Help for my manager, resend (Crazy like a fox)

Tue Feb 22 07:57:36 PST 2005

Hi Paul - Welcome back from the Black Hole. I guess I should come clean. The
"Young Manager" is in fact a figment of my imagination, although he seems to
have taken on flesh and blood here on OSLIST. Which all goes to prove that
OSLIST is even more remarkable that I thought. But if the manager was
mythical, I would argue that he is mythical in the deepest sense of the
word. Well beyond truth or non-truth, fact or fiction, he is every bright
young manager - and I would bet we all know such a person, maybe several. In
a word, the story may be a "hypothetical" but the situation is quite real.
More to the point, I believe we have something to contribute to his
situation well beyond Open Space. Far be it for me to say a nasty word about
Open Space, and I personally think it is quite true that his first step with
the new project might actually be to Open Space and invite all who care to
come - but there is more. And it is towards that "more" that I am driving. 

During the 20 year experiment with Open Space in which we have all played a
part, a number of things have been learned, among them - How you can
consciously and effectively operate in a Self-Organizing system. For many
people who have not had this experience, our practice and achievements (what
actually happens in OS, even if we didn't "do" it.) are viewed either as
crazy or magic. Both words have been used in my presence, and I suspect that
most of you could say the same. People who only hear about Open Space
perceive it as "crazy" because it flies in the face of all (or most) that
they know to be true. And when a group of folks (us) become very excited
about something that any sane person knows could not happen - that is crazy.
Other people, who basically hold the same sorts of views as the first group
(OS can not happen according to all standard rules and procedures) and
suddenly find themselves in an Open Space where the "impossible" happens
with regularity, will call it "magic." I suppose we could just retire and
enjoy our status as crazy magicians. Or maybe we should be crazy like a fox?
Foxy, as it were.

For those of you who have never met a fox, up close and personal, it is
probably useful to know that these beautiful animals engage in a lot of
playful, weird behavior which seemingly has nothing to do with the primary
business at hand - which is usually catching dinner. More than a few bunny
rabbits have been fooled.

Anyhow - Crazy like a Fox?  Just suppose that my wild idea that there is no
such thing as a non-self-organizing system was correct. Add in the fact that
for "most people" this idea is crazy at worst and magic at best - but
unfortunately the idea just happened to be true. This would mean that "most
people" were playing the organizational game with rules that looked very
nice on paper, but had little to do with reality. The fact that such people
sometimes succeeded in their game would have nothing to do with their skill
or perception (after all they were playing by the wrong rules), but rather
the happy coincidence that the system they were seeking to manage and
control in a certain way was already going in that direction - all by
itself. In all other situations where no matter how hard they tried to
exercise their management skills and things turned out very differently,
there would be no mystery - they just had played by the wrong rules!

Enter the Fox! She plays by the real rules (which others don't see or
understand), achieves extraordinary things in the most mystifying way - and
everybody just thinks she is crazy. Crazy like a fox.  Talk about
competitive advantage! 

So Paul - I didn't forget you. When you said, "But, about the
self-organizing to write a new software program, that seems really iffy.
Software requires strategy, discipline and right code, not something that
very easily emerges from no structure.  Even Chaos, with it's structure of
bounded instability, can't predict what the outcome will be or when it will
emerge.  Only that something will." I certainly agree. And in fact, so would
most people. And if it should ever happen that good software were to emerge
from a self-organizing (Open Space) environment we would definitely have an
anomaly, even a crazy anomaly. Even worse, if all this should happen in
record time, the race to the bottom line would be won hands down, and the
competition would never understand how it happened. Crazy like a fox. 

Now in fact I have seen just such things occur (complex systems developed
with excellence in fractions of the expected/normal time). And a number of
the participants called it Magic! But I didn't think it was magic at all. It
is simply what Complex Adaptive Systems do when treated in the right way.
And on your point of "no structure," what I witnessed was just the opposite.
There was a level of structure and controls operative that just blew the
mind. The difference was that the structures and control were all emergent
and appropriate, appropriate to the people involved, the task they were
performing, and the environment in which they worked. And when any of those
three variables changed, the structure and controls changed virtually
instantaneously. In a word, the structures and controls actually supported
the operation instead of being an arbitrary "Lay-on" - which more often than
not stands in the way of truly productive work. 

So how do we teach (enable/encourage) our mythical young manager, and all
his "real" brothers and sisters to be crazy like foxes?

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
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 

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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of
EVERETT813 at aol.com
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2005 9:37 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Help for my manager, resend

Well, it seems that my reply is going into a black hole somewhere.  Anyway,
Harrison kindly alerted me that such was the case.  Below is my original
post, and an addendum that I thought of later.

Paul Everett

Harrison wrote:

He knows all about playing by the old rules which require a project plan,
budget, staffing levels, milestones, evaluation and testing procedure, and
all the rest. But, what about all this "self-organizing" stuff? How do you
play by the new rules? What are they? And last but not least - how do you
rationalize what you have done under the new rules so that it looks like the
"old rules" have been observed? This last part may seem sneaky and
dishonest, but my young manager friend really likes his job.

Harrison,

Well, I'm not sure this is probable (it may be slightly possible).  As Kuhn
writes, the user of a new paradigm hasn't got the proof that it is the way
to go.  Everything says otherwise.  The risk takers are going on 'faith' in
their instincts.  Your young manager has more than that, he has deep world
experience with OS to draw on.  Maybe he can use it to get an "aha" about
the programming process itself.

But, about the self-organizing to write a new software program, that seems
really iffy.  Software requires strategy, discipline and right code, not
something that very easily emerges from no structure.  Even Chaos, with it's
structure of bounded instability, can't predict what the outcome will be or
when it will emerge.  Only that something will.  Rather like the
instructions for building an ant's nest.

1.  When an ant, carrying a stick, comes to another stick, the ant puts its
stick down.

2.  When an ant, not carrying a stick, comes to a stick, it picks the stick
up.

Those two instructions will build an ant hill (mathematically, I'm told) but
you can't tell where or when it will emerge, just that it will.  I doubt
this will be sufficient for the client. 

Maybe the two process should be separated.  The 'chaos' of OS for
breakthroughs, the discipline of code writing for getting something needed
to emerge in a timely, semi-predictable manner to meet the needs of the
client customer. 

Paul Everett

Addendum:  As I read the other comments, I realized I had said much the same
thing---except maybe not so elegantly.  That is, separate the code writing
from the issue of how and what to write, which one writer suggested.  I
think the real task is to get into a solidly creative state, meaning one in
which there is an absence of rejection of any known kind.  OS certainly does
help that, but doesn't assure it, in my mind.  The only way I'm aware of
ensuring it is to make that state of mind explicit and keep it in front of
people's consciousness.  Suspension of judgment is another part of that
state of mind.  All that judgment stuff comes later, when decisions must be
made (convergence). 

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