Life is by it's very nature self-organising. It is about adapting to circumstances.
Let's take this whole idea of survival of the fittest. My problem is I don't believe it. Even the fittest of organisations will not survive if they do not adapt to a changing environment. And how do environments change? Well people, by and large, change them. Allowing for nature that is. Empires don't last because people start to organise themselves around the rules and regulations of the center. The people have to a large extent ignored the Catholic Churches teaching on contraception. Tax payers will ignore the tax system if it becomes too onerous and create themselves an untaxable hidden, economy. Really clever politicians/leaders spot these VMEME changes as they are arising and announce new directions/policies at just the right moment. Bush has the support of a large section of the American voters (not necessarily the people). Blair is the same. But Blair has to deal with a media that feels itself more able to question the status quo (based on my impression of the US media, I know). This does not mean that there is not a whole bunch of self-organising going on all over the states. The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq has changed the environment. Now we have to watch out for our "friends" as well as our enemies. We here in Ireland have a political establishment that is scared as hell that US companies will pull out of Ireland if they upset the White House. So they do a bit of self-organising and start smudging their words so you have no idea what they think. It's a bit like telling your spouse they look really great in that T-shirt. Just look how once high class neighbourhoods become run down. The rich move little by little to the better hoods. The price falls a little at a time. Until it's a low income zone. Look how quickly fashion changes. And how hard schools that insist on uniforms find it to keep pace. Each generation self-organises just to be different from their parents. My boys are growing their hair long, just to be different from me! Heh, lads. I got photos. Do the cable channels really believe that people will pay for the same repeats on 500 channels for ever. Do coffee houses really believe that coffee houses are anything more than a fashion. As we in Ireland are about to get our first STARBUCKs this year, I'll bet the alternative is already beginning to emerge in LA or San Fran, out of the never-ending collective creative genius of humanity. Where ever one or more are gathered...... someone will think it's cool, and different, and new and so will their mates. They'll spread the word and wooosh, it'll be. Energy flows. Force gets resisted, eventually. But change is enevitable. Shay At 14:38 17/03/2005, you wrote:
Artur Wrote: I think we are seeing reality from two different points of view (it is the same reality...). Precisely! If I may put some words in your mouth I would guess that you feel that the various acts of the several players establish the organizational context. They organize, they set procedure, they out line protocols they essentially create the organization. Although it may also be true that there are also elements of self organization. I find myself looking at precisely the same organizational reality and coming to a different conclusion. I feel that the organizational context is fundamentally established by the powers of self organization, although it may be true that certain individuals and groups make every effort to organize, establish procedures, outline protocols, and manage the result. I suppose someday you could prove which view is correct, but that day may be a long time in coming. In the interim I think we are left with an interesting situation in which proof is not possible, and so we are at liberty to look at things either way depending on what makes the most sense to us. Tradition is certainly on your side, and for sure the majority of people in organizations of all sorts would agree with you. Personally I have found myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the traditional view. Perhaps it is the anarchist or revolutionary in me, but I honestly feel it goes deeper than that. For me the critical points of discomfort appear in the anomalies I perceive. Tradition says that organizations are created by some individual or group sitting down to design the mechanisms and then implementing them in time and space. However, whenever I have attempted to do a careful natural history of how things actually occurred I have found that what is said and what happened are at some critical variance. We say there was a nice, linear, sequential process. But upon closer inspection it appears (at least to me) that the clean linearity, to say nothing of rational process was imposed after the fact. In the moment it was pretty much of a mess which was cleaned up when the story was told. And mess of course is the word we use to describe a situation that is out of control, is not following the plan. Mess is also the way many people have used to describe the generative situation for a self-organizing system. Another word would be chaos. So two ways of looking at things. And the way I have chosen, almost reluctantly, just makes more sense to me. I say reluctantly because it did not happen over night, and it certainly has gotten me in a world of trouble, misunderstanding and marginalization with many of my colleagues and friends. Frankly it would be a lot easier if I could just go along with the traditional view. When I say it makes more sense I have a number of specifics in mind. With reference to this particular community and Open Space Technology, I long ago came to the awareness that if the Traditional view was correct, Open Space, as we all have experienced it, simply could not happen. Everybody knows that inviting a large group of antagonistic people to solve a complex issue without the benefit of pre-planned agenda, an army of facilitators managing a carefully controlled process was insanity. And yet this is an insanity we all have experienced on countless occasions. Worse yet it works. And it shouldn t, But it does. So I asked my self What view of reality would allow for Open Space? And the answer that came (as everybody here on OSLIST knows ad nauseam) was the primacy of self-organization. In a world viewed as a totally, all levels, all sectors, all scales self-organizing system what happens in Open Space is predictable. In a world understood as the mainline organizational tradition would under stand it Open Space is impossible. But one might reasonably ask is it legitimate to extrapolate from this funny Open Space experience to the larger world of traditional organizations? I think so, and that has been the adventure to date. And it certainly makes sense to me. But others will think differently, which makes for a good conversation. Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20845 Phone 301-365-2093 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Artur Silva Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 6:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: NO Such Thing as non-self-organizing system A very short comment in another 10 minutes, Harrison. I think we are seeing reality from two different points of view (it it is the same reality...). If I understand well, you are too much concerned with bosses that think they are in charge. I don't think that those "in charge" control organizations. I am thinking more of something similar to the "invisible hand" - rules, regulations, assumptions taken for granted, etc that condition you, myself, and all the other humans. We don't act like quarks and quasars, and the same rules don't necesseraly apply.. I insist that reading Argyris (in Action Science) is very conveniente. He shows how, in organizations, a Model 1 of behaviour is always present, and that it closes the space as it closes communication. The merite of Open Space IMHO is that it reduces or supresses Model 1 and enhances Model 2. But that would need a very big explanation that I have not the time now to give. But, don't worry - some day YOU will see the light ;-) Warm regards Artur Harrison Owen <[email protected]> wrote: Artur Wrote: This allows me to say that I agree with you (except perhaps in your mantra, because I still think that there are some organizations - like the Catholic Church and most armies, some companies and even countries - that have a lot of success in acting as closed systems - even if there are also open processes happening in them. Do you Yahoo!? <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/mobile/*http:/mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo>Take Yahoo! Mail with you! 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