"Bylo chudo" or New Paradigm slavery-- long

[Harrison Owen]

Raffi Wrote: Harrison, you in your delightful semi-impish spirit trickster raven kind of way said you were almost afraid to ask what I thought the next paradigm was. I think I explained what I thought the next paradigm was+and I didn't quite understand why that thread died. Is it because I'm talking out of something besides my mouth? Or that everyone already knows what the next paradigm is. Or that it is moot? Or that the paradigm of thinking in paradigms is well so+passé because it assumes a linear path of development?

I don't know why the conversation on the next paradigm" ended -- it certainly has never ended with me. I suppose that if there is a single dominant theme in all of my work, it is not about Open Space, but rather precisely on that subject. Thomas Kuhn's notion of Paradigm and paradigm shift has been very useful for me (and obviously millions of others) in several ways. First he wrote clearly about the mechanisms and costs of fundamental shifts. As you may remember he is primarily a philosopher of Science -- but his work obviously applies in much broader realms. He showed us (reminded us) that human progress does not go in nice linear patterns, but in great, always painful, lurches. And the fact that he tied all this to the progress of Science was useful in that it helped us see that super-rationalistic science was also a part of the human endeavor. But as helpful as Kuhn has been it always seemed to me that he stopped short of genuine breakthrough. For me the notion of paradigm shift is really the whole business of the evolution of consciousness. Fortunately, many others have explored territory that Kuhn never (so far as I know) got into. On the contemporary scene, Ken Wilber has led the way for me. And the Spiral Dynamics folks have added some interesting details. But the story is a very old one going right back to The Great Chain of Being traditions, which spoke of the evolution of consciousness in terms of 7 levels or domains. The words vary, but the sense is Nothing, Body, Mind, Intellect, Soul, Spirit, Nothing. Since it is a little difficult to speak of "nothing" -- we are basically left with 5 domains that we can get out words around. It occurred to me in the early 80's that although the focus was basically on the individual evolution of consciousness -- the general thinking would equally apply to organizations, which you might call the collective expression (manifestation) of Spirit or consciousness. To make the point and the connection I created what I called an organizational analogue to the development of individual consciousness, and the levels (domains) were denominated as follows: Reactive, Responsive, Proactive, Interactive, and Inspired. If you are interested in the details, I wrote it all up in my first book, "Spirit: Transformation and Development in organizations" which came out I think in 1985. 

Then along came Open Space, which appeared in my eyes to be a funny thing we did on the way to the future. Its real value totally escaped me. Fortunately several others saw what I failed to notice -- this stuff was important. And once they got my attention, I noticed a very odd thing. It seemed to me that in Open Space people had the experience of moving through levels of consciousness. And more particularly, it seemed that they were shifting in and out of the dominant level, which I called Proactive, into the next level, which I had called Interactive. For the majority, this was a momentary, although significant experience -- but at the end of the day it was back to the old familiar Proactive organizations. Some, however, did not seem to go back so easily -- and the Interactive level became their domain. This was a exhilarating and scary experience, to say the least. I am totally clear that Open Space did not (does not) cause such shifts -- but it does seem to provide an environment which is conducive to this shifting. Anyhow it seemed to me that something rather new and exciting was occurring -- and that a radical new organizational lifeform was putting in an appearance. Since we were heading towards the Millennium at that point, hyperbole got the best of me and I began to talk about The Millennium Organization. Even wrote a book about it with the same title. That book is now out of print, but I tried to tried to bring all my thinking to that point together in my last book for Berrett-Koehler, which bears the title, "The Power of Spirit: How Organizations Transform." That one came out in 2000, which I thought was sort of appropriate.

Anyhow, the story continues and becomes ever more exciting. Obviously not without  many painful bumps and bruises -- and the final chapter has clearly not been written. 

Harrison


Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Dr.
Potomac, MD  20854
USA
301-365-2093
207-763-3261 (summer)
website www.openspaceworld.com


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Raffi Aftandelian 
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 
  Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 5:07 PM
  Subject: "Bylo chudo" or New Paradigm slavery-- long


  Dear all,

  "Bylo chudo" is Russian for "a miracle happened." That is what one seasoned Muscovite open space facilitator said at the closing of the first day of the OST meeting on the future of my new consulting firm, essenceworks consulting group. And he had not even been able to be at the storytelling on essenceworks from the evening (Friday) before. At the end of day two of the OST meeting- he said, "I think what has happened here is that a process of transformation seems to have happened with all of us. And the question for each of us is: what do we want to do with that tomorrow? Tomorrow is the next day of the rest of our lives."

  In other words this OST meeting, while offering lots for the development of essenceworks, offered no less than your standard personal transformation workshop. Typical OS...

  Indeed the meeting was a string of miracles.

  Izabella Lauterpakht and Nikolai Silaev, who just "remembered" OST recently at the first Working with OST workshop as part of the Genuine Contact Program that I'd conducted, led it. Izabella is a director of an English school. Nikolai is a journalist and researcher on the North Caucasus. 

  It was a fascinating experience to be both sponsor and to be coaching them (minimally) for this event. They led the storytelling, too.

  I got a tad nervous when at the storytelling one of them said "In open space tomorrow you can ignore the title of the OST meeting, forget about essenceworks, just do whatever you want in open space." In response, after a few breaths (no hyperventilating) I said "Yes, and tomorrow is..."

  I saw some of the deepest, most respectful listening in a group of strangers ever. And no workshops, groundrules and other assorted old paradigm nonsense preceded it...

  Thruout the whole event we average between 15-23 people. There were trainers, consultants, psychologists, artists, people who I still can't figure out how they learned of the event...

  Lotsa yummy food-- i love food and i saw there was variety and yum yum action.

  Also put out a mini-OST library of all the books in English and Russian I have related to OST. My Angeles Arrien in Russian translation sprouted legs and I kinda know who made off with it+Hey, kleptos are people too+.

  This time also experimented with creating a creativity corner-- a table with art supplies and toys (who here gave me this idea? A delight!)At one moment this one person took a fistful of paintbrushes and asked if she could handle them. I said, "it turns out those paintbrushes may not be mine." She explained that all she wanted to do was to touch them, handle the bristles...more miracle action. 

  Play dough girls, flowers
  people brought kilos of raspberries, someone brought flowers for storytelling (i had forgotten the flowers), i made the registration self-organizing...

  Topics announced (incomplete list):
  1. How to get government and companies open to participatory methods
  2. The concept of essenceworks: mission, projects
  3. Women's peer support
  4. Risks associated with essenceworks
  5. unanswered questions
  6. "What will happen tomorrow, on Monday?" personal energy management

  The topic "How to get government and companies open to participatory methods" was especially fascinating because it was announced by a friend and colleague who does restorative justice work and just goes ga-ga over theory. Basically, he announced his topic and then attached every post-it for room "A" to his topic. He just sat in one place for almost the whole OST meeting from the very beginning. 

  What he essentially did was attempt to develop a theoretical explanation of what Open Space Technology is, reflecting on OST from the very beginning of the meeting. I kind of imagined him locking himself up in OST and trying to make sense theoretically as to what is open space. I am hoping to get my hands on the meta-narrative of his topic-- the story of who came in, when, and how that influenced the theory he developed around participatory approaches.

  What he also ended up doing was doing something that I had wished for. Let me explain. Before I had the idea to organize this OST meeting, people asked me, "Raffi, what is your business plan?" I remember thinking, "Why in the hell should I write the business plan when the system will do it for me?" Now, I am not sure I walked away from this two day meeting with a business plan (I am not sure if I'll ever make the $20k/month I hope to be two years from now, but it doesn't hurt to try. Or does it?). But I definitely got a lot clearer. And of course, did I neglect to say I had fun? Fun the whole time. 

  My wish for the OST meeting was that the participants would essentially write my website materials for me. This restorative justice colleague essentially (unwittingly) modelled that. He wrote material that will go up on essenceworks.net/.ru and the Russian language OST site, the domainname I don't remember...

  Other miracles: Marina Tyasto called and said she'd flown in from Novosibirsk. She was on her way, of course, to Palestine. I invited her but because of the rain she couldn't come (what could all this Moscow rain be a dreaming of?) She and I did meet yesterday for 6 hours of nonstop convo action+at McDonald's+over lattes and mozzarella sticks in andalusian and BBQ sauce. It was a gift!

  And today I think I realized where I am going with this essenceworks project: To take the concept of the Conscious Space Organization to (one of its) logical conclusions: to sleep and hold space while essenceworks (ew) runs itself.

  As I said earlier, I envisioned essenceworks to be me, a parttime bookkeeper, and an executive assistant. That's it.

  I think where I have to go with this is to figure a model to just hold space for essenceworks: the clients write the website materials, market the firm, , do the bookkeeping for me offer the services themselves, help other clients "remember" OST, one set of clients offer the services to another set of clients and I get paid for them offering services to each other, and in the end, we all scream "Thank you" in deep deep gratitude. Oh, and the clients will also develop the organizational joy program that will come after the Genuine Contact Program. And i get my $20k/month, part of which will go to the dream foundation I have been thinking of, which, ho-hum, will also have to be a COSO...

  On the Genuine Contact listserv there was discussion as to whether a COSO could be just one person. There was some doubt on this score. I think at this point the answer is yes.

  I would like to know what other experience there is in creating and "running" ( Taoist least effort sprint-crawling"?) such companies.

  I first thought that I could get away with just running a one-day OST meeting on essenceworks and invite a wide variety of people each season. Now I realize that I can't get away with that. Perhaps in November I'll organize the next OST meeting on essenceworks, make sure more intense pre-work will be done with me, and try to conceptualize the OST meeting so that the organizing for the OST meeting is more self-organizing (how do I do that?). Yes, I worked too hard. I bought all the food and did a lot of the work myself. 

  But boy was it great to participate! (Reports and fotos available). BTW, I am not very good at uploading fotos, if anyone could help and post them for me (5mb zipped, 60 fotos) or explain how would much appreciate.

  I want to write a post-event press-release for wide circulation here. Ideas about how to do that would much be appreciated. Part of the aim is to hook those who were interested and to share this vision (or would this COSO vision turn people off if not carefully packaged?).

  Also, I will be co-creating with anybody interested three mailing lists, two of which I mentioned before: breathing circle and breathing marketplace. The first one a forum for multilingual, (translation self-organizing) exchange of ideas between east and west and north and south (so much of interest, for example, is happening just in Russia, and few in the west know about this), and the second one a kind of international, free multilingual classified ads marketplace+all kinds of interesting events happen all the time and you don't always hear of them. I definitely didn't hear of the upcoming OT 24 (or is it 23?) in time, otherwise, I would've gone to that first+people here know nothing of that event and all kinds of goodies happen here all the time. 

  I will post the concepts for these mailing lists hopefully prior to Heavenfax so that by Heavenfax starts the face-to-face portion of the already opened OSonOS the lists will have begun+

  The third listserv will be on essenceworks, creating a participatory virtual presence for the organization where  clients" and anybody else will co-create the firm with me+I hope to post that mailing list concept, too+

  I thought of how Nikolai and Izabella held space for free. They refused to be paid for this even tho pre-event I insisted they be paid+And I thought how their holding space for free, doing the cooking and cleaning was a kind of New Paradigm slavery. And then Izabella, in yet another burst of synchronicity said as much+

  Harrison, you in your delightful semi-impish spirit trickster raven kind of way said you were almost afraid to ask what I thought the next paradigm was. I think I explained what I thought the next paradigm was+and I didn't quite understand why that thread died. Is it because I'm talking out of something besides my mouth? Or that everyone already knows what the next paradigm is. Or that it is moot? Or that the paradigm of thinking in paradigms is well so+passé because it assumes a linear path of development?

  In any case, I want to revisit that and say that I think since the late 90's drawing on the (admittedly imperfect) model that Marv and Sandra illustrate (the learning curve, p.2 of the Future Search book) we have been in the 5th paradigm (the 4th was the  everyone improves whole systems" the holistic participatory system approach).

  Paradigm no. 5:  Everyone improves the whole organism" participatory holistic organism. This paradigm is a  post-tool" paradigm. We no longer have the system (mechanistic worldview), but an organic one. Where the tool is a secondary issue. Tools are something that emerge in the moment, where OST morphs from method into an attitude, where more and more elements of form just start melting away as we get used to living in an expanded now, as more and more organizations becoming living beings themselves. Could maybe be called the Genuine Contact paradigm

  Paradigm no. 6:  All living things (aliens included see Flower of Life, which I have but I am too close-minded to quite understand) constantly consciously transform the whole organism (the universe). In the mid-90's I met an OD consultant in Berkeley who made money management consulting to Microsoft and other assorted transnational non-charities. Marian Jones (was that her last name?), where are you? She was desperately going about the San Francisco Bay Area asking the question,  How do you consult to a whole bioregion?"  Now I know what she was *really* getting at+But if consciousness does not exist really, if it's only a retroactively constructed narrative what do we do? 

  Also I want to express deep deep thanks to all those who held space, gave important wisdom ( be humble+" I tried. Was I humble? Probably not, but I gave quality listening my best shot)+thank you thank you thank you.

  raffi
  organizational joy (oj)  consultant" (bold quotes) moving towards jo! (the joyful organization)
  oj (organizational

  p.s. in my non-drug taking (I really don't take drugs, never have) student days in Berkeley, my way of telling people off was by saying,  Get out of my paradigm!" That phrase has new meaning now, especially since we're arriving in a post-paradigmatic paradigm+

  p.p.s. I remember being really put off when an OST/GC colleague referred to my consulting work as  consulting" (in quotes), as if it cannot be taken seriously. Maybe I indeed can't be taken seriously. And should take it as a compliment+a post-paradigmatic consulting, virtual consulting after all it's in quotes+And how can I expect to be taken seriously especially when I insist on acting like an eight year old? As they like saying in San Quentin Prison (North California):  it's all good." 

  p.p.p.s. I recall when I went off my rocker a few months previously onlist, I wrote that if I'm offbase, feel free to bang me on the head. One kind well-known raven-visionary was kind enough to do so. I insist today that he was offbase to bang me on the head-- offlist. But, it's all good. After this post if anybody would like to bang me on the head, I would like to say,  Please bang harder. I kinda like it+"



  Отдохни, поиграй с друзьями! Он-лайн игры в новой версии М-агента http://r.mail.ru/cln2661/agent.mail.ru

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