OS and AI

[Peggy Holman]

Ah, Harrison.  How much you put my internal struggle in words!  I do believe that directed facilitation can be disempowering.  I also believe there are times when it enables a next step. To me, the art is knowing when to be willing to offer some directive support.

When is a helping hand truly helpful and when is it actually just fulfilling my need as the helper to feel useful and is a disservice to the recipient?

Years ago, when I worked in information technologies, there was a woman who really wanted a new report and came to me multiple times to talk around her request.  I consistently said to her that I'd be happy to sit down with her at any time and help her design this report.  I even offered to do it right in the moment but she always said no.  About a year later, I discovered that a co-worker had created the report for her.  She was delighted!  She had her report and was getting on with the wonderful uses she'd envisioned for it.  So which was the greater service?  Mine, which asked that she take responsibility for her wish and work with me or my colleague who provided her with what she wanted just because she asked.  To this day, I don't know.

As I write, I'm reminded of the 4 children described at Passover.  The wise child, the wicked child, the simple child, and the one who doesn't even know enough to ask.  Each requires a different strategy for learning the story of Passover..    The wise child comes to you and asks to hear the story.  At the other end of the spectrum, the strategy with the one who doesn't even know to ask is to go to the child and tell the story.

Harrison, because you expect full independence, you attract people who are independent.  The rest, like the woman in my story about the report, find someone else who is willing to do it for them.  

There are times where I make the choice to step in, to provide some directed facilitation and then work myself out of the picture.  You do point to the risk in this -- they think I am the source of success or failure rather than themselves.  If I think someone just wants me there to do the work for them, I'm gone.  Where I see the request for support as a step towards independence, like the temporary scaffolding on a building that explicitly comes down before I leave, I may say yes to the work.

I do my best to be clean about my motives.  Am I willing to be facilitative so that I can feel like the hero (or villian)? Am I doing it as a service towards independence?  

Is such a service real or am I kidding myself?  

When I put together The Change Handbook, I did a lot of soul searching around this question.  There are several methodologies in the book that personally make me crazy, they feel so controlling.  Was I doing a service by making more people aware of approaches that in my judgment enabled people to continue to be comfortable in a variation of the status quo (e.g., they can survive being in hierarchy because it seems more benevolent, less autocratic)?  What I noticed was that organizations who used such approaches over time became more likely to step further into the dance of chaos and order.  So for right or wrong, while it may not be my work, the people offering these more directed approaches were creating conditions that make it more likely for people to move further from the illusion of control with time.

I think we each make a choice about what form service takes for us and operate from there.

Guess that's it for now.

Peggy

 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Harrison Owen 
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 
  Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 6:06 AM
  Subject: Re: OS and AI


  At 04:08 PM 4/24/01 -0700, Peg Holman Wrote:

    To me that means that given enough time in healthy conditions (and OS
    creates healthy conditions), people begin to focus on life giving forces.
    They do this without all the OD-like complications of AI's 4-D cycle.

    Having said that, I LOVE the transformative effect I've observed AI can have
    when people experience an AI interview.  So when the time is short or a
    client isn't ready to start with OS, I introduce AI.

    I sit very much with the question about AI that Harrison applied when
    experimenting with OS: what is one less thing to do and have the experience
    be whole?  For me, the 4-D methodology puts the facilitator too much in
    charge.  I want to see the philosophy and practice of AI flourish but
    without all the fuss.  When the appropriate situation arises, I would like
    to try doing an appreciative interview and then move directly into opening space.

    Peggy

  Peg raises an interesting and delicate point -- the relationship between OS and AI (to which I would add the whole spectrum of interventions out there ie Dialogue, Cafe, Community Building etc). I will be the first to say that I have learned much from each of these, and respect their authors/creators profoundly. I also have to say that in my experience groups operating in Open Space naturally  manifest precisely the same behaviors as these approaches seek to achieve -- all without apparent intention or direct intervention from a facilitator. So I am left with the question, why do formally what seems to appear naturally, especially when the formal intervention requires a lot more work? 

  And there is a deeper concern. When a group experiences Dialogue, appreciation of each other, community... in the context of a facilitated session, there is a natural tendency to assume that the "facilitator did it" -- and further -- a repeat of those experiences will require the services of a trained facilitator expert in those particular approaches. In a word the group is, at some significant level, dis-empowered. They are likely to think that what is a natural phenomenon can only occur as a result of direct intervention from an outside source. Such thoughts/feelings may make the facilitators feel better, as also the client/sponsor who may think that such powerful experiences should only be encouraged under strict guidance. After all it could get out of control. But I think all of that is to deprive a group of its natural heritage. Good for the facilitator, good for the client/sponsor -- bad for the group.

  I also take Peg's point about the group/sponsor being "ready" for Open Space. Some are, and some apparently aren't. But is this really true? Phrasing the issue in this way makes it seem that when we "do" an Open Space, we actually bring something to a group that it did not have before. I find myself looking at things rather differently. From where I sit, all groups exist in open space whether they like it or not. So it is not about bringing something new -- but recognizing what is. Put rather more directly, I think what happens in Open Space is that we just recognize the open space of our lives. Nothing new, just a blinding flash of the obvious. So somehow, talking about being "ready" misses the point -- we are all ready (already) there.

  At this point, I think we may be getting close to what I take to be the heart of the matter. All of us at some point have spoken fondly, and sometimes longingly of that wonderful thing -- The Open Space Organization, as if it were something that we might achieve or create. Indeed, some of us (myself included) have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about how we might do just that. But what is the Open Space Organization?

  Doubtless we could produce a long list of qualities and characteristics -- which might then lead to a disciplined and "effort-full" process to install such a thing. But in doing all that, I think we miss the central and critical point. We already are Open Space Organizations. It remains only to do intentionally what we are already doing. To be intentionally what we already are. 

  And what is "it" that we already are? My answer is -- we are Complex Adaptive Systems! Or in other words self-organizing systems. That is all there is. Now to be sure there are more than a few folks who actually think they did the organizing, and then at great effort are responsible to keep things organized...

  Anyhow, I find it useful to just keep opening space, and the rest will pretty much take care of itself. Lazy, narrow minded... perhaps. But it seems to work.

  Harrison 

    



  Harrison Owen
  7808 River Falls Drive
  Potomac, MD 20854 USA
  phone 301-469-9269
  fax 301-983-9314
  Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com 
  Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
  Personal website www.mindspring.com/~owenhh

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