[OSList] Authority Distribution in Open Space

Wed Oct 22 09:02:47 PDT 2014

John – your comments regarding groups and individuals certainly track with standard western understanding in which the two are radically distinct and the individual is understood to be the nexus of all action. One person, one vote sort of thing. But I think it is fair to say that the western understanding is not held in all quarters, and possibly not in the majority of quarters (of the world). Alternate opinions obviously do not invalidate the western view, but they might give pause for question.

Over the years, I have found that question growing in my mind, and truth to tell I rather think that the radical distinction between individual and group is overdone. Obviously at a gross physical level the distinction holds – a single body is a lot different from a gaggle of bodies. But that I suggest is only at the gross physical level, and the truth may be somewhat more subtle. Indeed the relationship may be much more dialectic, a matter of polarity, or possibly an artifact of our language and our genuine difficulty to deal with things like that. The waters get a little deep and muddied here, but somewhere along the line I found myself saying, “We have never seen an organization that was not composed of individuals, but I think the reverse is also true...We have never seen an individual not composed of organizations.” And if you doubt that try to describe who you are without mention of any associated organizations (family, business, country, etc). It might appear that individual and organization/group are simply two sides of a common reality? 

You might reasonably ask...Why bother? What good does all this “philosophizing” do? I can’t really answer generically, but I can tell you why I kept chasing down all those rabbit holes. The reasons are two, and are inter-connected. The first is my lifelong fascination with Spirit and Consciousness, two words for the same thing, I think. The details of which you may find, should you care, in most of my books, beginning with my first, “Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organizations.” When thinking about Spirit/Consciousness I found that the distinction between “individual” and “Group,” to be confusing. It was all Spirit, sometimes manifesting as “individual,” sometimes as “Group,” and sometimes, “all off the above.”

My second reason was all about Open Space. As our collective experience grew over the past 30 years it became clear to me that thoughts about what happened in Open Space did not fit comfortably with what I might call the standard definitions of individual, group, organization, and the processes they all engage. For example, I, and I would believe all of us, have witnessed large groups of people making radical departures without any apparent, formal decision making, or even obvious discussion. Words get a little sloppy, but it just seemed they were suddenly flowing in a new direction, and nobody could quite way how that happened. Not always, not everywhere, but often enough to be a noticeable bother. Could I then talk about a group possessing “will?” Not really, but something like that was happening, even if we didn’t have a “correct” word for it.

So John – I think the conversation is still getting richer, and probably no closer to closure. But that’s what makes it fun J

Harrison   

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From: OSList [mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of John Baxter via OSList
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 7:12 PM
To: Harold Shinsato; World wide Open Space Technology email list
Subject: Re: [OSList] Authority Distribution in Open Space

Sure thing Harold

Yes groups have an emergent wholeness, but that does not mean that they take on characteristics we understand in individuals.  We should be careful not to anthropomorphise (?) them.

Groups definitely have aliveness, needs, strengths, weakenesses, robustness, identity... lots of things.  I can understand what these characteristics mean for a collective, as a system, and a collection of individuals.  To me they all make sense.

I can't understand what "will" means for a group.  Nor do I see will in action.  Some similar things I do see... e.g. the individuals in a group give consent for a collective decision... but this isn't the same thing as will.  This is group behaviour emerging out of a collective of individuals, with individual wills, consenting to be identified with a certain position by virtue of membership (some more loosely bound than others, and all with their own interpretation of the contract).

This is not will, it is characteristically different.

I am guilty myself of shorthanding, using individual psychological terms to describe group behaviour.  Sometimes it is pragmatic, but we shouldn't hold on too tight.

Cheers

John Baxter

CoCreate Adelaide Facilitator, Director of Realise consultancy

 <http://cocreateadl.com/localgov%E2%80%8B> CoCreateADL.com |  <http://www.jsbaxter.com.au/> jsbaxter.com.au

0405 447 829

 | 

@ <http://twitter.com/jsbaxter_> jsbaxter_

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On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 2:04 AM, Harold Shinsato via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:

Hi John,

Thank you for your engagement on the OSList - I'm greatly enjoying what you are helping us look at.

When you spoke about "nothing mystical about" the will of the group, and in fact, that groups don't have a "will" - this goes explicitly against the core thinking I've experienced from several different traditions in looking at the group in the light of systems thinking. To take one tradition, here's a quote from what many call the "coaching bible", "Co-active Coaching: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success":

"A team, an organization, even a partnership or intimate relationship exists as a living system, not simply a collection of individual parts. A human system can be thought of as a group of interdependent members with a common focus. The behavior of the system emerges out of the interaction of its players and is greater than the sum of its parts. The system itself is alive, has needs, strengths, weaknesses, values. It can be robust or fragile. In organization and relationship systems coaching, we refer to the system as the 'third entity'."

In this light, would you say more about your thinking that groups don't have will?

    Thanks,
    Harold

On 10/16/14 12:28 AM, John Baxter wrote:

Interesting questions Harold.

My first thought regards "will" - there's nothing mystical about it.  Groups don't have will, individuals have will... groups just exhibit collective behaviour when these wills are aligned... though I guess it takes much more than that!

I think the magic (if not mysticism) of self organisation is that people can and do get together and do things themselves, regardless of formal authority from a boss or a group.  All they need is to get adequate resources working towards an intent, with access to the right levers (including time, passion, social capital...; money is often down the list of importance).

The Formal Organisation assumes that this doesn't happen, but we all know that it does.  Harrison gives good examples.

One or two or three people with aligned will might be enough for "where there is a will there is a way".  Or in the case of the Pirate Party of Sweden (I just posted here about Swarmwise), the required "will" was 225,000 votes... and of course the thousands of activists who needed to campaign in order to catalyse that will.

John Baxter

CoCreate Adelaide Facilitator, Director of Realise consultancy

 <http://cocreateadl.com/localgov%E2%80%8B> CoCreateADL.com  |  <http://www.jsbaxter.com.au/> jsbaxter.com.au

0405 447 829 

 | 

@jsbaxter_ <http://twitter.com/jsbaxter_> 

City Grill— An Election Forum More Magnificent Than Any Ever Seen <http://citygrill.eventbrite.com.au> !, Saturday 18 October 2014
Connect with your candidates, get your voice heard by joining with others in your community, and Influence the future of the city

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Harold Shinsato via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:

Harrison,

A deep bow of gratitude for your thoughts around the patronizing quality of "empowerment" as well as the rich questions raised in your response to Daniel.

Thank you for this quote "...if we understand OST simply to be an invitation to maximize the ongoing process of Self Organization - the basics are already in place and fully operational..."

You say *the basics* are already in place. That seems to imply that using OST (for now at least) is helping us get beyond the basics. Is there anything else that helps us get beyond the basics for Self Organizing?

Also, to your statement "When there's a will (desire/care), there's almost inevitably a way." Whose will? Is it the "will" of the Group/Organization as a whole?

So despite the duly authorized say so of the Boss/Sponsor (or lack thereof), if the "will" of the Group is to do something, it will find a way. Could we better consider "Sponsor" support as the "will" of the Group? And if the will of the Group is at odds with the Boss's will, how do we tell when it'll be ok/safe/legal to run OST despite the Boss "just saying no"?

    Thanks!
    Harold 

On 10/15/14 10:47 AM, Harrison Owen via OSList wrote:

Dan – Your Sponsor Properties are intriguing. My first-take response would be, Sure. All are useful. And the same could be said for having any party. After all, who would want to go to a party when there is nowhere to go, nothing to consume (resources), and the party itself is contrary to all regulations? End of report. Full stop!

But is it? If so a whole mess of teenagers, Gen-X’s, what have you, would be very surprised. My experience aligns with theirs. When there’s a will (desire/care), there’s almost inevitably a way. Somehow the space clears, the consumables manifest, and who cares about the regulations. A fellow parent once said in jest that the fastest way to insure a massive neighborhood teen blowout was 1) Restrict all likely participants to their bedrooms. 2) Remove any and all possible “consumables,” and 3) Issue a proclamation that the Party Can’t Happen. That’s not a joke son. But of course such behavior could never happen in a well managed, bureaucratic organization. Right?

Maybe. But my organizational experience suggests a rather different conclusion. I spent some 10 years in the (US) Federal Health Care establishment, mostly the NIH (National Institutes of Health), which most folks at the time (1970-1980) would describe as hugely bureaucratic and generally well managed. I can’t give you a totally accurate account, but I venture to guess that something like 50% of all the “program initiatives” I was involved with occurred without “official” sponsorship, with little to no resources, and no time or space allocated going in. In one situation where we were working to spell out something called “Competence Based Re-licensure” for physicians – which was about as popular as a skunk at a garden party – we worked together for  better than a year, involved a broad base of experts (including the past Director of NIH), and produced a product which is still having influence today. At the conclusion of our efforts, the Director of NIH came to me and asked what the budget had been. My response: “I don’t know sir. We never found one.”

Doubtless that is just the aberrant behavior of HH Owen. But if so, that marvelous creative source of innovation, The Skunk Works, could never have happened. I think Tom Peters named the critter, but anybody involved with the creation of new products and who honestly describes how they happened, will recognize the beast. The poster child, of course is the “Post-it” from 3M. If you listen to the voice of 3M today, you might think that the new product arose from a careful plan, richly resourced, and fully blessed by the corporate powers that be. Nothing could be further from the truth. Post-its was actually the product of a small motley crew, with virtually no resources, except those they could “borrow,” often operating in secret to avoid corporate censure. 

But what does all this have to do with Open Space? Nothing, I guess. And everything, I do believe. Obviously Open Space as a formal entity (sit in circle...) had nothing to do with any of the above. It didn’t exist. On the other hand if we understand OST simply to be an intentional invitation to maximize the ongoing process of Self Organization – the basics are already in place and fully operational, as has been the case for 13.7 billion years. I have found it very worthwhile to consider the operation of naturally occurring “Open Space” as a guide to our own efforts with OST. And there is a lot to consider, but in the area of “sponsorship” it would seem that what Dan has suggested may well be true, but is by no means the whole story. In a word, there is a lot more than meets the eye. I think.

Harrison

Winter Address

7808 River Falls Drive

Potomac, MD 20854

301-365-2093

Summer Address

189 Beaucaire Ave.

Camden, ME 04843

207-763-3261

Websites

www.openspaceworld.com <http://%20www.openspaceworld.com> 

www.ho-image.com

OSLIST To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of OSLIST Go to:http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org

From: OSList [mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mezick via OSList
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2014 8:37 AM
To: oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
Subject: Re: [OSList] Authority Distribution in Open Space

Hi Harrison,

Thanks for your rich reply and explanation of the role of [empowerment].

Question: 

Is is true that if we have the 5 preconditions as you describe, do we still need the following to have an effective OST event?

(Note I am assuming a private (not a public-conference-type OST event...)

Sponsor Properties:

1.  A Sponsor who has permission from the org, to allocate some of the org's scarce capital, to pay for the event expenses;

2.  A Sponsor who has permission from the org, to invite people to spend a day if they so choose, by accepting the invite;

3.  A Sponsor who has permission from the org, and is willing and able to "keep it open", with all the issues "on the table" with no issues "off limits" as described on page 20 of the GUIDE;

4.  A Sponsor who has permission from the org, and is willing to: 

       a) Represent to the people that the Sponsor's plan is to immediately act the (as yet unknown) Proceedings and (drum roll here...)
       b) ...actually follow through and act on the issues that appear in the Proceedings, immediately following the event.

If the Sponsor is missing even one of these properties, is it advised to proceed at all?

Daniel

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