OST and metanoia

[Fr Brian S Bainbridge]

Dear Artur
It's a while since October 9 when you sent this material to the OSLIST, but I take
a while to digest and think and then express my thoughts.
I'll add my comments - for what they are worth - in the text of your questions
below.

"Artur F. Silva" wrote:

> I am discussing in another list the problem of enhancing organizational
> learning, especially double loop learning and metanoia.
>
> I plan, in a near future, to present OST and discuss how it can improve
> double loop learning (or metanoia).
>
> In the last post to them I have presented Alberoni's conception of
> metanoia. I am asking for those of you who care about the subject to
> read that post and then answer, to the list or privately to me, to this
> questions, using always the meaning that Alberoni gives to "metanoia":
>
> 1) From your experience with OST, do you think that OST is an important
> way to enhance metanoiaic states in organizations and communities?
>

<I do think OST is a way of enhancing, as you suggest and as Alberoni seems to be
working at.>

>
> 2) Do you think that some concepts current in the OST community may
> facilitate this? and others may make it difficult? What concepts?
>

<My own experience/thinking is that the concepts that are used - the 4 rules, the
Law - do facilitate this very strongly.  Again, from my experience, I haven't
found any difficulty-making arising from these concepts.>

>
> 3) Do you think that the OS community qualifies in itself as a "birth stage"
> (of a movement or of a Community of Practice, as Etienne Wenger defines
> CoP's)?
>

<Actually, I don't think this is so.  Rather, as per HHO, I sense that the
hugeness of the impact of OST in a group/organization/community is that the
"self-managing" is already alive and well in the system and has been suppressed,
oppressed or ignored, and that OST simply allows the participants (even 2) to
recognize, name, honour, and then enjoy and build on the sense or soul or spirit
that such recognition uncovers and then encourages.
The stories I have from events I have been part of all involve "surprise" by
participants that our ideas and sense are OK after all, that what we thought we
knew - and weren't allowed to express - really matters, that we are now able to
take forward these ideas and apply them the way we always knew should have been
the case - but have never been allowed to do so.  Hence the oppression of "modern
management" and "systems" and "rules and regulations".
This is not to say that management/systems/rules have no place.  They have.  But
their place is not that of utter control and "closed space" the way most people
experience them.
So, rather than seeing OST qualifying as a "birth stage", I rather think of it as
a discovery of reality, as perhaps a mature recognition of a state of existence
which has co-existed with the "oppression systems", but which is now able to
emerge and flourish.
That, if I understand the concept correctly, is different from metanoia, both as
you describe it and as the theologians and scripture scholars I have studied
(especially re St Paul) have described and understood it.
Then again, I see it as a stage of development in human "civilization" rather than
a real metanoia.
For some people, it happens rather as a shock to discover it.  The Alberoni
description of the process of falling in love can happen as a shock, I observe,
but generally is a gradual and stepped development, mostly without any clarity
about where it will end up until after it has happened and after it has come to
some decision/conclusion.>

>
> 4) If so, do you think that there is a risk that the community may disperse in
> different "sub-practices", and that can diminish the overall metanoiaic
> potential of OST?
>

<Metanoia or not, I do think there is a real risk and cost in the sort of
"sub-practices" which do occur in the OST field.  Like Harrison, (and unlike
Birgitt Williams) I don't think we can do anything about that by way of
certification or licensing for practitioners.  But I do know of a number of
examples where people have "done" Open Space and really come away with bad taste
and bad vibes.  In every case I know of, the person opening the space has really
seemed to bastardize the process, using control mechanisms and not letting-go,
using other interventions instead of disappearing or becoming invisible (the way
Angeles Arrien reminds us), or simply naming what they already do as "Open Space"
and allowing a little more time for people to ask questions which the facilitator
then sets out to address.  I shudder especially when I see conference agenda which
have programmed inputs followed by "Open Space time", which I know is a travesty
of truth.
And yet.  There are other examples where I know the facilitator has done some of
this sort of thing and the program has worked out well - as one participant put it
"In spite of the Facilitator".
And this always leads me back to the "Whatever happens is the only thing that
could have" rule - reminding me that perhaps the organization/community/group was
only able to go as far as they did, that it perhaps wasn't just the "fault" of the
Facilitator, that in the longer-term scheme of things, we can often try to see
meanings which are not yet ready to emerge and which, given the patience and
"letting-go" so much needed in our world and time, may yet grow and happen.
The real metanoia that can and perhaps does happen - but as shock, not
development, as I have expressed above - is the perception by controller persons
that there is another way which is better and which is easier and which can work
with a whole lot less energy and controlling.  And Open Space can do that.  And
the fear such people have built up over decades of experience is very hard to
overcome or replace, generally.  Hence they flop back into the control-and-command
mode as soon as they can, whatever of the good intentions and initiatives that
have been uncovered and fostered in the Open Space event.
Artur, some of the thinking that is in my mind.
It may not be connected at all, but I do observe that the great number of Open
Space events in this country, and perhaps elsewhere, occur in the services
industry sector of the community.  Very few Open Space events seem to happen in
business and strictly-for-profit or manufacturing organisations, I suspect.  That
may or may not impinge on the aspects of metanoia that you are working with in
terms of where such changes can and do occur.
If that adds to your thinking at all, that's nice.  In any case, it has been good
to sit and explore the thoughts that you have stimulated for me.  Thanks.
Cheers and blessings,   BRIAN.
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