[OSList] Open Space and Authority

Rosa Zubizarreta rosa at diapraxis.com
Fri Apr 4 14:42:52 PDT 2014


Hi Harold!  I love this:

"I love how Open Space Technology helps people get in touch with their own
ability to create. To ripple the fabric of space-time."

Went to a three-day Group Relations conference in Boston a few years ago.
It was fascinating... I found it different in some significant ways that
T-groups, with which I'd had a not-so-positive experience before. Seems
like T-groups are much better known than Tavi. Too bad -- I found the Tavi
experience much richer in many ways. Challenging of course, yet also
"safer" that T-groups in a strange way...

To take off on a detour here, safety is another word that can have such
different connotations! For some people it equates with 'boring' and
'mainstream'... Yet there's another sense of it, that I have a hard time
conveying... a friend of mine often says, "have a safe adventure!" For me,
there's something about wholeness, non-injury, belonging, connectedness... I
think of Harrison's story about the woman in OS who took off all her
clothes, and what happened next... for me this is also a metaphor for the
self-healing property of the Universe, the way it's always immediately
beginning to re-weave the fabric of integrity, after any injury or tear in
it...

and still, the existence of self-hearling is clearly no excuse for wanton
havoc... we deeply mourn the gashes, the strip-mines, the random death and
destruction... it's  so much easier to destroy something, than to nourish and
support growth...

so i guess then, that is the other sense of "safety"... the avoidance of
unnecessary suffering... of course, we can learn from whatever suffering
comes our way, yet also value non-injury, health, wholeness... (the online
etymological dictionary tells me that "safety" comes from the Sanskrit
'sarvah', which means "uninjured, intact, whole...."

About "supporting growth": here I am clearly an OS heretic; in my
experience with plants or children, "self-organization" depends on so much
nurturing support! Whether it's fresh air, water, sunshine, good minerals
in the soil, all in reasonable doses... hugs, attention, listening, and yes,
protection when needed...

So in T-group, "protection" is taboo; we can be witnessing the group
turning into a mob, seeking to "break" someone emotionally in order to get
them to "express their feelings," and anyone questioning this may be told
to "speak about your own self"... (some people I know, call them
"insensitivity-training groups"... :-)

whereas in Tavi, the difference I saw, is that the purpose is not 'to get
individuals to get anything', but instead to support the development of an
experiential understanding, of the 'group unconscious' and how it moves...
 and so facilitators are much more likely to be inviting participants to
question, how any challenging individual may be 'doing the work of the
group', than to be tacitly encouraging an effort to 'confront' any
particular individual in a misguided effort to get them to 'get in touch
with their feelings'...

and, if some individual chooses to 'challenge' someone else, and some other
individual chooses to 'defend' that person, neither one is given priority!
In both cases, it still comes back to, what is each individual acting out,
for the 'group as a whole' (who does not get to hide out in the 'being an
innocent bystander' role!)

 in other words, how can each of us take more responsibility, for what is
happening here? (which for some of us, may be a place where Tavi and OS
converge... :-)

***

So anyway, probably much longer of a response than you were seeking!
thank you for the opportunity to revisit some of this...

with all best wishes,

Rosa


*Rosa Zubizarreta*

*Diapraxis: Facilitating Creative Collaborationhttp://www.diapraxis.com
<http://www.diapraxis.com/>*

*Celebrating my new book, "From Conflict to Creative Collaboration: A
user's guide to Dynamic Facilitation"
<http://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Creative-Collaboration-Dynamic-Facilitation/dp/1626526117/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394491921&sr=1-1&keywords=from+conflict+to+creative+collaboration>!*


On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 4:48 PM, Harold Shinsato <harold at shinsato.com> wrote:

>  Hi Rosa,
>
> Would love to hear more of your experience with Group Relations some day.
> I learned a huge amount about myself and how groups work. I'm not sure how
> much everyone knows about GR and Tavistock. I find it interesting that many
> credit Kurt Lewin as one of the founders of organizational and social
> psychology, sociology, and organizational development. Kurt Lewin was one
> of founders of the Tavistock Institute.
>
> Rosa, I like what you say about the feeling of "authorization". Even after
> understanding the Tavistock concepts around authority, I still get these
> instant images of a bureaucracy - filing cabinets, cold legal offices,
> clerks, and people making decisions behind closed doors. Ink stamps in
> passports. And "Your papers please?" Yuck.
>
> How different the general feeling and poetic sense of this concept when
> you bring in the words "author" and "authorship".
>
> The word author comes ultimately from the latin, "auctor", meaning
> creator. Creator!
>
> Robert Heinlein wrote a time travel novel towards the end of his career
> where all the stories got tied together through a complex universe. I
> recall a review of the book mentioning people would be afraid in this
> Universe when an author came by. An author could change the fabric of
> space-time.
>
> I love how Open Space Technology helps people get in touch with their own
> ability to create. To ripple the fabric of space-time.
>
>     Thanks,
>     Harold
>
>
>
>
>
> On 3/31/14 7:35 PM, Rosa Zubizarreta wrote:
>
> Ok, plunging in here... deep waters!
>
>  One thing I'm noticing, is how words "sound" different, within different
> communities...
>
>  some of the posts above, seem to assume that "authorization" is about
> the "standard" world view...
> and sometimes, some parts of me resonate with that... it's a word that
> initially felt very strange and "foreign" to me,
>  not at all "organic"...
>
>  and then, after some Tavi experiences, I've come to hear it in a much
> more creative vein...
> as in, who is the "author" of this story that I am experiencing?  Who is
> it, who is really giving power to those, who I see as "powerful"?
>
>  and so I've come to experience the whole notion of "authorship", within
> that particular community, in a very creative way...
>
>  yet still, the word at times has older echoes of "authoritarian", and
> "authority",
> which don't resonate so well with these other, newer-to-me, usages...
>
>  So, here is what I am hearing Dan say, and Harold clarifying further:
> Within an Open Space event , we are all equally invited to play (er, work...
> same thing, in my book!)
>
>  What I am hearing a few others say (I see no contradiction here): Just
> by virtue of stepping into an OS event, this does not alter the
> internalized external authority structure that people are bringing in with
> them (at least not immediately! ;-)
>
>  my own experience echoes Peggy's and others: three consecutive days at
> an Open Space event, certainly affected my own sense of creative
> freedom/agency/self-authorit)!
>
>  thanks for the conversation, all...
>
>  best wishes,
>
>  Rosa
>
>
>  *Rosa Zubizarreta*
>
> *Diapraxis: Facilitating Creative Collaboration http://www.diapraxis.com
> <http://www.diapraxis.com/>*
>
>  *Celebrating my new book, "From Conflict to Creative Collaboration: A
> user's guide to Dynamic Facilitation"
> <http://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Creative-Collaboration-Dynamic-Facilitation/dp/1626526117/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394491921&sr=1-1&keywords=from+conflict+to+creative+collaboration>*
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 5:39 PM, Harold Shinsato <harold at shinsato.com>wrote:
>
>>  Dan, Peggy, Michael, David, Kári, Paul,
>>
>> Such a rich topic.
>>
>> I don't think Dan is "barking up the wrong tree at all".
>>
>> Perhaps this is just my own experience, sensitivity, and upbringing - but
>> I deeply resonate with the changing sense of authorization that happens in
>> a good Open Space conference, and actually in most circle based processes,
>> compared to the other more hierarchy based ones. And the spatial setup is
>> critical here.
>>
>> This was almost ridiculously confirmed in my experience of a Group
>> Relations (GR) conference. We started in a theater style - the hosts and
>> administration of our temporary institution - sitting like the judges and
>> jury of our assembly. They claimed we the assembly had no rules, but when
>> the group tried to rearrange the chairs in a circle, the leader
>> de-authorized the conversation. No one dared again challenge the chair
>> settings again. Also in my GR experience, there was another large group
>> process - where we sat in a double spiral. It was fascinating to see the
>> dynamic nature of authorization happening as people moved in and out of
>> greater and lesser levels of authority (as granted by the assembly). My own
>> experience of the OSList is we're more in a Spiral dynamic than in a
>> circle. Just my experience. Since we're not in visual contact, it's a
>> little harder to tell who is closer to the center as we speak/write on the
>> OSList. But it's not that hard to tell.
>>
>> A circle is inherently equalizing. Think of the Knights of the Round
>> Table here. Maybe it doesn't make everyone equally authorized - but it does
>> give a sense that we're all in it together, and that everyone matters,
>> everyone counts. It's certainly harder to hide in a circle - but where does
>> a circle start? Where does it end?
>>
>> Obviously, OST is a lot more subtle than just the circle, the bulletin
>> board that everyone is authorized to write on, the law of two feet, and the
>> five principles. There's so much more to say. I hope the group doesn't
>> deauthorize the importance of this topic.
>>
>> A couple more points.
>>
>> 1) Using GR vocabulary- I join with Paul Levy. I think Open Space is more
>> about "moral authority". To me that is about enabling self-authorization.
>> Maybe another possible term - intrinsic authorization. I love some of the
>> thinking of the Rights described in the American Declaration of
>> Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people]
>> are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
>> unalienable Rights." Authority comes from the Creator - or you could say -
>> it's already built in :-)
>>
>> 2) I love the safety theme around authority, and I also join with David
>> and Kári on that theme. This is all about the container. A good facilitator
>> helps establish and hold a strong container. It's hard for the container to
>> hold without a blessing from the kings and queens of the community - the
>> Sponsor. This container needs rules of play that equalize the authority to
>> "do work", which in an Open Space is to host and attend sessions, be a
>> bumble bee or a butterfly. It doesn't matter how great the title someone
>> has - once the container is set - it should be safe and without
>> repercussions for someone to take hold of the center of the circle and
>> announce their topic, not announce a topic, attend or not attend sessions.
>> Those rules are not usually in play for most meetings. For example, at a
>> Board meeting most people in an organization aren't even allowed to be
>> there, let alone speak.
>>
>>     Cheers,
>>     Harold
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 3/31/14 9:00 AM, Peggy Holman wrote:
>>
>> Dan,
>>
>>  You ask great questions!
>>
>>  My take: like most of life, authorization is more nuanced than your
>> statement below.
>>
>>  Like you, I believe everyone has 100% equivalent authorization AND they
>> also carry the imprinting of habits, context, self-talk, existing
>> relationships, and more that influence how they show up. Some will
>> experience themselves as having 100% authorization, some will test that
>> assumption, others will observe and reserve judgment, and every other
>> flavor in between.
>>
>>  I have observed that with repeated use, people seem to experience an
>> increasing sense of self-authorization. More take responsibility for what
>> they love not just in Open Space but in life.
>>
>>  I know of no practice that lays the groundwork better for increasing
>> self-authorization in social systems.
>>
>>  from sunny (at last) Seattle,
>> Peggy
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  --
>> Harold Shinsato
>> harold at shinsato.com
>> http://shinsato.com
>> twitter: @hajush <http://twitter.com/hajush>
>>
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>
>
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>
> --
> Harold Shinsato
> harold at shinsato.com
> http://shinsato.com
> twitter: @hajush <http://twitter.com/hajush>
>
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