Craig

Wed Jun 1 14:44:36 PDT 2005

Harrison said,
But I also suspect that while killing themselves implementing a plan for a
future that never quite happened the way they thought it might -- they
missed out noticing some super-extraordinary opportunities that would have
been infinitely better than what they were planning on.

Comments:
As I think about your comment,  strategic planning, emerging order, and OS,
I remember comments/quotes from two sources that I think are significant:

1)  Joseph Campbell who said that if someone can tell you their life plan
A,B,C, it probably means they are living someone else’s life.  If we are
living our own, there is always an element of mystery, uncertainty, and the
unknown.  (very paraphrased, but hopefully, you get the drift)

2)  The second quote is from Carl Jung responding to a letter her received.
I think somewhere in this quote and the other paraphrase by Campbell, there
is some deep wisdom and implication about the way we or at least I have
thought of Strategic Planning and the implications OS and emerging order has
brought to the surface.   I wonder about the implication for strategic
planning, or at least the way in which we think about the future and plan
for it, as they relate to these statements.  Jungwrites,
“Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to
live.  One lives as one can.  There is no single, definite way for the
individual (or organizations) which is prescribed for him/her or would be
the proper one. . . But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way
you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in
advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot
in front of the other.  If you always do the next thing that needs to be
done, you will go most sure footedly along the path prescribed by your
unconscious.   Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how
you ought to live (or organize or manage).  And then you know, too, that you
cannot know it, but quietly do the next and most necessary thing.  So long
as you think you don’t yet know what this is, you still have too much money
(and time) to spend in useless speculation. . .”

I think somewhere in these quotes, there is some deep wisdom and implication
about the way we, or at least I, have thought about Strategic Planning
(planning for the future), and that OS and emerging order has brought to the
surface.   I continue to explore how to hold the unknowing in context of the
anxious need of some to know?  Maybe it is my need to know that I need to
own?  Maybe the question is, How do we hold the space in an extremly toxic
system, especially on a system that has prided itself in knowing?

Thanks,
Craig

----Original Message Follows---- From: Harrison Owen
<hhowen at comcast.net> Reply-To: OSLIST
<OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU> To:
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU Subject: Re: Craig Date: Wed, 1 Jun
2005 14:29:13 -0400 That sounds like one of my overly broad
generalizations, which like all generalizations is false. I am sure that
folks have tried like hell to implement their strategic plans. I am
equally sure that some parts fell in line. But I also suspect that while
killing themselves implementing a plan for a future that never quite
happened the way they thought it might -- they missed out noticing some
super-extraordinary opportunities that would have been infinitely better
than what they were planning on. Or something. 
Harrison 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 Craig Gilliam Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 9:40 AM To:
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU Subject: Craig Harrison and
all: I am still exploring Strategic Planning, OS, and emerging order.
 I guess I am a slow learner, but there is something around this topic
that intrigues me, but I am not hearing consciously what the
"it" is that has my attention yet. Harrison, someone
mentioned or reminded my, I don't quiet remember, that you stated that no
strategic plan is ever implemented. Would you make some futher comments
on
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