Dear Tony,
the first sentence in the wikipedia entry is
"Sociocracy is a theory of governance that seeks to create
psychologically safe environments and productive organizations."
OST focuses on expanding time and space for the unfolding of the forces
of selforganisation.
It is not interested nor attached to any outcome.
However, what regularly happens in OST events are such things as
creating safe environments, productive organisations and many other
things. These are then felt to be the aim of ost events. Wrong. Stuff
like that evolves because there is no other goal than the one postulated.
cheers
mmp
Am 28.10.2022 um 17:46 schrieb Tony Budak:
Hi Michael,
Love the way you shared your thinking and wrote here below. Thank you.
Would you kindly share any insights regards
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy
Thanks again and again,
Tony
On 10/28/2022 7:12 AM, Michael M Pannwitz via OSList wrote:
Dear Tonnie,
in your email of October 23 you wrote:
"We tried to translate the steps from an offline environment to an
online one..."
Looking at the document I noticed that you used "voting" in the
Action Planning part.
Way back, when actively working as a facilitator (more than a decade
ago) I also used "voting".
However, I used the word "weighing" (gewichten, in German).
I was an old hand outfittet with many voting tools in my prior 3
decades as an OD consultant (took me a long time to work myself out
of the OD mode).
Keeping a close eye on everything that took place in the os events we
noticed that "voting" along the line of
"what you think is most important to work out in action plans" often
led to the "odd" behavior that the most important item was not worked on.
After a while and being aware that "voting" is a statistical approach
we felt that the most important aspect would be what took place at
the beginning of an os when posting issues: Heart and meaning,
passion and responsibility.
So we decided to simply have Action Planning in open space mode.
This meant that on the last half day (usually on Day 3 of an open
space), participants met in the circle and posted "projects" they
wanted to work on. Oddly enough, some of the projects posted
apparently had no direct connection to what had happended in the
divergent part (the first two days). (Maybe encouraged by one of my
comments in the beginning such as "Divergence was in the last two
days, now the focus is on projects that I am passionatly interested
in and will be responible for")
Since this approach worked beautifully and was always a dynamic and
intensive way of getting into the action-oriented nature of os
events we decided to put "voting" or "weighing" into the box labeled
"one less thing to do".
In November of 2013 I had the privilege to co-facilitate the Action
Planning phase of the 3-day European Learning Exchange in Utrecht
convened by Frank Little (hi there).
Nobody has done what is called "research" on this and much other
strange stuff that happens in os. And I think thats perfectly ok,
knowing that what works is important and being aware that at least I
will never understand the mysteries of systems and the force of
selforganisation. Every time we closely watch the prerequisites for
having an open space event including all other experimentally tested
aspects of our craft, it works perfectly.
All the events that did not work that I heard of or was part of, were
not sufficiently close enough to duplicate the effect of the tested
experiment (missing even one of the prerequisites or trying to get
ost working on a wicked "business issue" within one day where
actually 3 days were required or not having enough of the system in
the room... ).
And at this point I usually tell the story of sometimes meeting folks
on the public transportation system in Berlin staring at me and
suddenly bursting out with "open space". When we figured out which
open space the other passenger meant and where it took place and what
it was all about, I would ask what took place after the event.
Invariably, folks told me things that I could in no way connect to
the os, not even after looking at the documentations that I collected
in my archives.
Yes, I knew it was the ripple effect, completely beyond any control.
Well, the old admonition "never delude yourself to be in control"
(never delude yourself in understanding complex systems) pops up.
I invite you to try the "Action Space" approach in one of your next
online events.
The script you can find on pages 168 to 175 of the book Meine open
space Praxis
https://www.westkreuz-verlag.de/de/Meine-open-space-Praxis-E-Book
https://www.westkreuz-verlag.de/de/Meine-open-space-Praxis
Frank Little might have an English version of the "Action Space" that
was recordet at the European Learning Exchange in Utrecht back in
2013... there were 20 participants from Finland, Germany, Italy,
Netherlands and Poland.
Hi to you all just in case you kept reading up to this point.
Have a great day and lets talk more at the WOSonOS in Berlin next year
mmp
Michael M Pannwitz
Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin
+49 30 [email protected]
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Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin
+49 30 [email protected]
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