The Illusion of Successful change requires the top person

[Richard Holloway]

Agreed.

It was Mary Parker Follett who said, "purpose is the invisible leader."
Indeed, purposeful groups self-organize.  Within this group, the "leadership
mantle" devolves and rotates through those combinations of individuals who
have the vision, skill or drive to realize that purpose.  It's rarely one
person who is the leader.  "Top" person, in these cases, refers to people
with authority (legal, political or organizational) to make the risk-filled
decisions...or not to make them, as is the case.

Once that manifest purpose is lost (as is often the case), then we rely on
structure and formal roles for leadership.  "Top" can then be a symbol for
stasis or for change.  This is why some "leaders" prefer to lead by
avoidable crises, as a means to generate purposeful behavior (including
their own).

I've come to believe that leadership is the capacity of a community to
successfully adapt itself to a changing environment, and the process of
developing that capacity (to paraphrase "The Dance of Change").

Open Space is often successful (I think) because it identifies the purpose
for coming together and provides the safe space for people to join and
organize themselves around that purpose.  The boundaries and delegated
authority for OS set by formal authority (when it's appropriate), the
purpose and the space create a place for people to be powerful, visionary
and risk-takers.  That's capacity for change.

Doc

------------------
'Love is helping others to complete themselves'- Bill O'Brien (The Dance of
Change)

Richard Charles Holloway -
P.O. Box 2361, Olympia, WA 98507 USA

----- Original Message -----
From: "uwe.weissflog" <Uwe.Weissflog at t-online.de>

 - I too
> think it is not right that we allowed ourselves to believe that the
leaders are
> a special group of people. They are not.
>

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>From  Sat Feb 24 08:58:11 2001
Message-Id: <SAT.24.FEB.2001.085811.0500.>
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 08:58:11 -0500
Reply-To: lpasoc at inforamp.net
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Larry Peterson <lpasoc at inforamp.net>
Subject: Re: Opening nutrient spaces
In-Reply-To: <018401c09e01$a881ab00$0400000a at Peggy>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
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There are big differences in the spirit of any organization.  The
manifestation of spirit in the collective space/reality/consciousness of
that organization.  I find that the nature of the preparation can make a big
difference in what the sponsors bring to the space, the intention, theme and
givens and commitments.

Larry

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