[OSList] rest of the world catching up with Open Space...

Tue Nov 4 12:38:00 PST 2014

Hello Artur!

Really interesting to hear about your work. And I appreciated your metaphor
of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as opening a Pandora's Box...

I also very much appreciate your point about how different ideas are
"discovered" and then later "forgotten",
only to be rediscovered again...

among other various projects, I am back in grad school now, enrolled in a
PhD at Fielding.
as one small example, it's amazing to me how among all the post-modernist
and "social construction of knowledge" stuff,
hardly anyone (at least here in the U.S.,) acknowledges the work of Karl
Mannheim...

in my mind, he made some significant contributions to revisioning the
dialectic from a "battleground" to an ongoing process of learning to work
creatively with different perspectives... which is what my own work has
been about.

Another source of inspiration for me has been Mary Parker Follett...
written in the 20's, then largely forgotten till the 90's, when she was
honored by Pater Drucker as a "prophet of modern management," her insights
still being at the forefront of much of what is happening today...

Anyway, here's hoping you will find abundant opportunities to recreate your
"Metanoia Center" again!

with all best wishes,

Ros

*Rosa Zubizarreta*

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

On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 7:43 AM, Artur Silva <arturfsilva at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi Rosa, Chris, Daniel, Alan and all,
>
>
> Like Rosa I also found the link to this article that Hamel and Zanini
> wrote to McKinsey through a LinkedIn thread, but only today I had the time
> to read it.
> (
> http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/build_a_change_platform_not_a_change_program
> )
>
> I agree with others that it is a marvelous article, that may explain to
> many large companies - in a language that they can understand - concepts
> that we are aware of, but also others that - as a community - we have never
> explored enough, namely “collaborative platforms” (more about that below).
>
> I also agree with Chris that this could be an article written in the 80's
> or even before (except for the Web). But I have progressively discovered,
> in the last years, that a lot of brilliant ideas about very different
> subjects (from education to sustainability, to transformational change, to
> mention only some of them) have been written from the 50's to the 80's, and
> then disappeared from the radar of Universities, companies and the media.
>
>
> The fall of the Berlin wall was an impressive victory of democracy, but
> had also a very bad side effect as it convinced everyone (and especially
> the radical conservatives), that, if the communism was bad, then capitalism
> was good *and it should be increased, giving more power to the markets
> and increasing (uncontrolled) free trade*. The very dangerous results of
> that are now evident to more people everywhere.
> [I remember, in the closing circle of WOSonOS 2000 in Berlin, someone
> making a reference to the fall of the Berlin wall as "opening more space"
> and I have though that it was probably also opening a Pandora's box, but I
> couldn't find the words to explain that - and it was also clearly off
> topic. I would react differently if it was today - as also probably would
> he...).
>
>
> Like Chris, but in a different direction, in this year I have been putting
> together an approach to the transformational change of organizations, that
> I have called – as some of you would expect - a "Metanoia Center".
> Indeed I had the opportunity to work with two inter-related communities of
> a large Portuguese industrial firm, where we have done:
> -  Two revisions of the literature, one about "Professional Communities"
> (Communities of Practice, if you prefer that designation) and "Online
> Professional Collaborative Platforms" that have been distributed to all the
> members of the two communities involved (those reviews are in Portuguese);
> - one OST event on the subject of "How to Improve Knowledge Sharing in
> Company X?" to whom all have been invited and was attended by about 20
> people, with the procedures distributed to all the invitees;
> - The installation of an online professional collaborative platform
> (similar to Zimbra's one) where all the community was enrolled and could
> participate. [Examples of these types of platforms from the Forrester's
> Report on "Social Platforms) are, for instance IBM Connections, salesforce
> Chatter
> and Communities, Jive, Microsoft Office 365, Zimbra Communities, Tibco
> tibbra)].
>
>
> Unfortunately, as this was a program financed by the EU the time frame had
> a defined end. On the other hand the project had a major delay as the
> former Project Manager was nominated to a foreign assignment, and finally a
> large part of the two communities have been involved in a major project for
> a customer during part of our project. So, for me, the results were
> inconclusive, but I look forward to repeat the experiment anywhere I am
> invited to.
>
>
> I also think that, if this article was available sooner, I would have the
> possibly to distribute it to the high management of the company that have
> never been clearly involved :-(
>
>
>  Regards
>
> Artur
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>   ------------------------------
>  *From:* Chris Corrigan via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
> *To:* Rosa Zubizarreta <rosa at diapraxis.com>; World wide Open Space
> Technology email list <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
> *Sent:* Monday, November 3, 2014 8:52 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [OSList] rest of the world catching up with Open Space...
>
> I think the idea of a change platform is an excellent one.
>
> I have been putting together my own approach to this kind of work
> recently.  i’ve been thinking of it as a kind of operating system with
> different layers. It’s about examining how I work with pretty much anyone -
> the kind of theoretical basis for my work, my own strengths and preferences
> and assumptions.  On top of that are ways of seeing the world that I apply
> pretty consistently and on top of that, “apps” if you will that help work
> get done coherently.
>
> It has been a rewarding exercise to do this, and I can’t recommend it
> highly enough to others in this field.  At the very least it helps make it
> clear to others what you do and why and it has the added benefit of
> allowing you to see your own assumptions about the way the world works.
>
> Having said that, yeah, this article seems very 1985.  I’m pretty sure
> that even in the hallowed belly of McKinsey, this thinking is pretty
> dated.  Being the self-appointed guardians of what is the gold standard of
> management consulting, it kind of bugs me when they publish stuff the rest
> of the world has known for years as if it’s the latest trend.  Having said
> that, it’s always nice to pull out their stuff when confronted with a
> particularly traditional organization that is stuck in its thinking about
> change and complexity and strategy.
>
> Chris
>
> On Nov 3, 2014, at 7:07 AM, Rosa Zubizarreta via OSList <
> oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:
>
>
> http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/build_a_change_platform_not_a_change_program
>
>
>
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