[OSList] Management and Organization

Judith-Kate Friedman director at songwritingworks.org
Sat Aug 2 22:08:04 PDT 2014 

Greetings,

I too am posting for the first time, an intermittent lurker and fairly new
to OS, having been introduced via networks practicing Applied Improvisation
and also Liberating Structures.

In response to the conversation at large and to Harrison -  "Šnone of that
can hold a candle to the profound sense of wonder and awe that I experience
in the silence of my not-knowing. That is truly wonderful" -- these words
from Lao Tzu, translation Ursula LeGuin, version Daniel Deardorff:

"To know with not-knowing is best.
Not knowing without knowing it is sick.

To be sick of sickness
Is the only cure.

The wise aren't sick.
They're sick of sickness,
So they're well."

Glad and grateful for the gleanings I get from all your posts.

Judith-Kate 
Friedman

Songwriting Works Educational Foundation
Restoring Health and Community through Song
www.songwritingworks.org

P.s. RosaŠ. It's been maybe 30 years since we met?

From:  Rosa Zubizarreta <rosa at diapraxis.com>
Reply-To:  World wide Open Space Technology email list
<oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
Date:  Saturday, August 2, 2014 1:34 PM
To:  World wide Open Space Technology email list
<oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
Subject:  SPAM-HIGH:  Re: [OSList] Management and Organization

Bhav, you wrote "...I think OST doesn't work for the way Dave Snowden wants
to approach complexity, however that is different to the question of whether
it is a method that does work in complex space."

I agree that in many complex situations, OST can be a great way to draw out
and make room for people's natural creativity and motivation. and that
little else may be needed.

In other complex situations, I've seen OST work well with other methods that
are also well-suited for complexity. For example, at the Surfing Democracy
conference in Batschuns, Austria, our hosting team offered the option of
having Dynamic Facilitation for those OS sessions that wanted to make use of
that method. It worked quite well -- the only difference being that
participants who offered DF OS sessions usually booked a double time slot,
to allow for the greater in-depth exploration that we do in DF. (Of course
we work too hard, Harrison. Yet we have a lot of fun doing it! :-)

with 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 Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 12:04 PM, Chris Corrigan <chris.corrigan at gmail.com>
wrote:
> What a fantastic post. It has summed up much if my own thinking about Dave's
> dismissal of Open Space.
> 
> My take on this is that I have used Open Space to address complexity within
> the constraints if the cynefin framework and it works well. I have seen OST
> help with conflict and create innovation. I have never seen a silver bullet
> that says that "if we do this everything will be perfect". So we have to be
> sensitive to things like power and resources and such.
> 
> I don't know what evidence dave makes his assumptions upon but it's entirely
> possible he has been around poor facilitation for a lot of his career.
> 
> And then what else is valuable about his analysis is that it causes me to look
> at my own practice and see where I have been guilty of some of the things he
> says. It's useful to have a critical view.
> 
> I've known about Dave's dismissal of these ways of working for a long time and
> he's known about my championing of these ways of working. It hasn't stopped us
> having conversations online about our work and it hasn't prevented me from
> using his tools. 
> 
> Chris
> 
> -- 
> CHRIS CORRIGAN
> Harvest Moon Consultants
> Facilitation, Open Space Technology and process design
> 
> Check www.chriscorrigan.com <http://www.chriscorrigan.com>  for upcoming
> workshops, blog posts and free resources.
> 
> 
> 
> On Aug 1, 2014, at 11:02 PM, Harold Shinsato <harold at shinsato.com> wrote:
> 
>>      
>> Chris - thank you again for the mention of the Cynefin framework. I very much
>> enjoyed your youtube presentation about the framework to the Art of Hosting
>> Community at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRn3BM56W74. It was well worth
>> the 55 minutes. I especially enjoyed your questions and answers section.
>>  
>>  After I listened, YouTube presented a related video of a keynote by David
>> Snowden to a Lean, Agile & Scrum conference in Europe. His talk is titled
>> "Making Sense of Complexity". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6RfqmTZejU
>>  
>>  I found his talk brilliant. I enjoyed the insights, but also the challenges.
>> David called himself a "Constructive Irritant" or a curmudgeon. I'm not sure
>> I'd recommend the talk to everyone in this group - but there is one piece
>> that was particularly confrontational and important. I carefully transcribed
>> it for you here. David Snowden makes these remarks while showing a slide of a
>> dragon towering over two Knights, and one Knight says "Oh No! A big, evil,
>> DRAGON!". The other says "Quick! Somebody hold a meeting". Here is what David
>> says (it is at 49:05 in the talk):
>>  
>>  "This sort of hold a meeting mentality, or worse still, I mean if there was
>> an Agile version of this, it would be 'Quick let's hold an Open Space',
>> because we can all have a nice time and nobody will be challenged. Just to
>> make a controversial statement: Open Space is the enemy of innovation because
>> it enforces consensus. There are actually larger group techniques certainly
>> which we and others have developed which actually increase conflict because
>> if you don't increase conflict you don't get diversity and you don't get
>> proper testing. So the Law of Two Feet is the enemy of innovation because it
>> allows people to avoid confrontation where they need to do confrontation.
>> Right, it doesn't mean it doesn't have value, but it's a contextual method."
>>  
>>  This statement from David actually interfered with my sleep. I made me
>> question for a couple hours my deep emotional investment in OST. As mentioned
>> earlier, I saw and still see Cynefin as a way to help promote the use of OST.
>> Earlier in David's talk, when he described how to work in the complex space,
>> his recommendations sounded a lot like an OST event. But quote I offer from
>> him was clearly hostile to OST. My first reaction to his "irritant" statement
>> was that OST does *not* enforce consensus. But other parts of his statement
>> raise interesting questions. Is there value in setting up large group
>> processes that don't allow people to avoid confrontation? Can OST prevent
>> needed conflict?
>>  
>>  My take on Open Space as a method is that it has been traversing the chasm
>> on the innovation cycle between Early Adopter phase, and Early Majority. I
>> had expected Agile to help push Open Space over to Early Majority. It sounds
>> like OST may already be in the Early Majority phase in the Agile community
>> based on David Snowden's missive against it. I've also predicted that OST
>> will start facing open and active hostility as it starts to break into Early
>> Majority. David Snowden may be some evidence this is happening.
>>  
>>  I'm quite curious how others receive this statement against OST from David
>> Snowden.
>>  
>>  Harrison, I quite enjoy what you've written, and I think there's something
>> in OST that most consultants and organizational development experts are going
>> to miss simply because the fundamental assumptions of their traditions go 180
>> degrees in the opposite direction of Open Space, wave riding, and the ancient
>> mystery we might now call our self-organizing universe. For me, I don't think
>> there is any end to the digging, because there is no way a "theory of
>> everything" will ever be able to capture it all. And still, there are some of
>> us that have not yet tired of digging. But my aim in the digging into game
>> theory, Agile, Cynefin, brain science, Tavistock and group relations,
>> sociology, psychology, etc. etc. is not "how to deal with massive complexity
>> ... by ... making models, and gathering data." The joy in the digging is not
>> to try to get to the bottom of it. There is no bottom. There will never be a
>> theory of everything. But making maps, as long as we understand their
>> fundamental limits, is a wonderful thing. As long as we don't confuse them
>> with the territory.
>>  
>>      Harold
>>  
>>  
>>  On 7/31/14 12:59 PM, Harrison Owen wrote:
>>  
>>  
>>>  
>>> 
>>> Good  thinking Peggy, and having spent no small amount of time, paper, and
>>> ink exploring the world of emergence or self organization ­ I can definitely
>>> appreciate the effort. Helping people to develop an awareness of the flow of
>>> the enterprise is definite plus. Having said that, I find myself needing to
>>> issue a caveat. Producing a model, even a very good model, of the flow of
>>> self organization as it relates to complexity, is not to suggest that we can
>>> fully understand the process, even less that we could predict or control it.
>>> My experience has been that the more I know, in the sense of actual
>>> experience and perception, the less I understand. Perhaps it is the advance
>>> of senility, but I find my rational capacity totally overwhelmed and
>>> over-awed by the magnificent mystery of our evolving cosmos. This is not
>>> simply the majesty of infinite space/time ­ but equally the fantastic
>>> complexity, diversity and connectedness of the smallest creatures. The
>>> Hummingbirds, for example who feed at my window. The Paramecium (single
>>> celled protozoa that swim in my lake). A single snow flake.
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Some  might take my statement as the despairing cry of an old man. The ³old
>>> man² part is dead on... but there is no despair. Just the opposite, in fact.
>>> It feels just wonderful! I am reminded of conversations over the years with
>>> various ³Systems Thinking² friends. Bright people all, with enthusiasm
>>> unbounded. They were certain that if they thought hard enough, collected
>>> data long enough ­ for sure they could design the perfect system, or at
>>> least understand the one of which they were a part (their business, etc.).
>>> They sensed victory just over the hill, and I surely wished them well. For
>>> myself, inspired by their effort, I tried to do the same. But for me, the
>>> harder I tried, the worse it got. In fact it became an infinite regression
>>> into ultimate complexity. One could call it an exercise in despair. But that
>>> is not how it felt... Liberation was more to the point with the realization
>>> that you just couldn¹t get there from here...Wonderful!
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> But  how to deal with massive complexity in real life situations if not by
>>> thinking about it, making models, and gathering data? It is not that
>>> thought, models and data were somehow evil or useless, but in terms of my
>>> quest, they only led down a rabbit hole out of which I could not come. And
>>> the harder I tried, the deeper I sunk... It felt just wonderful to just stop
>>> digging! But the complexity of life remained.
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Somewhere  along the line an odd curiosity captured my attention. As our
>>> marvelous natural experiment in self organization (AKA OST) proceeded, it
>>> dawned on me that contrary to all of my preconceived notions, multiple
>>> groups of people of all sorts and conditions from every part of the world
>>> seemingly engaged their complex, self organizing world in an effective and
>>> productive fashion without benefit of prior instruction, models of whatever
>>> sort, intense facilitation (handholding)... In a word it appeared to be a
>>> natural act. Even more counter intuitive (counter to my intuition and
>>> expectations) was the fact that in those (relatively few) situations in
>>> which either I or some colleague had endeavored to ³prepare² the
>>> participants with conceptual models, exercises of various sorts, or
>>> explanation of the process (other than the normal OS invitation to sit in
>>> circle) there was no visible sign of improved performance, so far as I could
>>> see, and in fact there was some indication of a decline. Now, almost 30
>>> years into the experiment I also have to say that my most difficult groups,
>>> without exception, were those composed of The Professionals. Those people
>>> who made it their business to THINK about all the details (facilitators,
>>> systems theorists, etc.). Eventually even these folks ³got with the program²
>>> and everything happened just as it usually does in Open Space. But the shift
>>> occurred, as I saw it, only when they stopped thinking about it.
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> I think there may be a lesson here. Engaging complexity is not primarily a
>>> rational act. Even though complexity is a basic existential concern for all
>>> of us, right up there with Death ­ the resolution to our dilemma will not be
>>> found through rational enterprise (thinking about it). A major frustration
>>> for us all! But the good news is that we do not have to travel that route.
>>> Indeed we really don¹t have to travel at all. We¹re already there!
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Proof  is a slippery word, but I think it fair to say that the 30 year
>>> Natural Experiment of Open Space has rendered a verdict almost as good.
>>> Highly Probable. Given our experience of 1000¹s of groups effectively
>>> dealing with complex, conflicted, inflammable issues prepared only by a
>>> 10-15 minute invitation/introduction...It is highly probable that the
>>> essential skills and mechanisms were already present within the group prior
>>> to their arrival at the circle. In short they were ³already there.² No need
>>> to think about it. Just Do it!
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Once  done, it is then time for rational reflection. In truth our innate
>>> capacity for dealing with complexity, once awakened, flows so seamlessly
>>> that most people hardly notice. At the end of every Open Space in my
>>> experience the people evidenced some real sense of joy, satisfaction,
>>> completion... and little appreciation of how it all happened. It just was.
>>> That is all they know, and all they care to know. That status may be more
>>> than sufficient in the moment, but it is also true that rational reflection
>>> in all its forms (model building, data collection, etc) can enhance the
>>> appreciation, and deepen the experience.
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> As  one who has spent a lifetime doing all that ³rational activity² from
>>> model building to data collection (well, story collection J),  I can truly
>>> appreciate and applaud the effort. Useful undertaking, I think. BUT none of
>>> that can hold a candle to the profound sense of wonder and awe that I
>>> experience in the silence of my not-knowing. That is truly wonderful.
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Harrison
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>    
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> 
>>> Winter Address
>>>  
>>> 7808 River Falls Drive
>>>  
>>> Potomac, MD 20854
>>>  
>>> 301-365-2093 <tel:301-365-2093>
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Summer Address
>>>  
>>> 189 Beaucaire Ave.
>>>  
>>> Camden, ME 04843
>>>  
>>> 207-763-3261 <tel:207-763-3261>
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Websites
>>>  
>>> www.openspaceworld.com <http://%20www.openspaceworld.com>
>>>  
>>> www.ho-image.com <http://www.ho-image.com>
>>>  
>>> OSLIST To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of
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>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>  
>>  
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