Craig

Therese Fitzpatrick therese.fitzpatrick at gmail.com
Fri May 27 09:10:42 PDT 2005


Craig writes:  "Yes, we need to think about the future in a somewhat
systematic way."

And Peggy writes:  "I think emergence is actually spirit making it's
presence felt."

Therese riffs:  The more I think about emergence, the less faith I
have in human beings trying to think about the future in even
'somewhat' systematic ways.  I believe that, as Peggy has stated, that
emergence is actually spirit making it's presence felt.  I also
believe that spirit is always and inescapably present in all human
endeavors or thinking or feeling and that spirit is always a presence
that can be felt.  I believe that when humans try to impose order or
anticipate what order will be needed in the future (strategic
planning), humans have subtly stepped away from an alignment with
spirit/emergence.

I believe that organizations should be investing in building their
collective capacity to be able to discern what which wants to emerge,
to discern spirit's 'divine' plan instead of investing in puny human
attempts to anticipate what order will be needed in the future.  If a
work team, an organization or an entire system has practice in being
in open space. . . . and I mean regular, ongoing practice in
discerning together the collective consciousness. . . . then the thing
now called strategic planning will cease to exist.

The real work of emergence, I believe, is building collective
consciousness.  And I believe an open, ongoing embrace of open space
is the way to do it.

Spirit's presence can always be felt.  It can be felt at a three day
planning event and it can be felt on a slow Tuesday at the office.
The real work, I believe, that organizations need to be doing is to
practicing being conscious of spirit together.  And that is open
space.

Michael Herman said it quite well a few days ago:  the practice of open space.

I have read Tom Atlee's open space epiphany that Peggy reported from
the Evolutionary Salon held recently.  And I am deeply pleased to read
Peggy's statements that many of the participants at that conference
had never experienced more than a day in open space previously.

Imagine if all the participants at that conference took the practice
of open space into their daily lives and practiced open space for more
than three days. What would a thirty day open space look like?  Or a
year round open space?

Year round open space.  Instead of internal OD people, organizations
could have internal OS practitioners, roving organizational shamans
guiding various work teams and cross-functional teams in their
practice of open space.  That's the kind of strategic planning the
work needs.

One of the many problems with allowing organizations to be thought of
as real, separate things when, in fact, they are human social
constructs, has allowed organizations to separate from spirit.  The
work of emergence is realigning human collective work (organizations)
with spirit.  IMHO.

Which is not to say that I know how to sell this to anyone. . . .

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist



More information about the OSList mailing list