Organizations as complex relational processes, narratives and emergent action (and a story!)

[Alexander Kjerulf]

Hi

For a good, no-nonsense introduction to the what-why-how of
storytelling, check out "The story factor" by Annette Simmons
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738206717/positiveshari-21>.
I've been using storytelling more and more over the last couple of
years, and this book really gave me a handle on how it works and why
it's important. It's also very practical with lots of tips.

I've reviewed it here:
http://www.positivesharing.com/journal/00000337.htm

Cheers

Alex

Alexander Kjerulf
alexander at kjerulf.com
http://www.positivesharing.com

+45 2688 2373
Arena, Norrebrogade 14B, 1. sal
2200 Copenhagen N.



Harrison Owen wrote:

>Well Chris, (NO "T") this is interesting soup indeed. I think the real
>positive here is the emphasis on Story Telling. For 40 odd years, ever since
>the days when I presumed to be an academic delving into the mysteries of
>myth, ritual and culture in the ancient near east -- I have felt that we
>(all of us humanoids) are essentially story-tellers, it is the way we make
>meaning and communicate meaning (as in the natural first question of a new
>person -- "What's the story?"). For the last 20 years, after having fallen
>into the world of Open Space, I have observed that a (maybe "the") central
>activity in an Open Space is storytelling, and it is certainly "fuzified"
>storytelling, for initially there is no single story, nor story teller. It
>is what I have called Collective Storytelling. Meaning emerges, and action
>follows (usually) as the collective tale comes into being, having been woven
>from the myriad narrative strands brought forward by the participants. Frank
>Smits is definitely riding a train I have been on for quite a while, and
>although that certainly doesn't make all of this "true" -- it is certainly
>in line with my fundamental prejudices. The fact that he casts the
>discussion in the new language of complexity theory is an added gift, for it
>gives me (gives us) a new set of spectacles with which to view our
>experience. (If anybody cares for the details of my random thoughts, check
>out Chapters 11 and 12 in my book, "The Power of Spirit" (Berrett-Koehler,
>2000) For an earlier and more arcane version of all of this click on
>http://openspaceworld.com/mythos.htm where you will find the opening chapter
>of my first book, "Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organizations"
>-- now out of print)
>
>But I am not sure that Smits appreciates the full depth of Storytelling as
>meaning making. First of all, although it is true that stories can be told
>with words, this in my experience is just the tip of the iceberg. Powerful
>stories which shape and form cultures (otherwise known as myths) appear in
>the rich garments of ALL modes of human communication -- the total dance of
>a peoples' life. This may seem just an academic quibble, but I think it has
>some real implications concerning our ability to fully understand what is
>taking place. In a word, we are faced with a level of complexity (even with
>a small group of humanoids) that simply boggles the mind. And when it comes
>to the role of the facilitator, the boggled mind is not helpful,
>particularly if the facilitator's role is as Smits describes it --
>
>"But, in order for Facilitators to participate, as a listener, a 'neutral'
>narrator or focaliser, they need to be able to understand the language,
>power relationships, semiotics, etc. in the group of people. In other words,
>they need to be 'external insiders'. As the name suggests this is a very
>paradoxical role (see Figure 6). By somehow becoming an 'insider' there is
>potentially an element of 'risk' for the Facilitator with the outcome
>(emergent action). A delicate balance."
>
>A "delicate balance" indeed -- and one which I suspect is neither possible
>nor necessary. Does that mean then that as facilitators in Open Space there
>is nothing we can do? If "doing something" means acting as the "focalizer,"
>then I believe the answer is, Yes. Bluntly stated, we simply do not have the
>horsepower to do that -- to say nothing of the mental capacity. But there
>are realms where we can and do "do something." Specifically, we can create
>the space for storytelling. We can even shape that space when we work with
>the client around the theme. And lastly, we can also create a space for
>reflection. But when it comes to telling the story, interpreting the story,
>and acting on the story -- I think the people do it all by themselves.
>Which, after all is what self organization is all about.
>
>Thanks for bringing all this to light Chris! There is lots of good stuff to
>explore here, and I look forward to the continuing conversation.
>
>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
>OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
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>
>
>
>-----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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