Hi Harrison, This part:
"...Communication is reduced to small restricted areas and allowed to follow narrowly defined channels." Seems to work pretty good with the words of our friend Mel Conway: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communicationstructures of these organizations —M. Conway[2] What do you think? Daniel www.OpenAgileAdoption.com Sent from my iPhone On Mar 7, 2015, at 3:52 PM, Harrison via OSList <[email protected]> wrote: > Emergence is a nice, warm cuddly word. Makes you think of springtime flowers > making their random appearance, little babies entering the world – everything > just sort of popping up when and as it chooses. I can understand why this > cuddly word has replaced the harsher “Self Organization” in the vocabulary of > many people, but it is the same stuff by another name. Emergence is simply > what life does – it just pops up randomly and never follows a plan, or > certainly not any plan we might have made. The shift from “self organization” > to “emergence” is, I suspect, a lightly veiled effort to sugar coat the > reality that Emergence (self organization) is the manager/executive’s worst > nightmare. And if you are going to have a nightmare, best it be a warm and > cuddly one. > > Face it. Emergence is the last thing that any competent manager wants in > their organization. The Enemy. It is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and quite > unknowable. Without prediction, control, and knowledge, where would any self > respecting manager be? The uncomfortable answer: Out of a job. > > The response has been the elimination of Emergence at all costs. The first > line of defense is carefully designed organizational systems, crafted to > prevent variability and deviance. Each working unit is precisely defined so > as to integrate with all others in a seamless manner. To insure effective > operation, these systems are encased in layers of control – not just one but > controllers controlling the controllers, and so on ad infinitum. Rounding out > the picture, we have multiple training programs, skillfully constructed to > insure total compliance with system demands. > > The effort to date has been massive and in many ways, quite productive. > Unfortunately there appear to be certain unintended consequences. For > example, as organizations operate within narrower degrees of variance, > innovation, creativity, agility, and flexibility almost disappear. New > Leadership (one might say emergent) is noticeably absent – after all who > could tolerate such Emergence? Communication is reduced to small restricted > areas and allowed to follow narrowly defined channels. This sounds good, but > it renders the often praised, but rarely seen Cross Disciplinary/Departmental > cooperation virtually non-existent. Lastly, individuals employed by such > systems are perhaps less than content. Even though they spend a majority of > their waking hours so engaged they appear to devote major energy to thoughts > of escape. They long for the weekend, Thank God for Friday, would rather be > fishing, and often compare their situation to being in jail. I even heard > some say that they felt like rats in a cage. > > These unintended consequences are apparently taken to be a small and > inescapable price for the productivity we have achieved. In addition, an > appropriate fix is readily available. Indeed we have a whole profession > devoted to the effort: Consultants. These wise purveyors of Leadership > Development, Communication Skills, Creativity Enhancement, Employee > Motivation, Conflict Resolution, Meeting Facilitation, Change Management – > all packaged in suitable interventions, programs, and “tools,” are ready to > assist. For a fee of course. > > Taken as a whole, it would seem that we have all bases covered. Productive > systems function without distraction from pesky Emergence, and such > unintended consequences as there may be are well handled by the > professionals. Could it get any better than this? Probably not unless... > > ...unless it were to turn out that our organizations were actually part of > life. Life, of course is incredibly complicated with many unknowns, but it > does seem that we have learned a few things. For example, living creatures > really don’t do very well when locked in a box. They may survive, but in very > reduced terms. Life always seems better with some basic fundamentals, such as > fresh air to breath, space to move about in, interesting and diverse > experiences and challenges, mountains to climb, and unknown hills to peer > over. Always strange, always new, always a challenge, and never quite what we > might expect. You could say Life is emergent. > > This list certainly not inclusive, and hardly scientific, but given such > basics, life does seem to work itself out. Most interestingly – Given the > basics, living creatures naturally display amazing creativity, agile > adaptation to new opportunities and changing environments, and are constantly > in communication with their fellows and other creatures. Along the way, they > create complex and elegant structures, manage such conflicts as they have in > ways that create minimal damage and maximum gain, and they have been doing > all this for a long, long time. However, deprived of such fundamentals, life > turns nasty real quick. For example, if you take a dozen perfectly > respectable, amiable, well behaved rats and squeeze them into a small box – > they will quickly kill each other. > > An odd thought does arise. It would seem that most everything we do in the > name of organizational effectiveness is antithetical to what Life requires. > Should our organizations be part of life it would then follow that such ills > as we experience (loss of agility, creativity, leadership, etc) are actually > self inflicted wounds. Doubtless our various attempts to aid the wounded > through our multiple programs, interventions and tools, are commendable, but > truthfully we are only dealing with problems we have created. It might make a > lot more sense to just stop shooting ourselves in the foot (and elsewhere). > > For a next step, we might just open up some space for life to breath. Won’t > solve everything, but it could be a good place to start. And we might just > find that the Enemy (Emergence) is our friend... > > Harrison > > > > Winter Address > 7808 River Falls Drive > Potomac, MD 20854 > 301-365-2093 > > Summer Address > 189 Beaucaire Ave. > Camden, ME 04843 > 207-763-3261 > > Websites > www.openspaceworld.com > www.ho-image.com > OSLIST To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of > OSLIST Go > to:http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org > > _______________________________________________ > OSList mailing list > To post send emails to [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > To subscribe or manage your subscription click below: > http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org > Past archives can be viewed here: > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
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