Empowerment, Self-Organization an d Open Space

[Harrison Owen]

Somehow or anotherI allowed myself to become involved in an electronic forum on Empowerment. Having followed it for several days I have become convinced the the organizer already knows what he thinks empowerment might be and is not terribly interested in alternate visions or versions. But before I threw in the towel having concluded that it was all pretty much same old, same old. . . I did post several responses concerning self-organization and empowerment  -- all of which took me to some interesting new places, I thought. If anybody here finds it interesting that would go a long way towards redeeming what otherwise would be wasted effort. And of course, if there is no interest. . . 

Oh Well :-(


Harrison

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Bob wrote: "Why not treat them ((Students in schools)) (within some limits) as equals and as
responsible adults?  It would be school managed jointly by teachers
and pupils, in the style of Harrison's "Open Space"."



There have actually been a number of situations where Open Space has been used in schools. (If you are unfamiliar with Open Space check http://www.openspaceworld.com/emergent_order.htm ) And the interesting thing is that it always seemed to produce useful results. For one thing, so called behavioral problems virtually disappeared. Learning, even in very specific areas, appeared to be at an all time high -- and perhaps most remarkable, most everybody said that it was fun. Imagine that Learning (school) was fun! I might take a small issue with Bob -- it was not that the children were treated as "responsible adults" -- but rather that everybody was treated as responsible (human) beings. I think it would be a mistake, however, to attribute these "results" to "Harrison's Open Space." After a number of years' contemplation of the conundrum that something so simple could produce such results it has become clear to me that it really has nothing to do with the power of Open Space Technology -- which as my friends know was the product of two martinis.  The operative power is that which underlies Open Space, and indeed virtually everything else in the creative cosmos -- the power of self-organization. This thought has led me to the outrageous proposition that there is no such thing as a non-self-organizing system, albeit there are some mildly deluded people who think they did the organizing.

With such monstrous (although I think defensible) jumps of logic, I find myself at a place where I think a truly profitable discussion of Empowerment might begin. In the first place it is not about designing "Empowerment Systems." Rather is about fully appreciating (or maybe just more fully appreciating) the nature of the "system" of which we are all a part. I suspect that much of the pathology we currently experience in organizations of all sorts and sizes (families, companies, countries) derives from the "fact" that we spend a great deal of time doing what doesn't need to be done (organizing/designing/controlling), while neglecting the essential task, which I might call the Care and Feeding of a Self-Organizing system. And instead of attempting the creation of new systems, we could take a good hard look at what we already are. From this might come an ability to "leverage" the power of self-organization, as opposed to attempting to eliminate it -- as in Taking Charge (control).

Open Space has become for me a marvelous natural experiment which to date has been "run" perhaps 60,000 times in 108 countries that we know about. In short the Beta Tests are in -- and the results have been remarkably consistent across countries, cultures, and continents. One of these results has been a virtually universal experience and expression of personal empowerment -- even (or perhaps most particularly) amongst populations that one might considered radically disempowered. Could be food for thought.


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Dee Hock, whom I know and respect, did a wonderful thing with Visa International -- and his experience there became the basis of his book and further work with the chaordic organization. Interestingly, however when he and others set out to replicate the Chaordic Organization is other situations, their success rate has been just about zero. The key, I think, is that they attempted the "creation" of the Chaordic Organization as if it were just another organization -- they started with Mission, Goals etc. Miles said, "Leadership and or some sort of facilitation is needed if "self" organizing is to work." I think that is partially right. The fact of the matter is that self-organizing systems (by definition) work, or don't work, all by themselves. No help needed. However WE may need some help (leadership and facilitation) to work effectively with a self organizing system. In the Open Space Experiment, Leadership is required to set, or better, to intuit the direction (purpose of the Open Space) -- and a facilitator can be helpful with the preparations and to get things started.  But once under way, the people (participants) do it all by theselves -- no help needed. 

I think this may be significant. Understanding the essential preconditions for self organization is very useful. Perhaps we could also call these conditions "The Essential Preconditions of Empowerment?" But once started, the level of overt intervention drops to basically zero. It would seem that the critical mechanisms are so fundamental to our existence that they do not need to be explained (we already "know" at a very deep level), nor to they have to be tampered with (no management committee). But they (the mechanisms) do have to have sufficient space/time in which to function. We have found that the ongoing role of the Facilitator in Open Space is all about "Holding Space" which is much more about Being than Doing. And when things get a little bumpy (lots of chaos, confusion and conflict) the appropriate response is actually to open more space. To an outsider this often appears to be counter-intuitive at best and probably irresponsible, immoral, and wrong. After all, we have all been trained that our "job" is to fix things up. 

 

Harrison  



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


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