Organizations as complex relational processes, narratives and emergent action (and a story!)
Chris Corrigan
chris at chriscorrigan.com
Sun Mar 14 12:24:24 PST 2004
Thank goodness you found the problem...I was beginning to wonder how to
live up to my billing from you!
Chris
---
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Bowen Island, BC, Canada
(604) 947-9236
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology
Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Homepage: 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: Sunday, March 14, 2004 7:01 AM
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Subject: Re: Organizations as complex relational processes, narratives
and
> emergent action (and a story!)
>
> Well Chris you have been elevated again. But I think I found the
> culprit. The Auto-Correct feature on my email software. Doesn't seem
to
> like "Chris" and adds the "t". The Spirits of Cyberspace rule!
>
> ho
>
> 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
> OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives
Visit:
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>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Harrison Owen
> Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2004 6:27 PM
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Subject: Re: Organizations as complex relational processes, narratives
> and emergent action (and a story!)
>
> Christ -- this is better than reading the NY Sunday Times. It takes a
> while, but it is worth it. All the News fit to Print (except what they
> made up :-))
>
> So -- I'm reading and thinking. More later.
>
> ho
>
> 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
> OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives
Visit:
> http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of
Chris
> Corrigan
> Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2004 3:41 AM
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Subject: Organizations as complex relational processes, narratives and
> emergent action (and a story!)
>
> Okay, a dose of theory here.
>
> I came across a paper by Frank Smits from Sydney, Australia, courtesy
of
> the Plexus Institute called How stories affect human action in
> organisations,
> (http://website.lineone.net/%7efrank.smits/Essays/Stories.htm) last
> week. I've had a chance to read it and it posits a number of
> interesting points.
>
> My reading of the paper follows the development of these key ideas:
>
>
> 1. Organizations are not "things" but rather relational processes.
>
> 2. Human beings use story to represent and understand the patterns
of
> experience.
>
> 3. Stories only represent partial versions of reality and so
> narrative interpretation is subject to power dynamics.
>
> 4. Powerful storyteller can make people "captives" in the story;
this
> is the process of mythmaking.
>
> 5. "Organisations, in fact the 'organising via relating, exist in
> order to 'do something'. Hence somehow, the individuals in the
> organisation need to 'act'...if our identity is clear and we are
> actively interconnected in interdependent processes that when
> information comes available, action can emerge. The information
sharing
> happens in interactive processes between individuals (either inside or
> outside the 'organisation')."
>
> 6. "In the language of Gover (1996) 'our identities are being
> constitutes and reconstituted with their physical, cultural and
> historical contexts'. The roots of narratives and identity, he claims,
> 'merge, inextricably embedded and nurtured in the soil of human
> action'."
>
> 7. Narratives that resonate with an individual's experience create
> meaningful and sustained emergent action.
>
> 8. If people in organisations don't pay attention to the Individual
> Intention, the likelihood of the vortices of the narratives in those
> organisation resonating with the vortex of the Individual Intention is
> purely one of chance. It is due to individuals themselves to actively
> spend the time to understand other people's Individual Intention.
>
> 9. By consciously working on understanding Individual Intention and
> consciously work on fuzzifying the narrative the complex responsive
> process of interaction between the people will move to the attractor
at
> the critical point. This can only happen in self-organised process of
> interactions where meaning can start to flow.
>
> All of this is interesting stuff, especially the deep connection
between
> narrative and action. Organizations as relational processes, as arenas
> for the practice of storytelling and mythmaking (with it's attendant
> careful attention to compassion) and all of this as a propellant to
> emergent action. It's a lucid thread.
>
> For my money the last point is the most interesting and an example of
it
> cropped up for me in an Open Space meeting I facilitated last weekend.
>
> I was working as part of a team developing a transportation demand
> management plan for a city in British Columbia, basically coming up
with
> a strategy to get people out of their cars. As part of the process we
> convened a 1.5 day Open Space meeting with the intention that the
> participants would begin to work on citizen-based initiatives to get
the
> message out.
>
> These people didn't know each other, and so Day One was taken up with
a
> lot of conversation about the "typical" issues. The day was
essentially
> about getting to know each other, testing out ideas and theories,
> exploring the stories and myths about the issue and basically sussing
> out the power relationships, the allies and the opponents. There was
> very little new content, but the day was a rich field of developing
and
> dissolving structure, process and relationships, coalescing around
> stories. Because we were in Open Space and the agenda was driven by
deep
> personal passion and responsibility, the process of group-forming was
> accelerated. By the end of the day there was one story that emerged to
> invite action. Someone mentioned that in the very neighbourhood in
which
> we were meeting, the world's first curbside blue box program had been
> initiated. Whether or not this was an observable fact, it became the
> story upon which we hung the potential for citizen action in Day Two.
>
> Day Two was a two-hour action planning session, and I opened with that
> story and my interpretation of the fact that we simply don't know when
> and how small initiatives will blossom. And so the invitation for
action
> planning was to start something small that could change everything.
>
> Within two hours there were three major initiatives sketched out. One
> involved closing a street down for a one-day festival promoting
biking,
> walking and bussing. One was a project to have coporations sponsor
> evening busses into town from the suburbs on weekend nights to
encourage
> teenagers to stay out of their cars. The third idea was the formation
of
> a website and the coordination of letter writing and lobbying
campaigns
> to align actions on specific issues. All of these ideas had champions,
> follow-up meeting dates and committees or teams of people committed to
> working.
>
> I found the way this Open Space event evolved to be right in line with
a
> few of the paragraphs from Smits' paper:
>
> "By consciously working on understanding Individual
> Intention and consciously work on fuzzifying the narrative...the
complex
> responsive process of interaction between the people will move to the
> attractor at the critical point. This can only happen in
self-organised
> process of interactions where meaning can start to flow. That is the
> domain of dialogue; it is the art of 'thinking together'... Or, in the
> words of Bohm:
>
>
> From time to time (the) tribe
> (gathered) in a circle. They just talked and talked and talked,
> apparently to no purpose. They made no decisions. There was no leader.
> (.) The meeting went on until finally it seemed to stop for no reason
at
> all and the group dispersed. Yet, after that, everybody seemed to know
> what to do (.). Then they could get together in smaller groups and do
> something or decide things.
>
> -- David Bohm, On Dialogue (quoted
> in Jaworski, 1998: 109)
>
>
>
> In this quote Bohm describes how dialogue as a way of
> people interacting manages to let meaning emerge because of people
> understanding each other's Individual Intentions. Effective action
could
> emerge. Note that the course of action was not decided by someone
> outside the process or decided via a compromise! It was emergent
because
> the process allowed the Group Intention to move to the Edge of
> Incoherence."
>
>
> This is exactly what happened, with people saying in the closing
circle
> that they were very surprised at how quickly the action plans came
> together. This echoes my experience of using an Open Space action
> planning process we call "non-convergence," so-called because it
eschews
> voting, preserves the diversity and complexity of the Day One
> conversations and keeps the space open for subtle pattern and
> meaning-making by those motivated enough to initiate action.
>
> Smits' paper gives me a nice theoretical frame to understand that
> process. I thought it might spark some discussion here as it suggests
a
> move from seeing organizations as complex adaptive systems to complex
> relational processes. In Wilberian terms, that seems like a very big
> shift from the right hand side to the left hand side.
>
> At any rate, I've also posted this to my weblog at
>
http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/2004_03_01_archive.html#10791665
> 3320999533 for comment.
>
> ---
> CHRIS CORRIGAN
> Bowen Island, BC, Canada
> (604) 947-9236
>
> Consultation - Facilitation
> Open Space Technology
>
> Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
> Homepage: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
> chris at chriscorrigan.com
> (604) 947-9236
>
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