[OSList] Conversation as fractal (Was Re: energy field of the facilitator and its influence on OST outcomes)

[Peggy Holman]

Dear Reinhard,

I am picking up on an old thread as I begin to look at a backlog of email.  I just couldn't let a particular assumption go by without comment.

First, I hope that you are fully recovered by now from your time in the hospital in August.  

Next, I LOVE your visual work!  It adds so much. I always feel fortunate when people bring the visual into the space.  As you eloquently describe, it so enhances the experience.  Thank you for all you do.

The thread that caught my eye is an assumption in your ASPECT 1 below.  It's the notion that because someone is able to participate in just a few sessions that they only have a small slice of the puzzle.  I think that view contains the assumption that every session is completely unique, that conversations are linear. My experience through the years is that because people come together around a shared inquiry, while aspects of every session are unique, there's is a remarkable amount of shared substance that emerges from the sessions.  

How many times have you experienced people discovering that a variation of the conversation they just had in a session is now going on elsewhere?  I see that as self-organization at work -- the dynamic of clustering as connections are made and meaning emerges.

I've come to see conversation as fractal, similar patterns showing up in many places.  It's part of the reason that I often notice people relaxing into less need to attend every session. Of course many factors affect how much synergy arises, but it happens enough to be significant.  

In fact, this was a large part of the reason that I fell in love with Open Space. I got to experience this phenomenon during the first Open Space I ever attended. It was at U S WEST Communications in 1994.  The event is captured on video -- one of the early videos of Open Space in action.   (And it is now available on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/25251316.

There were several hundred people: managers, engineers, network technicians, and others.  The question was how to make the telephone phone system reliable again.  After years of patchwork repairs, the statewide telephone system that people relied on went down during floods in Arizona. The OS meeting was called to figure out how to bring reliability back to the system.

I heard more 4-letter words at that meeting than I knew existed.  (For non-English speakers, "4 letter words" is a term for cursing.)  Still, by the end of the gathering, it was exquisitely clear to everyone that the company needed to invest in rehabilitation of the basic plant.  While there was voting on the last day to set specific priorities, the ability to act was strong because everyone present understood the need.  And the commitment to act was widely embraced.

About a week after the OS, a follow-up meeting happened.  It clinched this idea that people got a sense of the full picture without having to attend every session.  In an unprecedented move, rather than just managers, the department head invited anyone who wanted to attend to come to the follow-up meeting.  I was awestruck as a network technician advocated for hiring contract help to take care of repairs so that full time staff were freed up to rehab the basic plant.  And he had plenty of support from others. In fact, there was NO pushback.  

To put this in context, the network technicians are unionized. Hiring contract labor is a serious sore point with them.  And contract negotiations to renew a multi-year agreement were happening in the background.  Still, at the OS, this tech "got" a clearer picture of the whole system than he had ever had. In doing so, he saw the merit in using contract labor to meet the needs of the organization AND to help him do what he cared about: provide reliable service to customers.  In other words, he -- and others -- were now making decisions from a whole system perspective.

So that's about it.  I see this emergent dynamic as one key reason why self-organization seems like magic.

appreciatively,
Peggy




_________________________________
Peggy Holman
peggy at peggyholman.com

15347 SE 49th Place
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425-746-6274
www.peggyholman.com
www.journalismthatmatters.org

Enjoy the award winning Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity
 
"An angel told me that the only way to step into the fire and not get burnt, is to become 
the fire".
  -- Drew Dellinger












On Aug 13, 2011, at 10:40 AM, VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE wrote:

> Dear OS-friends,
> 
> I have been in hospital for some days, so my response comes a little late. But some of you won't like it earlier or later, and for me it stays valid also after time.
> 
> 
> Since Birgitt showed up and opened the dialogue with Harrison, I wanted to jump into the ring as well.
> 
> I fully support Birgitts approach to lift the level of consciousness of facilitators. I like also Harrisons love for  self organization and share it. BUT I ask: self organization of what? Of the OS meeting? I think that's by far not enough. My credo: an egoless organization could, would create heavon on earth.
> 
> Once I was visualizing a big OS. The theme: Rising the quality of the Inner City of X. The OS facilitator, a famous colleague, told me: I don't care a bit if they get a better Inner City, I care that they have a good OS!   
> 
> Here I strongly disagree. If people want to use self organization to meliorate their City, I want to support them in any way. I don't care if they use OS or other effective ways (we offer some), but if they use it, they should get the best out of it. And over the years grew my following thoughts:
> 
> ASPECT 1  
> An average participant chooses his groups at the marketplace. If he chooses one out of 15 possible groups per time slot, he participates in 6-7% of the groups. His information at the end about process and results covers 6-7%. If he is a bumble bee, and if he watches the written results of other groups carefully, and if he even reads written reports, his information level could rise to 10, 15, even 20%. He will never see the full picture, although he feels the energy of 100%.
> 
> Nobody so far mentioned this fact as far as I know, in all the discussions and OSONOS'es.
> 
> Here Visualization can help. The visualizers go from group to group, like bumble bees, noticing, noticing, noticing, transforming process, results and atmosphere into images. We are doing it on little cards, which you can take into every corner, participate in discussions silently, go wherever we feel the energy rising, as Max Schupbach calls that. With our pictures we then form a continuous picture wall, where everybody can follow the process. And in the evening News we project the images to the whole group. Scientific research shows, that hereby the awareness of process and results jumps from 20% to 60%.
> 
> ASPECT 2
> 
> If the OS has consequences, the images are a strong tool. To remember what happened. To show it to others, who did not participate, for example board members. To use them as starting platform for new work groups. To compare later results with the original intention. And always: to remember.
> 
> If you only want to create a beautiful OS, Visualization certainly is one thing less to do.
> 
> If you want to support self organization, in a company, an organization … , using OS as a tool, to sharpen this tool by Visualization is great. After hundreds of projects I know what I am talking about.
> 
> Some will say: There is nothing to improve in OST! OK, but maybe there is something to improve in the use of OST  for self organization.
> 
> Reinhard
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Reinhard Kuchenmüller
> Dr. Marianne Stifel 
> VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE®
> 
> tel +39-0566-88 929
> www.visuelle-protokolle.de
> 
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