[OSList] Authority Distribution in Open Space

Daniel Mezick via OSList oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
Thu Sep 25 06:39:22 PDT 2014


Greetings to All,

For the past several years I have attended conferences of the Group 
Relations community, and encouraged others to do the same. I've studied 
their literature, and harvested some important learning as a result. One 
of the things I have come to understand a little bit better is the role 
of "authority dynamics" in self-organizing social systems.

Link:
www.akriceinstitute.org

Over the past several years I've been using Open Space with intent to 
improve the results of my work in helping companies implement Agile 
ideas in their organizations. We do an initial Open Space, then the 
folks get about 3 months to play with Agile (we carefully use the word 
"experimentation" with management,) then we do another Open Space after 
that, to inspect what just happened across the enterprise. The initial 
and subsequent Open Space events form a "safe" container or field in 
which the members can /learn/... as they explore how to /improve/ 
together by /experimenting/ with new practices, and see if they actually 
work. I call the process Open Agile Adoption.

Link:
OpenAgileAdoption.com

This seems to work pretty good. It seems to "take the air out of" most 
of the fear, most of the anxiety and most of the worry that is created. 
The key aspect is /consent/: absolutely no one is forced to do anything 
they are unwilling to do. No one is /coerced/ to /comply/. Everyone is 
instead respectfully /invited/ to help /write/ the story, and be a 
/character/ in the story...of the contemplated process change. Open 
Agile Adoption encourages a spirit of experimentation and play.

The spirit of Open Space is the spirit of freedom. Isn't it? In the OST 
community, we discuss and talk a lot about self-organization, 
self-management and self-governance. The Agile community also talks 
about these ideas a lot.

So I have some questions. What is really going on during 
self-organization in a social system? What are the steps? What 
information is being sent and received? From whom, and by whom? Is the 
information about /authority/ important? How important? Can a social 
system self organize without regard to who has the right to do what 
work? /How do decisions that affect others get made in a self-organizing 
system?/

Who decides about /who decides/? How important is the process of 
/authorization/ in a self-organizing system? Is self-organization in 
large part the process of dynamic authorization (and /de-authorization/) 
in real time?

What /is /authorization? Can self-organization occur without the sending 
and receiving of authorization data by and between the members?

Is Bruce Tuckman's forming/storming/performing/adjourning actually 
decomposing the /dynamics of authorization/ inside a social system?

The essay below attempts to answer some of these difficult questions. 
I'd love your thoughts on it. Will you give it a look?


Essay: Authority Distribution in Open Space
http://newtechusa.net/agile/authority-distribution-in-open-space/



Kind Regards,
Daniel

-- 

Daniel Mezick, President

New Technology Solutions Inc.

(203) 915 7248 (cell)

Bio <http://newtechusa.net/dan-mezick/>. Blog 
<http://newtechusa.net/blog/>. Twitter <http://twitter.com/#%21/danmezick/>.

Examine my new book:The Culture Game 
<http://newtechusa.net/about/the-culture-game-book/>: Tools for the 
Agile Manager.

Explore Agile Team Training 
<http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-training/> and Coaching. 
<http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-coaching/>

Explore the Agile Boston <http://newtechusa.net//user-groups/ma/>Community.

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