OST as an "halfway technology"

[Harrison Owen]

Ah -- The Tension Builds! And the reason for the delay? Weather. Beautiful
weather -- which means it is time for REAL OPEN SPACE!

Place: My boat
Name of Boat: The Office
Time: As often as possible.

Back soon

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 Artur
Silva
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 6:01 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: OST as an "halfway technology"

Hello:

As Harrison is a bit shy (?) or not yet fully
prepared, let me clarify some of my doubts about this
question.

As many of you know, I have been for years an active
contributer to the LOlist, and even contributed a lot
of posts on "metanoia" that basically wanted to probe
that:

- the (descriptive and non prescriptive) concept of
learning company, defined by Arie the Geus, was a very
interesting one, that Senge himself recognized as the
origin of all LO's thoughts (Preface to de Geus'
"Living Company").

- the 5 disciplines of LO's, introduced by Senge, were
a fraud and a fad, as no companies reported to become
LOs after training in the 5 "disciplines".

- Senge himself recognized in an interview to Fast
Take that the cases of success were very little (to
none...)

- later, he began to say that LO's "had been an useful
concept for a period" (useful for what? to allow him
to sell books and consultancy? He has been even in
Portugal to give one of the most uninteresting
presentation, complemented with a complete lack of
respect for the "third world" participants (I know, as
I was one of them)

- I suspect with is NEW method (KM?) he wanted to do a
revamp of his marketing strategy - some other fad to
impress the public during some time;

- my hypothesis was that to create an LO's from am
Ordinary organization a process of metanoia (second
order change of mind) was needed. This could be
accomplished by changing from Argyris and Schon's
Model 1 to Model 2 and/or through OST

- OST is not Open in the sense that it has no rules.
In my opinion, on the contrary, OST has some
"foundations" and rules that SUSPEND, for the duration
of the event - and maybe more - the
normal-closed-Model-1-rules

- The simplicity of those presuppositions or
foundations is that they are minimalist and very
effective - a full accomplished methodology that is
not easy to change to something better - but it is
easy to change to some method that is not so good.

So if OST is only an "halfway methodology", what will
follow? Maybe something better, of course. But maybe
something worse.

Reasons why I am - I repeat - curious but a bit afraid

Artur






__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover

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

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist

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

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist