Turtles (short)

Mon Feb 14 08:05:15 PST 2005

Artur wrote - 

"1. You refer often to Kaufman's conditions for self-organization. Clearly
those conditions are NOT current and they occur only in special situations.
So it seems to me that there is a contradiction between your references to
those conditions and your persistent affirmations that "there is not such
thing as a non-self-organizing-systems". Can you clarify your thoughts about
this please?"

It may well be just a difference in where I am sitting - but from my view
point, there are precious few moments in my existence/experience when
Kaufmann's Preconditions are NOT present. For those who have not been
following Kaufmann's work the essential preconditions for self-organization
as he understands it (and others have a different take on the matter) are 1)
A relatively safe nutrient environment. 2) High levels of diversity. 3) High
levels of potential complexity (things could fit together in a variety of
ways) 4) Space Prior Connections (the stuff is not already organized). 5) A
search for fitness. 6) Being at the edge of chaos. I would concede that
condition #1 (safety) may not always be there, but all the rest seem to me
to be pretty much of an everyday experience. And even #1 shows up more often
than we might suspect. I have spent a fair amount of time in some pretty
unsafe environments, psychologically and physically - and even in the worst
of those, there were moments of rest and safety. And how much time do you
actually need? Very little I suspect - in fact one of the strange things
about self-organization is just how quickly it takes place when the
conditions are "right." Sometimes it seems almost instantaneous. Just think
of what we all experience every time Space is opened. From start to
organized work - something less than an hour. I would probably happen faster
if we didn't have to talk so much.

"2.  I agree with Masud that the statement is true for "living systems". So
when we consider the humans as part of an ecosystem we can see them as a
"living systems". But human organizations are not only "living material".
Masud gave an example with the financial system, but there are others. An
organization is a mix of living people with objects, rules, procedures,
hierarchies, etc that are not "living" in the biological sense. Those rules
and procedures inhibit, in my opinion, their being "living systems". That's
is precisely the reason why we talk about opening the space - the fact that
quite often in organizations and even in communities the space is pretty
closed. Any comments?"

I think my comments to Masud apply here too. It is all about the degrees of
freedom and the size of the possibility space. Both of these can be very
different in various situations. But I would suggest that process remains
the same. Further, if the degrees of freedom were zero and the possibility
space reduced to nothing - the organization would be dead. So when we (I)
Open Space in an organization that is still alive (and by definition I don't
have much opportunity with the dead ones) - I am not so much creating
anything new but reminding them of what they already have and are. In words
I have used before, creating an Open Space Organization is a waste of time.
Every organization is already an Open Space organization; they are just
doing it rather badly. 

The real issue for me is How can they do it better? And what would doing
better look like? Which comes back to the question I posed when I opened up
this particular space - "how we can reasonably and effectively live in a
fully self-organizing world? What is the role of the individual, place of
individual initiative, function of leadership, planning . . .?" 

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 Artur
Silva
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:16 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: Turtles (short)

Masud Sheikh <masheikh at cogeco.ca> wrote: 

HO wrote:
"Or put rather bluntly - there is no such thing as a non-self-organizing
system. There are only some mildly deluded folks who think they did the
organizing. Outrageous for sure, and possibly a break with reality, but that
is pretty much where I found myself."

I believe the statement "there is no such thing as a non-self-organizing
system" is true for living systems, but not for non-living systems. For
instance, in any "organization" there are systems of people, who find that
the best team-building may be done around the coffee machine or bar, rather
than in a classroom, teaching "teamwork". There are other systems (e.g. the
financial reporting system) that are non-living. Both the living and
non-living systems interact with - and impact - each other.

Let me stop here, and invite others to join in

Masud - thanks for taking the lead on this.

Harrison - there are two things that I don't understand in this last post
and in some others from you. I think I have already referred to this, but
let's go again.

1. You refer often to Kaufman's conditions for self-organization. Clearly
those conditions are NOT current and they occur only in special situations.
So it seems to me that there is a contradiction between your references to
those conditions and your persistent affirmations that "there is not such
thing as a non-self-organizing-systems". Can you clarify your thoughts about
this please?

2.  I agree with Masud that the statement is true for "living systems". So
when we consider the humans as part of an ecosystem we can see them as a
"living systems". But human organizations are not only "living material".
Masud gave an example with the financial system, but there are others. An
organization is a mix of living people with objects, rules, procedures,
hierarchies, etc that are not "living" in the biological sense. Those rules
and procedures inhibit, in my opinion, their being "living systems". That's
is precisely the reason why we talk about opening the space - the fact that
quite often in organizations and even in communities the space is pretty
closed. Any comments?

Artur

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