OST and PD (Positive Deviance)

Sat Nov 13 10:35:24 PST 2010

Harrison (also Alan, Raffi and all):

I am afraid I disagree with you, not so much in the substance of your post, but 
in your conclusion: "So Open Space is PD and vice versa. No problem".

First: OST is not PD. OST offers an opportunity for Positive Deviant people to 
talk their truth. In this sense, OST nurtures PD people and allow them to 
positively influence others.

But the point is that PD is not only the recognition that there are PD people in 
any community. It is also a technique to deal with that. If we follow the steps 
of the PD technique we encounter the following (at least this is one of the 
possible flavors of it):

Steps of the PD Process:
------------------------------ 

An invitation to change,
Define the problem,
Determine the presence of PD individuals or groups,
Discover uncommon practices or behaviors,
Program Design,
Monitoring and Evaluation.

It is not difficult to conclude that this is a directive process that is 
contrary to OST foundations as I see them, and that can disempower the 
community, and make more difficult the emergence of new behaviors and the 
positive effect of positive deviant people. IMHO, emergence is made more 
difficult by all directive methods. And there is no need for that. Just open 
some space and the PD will come and do their job

So PD is not OST.

More generally, I think that one must be very careful about combining OST (that 
is an empowering process, based on the self organization of the system) with 
other methods, especially with methods where the "facilitator(es)" facilitates 
too much, directing all the action, hence disempowering the people and 
constraining self organization.

This also relates with OST and GCP. GCP uses "a kind of OST" combined with other 
directive techniques (like Whole Person Process) and, again IMHO, can't be any 
more considered OST (even if there are many excellent OST facilitators among 
that crew). 

And I am not talking this time about the trademarks and copyrights that are 
also, IMHO, contradictory to what I consider one of the most important 
components of the spirit of OST.

Regards

Artur     

________________________________
From: Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net>
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Sent: Thu, November 11, 2010 2:41:56 PM
Subject: Re: [OSLIST] OST and PD (Positive Deviance)

Alan --I can’t say that I have ever used Positive Deviance (defined as my 
friends Henri and Lisa might) – but being a positive character of a deviant sort 
living in a self organizing world (there is no other) – I simply can’t imagine 
the circumstances where I would NOT be using PD. But don’t tell a soul. Anybody 
with PD has got to be suspect!

I joke – but seriously. As I understand it PD is a brilliant application of a 
very ancient phenomenon – Anomaly. Anomalies, as you know are funny things that 
happen that shouldn’t according to the “accepted” view of things. The word comes 
from the Greek “anomos” – which literally means “without the Law” – or we might 
say outlaws. A perfect example is Open Space. Everybody “knows” that given a 
complex problem – sitting in a circle, creating a bulletin board, opening a 
market place will produce only disaster. Strangely (anomalously) it doesn’t.

More often than not, anomalies are byproducts of self-organization. The 
technical word is emergence. As the system adapts to its environment, strange 
things happen – the system does something it had never done before. Probably 
most of these things are not useful – but a few are marvelously adaptive, and 
suddenly the system has a new capability to deal with some issue. The 
conventional wisdom looks at the new capability and says – that just couldn’t 
happen. Tragically the conventional wisdom usually tries to eliminate the 
innovation because it is not part of the Standard Procedure. The Smart Money 
(and Henri and Lisa have a lot of that) says, WOW!

Instead of spending hours and days designing solutions for new problems which 
usually won’t work very well, The Smart Money lets the system do all the heavy 
lifting (create the innovation) and then claims the credit and advertizes the 
result. Now that is real smart – And pretty much what we do all the time with 
Open Space – which everybody knows is the ultimate scam. The client does all the 
work, creates the solutions, and even writes the report. This is known as 
Thinking of one more thing not to do!

So Open Space is PD and vice versa. No problem.

Harrison

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Dr.
Phone 301-365-2093
www.openspaceworld.com
www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)
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From:OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Alan Stewart
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 12:47 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: OST and PD (Positive Deviance)

Dear All

I am going to West Sumatra (different parts this time) in Indonesia next week to 
continue the process of introducing OST to university lecturers and students in 
the field of health care.

http://openspaceworld.ning.com/forum/topics/sewing-seeds-for-ost

One of my former PhD students and I will do this together. He will add his 
considerable experience with PD which can be seen to be a complement to OST in 
particular contexts. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Deviance and 
http://www.positivedeviance.org/about_pd/index.html 

Which means that not only will participants become aware of how to engage with 
communities about their perceived needs for health services. They will also come 
to appreciate that there may already be effective strategies in place within 
communities on which to build, eg local initiatives in child care that health 
care practitioners would not know of unless they looked out for them. 

Further, how to encourage the invention of such strategies through conversation, 
and story telling of successes elsewhere, about possibilities. 

I wonder if anyone has had experience in using OST in conjunction with Positive 
Deviance? 

Along with our friends Henri Lipmanowicz, Lisa Kimball and Joelle Lyons Everett, 
all of whom were present at the wonderful WOSonOS in Marysville, near Melbourne, 
in 2002. * And who are among the contributors to the new book'Inviting Everyone 
- Healing Healthcare through Positive Deviance'. 

Looking forward

Go well

Alan 

* Sadly, as you may be aware, the lovely hotel which was our residential venue 
and most of this country town were destroyed in a bush fire last year. 

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