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<TITLE>RE: non-convergence</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>G'day Chris</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Really enjoyed the story about the folks in British Columbia, especially the bit about non convergence. I have to admit to having my fair share of struggles with this part of an open space event. Convergence was a real struggle at our office's last OS workshop. Remember I said half the room championed freedom shock. Havn't been able to put my finger on it, but its always felt like stuffing an exploding suitcase.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I followed your Bolg and read Michael Herman's words on this too. I love it!</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>We are in the process of re visiting our office's Open space event by having, yes, another whole open space workshop. I will deffinately be recommending we use Non-convergance as it makes the whole thing pretty seamless. Those who want to can pick up where we left off, and those champions of freedom shock can champion that again if they wish.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Are you still coming to New Zealand? Let me know if you are?</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Mike Copeland</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>-----Original Message-----</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>From: Chris Corrigan [<A HREF="mailto:chris@CHRISCORRIGAN.COM">mailto:chris@CHRISCORRIGAN.COM</A>] </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Sent: Saturday, 13 March 2004 9:41 p.m.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>To: OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Subject: Organizations as complex relational processes, narratives and emergent action (and a story!)</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Okay, a dose of theory here.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>I came across a paper by Frank Smits from Sydney, Australia, courtesy of the Plexus Institute called How stories affect human action in organisations,</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>(<A HREF="http://website.lineone.net/%7efrank.smits/Essays/Stories.htm" TARGET="_blank">http://website.lineone.net/%7efrank.smits/Essays/Stories.htm</A>) last week. I've had a chance to read it and it posits a number of interesting points.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>My reading of the paper follows the development of these key ideas:</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> 1. Organizations are not "things" but rather relational processes.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> 2. Human beings use story to represent and understand the patterns of experience.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> 3. Stories only represent partial versions of reality and so narrative interpretation is subject to power dynamics.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> 4. Powerful storyteller can make people "captives" in the story; this is the process of mythmaking.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> 5. "Organisations, in fact the 'organising via relating, exist in order to 'do something'. Hence somehow, the individuals in the organisation need to 'act'...if our identity is clear and we are actively interconnected in interdependent processes that when information comes available, action can emerge. The information sharing happens in interactive processes between individuals (either inside or outside the 'organisation')."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2> 6. "In the language of Gover (1996) 'our identities are being constitutes and reconstituted with their physical, cultural and historical contexts'. The roots of narratives and identity, he claims, 'merge, inextricably embedded and nurtured in the soil of human action'."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2> 7. Narratives that resonate with an individual's experience create meaningful and sustained emergent action.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> 8. If people in organisations don't pay attention to the Individual Intention, the likelihood of the vortices of the narratives in those organisation resonating with the vortex of the Individual Intention is purely one of chance. It is due to individuals themselves to actively spend the time to understand other people's Individual Intention.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2> 9. By consciously working on understanding Individual Intention and consciously work on fuzzifying the narrative the complex responsive process of interaction between the people will move to the attractor at the critical point. This can only happen in self-organised process of interactions where meaning can start to flow.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>All of this is interesting stuff, especially the deep connection between narrative and action. Organizations as relational processes, as arenas for the practice of storytelling and mythmaking (with it's attendant careful attention to compassion) and all of this as a propellant to emergent action. It's a lucid thread.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>For my money the last point is the most interesting and an example of it cropped up for me in an Open Space meeting I facilitated last weekend.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I was working as part of a team developing a transportation demand management plan for a city in British Columbia, basically coming up with a strategy to get people out of their cars. As part of the process we convened a 1.5 day Open Space meeting with the intention that the participants would begin to work on citizen-based initiatives to get the message out.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>These people didn't know each other, and so Day One was taken up with a lot of conversation about the "typical" issues. The day was essentially about getting to know each other, testing out ideas and theories, exploring the stories and myths about the issue and basically sussing out the power relationships, the allies and the opponents. There was very little new content, but the day was a rich field of developing and dissolving structure, process and relationships, coalescing around stories. Because we were in Open Space and the agenda was driven by deep personal passion and responsibility, the process of group-forming was accelerated. By the end of the day there was one story that emerged to invite action. Someone mentioned that in the very neighbourhood in which we were meeting, the world's first curbside blue box program had been initiated. Whether or not this was an observable fact, it became the story upon which we hung the potential for citizen action in Day Two.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Day Two was a two-hour action planning session, and I opened with that story and my interpretation of the fact that we simply don't know when and how small initiatives will blossom. And so the invitation for action planning was to start something small that could change everything.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Within two hours there were three major initiatives sketched out. One involved closing a street down for a one-day festival promoting biking, walking and bussing. One was a project to have coporations sponsor evening busses into town from the suburbs on weekend nights to encourage teenagers to stay out of their cars. The third idea was the formation of a website and the coordination of letter writing and lobbying campaigns to align actions on specific issues. All of these ideas had champions, follow-up meeting dates and committees or teams of people committed to working.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I found the way this Open Space event evolved to be right in line with a few of the paragraphs from Smits' paper:</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> "By consciously working on understanding Individual Intention and consciously work on fuzzifying the narrative...the complex responsive process of interaction between the people will move to the attractor at the critical point. This can only happen in self-organised process of interactions where meaning can start to flow. That is the domain of dialogue; it is the art of 'thinking together'... Or, in the words of Bohm:</FONT></P>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> From time to time (the) tribe</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>(gathered) in a circle. They just talked and talked and talked, apparently to no purpose. They made no decisions. There was no leader.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>(.) The meeting went on until finally it seemed to stop for no reason at all and the group dispersed. Yet, after that, everybody seemed to know what to do (.). Then they could get together in smaller groups and do something or decide things.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2> -- David Bohm, On Dialogue (quoted in Jaworski, 1998: 109)</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> In this quote Bohm describes how dialogue as a way of people interacting manages to let meaning emerge because of people understanding each other's Individual Intentions. Effective action could emerge. Note that the course of action was not decided by someone outside the process or decided via a compromise! It was emergent because the process allowed the Group Intention to move to the Edge of Incoherence."</FONT></P>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>This is exactly what happened, with people saying in the closing circle that they were very surprised at how quickly the action plans came together. This echoes my experience of using an Open Space action planning process we call "non-convergence," so-called because it eschews voting, preserves the diversity and complexity of the Day One conversations and keeps the space open for subtle pattern and meaning-making by those motivated enough to initiate action.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Smits' paper gives me a nice theoretical frame to understand that process. I thought it might spark some discussion here as it suggests a move from seeing organizations as complex adaptive systems to complex relational processes. In Wilberian terms, that seems like a very big shift from the right hand side to the left hand side.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>At any rate, I've also posted this to my weblog at <A HREF="http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/2004_03_01_archive.html#10791665" TARGET="_blank">http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/2004_03_01_archive.html#10791665</A></FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>3320999533 for comment.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>---</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>CHRIS CORRIGAN</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Bowen Island, BC, Canada</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>(604) 947-9236</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Consultation - Facilitation</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Open Space Technology</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Weblog: <A HREF="http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot" TARGET="_blank">http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot</A></FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Homepage: <A HREF="http://www.chriscorrigan.com" TARGET="_blank">http://www.chriscorrigan.com</A></FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>chris@chriscorrigan.com</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>(604) 947-9236</FONT>
</P>
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