Request for Proposal

Harrison Owen owenhh at mindspring.com
Sat Mar 1 06:17:55 PST 2003


At 09:29 PM 2/28/2003 +0100, Michael Pannwitz wrote:
>Transformation happens fairly independent of the will of the people
>or the will of an organisation.
>I have not experienced people or organisations "will" transformation
>as little as I have seen people or organisations doing grief work.
>What I have seen is people and organisations navigate in
>transformation and that grief works.
>So my way of putting it would be
>"I believe I can attempt to hold time and space for people to
>navigate transformation"

My feelings precisely. Ever since we invented the notion of Organization
Transformation, back in the early '80s -- there has been an ongoing debate.
Some of my colleagues felt that Transformation was something you "did" to
an organization -- as in  "We will transform our organization." Lots of
folks made much effort to achieve all that, but frankly I have never been
convinced.

For me Transformation (of whatever sort) is something that happens. Indeed
it has been happening for at least 13.7 billion years -- in short for a
long time before we ever put in an appearance. And truthfully, it has done
quite well without our help. But there are some rough points, for sure. It
seems that Transformation inevitably requires the ending of one form as a
new forms appear. The word "ending" has a nice neutral tone to it -- but we
experience it as death or dying. Not a nice thing. But we do have a way of
dealing with all that pain and destruction, and it is called Griefwork. And
we didn't invent that either. And so from where I sit, the fundamental
engines of transformation (self-organization and Griefwork) operate, have
operated, and continue to operate with, or without, our permission. But we
can certainly help along the way. And here Michael's words, "I believe I
can attempt to hold time and space for people to navigate transformation"
hit the nail exactly on the head, as far as I am concerned.

All of this has more than an academic ring to it for me at the moment. One
more time our world is transforming. It is a given (and I really think it
is a "given") that people will die, along with ways of life, businesses,
and probably countries. Some of it is pathetically funny, particularly the
rank arrogance of my President, who seems to think he is in charge. We may
all end up on a charred piece of solar driftwood, otherwise knows as planet
Earth. That would definitely be an ending -- and also a transformation. At
such a time, it may be useful to remember that the demise of planet Earth
has been in the cards since the moment of its creation. And if we don't do
it do it to ourselves, it will happen anyhow, perhaps the unintended
consequence of a close encounter of the cataclysmic sort should a wandering
asteroid bump into us. But no matter the outcome, Michael's words
constitute useful counsel. "I believe I can attempt to hold time and space
for people to navigate transformation"

I think this is what we all can do. It is certainly my mission of the moment.

Harrison

>Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-365-2093
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm

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