on literally to make big decisions is conflicted unless they can transparently explain why they are conflict-free. To be clear, a network of system theorists I belong to has believed for over 25 years now that humanity may not survive into the 22nd century because networks are an unprecedented revolution in systemising human relationship with the globe. More below, except to say that if our race turns out not to be sustainable – professions abandonment of Hippocratic oaths will be a major root cause.
2a Human relationship systems are always spinning (life-flowing or towards death). A vita duty of governance involves being able to calibrate which of these 2 trajectories a system’s movement through time is on. Moreover, as long as decay hasn’t repeated through too many cycles there are almost always systemic ways to intervene. Global corporations, professions, media, even democratic governments all qualify as human relation systems. All are measurable in terms of what they are compounding. If someone tells you this is not so about an organisation that has a critical impact on you, I will try and help if you will confidentially brief me on as much of the context as you can
2b Connecting the globe with networks is itself a meta-human relationship system, by meta I mean systems multiplying systems multiplying systems. Consequently, although we are talking 2 or 3 generations out, it is possible to map whether the globalisation we are currently systemising is sufficiently free of conflicts to be sustainable. Currently it is not . The good news is: there remains tine to intervene. The bad news is that transparency’s and sustainability’s main system mapmaker networks that I belong to have been issuing this warning now for over 20 years. Predicting when a system as large as the globe becomes impossible to turn round is not something anyone would estimate to the nearest quarter. But suffice it to say, what we started as forecasting as a generation away is now the last call responsibility of this generation including you and me.
3 Systemic intervention approaches are very different from what many advisers of large organisations offer. This comes back to another rule all mathematicians know in their water. Namely that when you design a systemic tool , you need to have a clear idea of three boundary matters. First situations your method does not apply to. Second within situations that its has application, what it does and what it needs to systemically interface with. I cannot think of any non-trivial systemic measurement method that does all the work by itself. Its success in intervening is dependent on what other systemic interfaces are combinatorially applied in the intervention. I stress this point because if you are caught up in a systemic crisis, you should never want to get all the resolution advice from one profession. Only from professions that are prepared to connect their expertise in systemic ways. Of the interventions that fail to turn round a collapsing system, the most common mistake is to have failed to bring all professions connectively to the operational table in time.
4 Any human relations systems cannot be effectively ruled just by top-down. The quality of the governance system’s future exponential duties depends on how truly critical flows including trust loop every way round. This is because such systems are always inseparable from other systems –micro (systems that have more detail inside that eg bottom-up people will have the most information of), macro (eg a corporation is part of a global market sector and it’s the whole sector’s spin that is most relevant in mapping whether its putting the whole of humanity at risk) and inter (for example national leadership decisions are no longer enough to protect people from interlocal waves such as natures tsunamis, earthquakes, plagues etc)
Complexity = Simplicity Itself
Chaos = Nature's Evolutionary way (for us to be or not to be, to work with as life's strolling players)
Conversation Pieces - an occasioan series
Please don't let the Toff's vocabulary of Complexity & Chaos bamboozle you out of Sustainability's Vital Conersations
As a mathematician, I ask that people do not let their self-confidence in integrity get bamboozled by words such as complexity and chaos. For starters, I suggests entertaining the ideas that complexity is simplicity if you look at wholes before parts; what people could start enjoy knowing is that:If people who study a phenomenon’s future dynamics in parts come up with a different consequential interpretation than people mapping whole, it is vital to openly debate the two answers, however unconventional the whole’s forecasts may be
It is not true that future exponentials are always unpredictable – see for example these 1984 forecasts
http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html#Anchor-Changin-27687 or read Thomas Friedman’s more uptodate future history
http://boards.charlierose.com/board/topic.asp?ti=15737BIG PICTURE SIMPLICITY
The relevance today is that like many 1980s systems thinkers -eg Buckminster Fuller - we can be almost sure that globalisation (and all networking connectivity) will compound one of two very opposite scenarios depending on whether:*Global decisions are mostly made in bits by a few superpowerful people*Or evolve with 2 million global villages each determining its communal gravities but also interconnecting boundaries harmoniouslyThe scenarios forecast that one will mean the end of most people two to four generations out (sorry if this timing strikes you as imprecise but as a blip in nature's world this is as precise as I can make it), whilst one will mean the most harmonious and fulfilling time to be alive everywhere. Crucially to me the chances of an in-between state 2 to 4 generations out barely exist – it is one or other of these futures that will exponentially compound.
I would suggest these are the key questions NOT to be bamboozled out of
Which scenario is the end game of which type of governance?
Which type of governance will we get unless a lot of people work to transform the patterns that are already spinning?
By when will globalisation’s spin become almost impossible to turn round?
If what I have tried to summarise matters to you there is more at
http://exponentials.blogspot.com and
http://valuesystem.blogspot.com as well as much more if we choose some contexts but that tends to be most quickly mapped if you rehearse that biggest context which you see as one overall invitational challenge to reconcile.
When I am being a tad more controversial I will stand up and say the way we train or condition our children to think now is the war that horrifies me most of all. Because - even the most ethical or religious people may never see the choice that waved by us
chris macrae wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
Can you help me search for people who have put what these conversation starters need to be about far more eloquently than I am able
I suspect there is lots in Shakespeare : try to be or not to be, and life is but a strolling player - or mail me with your finding
I am very confident when I read select sayings of John or Robert F Kennedy such as:
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation --Robert F. Kennedy
I love what Lingis says:
"One always sees things in joy. It
seems to me that there is a very fundamental kind of existential
decision we make: do we believe our joy or do we believe our neutral
states? In the latter case, the move is always one of prudence - not to
make decisions in a time of enthusiasm when one is carried away, but
rather to wait until everything cools down. I think one of the most
important things there is - I would almost say one could make this a
kind of maxim for life - is to always make decisions in a state of joy.
One should believe one's joy more than one's prudence, or any cautious
or fearful state of mind".
More on Lingis by searching:
Lingis*HappinessLingis*Delhi
Special Section on Open Space - the Conflict, Chaos & Confusion of The Practice of Peace
This special section will cut interpreations of open space that have been learnt by practitioners over 25 years. I will bookmark the links but also openly quote from them , which is also the number 1 etcical rule of the listserve of Open Space and its 50000+ practices linked through and nurtured by one man Harrison Owen, once an Angloical Priest & Peace Corps member turned to Commerce's Hall of Fame for innovation and transforamtion and Humanity's Hall of Fame as gifter of the simplest facilitation method any peoples can try to restore Peace around a singularly deep conflict.
David Weir mentored me -and my primitive understanding of globalisation and media in the early 1990s - when he was the Principal of Bradford Management School was an engineer who also researched thousand of accident reports. Reading between the lines he concluded 90% of thyem gave the wrong impression in the Executive Summary. They tried to blame a widget, what ultimately broke, when it was the collapsing system of human relationships degarding cycle after cycle that was most often the root cause.
LIVING SYSTEMS ARE ALWAYS AT RISK TO DEGRADING
He coined what I regard to be Weir's law: the tensions/energies of productive & demanding systems of human relationships are also why living systems are always degrading unless everyone is auditing to detect the next emerging conflict and leadership is resolved not to let a conflict enter the system (once it does, it compounds more conflicts like a cancer every cycle making the cost of resoultion expoentially more or ultimately impossible to prevent meltdown of the whole)
THE 3 C's OF SIMPLICITY & Open Space & Peace
This connects with Harrison Owen's 3 C's Conflict, Chaos, Confusion - which are fundamental in certifying any faciliator of open space or practice of peace , as well as understanding how to make systemic relationship simple as opopsed to ever more complex.
The introduction has introduced the risk of conflict. A system that has previously been running and governed perfectly can have its whole life and purpsoe threatened if even one conflict enetres into it. Chaos is the stage a system reaches several cycles after an undeteneted or unresolved conflict enters and compounds its cancerous flows. Confusion is the dynamics of relationships between those in power such as leaders and professions in making everyonne's need to pass through conflict worse. If we are to transform a system to a higher order system then waht needs to be openly known about conflicts (at least those that are cancerous to the whole system as opposed to benign) is that they are most challenging to the historic system's top people for a few reasons:
1) The conflict/chaos resolution will actually mean everyone changing a rule that was previously regarded as perfect if all are to pass safely through the conflict barrier- a classic story is Breaking through the sound barrier.s Early ilots literally risked and lost all failing to pass through this barrier and crashing their planes. Until one pilot acted on a hunch. Just as he passed shudderingly through the speed of sound, he reversed primary cockpit controls; they workded inside out above the speed of sound.
2) Failure to know that a rule (which may have been written down as a law of the land) to change will also mean that all professionals linked by this rule will cause more damage the harder they try to work to te old rule
3) The signals or the challenges to the old order usually come from changes in the environment - ie other systems surrounding the system being governed which top people neither have any command or control of, and are usually furthest from as we saw literally in such a case as Hurricane Katrina and FEMA's loss of timely interventions for New Orleans.
Will everyone recall the systemic lesson of King Canute in time to muddle through the unprecedented
age of waves that a newtorking world of localities going global is now thrusting into every being's and culture's midsts.?
Sytem governance becomes simple again as long as The 3C's are understood by everyone beginning with the connections between all in the top team and all who advise it professionally.
Out of London, we are compelled to give pride of place on chronicles of Open Space to our dear friend
Colin Morley (1952 to 2005-7/7)This is from his testimony to empowerment:February 08, 2005
Opening space versus activism
The Open Space email group has been discussing Iraq and anti-Americanism as have many other people. This is a dilemna that I have wondered about, particularly being part of the Be The Change organising team, where we found ourselves both wanting to stand away from blaming people or holding the space at the same time as wanting to persuade Americans to vote against Bush.
Harrison Owen, the originator of
Open Space has summed it up in a way that helps to clarify my thoughts a lot."Holding space and being an activist are two ends of a spectrum, and attempting to do both at the same time usually gets you in trouble, if not in schizophrenia. But the ends of the spectrum are always connected, and at any given time we (certainly I) find ourselves somewhere along the way. If my intent is to Open Space, I must let go as much as possible all thoughts of action, and a 14,000,000,000 year perspective can be very helpful. And when I choose to act, I must do so with every ounce of passion and talent at my disposal, even though I take up a lot of space. And the 14 billion year perspective is still helpful. I am still a blip, and a very small one at that."
Posted in Open Space.
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January 05, 2005
Practice of Peace
In December I went to the Practice of Peace event in Sweden with Harrison Owen the inventor of
Open Space. Peace, it turns out, is not the absence of chaos and conflict. What the event brought out clearly was the need for spaces where people can discuss and live with their conflicts so that more considerate solutions can be developed.
We now have a new website in the UK with news of Open Space here -
www.openspaceuk.comPosted in Open Space.
link Comments (1) TrackBackMay 04, 2004
Meetings
In meetings there is always spare capability that is not utilised. The more people in the room the harder it is to ensure that everybody is using their capability and time effectively. A poor chair person will allow some people to talk for too long while others with important contributions feel discouraged from participating. Even a great chair person cannot create the conditions for everybody to maximise their contributions and interactions.
When you have a group of people sitting round a table how can you maximise the capability in the room? Facilitation is a key skill for empowering people in a meeting to contribute to the fullest degree possible so that everyone's capabilities are fully expressed and used. I believe that it is vital to write peoples' contributions down on a flip chart or white board so that participants can feed off each others' ideas and draw the links between them. There needs to be a process for ensuring that everybody has a chance to speak.
Ultimately, the only way that I know of to maximise everybody's capability is
Open Space.
Posted in Open Space.
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April 02, 2004
The Inviting Organisation
There is a whole encyclopaedia of
Open Space info and stories at Michael Herman's Global Chicago site. Michael has collaborated with Harrison Owen to create the Practice of Peace training in Open Space.
"Genuine Peace will never be attained with the elimination of chaos, confusion and conflict. In fact all three are essential to the continuance of life. Without chaos, there is no open space for future possibilities. Without confusion, old ideas and ways of thinking stick around well beyond their time. And without conflict, ideas and approaches fail to reach their full potential, never having been sharpened in the intense conversation of critical assessment. Peace of the sort that brings wholeness, harmony and health to our lives only happens when chaos, confusion and conflict are included and transcended."
And I really like this piece
The Inviting Organisation Emerges in which Michael proposes 'inviting' as a core organisational skill and activity.
"First, name your issue and say something about why you think it matters. Second, make a list of "guests" which includes everyone you need to REALLY deal with the situation at hand. Third, get a time, a space and some materials, including such technical items as an empty wall, chairs, markers, masking tape, and perhaps a few computers if you want to be fancy. Fourth, prepare for the care and feeding of the success story that you will create during this meeting. This might include plans to distribute proceedings copies, create a website, allocate funding, meet with senior managers, or hold followup meetings -- whatever it will take to keep this work moving forward. Summarize all of this in a crisp, clear and creative way and send it out -- and always, always, always -- be prepared to be surprised. Which is to say, try not to get your heart set on specific outcomes or solutions that are almost certain to be less than what the inspired creativity of your group will produce. Expect them to blow away expectations -- yours and theirs. "
For people who wonder why they don't get invited to enough things, the answer is to make some invitations of your own. This is how space is opened and community is built. Michael lays out an approach based on the inputs of some key people including one of my favourites
Ken Wilber. He covers organisational culture (command and control has not really been superceded yet), strategy and lays out a model of evolution in organisations.
The model shows how organisations can evolve to empower people to exercise their feelings of passion and responsibility - the fuel that drives Open Space - and to work for higher and higher purposes. And the next big strategic question becomes 'How open and inviting is your organisation?' We move from 'Command and Control' to 'Host and Post'.
What this does is elevate Open Space into a higher level organisational strategy and culture.
Posted in Open Space.
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March 19, 2004
More Open Space
On the OSList I have discovered lots of new sources on Open Space. Including the following links:
Harrison OwenOpenSpaceUKOpen Space WorldMartin LeithFacilitating for ChangeAshley CooperPosted in Open Space.
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March 14, 2004
Walking round the circle
Last week I facilitated an
Open Space event of 55 people within the company I am working for in Ireland - the biggest one I have done yet. It worked extremely well, as always, and people really seemed to appreciate it. We produced proceedings of about 50 pages full of ideas and action plans on how to serve customers better.
With a lot of people I did not know being present for the first time I felt a need as the facilitator to play a kind of ceremonial role to create the focus the space. So I did what Harrison Owen recommends - I started by saying 'Welcome to Open Space' and then walked slowly and silently round the circle before introducing the theme.
People said this had a very strange effect. On the one hand they wanted to laugh. The Irish naturally enjoy debunking pretentiousness. On the other hand it absolutely did focus the group in the present moment and created a kind of only just bearable tension.
I do not know what will happen if anybody ever does laugh. We will see if I have the guts to walk around the circle in that way again. My alternative may be to invite people to look around the circle, see who is here and remind themselves of why they have come.
Posted in Open Space.
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February 15, 2004
Self Organising
We used
Open Space to facilitate our weekend deciding how to structure Community Building in Britain
(CBiB). I think it worked very well. The two approaches go together perfectly. So much so that we will probably use Open Space to manage the work of CBiB when we meet in future. That way all the key subjects can be raised and discussed and time and energy can be spent on the things people are most interested in.
Posted in Community Building.
link Comments (0) TrackBackJuly 12, 2003
Opening Space
I was thinking about Harrison Owen's phrase 'Open space and spirit shows up.' Then my facilitator friend, Philip talked about being an 'Opener of Space.' There are other ways of opening space besides
Open Space.
Its interesting to think about what fills the space and makes it need opening. Its partly a question of energy and power blockages.
An inflated leader can fill the pace like a huge balloon, pressing other peoples' thinking back against the wall where it has no room to grow. That can be fine if the leader is taking the team in a good direction. But a well aimed joke can burst the balloon with a pin prick and open the space up again. Of course kings and queens have employed jesters precisely for this purpose. Its a dangerous job though if you value your job security.
The jumble of everyones' different agendas can fill the space with clutter. A ritual like a prayer or a weekly meeting presentation ceremony can push the clutter to the back of the space and allow our common identity and purpose to enter.
Some things can both close space and open it. It depends on the situation and the people. Usually anger and shouting close space down by making people fearful and defensive. However, if the space is cluttered up with different agendas or dominated by inflated egos, and if people are mature enough to neither turn the emotion onto themselves or others, then anger and shouting can play a positive role in exposing the underlying realiities. This can open space by getting people to reprioritise and align their agendas.
Posted in Open Space.
link Comments (0)April 25, 2003
Empowerment and Open Space
Chris Corrigan in a
disussion board posting believes that we cannot empower people. But with
Open Space we can make sure we do not disempower them.People empower themselves, people only disempower others.
The kind of power we're talking about of course is the power of spirit, and that which enables us to move and make movement. Most of us spend our lives having this power whittled away by different people and institutions, be they political, educational, social, economic or what have you. Occasionally people find their power again. Sometimes they fully reclaim it. How else does one explain Mahatma Gandhi, Rigoberta Menchu, Nelson Mandela, Aun Sung Suu Kyi and many other men and women who, at some point during their lives have seemed to have more power than all of their contemporaries and most of their oppressors? Nobody empowered these people. No one said "now you have the ability to do your work." I think all of these people chose their work and embarked upon it, and in so doing became engaged with spirit. Spirit is what got them going and kept them moving.
So I'm increasingly thinking that there is no such thing as empowerment. I just don't see it being possible to empower others. This is an old learning from Open Space, indeed it stick out of the old green user's guide as a pull quote somewhere. To say "I empower others" is to shut down space totally.
It seems empowerment has a sort of zen aspect - to empower others you have to stop disempowering them.
Posted in Tools.
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January 01, 2003
Open Space
Open Space Technology as described by Harrison Owen is a wonderful facilitation technique for involving everybody to the degree that they want to be involved and behind the particular issues that they want to address. At 1-3 day Open Space events, a theme is set. Once the facilitator has described the guidelines of Open Space the participants empower themselves by proposing which subjects they would like to discuss and by deciding which meetings they want to attend. If you find yourself in the wrong meeting you can follow the 'Law of 2 Feet' and walk away to find somewhere else to put your energy. The discussion is written up on the spot and posted on the wall. After a few rounds of meetings the participants review all the discussions that have taken place and key themes are agreed. People again decide which themes they want to discuss by voting with their feet on which meeting to go to. At the end of the event everyone can leave with a book of all the proceedings. The beauty of Open Space is the way it uses the energy that people have to produce the best result possible with those people at that time.
Tales from Open Space is a compilation of various peoples' experiences in using this process.
Harrison Owen sums it up as
"Open Space and Spirit Shows Up".Open Space TechnologyHarrison OwenChris Corrigan DalarCo-Intelligence InstituteMAP for non profitsCornerstoneChange management toolbookNow to newOpen Space WorldPosted in Open Space.
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This is an extrordinary review of Harrison's owen's Practivce of Peace gifted to us all at
Peace.caOPEN SPACE AND THE PRACTICE OF PEACE: OPEN SPACE FOR OPEN MINDS FOR PEACE
Book - The Practice of Peace - by Harrison Owen. I wish to tell you about this because I see another convergence between the comments that the peacebuilding happens during the process of working on projects (for example), and using the Open Space conferencing in the process. Owen is the leader behind Open Space Technology. Open Space Technology or methodology of conferencing is very complimentary to what we have come around to thinking in terms of Servant Leadership style, non-hierarchical organizing, and the principles contained in the draft Charter (borrowed from the World Social Forum). I have come to believe (an "aha" moment) that essentially the Canadian Peace Initiative may be as simple as providing venues or "Open Spaces to Open Minds to Peace". (Another "reality check" -- It has been my personal view that I saw my contribution as simply providing venues where peace educators and peace builders could come together to dialogue, network, disseminate information, plan, etc. - in a sense, I/we have been doing Open Space for the past 3 years + without realizing it, through our conferences, my web site, our email listservers, etc.) What Harrison Owen is saying is, "do not worry about spending a lot of time organizing an agenda. Just provide an Open Space, have a general theme(s), invite people with a passion to come, the conference will organize itself based on what these passionate people really want to discuss". He confirms what I think many of our participants have said at the last National Peace Education Conference -- that our best time was in the personal chats outside the presentations. Harrison puts it much better than I.
You can order the book (and I highly recommend it to you) from the Open Space Institute of Canada in Quebec, by printing an order form off the Internet at
http://www.openspacecanada.org/books.htm and mailing it with a cheque (CDN$33.00). Alternatively, you can read the 146 page book on the Internet at
Practice of Peace, Chapters 1,2 Practice of Peace, Chapters 2,4 Practice of Peace, Chapters 5,6, Practice of Peace, Chapters 7,8 ,
Practice of Peace, Chapters 9,10 . (the only thing is, the Internet version is missing about 4 pages - but it doesn't really matter). Suggestion: do all your group work as a series of Open Space conferencing. In Owen's words, it will be self-organizing (which coincidentally takes a lot of stress off you). You may well think that I have gone a bit crazy with this Open Space stuff. However, I feel it is right for us, for what we have been working on, for the peace constituents, and for these times. Open Space has all the features of a Culture of Peace (eg. democratic participation, respect, listening to understand, etc.)
HIGHLIGHTS:
Chapter I: Peace, and The Practice of Peace
Destructive conflict occurs when you run out of room -- physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. And the answer would seem to be -- open more space.
Please do not expect a radical, new approach. In fact, I believe each and every one of us already has both the knowledge and skills necessary, and the fundamental mechanism is essentially "hardwired" into our being. We have only to remember what we know, and practice what we are.
The core mechanism ... Open Space Technology.
The notion that large groups of conflicted people could virtually instantaneously organize their affairs and pursue their tasks without elaborate pre-planning and a host of facilitators flies in the face of what appears to be the accepted wisdom.
Recently, we have been learning that, given certain very simple preconditions, order just happens.
I hope that you will take everything I have to say as a testable hypothesis, which of course is a critical part of any experiment. Don't believe a thing, and certainly not on my say so. Do it -- and if the experimental results are replicated, do it again and do it better. It could just be that Peace will break out.
The true power lies with the incredible capacity of self-organizing systems to create Peace for themselves and with their environment. Not all the time, not always perfectly, and not without continuing problems, but Peace, none the less. This power is owned by no one, and is available to everyone. We have only to use it.
... given the state of our world, practical application is essential.
Chapter II: A Piecemeal Approach to Peace
Organizational dysfunction is a bland short hand for the apparent fact that many, perhaps most, of our organizations and institutions are no longer capable of doing what they were designed to do.
... a significant number of people think something is profoundly wrong. And in this case, I would argue that perception is reality.
... Failed States .... Soul Pollution ...
I believe no small part of that failure may be traced to an inability, or unwillingness, to acknowledge the unbelievable complexity of a situation, and the bluntness of our tools. Add in massive doses of avarice and greed, and you have the perfect formula for failure, which we achieved.
Lessons Learned - a Whole Systems Approach ... you have to think systemically.
... the passage from concept to successful implementation is blocked by extraordinary obstacles.
... some coherent, new, social fabric bearing the requisite characteristics of Peace: wholeness, health and harmony
Putting it directly, is it really possible to think systemically and then rationally implement effective solutions, when the system we must think about is so horrendously complex as to boggle the mind, and the rate of change such that our best thoughts and efforts are rendered futile before the ink dries on the page, or the fingers leave the computer keyboard?
... individuals separated by more than two levels of consciousness have real problems with each other ...
... rational conversation, of whatever sort requires, at a minimum, the sharing of some fundamental, common presuppositions.
Chapter III: Scope of Work for the Peacemaker
But for all their diversity and multiplicity, the several tools in the Peacemaker's kit share a common linage, at least in the West: Rational Analysis and Problem Solving. Regardless of the size or complexity of the issue confronting us, we follow a procedure which goes roughly as follows: (1) Data Collection, (2) Rational Analysis, (3) Problem Definition, (4) Intervention Design, (5) Application/Intervention, (6) Evaluation ... it all seems to come down to the same thing -- Define the problem, and fix it ... "eating the elephant one bite at a time" ...
... we are doing the wrong thing.
... when it comes to resolution, we desperately need something infinitely more powerful that the rather meager tools in hand.
Chapter IV: Muddling Through
Think of the glass as half full, and not half empty.
It happened all by itself - Almost ... Self Organization
... when such systems are driven "far out of equilibrium" due to changed environmental circumstances ... the initial response is pure chaos ... until suddenly chaotic randomness is replaced by new and more complex order.
Order appears in chaos. Nobody did it.
It turns out that in open systems ... the tiniest of changes can have major impacts. The Butterfly Effect had been discovered.
Chaos was now to be understood as an integral part of the process of living. ... chaos had its uses -- positive and essential uses.
"Complex Adaptive Systems" -- Adaptive, in that the system is constantly "learning" new and effective means to fit with its environment in ways that honor its wholeness and enable a healthy harmonious existence.
... pre-conditions are as follows: (1) a relatively safe, nutrient environment; (2) high levels of diversity of elements, and the potential for complex inter-relationships; (3) a drive for improvement (Search for Fitness); (4) sparse prior connections; (5) edge of chaos.
In the popular democracy of neighborhood formation, we vote with our feet.
The complex organization which feeds us every day (barring certain lapses) happened all by itself. Nobody organized it. Nobody manages it ... the system does it all by itself.
The short answer -- They muddle through.
One could ask, however, how could it be that the mundane comes as such a surprise? And the answer, I think is that for most people, most of the time, there is no surprise. It is only the relative few (largely in the West) who, having arrived at the exalted level of consciousness which I called Intellect, and inhabiting organizations I have called ProActive, who understand that order and systems can only be the product of our effort. If we didn’t do it – it simply couldn’t have happened. After all, somebody must be in charge. All of the rest of the world has a considerably more humble view of our role in the ordering of things. And so for them, what we perceive as impossible, they perceive to be obvious. It may be past time for us to be struck by a blinding flash of the obvious. Despite our disbelief, even abhorrence, I think it fair to say that there is massive good news in the workings of the mundane engine of Muddling Through – The Complex Adaptive System, especially as we approach the awesome task of Peacemaking. For Peace to occur (and continue) which simultaneously includes and transcends chaos, confusion and conflict, we now know, or at least should know, that it cannot come about in pieces. Step by step won’t make it. One bite at a time insures that when the meal is over, we will not be around to enjoy it. We may practice systemic analysis and multi-factorial development with abandon, but no matter the elegance of our analysis or the energy of our development/Peacemaking strategies, the butterfly will always show up, the mega-monster of complex diversity, which is our common humanity, will blow our plans away. In short – we do not have the horsepower. But the everyday, mundane, run of the mill, purely average, Complex Adaptive System, has chaos, complexity and diversity for lunch, and begs for more. If it is horsepower we need, it is just sitting there and waiting for us. At least that is a story worthy of pursuit, I believe.
Open Space Technology may also be understood as a bridge between a general understanding of self-organization, and its application to the concrete, and critical, issues of Peacemaking.
... the first part of Open Space ... Gather in a circle.
... the second part of Open Space ... Create a bulletin board.
... the final piece of OST ... open a market place.
... the vast majority of those involved were infinitely more concerned with "doing" as opposed to keeping exact records and writing papers.
Open Space works, and works well, in any situation characterized by the following: 1) A genuine issue of mutual concern which elicits a high degree of passion. 2) High levels of complexity in terms of the elements of the issue. 3) High levels of diversity in terms of the people involved. 4) The presence of actual or potential conflict. 4) A decision time of yesterday; in short the issue was a not a sometime thing, but demanded immediate attention.
... self-organization at work ...
First, we have come to understand the gifts of self organization relative to the effective (and I would add peaceful) function of human communities. Second, we have learned much about what can be done, and not done, in order to initiate and sustain the process of self organization. When it comes to utilizing the power of self organization for the purposes of Peacemaking, such understandings are vital.
First of all there is the very practical gift of time and energy returned.
A second gift, no less valuable, is an exponential jump in the efficiency and effectiveness of the group and its work.
It is simply the awesome energy released when an everyday, ordinary, complex adaptive system gets seriously to work.
... the following behaviours and characteristics were evident: (1) high learning, (2) high play, (3) appropriate structure and control, (4) genuine community.
All structures and controls are emergent, built by the self-organizing system itself, and in the case of an Open Space, by the people involved.
The community manifest in Open Space is not of an idealized sort. Chaos, confusion and conflict abound -- they are not avoided or suppressed, but transcended in the most remarkable way.
I would call it peaceful -- but it is a very dynamic sort of Peace.
In a word, the process of self-organization may be seen as the primal example of genuine Peacemaking. And it happens all by itself.
Chapter V: Putting the Power of Self-Organization to Work for Peace
... why are we in such a mess?
Control, the need to be in control, and the attempt to exercise control. In fact we strongly advise people never to use Open Space if they have that need or even worse, actually think they are in charge.
External, and usually arbitrary, control is the enemy of Open Space.
... the mess we experience in our all too non-peaceful world has a similar etiology. It is all those bosses, and “wannabe” bosses, struggling for control and seeking to impose their notion of how things ought to be done, that gets us in the pickle we find ourselves. Some may call their efforts leadership, but if so it is a very destructive force, upsetting the natural process and often preventing the very thing many of these world bosses say they are in favor of – Peace.
Gandhi: ... the function of the leader as determining the direction of the parade and racing to the front ... he listened attentively to the ebb and flow of the emergent, self-organizing system ... urged it along the path chosen, not by him, but by the people themselves.
The Practice of Peace begins with an understanding of our world, and all of its multiple communities, as naturally occurring self-organizing systems, which for their own purposes, and in their own way seek internal wholeness, health and harmony. Not without chaos, conflict and confusion, which are integral to a process which both includes and transcends them.
... our present knowledge and practice is minimal, both in terms of the need and the possibilities. So this is an invitation to go deeper.
... I had come because I cared for my friends in Palestine and Israel, and also for myself and my children.
Rumi, the Suffi poet: "There is a field, beyond right thinking and wrong thinking. I will meet you there." (B.S. - new thinking?)
Where are you going, and what are you going to do?
At the very least, we all have a choice.
... the participants did it all by themselves ...
Chapter VI: Strategy for Peace
Building a strategy for Peace starts with several caveats . Never work harder than you have to – Lord knows there is plenty too be done, so save your energy. Second, take time to understand what is naturally present before trying to fix it. In a word, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. And last (and first) never delude yourself into thinking you are in control ...
Peace ... is a process, not a thing; a journey not a destination. It is flow and not a state.
Our function is to hold the space open so that the organization, or people with whome we work, can do what only it (or they) can do -- be fully themselves, as a living, self-organizing system.
... we are not in charge.
Open space wherever, however, and as often as you can.
... the organism is its own best healer, and the power behind that healing is self-organization.
The Practice of Peace, therefore, involves initiating, sustaining, and in some cases re-starting, that fundamental engine of our existence -- self organization.
... He who governs least governs best ...
... an experiment in progress.
The strategy, simply put, is -- when things fall apart, open space and allow the healing to begin.
Peacemaking is an ongoing, every day affair...
When Peace is at risk, or seemingly departed, the stakes become excruciatingly high. Time is short, need is great, resources few -- and action is essential.
... an invitation to the people who care about the issues at hand ... this is everybody who cares, what I call, The Coalition of Concern.
Invitation, on the other hand, is open to refusal, which is at once risky (nobody will come) and energizing. Those who do come really want to be there ... once present, invite everybody to sit in a circle ... all places are equal.
... hodgepodge of interested parties, drawn together by their concern for the common issue ... looking for solutions, resolution, improvement ... restore wholeness, health and harmony ...
Just get there and go! ... The first step of a strategy for Peace is to open space.
In highly conflicted situations the experience of Peace is such a rare commodity that people tend to forget what it was like.
... the absence of Peace is not unique to the world of nations and peoples. Precisely the same thing happens at all levels of our social environment, and the results are identical. ... All of which makes the point that the role of the Peacemaker is not simply an international one. ... "chicken and egg" problem
Reflection: The Second Step in The Strategy of Peace ... if Peace is to become something more than a brief episode, it will be helpful to notice (anchor the experience) as it passes by.
Fun
... the experience of Peace must be moved from the category of The Impossible to that of The Expected.
Step Three: In the Practice of Peace, as elsewhere, practice is important.
... practice what we learn, and learn what we practice. ... make Peace and Peacemaking a conscious act ... Peacemaking needs to become an everyday, ongoing occurrence ... the major engine of Peace and Peacemaking is not of our creation or doing. Self-organization will continue to happen all by itself. But there are any number of things that we can do, or more often not do which substantially raise the odds of the appearance of Peace.
“The Open Space Mentality.” (BS: Open Minds)
Using the insights and principles of Open Space every day enable us to have better and more peaceful days. This is a personal experience – we feel better and more peaceful. It is also a professional experience – our work in the world seemingly enables others to have better and more peaceful days. The critical elements, as I have experienced them, are: 1) Invitation. 2) The Circle. 3) Passion and Responsibility. 4) The Four Principles. 5) The Law of Two Feet.
When life’s many activities are begun with an invitation, the space is truly open for all sorts of possibilities.
For me the fundamental geometry for Peacemaking is a circle, with nothing in the way.
Passion and Responsibility ... and following up (if need be) on the implementation.
For better or worse, passion -- our human care and concern -- is what makes the world, at least our world, go around. ... And so we invite passion bounded by responsibility.
The solution is simple, just open more space.
I think the secret is that there is a tradition of giving each other the space they need.
I suggest that "gracious spaciousness" is equally important in the largest of all parties -- life together here on Planet Earth, and for the Peacemaker it may be the most important thing we bring to that marvelous party.
The Four Principles: Whoever comes is the right people. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. And, When it is over it is over.
... the working principles of any well functioning self-organizing system.
Start with the ones who care, and the rest will come, or not. But make a start.
Dreams of Peace and memories of Peace all have their place, but until or unless we have Peace now, it doesn't matter very much.
When Now becomes very big (or even just gets a little bigger) there is a calming sense of wholeness, integration and completeness -- Peace.
Open, living, self-organizing systems are never "on time" -- they are their own time. For the Peacemaker this understanding is core. Peace, like all other fundamental realities of life never happens on schedule -- it happens when it happens. Whenver it starts is the right time.
If at any time, during our time together you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet. Go somewhere else. Do something useful, and for sure don’t waste time feeling miserable. ... it is called authenticity.
When the disaffected do depart, they are then freed to make their own contributions in areas more to their liking. The conventional wisdom insists, rather blindly I think, that if folks just walked off when they got bored, society would be in a sorry state. ... different stokes for different folks,
Making that connection becomes infinitely easier when you have a number of people searching about for something useful to do which will fit both their interests and their talents.
In a word, the Law of Two Feet both acknowledges and facilitates one of the core process of our life and (if we are correct) the central mechanism of Peacemaking – self-organization. And when self-organization grinds to a halt, life stops, productivity and creativity cease. Most importantly, Peace as I have been describing it becomes questionable, if not impossible.
In our central role as witness, it is not our function or responsibility to create Peace – but rather to enable the conditions under which Peace may occur. In most cases, this means doing little and being much.
... although conflict may be intense and vigorous, never has the group been unable to handle that conflict, and more importantly, that they have always learned deeply from the incident.
At a very practical level, I take it to be true that no person (other than the pathologically deranged) actually likes to lose their cool and engage in violent conflict.
A Strategy for Peace – Summary: The strategy, as I suggested at the start, is extraordinarily simple. Open space whenever, however, and any time you can – in order to allow the natural powers of all self organizing systems do what they do best: create wholeness, health and harmony in themselves and with their environment. This may mean using Open Space Technology, and in certain situations the approach can be superbly effective. It may equally, and perhaps more often, mean assuming the open space mentality, that gracious spacious approach to life which starts with invitation, gathers in a circle, always remembers the Four Principles, and honors the Law of Two Feet. Such graciousness need not be reserved only for special occasions, like a party dress or tuxedo hung in a closet until the time is right. It is everyday attire, for every day is a good day to engage the Practice of Peace. [BS: Open Space for Open Minds for Peace]
Chapter VII: Many Roads to Peace
... we experienced that Peace as a constantly unfolding journey of exploration.
... the corporate domain ... the citadel of power and control ... who would suspect that such a human need (as Peace and Peacemaking) could surface in that paragon of efficiency?
... desperately in need of Peace in the fullest sense of my use of the word: The restoration of wholeness, health, and harmony.
... women definitely get it.
... The Change Initiative, which had no official standing and few resources -- but it was ready to go to work.
My answer was very short and simple: Open Space.
... 100 issues raised, some 10 or 11 topped the rest based on the groups' priorization. None of the remainder were lost, and most were converged with the top rankers.
... they knew Peace as organizational integrity (wholeness), reduction of stress and strain (health), and the multiple disparate pieces worked together (harmony).
Truth to tell, they never quite could go back, for they would always know that a different way was available. ... that bedrock of all firm knowledge: experience. ... If they had chosen to go back to the way things were, they would have been doubly damned.
When in doubt, conflict or confusion -- open space.
... all of the multiple activities that we as humans have invented to make our lives more peaceful can, and do, have positive effect, and none should be overlooked ... but none are sufficient individually ...
What we have been doing is marvelous, and we need to do more and better. However, we may wish to look at the How.
... that wonderful creature, The Complex Adaptive System, which seemingly lies at the core of each of us individually, and all of us collectively -- as well as the cosmos itself.
... never, ever, ever delude yourself into thinking you are in charge.
Chapter VIII: Of Rogues, Perceived Rogues, and The End of It All
... the power of self organization is everywhere (i.e. even to the rogues)
... getting to the core of the matter.
... a close integration of purpose and persons -- creating an organizational integrity or wholeness which is manifestly powerful.
... angry people ... all the disaffected, and dispossessed ...
... a real dilemma. Your Peace can well become my hell. And visa versa. Perhaps we should change the words? Or admit that we have been hoisted on the petard of our own logic? Then again, it may well be that there is something deeper here which bears exploration. Perhaps the logical contradiction is in fact a paradox that can lead to interesting new places. Putting it bluntly, how do we deal with the rogues of our world? Or is it only a matter of perception? Obviously my rogue can be your hero – selfsame person seen from two very different points of view. The heros of the American Revolution were definitely the rogues of the British Empire, a fact that some Americans tend to forget today. And for the would be Peacemaker, the dilemma posed is perhaps especially difficult and painful. Whose Peace would you make?
Either way the choice goes, we have a definite problem, until or unless we find it possible to discover resolution a different level.
... resolution is unlikely to come at the same level the problem manifests.
So where does this leave us and the role of the Peacemaker? ... The first step would be to acknowledge our cultural heritage and to be as conscious of it as we can. Cultural bias is a given we cannot change, but we can be aware of it.
Our function is not to create, offer, or suggest solutions, but rather to create the conditions under which solutions may be found without (and this is the truly hard part) any attachment to particular outcomes.
This act of searching is salutary to the whole process of living ...
... simple strategy of always looking for the broadest possible coalition of concern.
... coming together is the critical point, no matter the means.
... limits to this approach ... time, space, and money ... the limit imposed by our cultural biases ... others' perceptions of those biases.
Bottom line? Know your limitations, and don't be afraid to stretch them. However, when you reach the end, don't be offended, just pass the baton. In the search for Peace, everybody is the object of our concern, but only some bodies will respond to us as individuals. Pass it on.
We do not make the Peace, for Peace is something that all bodies (individuals and groups) do all by themselves.
... the lowest possible denominator of Darwinian evolution, kill or be killed, with the survival of the fittest.
Chapter IX: Endings and New Beginnings - The Epicenter of Peacemaking
The ending of things is almost inevitably traumatic ...
The role is a deeper one – to be the guide and support as one of the great, natural processes of human life unfolds. At stake is the continuance of life, not as it was – but as it may become. For the Peacemaker, this is the heart and soul of the task.
Griefwork (by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying, 1970)
Other books by Owen - Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organizations (1985); The Spirit of Leadership (1999); The Power of Spirit: How Organizations Transform (2000) (publisher Berrett-Kowhler)
The stages are as follows: (1) Shock/Anger, (2) Denial, (3) Memories, (4) Open Space as Despair, (5) Open Space as Silence, (6) Vision and Renewal
In the face of shock and anger the Peacemaker will do nothing, for nothing can be done, except to create and maintain the space in which the shock and anger may roll and do its essential work. This is the role of Witness.
At one and the same time, they appear as intimate to us as our own breath, and yet somehow above it all, anchored in some transcendent place.
They are facing a reality that hurts too much.
Without saying a word, or doing a thing, the Witness provides that quiet grounding in reality that offers a starting point. This is not about suggesting a future, creating the plans, offering direct assistance – it is all about marking the spot of commencement. Here. Now.
Denial is necessary, it must run its course and give its gift. Only then will life move one.
It is now painfully clear to everybody involved that the end did in fact come. What was – is no longer. And so the memories. Some bitter, some sweet – all important.
It is continuing process of self-definition and selfunderstanding occasioned by the end of the old, and the appearance of something new and yet to be fully understood.
... it needs to be told in order that the essential work of letting go and moving on may take place.
Sooner or later the tale is told. There is nothing more to say and what remains is silence ... just silence, emptiness, Despair.
In Despair we come to fully appreciate how much we really loved that which we grieve – be that a way of life, place of work, a group of people, or a single person. It is an appreciation, unfortunately, that can never be fully realized until the object of our affection is torn from our grasp. However, it is only when we have deeply appreciated what we have lost that we can fully release our attachment. And with that release we become free for whatever might be coming next.
... self-inflicted. It is the pain of holding on to that which no longer exists. Once we let go, the pain departs. And the sooner we let go, the sooner the pain ends. The ultimate gift of Despair, therefore is to provide us with some very strong motivation to get on with life.
Rather than avoid it (which you can't) you have to go through it. It is the only way to the other side.
... once again the role of the Silent Witness comes to the fore. In truth there is nothing to be done, for the person, or group, must do it all for themselves. Only they can let go, but having a warm hand to hold in the process is good.
Open Space as Silence ... the moment before creation.
... a question - What was I going to do with the rest of my life?
The question is important, but its mode of asking equally so. When that question is asked out of caring, or as I would prefer to say, Love – its power is incredible. Love, like Peace is one of those words with so many possible meanings that it becomes essential to say what you mean. For me, Love always has two faces, a face of acceptance, and a face of challenge.
... challenge ... this is the rigorous, no nonsense, expectation that we live up to our potential.
For the Peacemaker, there is a special opportunity in the moment of silence, the open space between what was and may be. It is to pose the question in love and await the answer. .... It is not about making any statement at all. It is about asking a question, for questions have the wonderful capacity to open more space.
Vision ... there is good news. Life has renewed itself. ... celebrate ...
In the beginning it was all about a meeting methodology, and by the end, open space referred to a critical time/space in our human journey.
Chapter X: Preparation for Peacemaking
Peacemaking is less about acquiring new skills and methods than applying those we already possess in some new and more intentional ways. ... every human being on the face of the planet comes equipped with the essential tools. It remains only to use them.
... if ever there were a case where theory without practice is useless -- Peacemaking is that case.
... anybody with a good head and a good heart can "do it".
And the means of elevation is practice.
... a professional skill
... focus -- the ability to bring all natural gifts and learned skills to bear in the present moment to the exclusion of any possible distractions. My preferred word would be presence.
Presence, for me, is more than the capacity to focus on the details and broad scene, there is also an integrative quality which allows for the inclusion and blending of all natural gifts and learned skills. More than anything else, presence is not so much an action, but a quality of being which manifests itself both in action and stillness. We all have presence, but some of us have massive presence. And each of us can increase our presence with practice.
... Practice as a Spiritual Discipline.
... invite the group to meditate together.
... Peacemaking is an everyday task and opportunity. We will find that the need is omnipresent, and for sure we will get better with repetition. We also must build the skills and knowledge, for as our world changes and continues to change old approaches will be seen in new ways, and new ways to Peace will show themselves.
... the demands of the moment are more than sufficient to fry our Spirit, unless that Spirit is constantly restored.
There is an old cliche to the effect that Peace begins at home. Like many cliches that have the well worn feeling of pebble stones in a brook, the truth may be obvious, but it is also profound. Every moment of every day, and in every situation, the forces of chaos, confusion and conflict do their natural work – opening space for new opportunities to appear, muddling convinced minds so that they can be open to new thoughts, and sharpening half baked ideas and approaches into well formed tools. Absent chaos, confusion and conflict, life stops. But if the toxic byproducts of discord, fragmentation and disease are not constantly dealt with, they soon reach a lethal level,...
The Practice of Peace, like any other practice, requires a strong base of knowledge and skills.
I often felt that entering a school was not unlike entering a war zone. Students appeared to be at war with themselves and each other, aligned only against the faculty, which in turn conflicted with the administration. ... Question: What would happen if you opened space in a school? ... Open Space worked just fine... What was remarkable was that deeply conflicted parties (students, teachers, administration and parents) found it quite possible to talk usefully with each other. Perhaps most interesting was that students took to Open Space like ducks to water.
Peace is fundamentally a matter of the Spirit.
We know it when we meet.
The ultimate goal of The Practice of Peace, so far as I am concerned, is healing the Human Spirit. That done, and everything else seems to pretty well take care of itself. ... the special agent of healing (at least from the outside) is the Silent Witness of the Peacemaker standing as a solid rock in shifting sand or the strong tree in a high wind – offering a point of reference and support.
... to add the strength of a good companion.
Following that path in the company of those who travel it is perhaps the highest calling that any of us may hear, and it is surely one of the most demanding. Which brings into focus a second sense in which the Practice of Peace is a Spiritual Discipline, not practiced for others, but for ourselves.
... I have felt my personhood fulfilled as in no other way. I can also say with the same absoluteness, that no other experience in my life demanded so much.
... the rewards so far exceed the costs as to be a total gift. I wish that gift for you.
