Harrison and Paul: I agree that the "care and feeding" of self-organization is a good theme for conversation and maybe a book. I have been in conversation with an interesting guy named Richard Knowles who has written the book "The Leadership Dance" which he believes is about enabling leadership to foster self-organization. His experience is similar to Paul's in that he was the manager of a number of DuPont plants that faced some environmental issues. He tells the story of his discovery of how leadership needs to encourage or foster self-organization. He is now retired and a consultant. (The Center for Self-Organizing Leadership, 2002. - You can google the center)
His book is about using the Enneagram as a tool for understanding the relationship between intentional management and self-organization. He heard us on the Plexus call about Open Space and then called me as we are not far apart. He does not really know Open Space Technology as a way of practicing self-organization. Like many others, his primary focus is theory or perspective which can lead to certain kinds of practice (a friend of Meg Wheatly). It is interesting how the two main "levels" of the Enneagram, to him, suggest a deep structure of self-organization overlaid by steps in a process that create the conditions for it, or not. The steps have some similarities to what we do to Open the Space - it is much, much more complicated. I've also been thinking a lot lately about "self-organization" in relation to Ken Wilbur's 4 quadrants. Self-organization is the "description" of what systems do - the lower left quadrant. All the other quadrants are also active and worth exploring and might help us with the care and feeding. Larry Larry Peterson Associates in Transformation Toronto, ON, Canada 416.653.4829 <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] <http://www.spiritedorg.com> www.spiritedorg.com * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
