Open Space: Systems develop in the direction of the questions we ask

A notebook of pieces of foundational thinking that informs my practice of Open Space Technology

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Open Space people with Blogs
Michael Herman
Martin Leith
Jack Richhiuto
Jon Husband

Open Space People
Michael Herman
Harrison Owen
Peggy Holman
John Engle
Martin Leith
Birgitt Williams
Judi Richardson
Larry Peterson
Michael Pannwitz
Gabriela Ender
Meg Salter

Other Blogs
Flemming Funch
Tom Coates
Seb Paquette
whiskey river
Thomas Madsen-Mygdal
Tom Peters
Jon Husband
Dina Mehta
David Weinberger
Euan Semple
Doc Searls
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Tesugen.com
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Lilia Efimova
Tom Munnecke
SciTech Daily
Business Daily
elearning post
Pure Content
Rob Paterson
g!
Howard Rheingold
Terry Elliot
Building Tomorrow's Communities
Complexity Digest

Interesting places
Co-intelligence Institute
Toxin Handler website
Fast Company
WIE Magazine
Elisabet Sahtouris
Plexus Institute
Strategy+Business
Dialogue on Leadership
IBM Watson Resarch Center
Edge.org
Wired
Inc.
HBS Working Knowledge
Innovation Journal
Arnold and Amy Mindell

Useful Books Online
Inviting Organization

OST User's Guide in Brief

OST User's NON-guide

Cluetrain

Out of Control

Earthdance

Deschooling Society

My other weblogs Parking Lot
Bowen Island Journal

Monday, August 25, 2003

LETTING GO:

Let's try an experiment. Pick up a coin. Imagine that it represents the object which you are grasping. Hold it tightly, clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your grip, you will lose what you are clinging onto. That's why you hold on.

But there's another possibility. You can let go and yet keep hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still yours, even with all this space around it.

So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping.

-- Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, pp. 34-35

After nearly two years of publishing this blog, it's time to let it go. I began writing here to document my experiences with Open Space Technology and later morphed into exploring notions of the "Inviting Organization" and how that shows up around us.

But there is a danger is getting attached to something like a weblog whose purpose seems to be generating itself at this point. For a while, I've felt that there has been a grasping energy about writing in this weblog. You wouldn't know there was a coin in my hand at all; all you can see is a clenched fist.

Also, the fact that my average hit count has dropped to nine a day has removed some of the external incentive for writing here.

All will not be lost however. I am leaving this blog here along with the archives and I will continue posting musing on OST and the Inviting Organization at Parking Lot, a blog which will be one year old in a couple of weeks. As a result, Parking Lot will take on a slightly different bent than it has to date, perhaps becoming more like one of my all time blog inspirations, The Obvious? which is written by Euan Semple. I've always enjoyed Euan's blend of personal and professional musings, all of which is soaked in a lovely dose of soul. Parking Lot may evolve a little that way too, incorporating some of the things I have learned from Open Space Technology and jamming them alongside the poetry, art and beauty that finds it's way there already. In that sense it may also find itself taking on more and more of the energy of Michael Herman's Global Chicago, another great blog.

So thanks for reading, and please re direct your links to Parking Lot where the fun will continue.

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Friday, August 22, 2003

The annual Open Space on Open Space conference opens on the Danish island of Bramstrup, starting Sunday. As has been the tradition for the last few OSonOS conferences, there is an online component, this year on the wiki at OpenSpaceWorld.net. You are invited to join the international community of Open Space Technology practitioners there.

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Friday, August 15, 2003

STRUCTURE: Great post from Harrison Owen on the OSLIST today regarding the emergence of the Chaordic Organization, (a concept defined by Dee Hock, former CEO of VISA) and its intersection with what is sometimes thought of as the "Open Space Organization." For Harrison, the key is self-organization.

After 20 years with Open Space, I have come to the conclusion that creating an Open Space organization is in fact a waste of time, for all organizations already are Open Space organizations but they don't know it. Stated this way, the notion appears as the height of hubris. Somehow "we" know the truth and all the world is deluded. But with slightly different words, the idea may become somewhat less outrageous. My mantra has become -- Open Space works because self-organization works. And prior to that -- all organizations are self-organizing, it is just that some folks seem to think they did the organizing. When Dee Hock discovered the Chaordic Organization -- it was in fact a discovery, not a creation, I think. Quite happenstantially, and contrary to all expectations, Dee found himself in the middle of a self-organizing system called Visa. His brilliance was that he intuited the essential nature of things, and treated the organization appropriately. Surprise -- It worked. I think we do the same thing every time we open space. So it is not about creation (as in creating the Chaordic Organization or the Open Space Organization), but rather acknowledgement and appropriate treatment. Still less is it about "structuring" either the Chaordic Organization or the Open Space Organization. One thing we know for sure is that given the essential preconditions, structure (organization) happens. Once this structure has emerged/manifest then there are some things we can do to clean it up a bit, but creating structure is not something we need to do. It happens all by itself.

I believe there is enormous synergy possible between Chaordniks and Spaceniks. First, we can share our growing, practical, on-the-ground understanding of the nature of self organizing systems at the level of human systems. This is not a theoretical endeavor, although theory is always helpful as we seek an understanding of what we are looking at. Secondly, I think there is much to share about how to best treat such systems appropriately. One of the major learnings from Open Space is that the imposition of arbitrary Control is not only a no/no -- it is in fact the only way to insure that the Open Space will not work, or work at less than optimal levels. In a word, appropriate behavior starts with massive amounts of letting go of pre-determined outcomes. When we do this, things work better. But this does not mean that we should become totally uninvolved in the process. A workable stance seems to have a lot to do with being totally present and absolutely invisible. And of course, there is much more .

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Tuesday, August 12, 2003

I am right now facilitating an Open Space Technology meeting at the Sliammon First Nation, which lies about 70 miles north by air of my home on the British Columbia coast. Sliammon is using Open Space in a truly innovative process to expand and deepen community governance. My notes on this process, which will soon contain a link to a fantastic background document, are posted at the OSWeblog wiki.

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STRUCTURE: Flash mobs are beginning to take on the status of cultural icon. Until now though it seems as if the point of convening a flash mob is, well, pointless.

I am wondering what would happen if we organized a flash mob that became and Open Space meeting. Gather anyone who wants to to meet at a predetermined time and discuss something like "Self-Organization as Fun" for a half hour. Post the proceedings on a wiki somewhere.

Repeat as necessary.

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OSonOS: The 11th annual Open Space on Open Space is about to happen in "Svenmark" (actually on the isle of Fyn, part of Denmark). The conference wil take place from August 24-26 and, as has been the practice for a number of years now, the proceedings will be posted online at the OSonOSinSwenMark wiki.

This is the second year in a row the wiki has been used for conference proceedings. Last year's OSonOS in Maysville, Australia was the first.

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Monday, August 11, 2003

Have a peek at the AgileAlliance library of articles. There is some very neat stuff to glean from there. If you are an Open Space Technology facilitator looking for language to use in the software development arena, this is it.

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Friday, August 08, 2003

COMPLEXITY: From the Plexus Institute comes this collection of stories on complexity in organizations. There are many stories here about managing and leading by befriending complexity.

The one I'm reading at the moment is the case study of strategy at Federal Metals. They predicated their strategic planning process on this fundamental story:

"Successful companies that survive and prosper in the long run are ones that seem able to learn and adapt. Such companies have an ability to live in harmony with their business environment, to switch from a survival mode when times are turbulent to a self-development mode when the pace of change is slow. Many companies, however, do not learn to adapt or, at least, not very quickly; a full one-third of the Fortune 500 industrials listed in 1970 had vanished by 1983!

In this context then what is planning�s role in corporate learning? In a nutshell the role of planning is to act as facilitator, catalyst and to help accelerate the corporate learning process. The most relevant learning is done by the people who run the business - the operators. So the real purpose of effective planning is to facilitate the ongoing development of the emerging strategies and thinking that the decision makers carry in their heads.

Our ability to learn faster than other players in the industry may be our only long run competitive edge. The tremendous improvement in the results of recently acquired steel service centers is, to a large extent, a result of exposure to the thinking of people in the Metals Group and the resulting �fast learning� experienced by the management teams in the newly acquired units.

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CELEBRATION: Hooray! The Academy of Management annual conference is on in Seattle at the moment and the 2003 Terry Book Award has been handed out. According to the Terry Book Award website:

This award is granted annually to the book judged to have made the most outstanding contribution to the advancement of management knowledge and published during the past two years (i.e., in 2001 or 2002). Books that contribute to the advancement of management theory, conceptualization, research, or practice are eligible. Books intended or primarily used as textbooks are not eligible for this award. Authors need not be members of the Academy. "

And the award this year went Toxic Emotions At Work, the recent book by my father-in-law, and all around good buddy, Peter Frost.

His citation reads as follows:

Frost examines the negative or toxic emotions of organizational life and explains how they can be understood and managed. Uniquely the book provides a critical understanding of the dark world of emotional despair, as it often exists in organizations. The vivid descriptions of toxic environments allow the reader to experience a toxic exchange. Everyone who reads the book will recognize themselves, their friends, their supervisors, and their subordinates in its pages. In the current business climate, we are increasingly recognizing the critical role that emotions play in building strong relationships, fostering teamwork, and building productivity. The book, simultaneously scholarly and practical, provides an optimistic vision of the human relationships at work. In the modern organizational world where competition and rivalry are prevalent, it is particularly refreshing to learn about the value of compassion in organizational and human health. The book is profound, frightening and almost spiritual � It is inspiring!

Big congrats Pete! Now go visit his website and order a copy of this award winning publication.

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Tuesday, August 05, 2003

STRUCTURE: Sense and Reliability: A Conversation with Celebrated Psychologist Karl E. Weick

Karl Weick on reliable organizations and the messy real world.

Can organizations learn to be more mindful?
They can, by adopting some of the practices that high-reliability organizations use. For instance, besides being fixated on failure, HROs are also fiercely committed to resilience and sensitive to operations. Managers at these organizations keep their attention focused on the front line, where the work really gets done. For example, among wildland firefighters, the most successful incident commanders are those who listen best to the people out there actually fighting the fires. HROs also defer to expertise, and they refuse to simplify reality. This last point is particularly important because it has profound implications for executives. As I have often written, leaders must complicate themselves in order to keep their organizations in touch with the realities of the business world. My worry when executives say, 'Keep it simple, stupid,' is that they're underestimating the complexity of their own organizations and environments. But contrary to how we often think about them, organizations are not at all passive; they are extremely active, and they half create their environments. So part of the solution to managing the unanticipated is to get executives to step back and acknowledge just how messy reality can sometimes be."

...

You've often said that plans are overrated, that they can actually make things worse for organizations.
Yes, I usually urge executives to fight their tendency to want to plan everything. Most plans are too specific, and the details create the illusion that the plan grasps everything that is going on and therefore can be trusted. As a result, when you have a plan, you tend not to look for things that disconfirm it. Plans are the opposite of gossip in that they lure us into the trap of overlooking the unexpected. They also deceive us into thinking that we know more than we do. The worst aspect of plans is that they heighten the tendency to postpone action when something unexpected happens. People do nothing while they stand around asking themselves, "What was I supposed to do in this kind of emergency?

Fabulous stuff. The piece on plans is going to get me started on another topic over at my wiki.

link to this entry here |

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