Harrison (also Alan, Raffi and all): I am afraid I disagree with you, not so much in the substance of your post, but in your conclusion: "So Open Space is PD and vice versa. No problem". First: OST is not PD. OST offers an opportunity for Positive Deviant people to talk their truth. In this sense, OST nurtures PD people and allow them to positively influence others. But the point is that PD is not only the recognition that there are PD people in any community. It is also a technique to deal with that. If we follow the steps of the PD technique we encounter the following (at least this is one of the possible flavors of it): Steps of the PD Process: ------------------------------ An invitation to change, Define the problem, Determine the presence of PD individuals or groups, Discover uncommon practices or behaviors, Program Design, Monitoring and Evaluation. It is not difficult to conclude that this is a directive process that is contrary to OST foundations as I see them, and that can disempower the community, and make more difficult the emergence of new behaviors and the positive effect of positive deviant people. IMHO, emergence is made more difficult by all directive methods. And there is no need for that. Just open some space and the PD will come and do their job So PD is not OST. More generally, I think that one must be very careful about combining OST (that is an empowering process, based on the self organization of the system) with other methods, especially with methods where the "facilitator(es)" facilitates too much, directing all the action, hence disempowering the people and constraining self organization. This also relates with OST and GCP. GCP uses "a kind of OST" combined with other directive techniques (like Whole Person Process) and, again IMHO, can't be any more considered OST (even if there are many excellent OST facilitators among that crew).
And I am not talking this time about the trademarks and copyrights that are also, IMHO, contradictory to what I consider one of the most important components of the spirit of OST. Regards Artur ________________________________ From: Harrison Owen <hho...@verizon.net> To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Sent: Thu, November 11, 2010 2:41:56 PM Subject: Re: [OSLIST] OST and PD (Positive Deviance) Alan --I can’t say that I have ever used Positive Deviance (defined as my friends Henri and Lisa might) – but being a positive character of a deviant sort living in a self organizing world (there is no other) – I simply can’t imagine the circumstances where I would NOT be using PD. But don’t tell a soul. Anybody with PD has got to be suspect! I joke – but seriously. As I understand it PD is a brilliant application of a very ancient phenomenon – Anomaly. Anomalies, as you know are funny things that happen that shouldn’t according to the “accepted” view of things. The word comes from the Greek “anomos” – which literally means “without the Law” – or we might say outlaws. A perfect example is Open Space. Everybody “knows” that given a complex problem – sitting in a circle, creating a bulletin board, opening a market place will produce only disaster. Strangely (anomalously) it doesn’t. More often than not, anomalies are byproducts of self-organization. The technical word is emergence. As the system adapts to its environment, strange things happen – the system does something it had never done before. Probably most of these things are not useful – but a few are marvelously adaptive, and suddenly the system has a new capability to deal with some issue. The conventional wisdom looks at the new capability and says – that just couldn’t happen. Tragically the conventional wisdom usually tries to eliminate the innovation because it is not part of the Standard Procedure. The Smart Money (and Henri and Lisa have a lot of that) says, WOW! Instead of spending hours and days designing solutions for new problems which usually won’t work very well, The Smart Money lets the system do all the heavy lifting (create the innovation) and then claims the credit and advertizes the result. Now that is real smart – And pretty much what we do all the time with Open Space – which everybody knows is the ultimate scam. The client does all the work, creates the solutions, and even writes the report. This is known as Thinking of one more thing not to do! So Open Space is PD and vice versa. No problem. Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Dr. Phone 301-365-2093 www.openspaceworld.com www.ho-image.com (Personal Website) To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html From:OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] On Behalf Of Alan Stewart Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 12:47 AM To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Subject: Re: OST and PD (Positive Deviance) Dear All I am going to West Sumatra (different parts this time) in Indonesia next week to continue the process of introducing OST to university lecturers and students in the field of health care. http://openspaceworld.ning.com/forum/topics/sewing-seeds-for-ost One of my former PhD students and I will do this together. He will add his considerable experience with PD which can be seen to be a complement to OST in particular contexts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Deviance and http://www.positivedeviance.org/about_pd/index.html Which means that not only will participants become aware of how to engage with communities about their perceived needs for health services. They will also come to appreciate that there may already be effective strategies in place within communities on which to build, eg local initiatives in child care that health care practitioners would not know of unless they looked out for them. Further, how to encourage the invention of such strategies through conversation, and story telling of successes elsewhere, about possibilities. I wonder if anyone has had experience in using OST in conjunction with Positive Deviance? Along with our friends Henri Lipmanowicz, Lisa Kimball and Joelle Lyons Everett, all of whom were present at the wonderful WOSonOS in Marysville, near Melbourne, in 2002. * And who are among the contributors to the new book'Inviting Everyone - Healing Healthcare through Positive Deviance'. Looking forward Go well Alan * Sadly, as you may be aware, the lovely hotel which was our residential venue and most of this country town were destroyed in a bush fire last year. * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist Potomac, MD 20854 USA* * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
