Reflections on the Law of Two Feet (longish)

Sat Mar 11 09:00:03 PST 2006

As previously disclosed, I have made the fateful error of starting a new
book. Whether it actually sees the light of day with proper publication
remains to be seen, but I have been having some fun exploring some odd
places - the latest one being the Law of Two Feet. I have been trying to
apply what we have learned about systems and self-organization in our 20
year wanderings in Open Space to the real live organizational world, and
most particularly to facilitate our effort to find higher levels of
performance. If interested - read on.

Observe the Law of Two Feet

	The Law of Two Feet specifies that if at any time you are neither
learning nor contributing, you should use your two feet and move to a more
productive place. In Open Space this may first appear as a curious, possibly
quaint, affectation, but its application in the larger world of "real"
businesses and organizations seems something of a stretch. The immediate
assumption is that if everyone were to follow their own personal
predilections the resultant chaos would be disaster.
	Seen from the point of view of those who consider the formal,
organized system to be dominant and desirable, such a judgment is doubtless
correct.  On the other hand, when the mind shifts, and the ground reverses
with the figure, so that self-organization is understood to be the
fundamental reality (There is no such thing as a non-self-organizing
system!), chaos becomes an essential pre-condition of emergent order. No
chaos - no order, no life, no organization. More to the point, all attempts
to limit, or eliminate chaos are not only doomed to failure, but are
actually counter-productive. Chaos, we are learning, is the rich seed bed of
emergent order. Strange new world.
	It might also be remembered that The Law of Two Feet is descriptive,
although it is certainly phrased in a most prescriptive fashion. The truth
of the matter is that regardless of constraint or intention we all follow
the Law of Two Feet. When learning and contribution cease, interest
dissipates, and our capacity for caring finds a new locus. That locus may be
out the window with the birds, into the middle of next week for that
exciting conference we anticipate attending, or backwards in time to the
beach last summer. The fact is - we are no longer present, nor do we care to
be present.
	In the world of self-organizing systems, The Law of Two Feet is a
simple statement of fact - but remembering to observe that law will have a
more than salutary effect on the optimal function of human systems. The
reason is a simple one. When we become prisoner to the strictures of the
formal system (custom, regulation, procedures, ways of thinking about
things), all of which may have been very good ideas once upon a time, we are
effectively taken out of the ongoing search for fitness. As individuals we
will lose the opportunity to build new skills and new competencies. And the
organization of which we are a part will lose an effective agent (us) in the
ongoing pursuit of high performance. In a word, it is a lose/lose situation.
	Under optimal circumstances, when the Law of Two feet is fully
observed, we (that is all 6 ½ billion of us) become part of a milling crowd,
randomly searching to a better way to be (fit). From the point of view of
the conventional wisdom, being a part of the milling crowd appears as a
perfect prescription for ineffectiveness, the very antithesis of high
performance. And yet, as we may learn from our brother the ant - a random
search is the epitome of efficiency provided there are a lot of searchers
and an effective means of rapid communication. 
	When morning comes, and the colony is in need of sustenance, the
ants stream out across the local real estate. What begins as an orderly
column quickly dissolves into a random search pattern as each individual ant
is guided in new and different directions by the local topography and their
own particular abilities and limitations. There is no formal grid search,
and each ant is on their own, doing their own thing - and collectively they
cover a lot of territory very effectively. Sooner or later they will
discover their objective: food. You might say they were following The Law of
Six Feet.
	Food may come in the form of some unfortunate worm, or perhaps our
picnic lunch, but once the discovery has been made, the randomness of the
crowd quickly transforms into the ordered progression of worker ants
bringing home the bacon. And the key to the transformation is effective and
rapid communication, which in the case of the ants seems to be chemically
based, but it surely works.
	To say that the ant behavior is random is by no means the same as
saying it is aimless. Each ant knows perfectly well what they are looking
for: dinner. In our own situation, as we wander amongst the milling crowd,
the randomness of our search is focused by what we care about. And conscious
attention to The Law of two Feet insures that we keep that focus. Sometimes,
to be sure, the Law operates in an apparently negative fashion by allowing
us to leave what we don't care about, but this process of elimination may be
the only way when life becomes confusing and overburdened. And of course, if
we do not care about anything, life quickly loses its meaning and often, its
duration. 
	In sum, the law of Two Feet keeps our attention on what we really
care about, what has genuine heart and meaning for us. When we lose sight of
what we care about, we lose our compass, and of course, if we care about too
many things, the effect is essentially the same. At such a time, being clear
about what we don't care for can be clarifying.
	The image of 6.5 billion people randomly seeking what they care for
through out, not only physical space, but also what I might call
"possibility space" (much of what we seek will never be found at a physical
time/space coordinate) - is awesome indeed, and maybe even terrifying. Given
an infinite number of random possibilities, how on earth could anything
approaching an orderly, purposeful life - individually or collectively -
ever emerge?  Stated more practically, how could we ever get organized in
order to conduct the business of living, when the mode of operation appears
as massive hedonistic anarchy? 
	The secret, I believe, is caring, or what I have previously called
the nexus of caring. As people search for what has heart and meaning, some
number of these searchers will discover that they are looking for the same
thing. While they may care in multiple and different ways, the object of
their affection is identical. This commonality of caring draws them together
in much the same way that the Strange Attractors of Chaos Theory draw
together the oddments of the physical world, and with a similar result -
emergent order. The nature and structure of that order is never predictable,
and even less may it be established in advance for the simple reason that it
(the organization) is the product of the people, the task, and the
environment - all of which are constantly in flux. 
	The fact that each individual cares in some different fashion is by
no means a liability, rather a source of enormous strength, for the
diversity of approaches creates the possibility of robust, adaptive
solutions. It is common knowledge that organizations with a single, or
restricted, response pattern may do quite well in a stable environment, but
when the environment itself is in constant flux, diversity of potential
responses is a major key to longevity.
	If ever there were a situation to totally boggle the rational mind
it is the situation described above. Starting with 6.5 billion potential
participants, any or all of which may be linked in an infinite number of
ways - the possibilities are absolutely infinite. The thought that one might
put it all together in a rational, linear way in order to create even a
simple organization is perhaps thinkable, but only briefly, resulting (at
least in my case) in a severe headache. And yet this is precisely what the
power of self-organization does on a daily basis, even as it has done for 14
billion years. Self-organization is quite capable of taking care of the
business all by itself with, or without, our assistance. However, we may
enhance the possibility of successful outcomes (a truly functional
organization) if we make sure to provide the maximum space/time free from
encumbrance (Open Space) in which all participants may move at will as they
observe the Law of Two Feet.

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland   20854
Phone 301-365-2093
Skype hhowen
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/>

Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website www.ho-image.com 
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