Russ,
I guess that's why they try to hold such meetings on neutral ground!
I was struck by the metaphor tucked away in "nutrient environment"
like an agar plate.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 5/6/2010 10:23:45 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Kaufmannesque Decison Making
I could no longer resist and went to the web page. The idea is that a group
(of perhaps as many as 1000) people who have some common area of interest get
together, set their own agenda (including perhaps subgroup meetings), and
resolve their differences. And it all happens automatically if no one pushes
it. (Is that an unfair characterization?)
I wish it were that simple. I find it very hard to believe. If it were that
simple, what is it that prevents all conflicts from being resolved in this way?
Why, for example, is our Congress so dysfunctional? It's true that they are
far more structured than an Open Space meeting, but if they threw away all
their rules, I doubt that things would be better.
Here is what appears to be a key paragraph.
The essential preconditions [to a successful Open Space event] are: 1) A
relatively safe nutrient environment. 2) High levels of diversity and
complexity in terms of the elements to be self-organized. 3) Living at the edge
of chaos, in a word nothing will happen if everything is sitting like a lump.4)
An inner drive towards improvement, hence if you are an atom it would be useful
to get together with another atom to become a molecule. 5) Sparsity of
connections This one is a little hard to visualize and was a real surprise to
me. Kaufmann is suggesting that self-organization will only occur if there are
few prior connections between the elements, indeed he says no more than two. In
retrospect, it seems to make sense. If everything is hardwired in advance how
could it self organize?
Many times when groups of people get together to work things out these
conditions don't hold. (Imagine a meeting in a workplace, either corporate,
academic, etc. in which there are some real disagreements about how to proceed
and some real possibilities of gain or loss of power, resources, etc.)
There may not be a relatively safe nutrient environment. Requiring that as a
prerequisite is asking a lot.
There may be high levels of diversity and complexity--although alliances may
form along lines that make things much simpler.
The event may be at the edge of chaos. In many cases the reason for more formal
structures is to avoid falling off that edge into real chaos.
Different people may have different ideas about what improvement means. That
may be the source of the problem.
In some cases pre-existing alliances may exist in which there are many
connections within each camp.
Then what?
-- Russ
On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 6:10 AM, Merle Lefkoff <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Nick,
Open Space Technology is a facilitation methodology even older than you and me.
(Just kidding--no method is that old.) I've been using it for years and
participated just last week in a whole conference in Istanbul using the
technique. At the Madrona Institute we massage it and combine it with
additional processes to see what it takes to break folks loose from old
paradigms. One of those old paradigms is the insistence on moving toward
consensus as a best outcome. In true complexity fashion, we abandon the need
for agreement. Since Steve is a part of our recent Madrona group, he is
experiencing a version of OST.
Merle
Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Everybody, (anybody?),
I stumbled on this, yesterday. Note that it cites Kaufmann for it's inspiration.
http://www.openspaceworld.com/brief_history.htm
It's a system, called for some reason "Open Space Technologies", for organizing
meetings and moving toward consensus.
My Calvinist curmudgeon nature tends to automatically deplore this sort of
thing, (Any time I see chairs arranged in a circle, my first impulse is to run
screaming from the room.) But I have to admit, it interested me. The trick is
that if there is more than one circle, the group can reorganize spontaneously.
I guess people are dragging their chairs around the room.
The hedonist in me particularly liked:
/The Law is the so called Law of Two Feet, which states simply, if at any time
you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor
contributing use your two feet and move to some place more to your liking.
Such a place might be another group, or even outside into the sunshine. No
matter what, don't sit there feeling miserable. The law, as stated, may sound
like rank hedonism, but even hedonism has its place, reminding us that unhappy
people are unlikely to be productive people./
//
Ah, the years I spent in Department Meetings when I could have been "/outside
in the sunshine!"/!
I bet Steve Guerin will like:
/The lesson from Open Space is a simple one. The only way to bring an Open
Space gathering to its knees is to attempt to control it. It may, therefore,
turn out that the one thing we always wanted (control) is not only unavailable,
but unnecessary. After all, if order is for free we could afford being out of
control and love it. Emergent order appears in Open Space when the conditions
for self organization are met. Perhaps we can now relax, and stop working so
hard./
Anybody out there have any experience with it?
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
