Merle Lefkoff wrote: Russ is partly right.
1. The people involved mainly have a policy interest only--solving the problem of nuclear non-proliferation does not rule their lives. So their determination is based on a combination of professional (diplomatic, think tank. INGO, academic) interest, curiosity about how to step out of the box or collapse it (we introduce them to applied complexity), and a bit of altruism thrown in. 2. Yes. There are three meetings several months apart lasting two and 1/2 days, and the delegates are together all the time. Some of the best "open space" dialogue occurs at the dinner table, where in February our Iranian and Israeli delegates had a mesmerizing three-hour conversation.
Russ Abbott wrote:
I just read the "Two Stories" section of this page <http://www.openspaceworld.com/intro%20to%20pop.htm> (toward the bottom). It seems to me the two examples have these two features in common.1. The people involved have a real interest in solving the problem. For most of them, if the problem at issue is not resolved, their lives will be a lot worse. So most of them have a commitment to succeed. 2. The even takes place over a number of days. That means that people are essentially forced to stay in contact with each other for that period. -- RussOn Thu, May 6, 2010 at 9:22 AM, Russ Abbott <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:I could no longer resist and went to the web page <http://www.openspaceworld.com/brief_history.htm>. 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.) 1. There may not be a relatively safe nutrient environment. Requiring that as a prerequisite is asking a lot. 2. There may be high levels of diversity and complexity--although alliances may form along lines that make things much simpler. 3. 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. 4. Different people may have different ideas about what improvement means. That may be the source of the problem. 5. 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] <mailto:[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]> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ <http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/> <http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ============================================================ 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ============================================================ 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
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