[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.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20140925/51f03a25/attachment-0004.htm>
More information about the OSList
mailing list