Care and Feeding
Harrison Owen
hhowen at comcast.net
Fri Jun 18 05:48:52 PDT 2004
Great to have an authentic "Muddling through" story! British no less. As one
half of the staff serving Curtis (our cat), I can tell you from bitter
experience that the right taste is critical. Dogs will eat anything. Cats
are extraordinarily particular. By the way, another strategy that you could
have used would have been to simply change the label and call it Dog Food.
And should you be wondering about the reference to "staff" - it comes from
the ancient and authentic observation to the effect that Dogs have Masters.
Cats have Staffs. I know
I was also struck by your comment: Organisations will only
try self organisation because they are in a desparate situation and feel
they have little to lose. So the question might be how to get people to
imagine the situation is desparate more often?
I think you may be giving the organizations in question more credit than
they deserve by suggesting that they make a conscious decision to "try"
self-organization. There is no doubt that a desperate situation may occasion
seemingly odd behaviors, but in my experience it is less about (consciously)
trying, than about running out of options. When you run out of options, you
simply have to go with what you have got - good, bad, and indifferent. Back
to first principles, basic powers and such - in this case the elemental
power of self-organization. It is always interesting to me to notice the
elaborate lengths people will go to in attempting to maintain the notion
that somebody is in charge, that the Plan is still in effect. A mild form of
all this is the nerveous admission that "we muddled through." In extremus -
there is all sorts of rationalization, posterior covering, blame fixing,
guilt, and anxiety. And all of that is basically wasted energy.
Harrison
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland 20845
Phone 301-365-2093
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/>
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm
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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On
Behalf Of Colin Morley
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 2:13 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: Care and Feeding
I think you have given a great insight that often
organisations will only try self organisation because they are in a
desparate situation and feel they have little to lose. So the question
might be how to get people to imagine the situation is desparate more often?
My story is about a catfood brand in the UK owned by Quaker
Oats that was down to less than 1.5% market share and was being delisted by
the supermarket chains. We had the revolutionary idea of making the product
with more of the ingredients that cats like so that they would actually eat
it. This idea had been rejected before as costing too much.
On the Friday evening on the day when they started
production of the new formula we reviewed the first days production and it
was not looking right - it was not going to have the right appeal when the
cat owner opened the can. So we decided to increase the amount of an
expensive ingredient for the weekend so that we could get the first shipment
done on time. We planned to explain the likely 10% further increase in
costs to the accountants the following week, if we could not solve it over
the weekend.
We never reduced the expensive ingredient back to its
original amount. And it didn't matter because sales went up by 3 and then 4
times and Felix catfood is now the second biggest brand on the UK market.
In Spiral Dynamics this type of revolutionary change is
called the 'Delta Surge' and it comes after the 'Gamma Trap' where change
seems essential but impossible.
Colin Morley
www.empowermentillustrated.com
Harrison Owen <hhowen at comcast.net> wrote:
Some little time back I tossed out the notion that Open
Space was in fact a
halfway technology - that as good as it is, it (OS) only
gets us part of the
way down the road. The discussion was spirited (what else on
this LIST?),
but somehow I felt frustrated. I was doubly frustrated
because I wasn't
totally clear where we "should" have gone. And of course, it
is terribly
hard to recognize arrival if you have no idea where you are
going. I cannot
say that my clouds of confusion have cleared away, but it
does seem that
there may be light at the end of the tunnel - just to mix
and mangle
metaphors. I think it is all about "Care and Feeding." In
fact, I think it
might be useful to write a sequel to "Open Space Technology:
A User's Guide"
with the odd title, "The Care and Feeding of Self Organizing
Systems."
Whether this turns into a book remains to ! be seen - and
since I have sworn
off writing books, somebody else may have to do it, but here
is the idea .. .
..
All organizations are self organizing, and when they get in
trouble, it is
usually because somebody tried to organize them. Exceptions
would be
environmental disruptions over which nobody (and certainly
not the
"organizers") has any possible control - for example, the
world economy has
severe indigestion. The core problem is that the proposed
organization
design is inappropriate to the situation. In a word, it
looks great on
paper, but simply doesn't work. The alternative is to allow,
enable,
encourage, the organization to do what only it can do for
itself -
self-organize. Which brings us to: The Care and Feeding of
Self-Organizing
Systems. At this point, our global experience with Open
Space can be a very
useful guide. This is not so much about doing an Open Space
Event, but
rather the application of the principles and experi! ence to
the life of
everyday organizations. Nor is this about creating an Open
Space
Organization. I think we are already there, it is just that
we have not read
THE OWNER'S MANUAL. Of course, the manual has yet to be
written - and that
is the task at hand.
I suggest moving from both ends of the stick towards the
middle. If we were
to reach the middle, we might actually have something.
First, we might look
at those situations where, despite best efforts to do things
properly,
everything got messed up, but it all worked out fine. The
British would call
this Muddling through. I would call it the triumph of the
self-organizing
system. An example of this would be the 3M experience with
Post-Its. The
thought is that by looking closely at situations like that
we might catch
the Self-Organizing system working under cover.
Secondly, we might look at situations where the
principles/experience of
Open Space had been applied (perhaps unconsci! ously) and
describe the results
- good, bad, and indifferent. Everybody will have their own
list, and mine
goes something like: Start with invitation, invited people
to join a circle
bringing both their passion and responsibility - and once
there -- follow
the 4 Principles and observe the Law. And of course, Be
prepared to be
surprised.
Rather than debating all of this abstractly, let's start
with some stories.
I have a few, and I am sure you have many more. And if you
have some, please
share. Who knows what we might discover.
Harrison
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland 20845
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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