lights &/ shadows?

[Susanne Hildebrand]

Hi everybody,

I´m still working myself through tons of literatur, enjoying it but and
again feeling my lack of experience. So I like to share some thougts of
mine:

I have the image, that open space works always on the "mass of people",
because it´s great, as we all know. What is with the ones, who are not able
to take really part, cause of language problems, who gave up by life
experience they could try to make a difference without being punished, who
just depend so much on their job (children, bad education ...?) they wouldnt
dare to put it on any risk, who just, as Marlene Walker Daniel reports in
her great ethnologic field study for 1 - 10 percent of the people:
"they just didn´t have anything they feel passionate about. … they would
have been happier going back to their jobs after the first morning session
when they saw the issues that were to be addressed by work groups. They
preferred doing their jobs as they had always done and leaving others to
work on the big picture." (Daniel, 1994)
Yes, these people could be butterflies, and maybe they were beautiful. But
being not passionate about anything and leaving others for the "big things"
sounds to me more like "give up" then "beautiful" and attractive for even
smalltalk. (hm... nice judgement though)
But is it alright to say: you are responsible for what is happening here
than? Maybe causing even more giving up, like selforganisation is for people
who can speak, who dare, not for people like me?

I´m aware of all the if´s , and for shure not questioning open space as a
method, but it´s helpful for me, to clarify it. Social selforganisation
seems to mean every element/ member of the system has the same possibilities
to take part on the process of creating social information, so what about
different "inner psychological realities"?.

My second issue is about that phenomen, that people seems to get always
empowered by open space, taking more responsibility, contribute if you let
them ... and than they go on with it, but the former mode of control from
the top often rebuilds quite fast, cause managers, supervisors, executives
have to give up control. Like: wow, it´s so much better without us.
So what positiv point could they make to "loosing" or "give up" control?
What could be attractiv about that to them?
What if they would make themselfs unneccesary in the whole process of the
organization?

Hm, I´m curious to know  your commments, thoughts, ideas.
All the best from a sunny summmermorning in Berlin,
Susanne

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html