AW: outcomes and one-off OSTs and OSLIST

[Catherine Pfaehler]

Dear Chris

Deep, meaningful, gorgeous stories you reported. As in OS, lots for daily
life in there. I realize how deeply we are driven by our inheritage without
realizing it, and how much awareness it takes, every moment, to stick to
consciously making our own choices.

Thank you, and thank everybody for this wonderful forum! Nourishing indeed,
even if I don't eat meat (dead mooses...) :)

Catherine (participant and co-organizer in and of several organization
transformation conferences in Europe since 1989)

Catherine Pfaehler
Kellersriedweg 8
CH - 2503 Biel
T/F/B ++41 - (0)32 - 365 68 41

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]Im Auftrag von Chris
Corrigan
Gesendet: Dienstag, 2. Dezember 2003 19:18
An: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Betreff: Re: outcomes and one-off OSTs and OSLIST

I agree with you Harrison, and echo Thomas's experience too.  What I've
been saying over the course of this thread is that there is no sure fire
answer to the problems of organizations and community.  The point is
that anytime we are dealing with a situation where there are more than
two people involved (sometimes even one!) there is tremendous complexity
brought to the space.  To think that we can be in charge of this
complexity and by intervening we can make the difference we want seems
to me to be somewhat folly.

But there is a reason we think we can get there, and Harrison will know
about this.  It lies in our myths and stories about what organizations
are and what creation is, and what the process of collaboration really
means.  In this sense I think there is a real cultural foundation for
what we are talking about and the tension I sense between the remarkable
intangible results of OST (bigger than one thinks) and the desired
"hard" outcomes of the clients (which are less significant than one
might think) are captured up in the dissonance between these stories.

So to take a COMPLETELY different tack with this thread, allow me to
share an extended quote from Thomas King, one of my favourite Aboriginal
writers, and a man who knows a lot about the shift from one kind of
story to another.

In a recent series of lectures, broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation called "The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative" Thomas
King compares and contrasts the archetypal North American Aboriginal
creation story with the archetypal Islamo-Judeo-Christian one.  His
quote is really revealing, but before I write it out, you have to sit
through a couple of stories.  The Aboriginal story, a set of images
which forms a fairly common narrative about the story of the creation of
what in Ojibway is called Mishee-Mackinakong or Turtle Island, goes like
this:

Kitche Manitou (Great Spirit or Great Mystery - it's the same word in
Ojibway) created the universe and the elements and the world.  After
that everything ran on its own.  In fact although there are lots of
spirit beings in Ojibway stories, Kitche Manitou never puts in another
appearance after the beginning.  Kitche Manitou creates all this and a
spirit woman called Nokomis who lives in the sky.  Nokomis becomes
lonely so Kitche Manitou creates a consort for her and Nokomis becomes
pregnant but the consort leaves her.  More despondent than ever she
lives in the sky alone.  At this point Kitche Manitou exits the scene
too, but KM doesn't really leave, but just sits back and watches.  Holds
space.

Down on earth meanwhile a strange state had enveloped the planet.
Everything was flooded.  It's important to note that the flood didn't
happen because Kitche Manitou was punishing anyone...it's just what
happened.  The world lay cold and wet, covered in water with no land.
There were lots of animals living in the water and\, seeing how sad
Nokomis was alone in the sky, they invited her to come down to earth to
give birth to her children.  The turtle volunteers to offer up his back
for her to land on.  She does and once she touches down, everyone gets
really quiet and then someone asks "now what?"  Nokomis suggests that
the situation they are in calls for some action, or at the very least
some land, as she is not very good at swimming and she's getting cold
and hungry.  The animals puzzle about this, as there is no land
anywhere, and they don't remember stories about the land.  Finally
Nokomis suggests that one of them dive down to the bottom of the sea and
get some mud from there.  Eager to serve her and be good hosts, each of
the animals volunteers and one by one, the loon, the ducks, the beaver,
the marten and many others all try to swim to the bottom of the ocean,
and all come back empty handed.

Finally the muskrat, the smallest and the most humble of all,
volunteers.  Everyone scoffs at him, but they don't have any other ideas
so away he goes.  He stays away for a long time and doesn't come up and
eventually the rest of the animals give him up for dead. They start to
really worry now, because there seem to be no options left.

Suddenly the muskrat appears more dead than alive with his eyes closed
and out of breath.  They pull him on to the back of the turtle and lo
and behold he has a tiny amount of mud clenched in his paw.  Nokomis
takes the mud and spreads it very thinly around the edge of the turtle
shell and is begins to expand and grow and cover the shell.  Soon the
turtle is covered in earth and things begin to grow and the world is
created again.  It becomes a beautiful place and eventually Nokomis
gives birth to her twins, balanced with spirit and body in equal parts.
These children were the original Anishnabeg, the "spontaneous beings"
from whom we are all descended, so the story goes.

So that's one story.

The other one you are probably more familiar with, the one where God
creates the universe and then the world and then plants and animals and
Adam and Eve and after Adam and Eve taste a pomegranate from the tree of
knowledge they are forever banished from the Garden in which God had
nurtured them.  They are forced into a barren world, punished, banished
and stripped of their innocence.  The world outside the garden is lonely
and unforgiving and they are forced to make something of what little
they have. The first generation of their children are wracked with
violence when one brother kills another.  God keeps coming back to
intervene either by saving the crowd or punishing them.

You are perhaps more familiar with the second than the first, and of
course there are many, many complexities to both stories, but we are
dealing with archetypes here.  So on to Tom King's quote.

After he recounts these stories in this lecture called "You'll Never
Believe What Happened" he concludes by pointing out that these stories
create two worlds, both of which we dwell in:

"So here are our choices," King says.  "A world in which creation is a
solitary, individual act, or a world in which creation is a shared
activity; a world that begins in harmony and moves toward chaos, or a
world that begins in chaos and moves towards harmony; a world marked by
competition or a world marked by co-operation."

These are pretty stark, conclusions but you get the point.  These
stories can inform everything, and especially the expectations of people
in situations where things go wrong.  We can choose in those situations
to look for the answer from above, from some omnipotent deity that will
set things right again, or we can accept the invitation of the animals:
we don't have much, but we have a solid foundation, and with a little
help from everyone, we can create a safe place to live.

I think we are in a time when our stories about who we are and where we
have come from are changing and paradigms are coming to rub against each
other in deep ways.  OST is a process predicated on the fact that all of
us can have a hand in creating the new world.  It is nearly the very
extreme example of that, in the world of organizational development.
Other methods rely on facilitators or experts (sometimes called
"management gurus" which isn't far from being gods) to come in and fix
things, banish the bad and tinker with the good.  It's easy to see
results when evil is banished.  That is a tangible step towards the
"better world" demanded by cynics.  It's much harder to see tangible
results from a process where the first step towards making a safe place
for your babies is to smear the back of a turtle with mud.

At any rate, I hope what I am saying makes sense.  We operate out of
deeply held stories about creation and renewal.  Where we come into
conflict with one another it feels dissonant but we can't put our finger
on why.  I'm suggesting that some of the dissonance we feel from
"results" people is at a fundamental level.  I mean, which story do you
really resonate with?  You know my answer.

Cheers,

Chris

PS  Ashley...on the dead moose, years ago I said that you can see a dead
moose as a stinky carcass waiting to be named, or you can see it as a
pile of food and thank your lucky stars that you won't starve this
winter... :-)

---
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Bowen Island, BC, Canada
http://www.chriscorrigan.com
chris at chriscorrigan.com
(604) 947-9236

-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of
Harrison Owen
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 5:50 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: outcomes and one-off OSTs and OSLIST

Lisa Wrote:

Outcomes and One-Off (single, isolated) OSTs:  Seems to me this raises
the age-old issue known to facilitators everywhere - how do I measure
success?  And I feel that our measuring tools / need for measurement is
what makes me feel we are limiting ourselves and our understanding of
success/outcomes.

Useful question / useful point! We just concluded a conference in
Toronto  on Collaborative Research on Open Space and Emergent Systems -
and you can believe that the question of measuring "success" put in more
than a single appearance. We made no attempt to come to consensus, but
the range of observations were, I thought, instructive. At the most
basic level one might say Open Space "worked" when a group comes
together, identifies and discusses their issues, and departs with
whatever degree of resolution they were able to achieve. Then, of
course, there are those times when the group does all of the above and
comes to the realization that the organization or project they were
interested in improving/working was actually dead in the water. Would
one then say the Open Space failed? My sense is No - the Open Space
worked (succeeded) superbly. It is only that the results were not quite
what one might have anticipated. Be prepared to be surprised.
Personally, I find it useful to have a conversation with the "client"
prior to the event that goes something like this. "Please understand my
role in this whole thing. I am not here to "save" your project, your
company, or even your job. My sole concern is to create an environment
in which you and the people associated with you may be fully and
honestly themselves. What happens next is up to you." I can't ever
recall being quite that blunt, and usually you don't have to be that
blunt. But I think the thought is important.

Harrison

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