Fused glass button
From a collection of glass buttons, this one stood out. Buttons as fastners, connectors, things that draw two other things together and hold them there echoed in the plug and wire, the implied connection, the plugging into power.
Gertrude Stein wrote Tender Buttons, a collection of still life sketches, tiny portraits of objects, food and rooms, which critic Norman Weinstein called “a mirror for our nonsense, a dictionary for our daily distraction�.”
Buttons as connectors, tender buttons as blogs.
From an email from the Plexus Institute, comes this piece, an interview with Birute Regine and Roger Lewin on complexity in organizations:
Complexity theorists argue that managers should allow creativity and efficiency to emerge naturally within organizations rather than imposing their own solutions on their employees. They can do this by setting some basic ground rules and then encouraging interactions or relationships among their employees so that solutions emerge from the bottom up. Managers can’t predict what the solutions will be. But just as a flock of birds can achieve more than a bird flying solo, it’s likely that the energy and enthusiasm that are unleashed when employees are working together will yield successful results.
This is a fantastic article on the application of complexity theory to organization issues, and it jives really nicely with a practice of Open Space Technology. For example Regin says:
Take the property of emergence, for instance. In computer models based on complexity theory, when autonomous agents interact and mutually affect one another, patterns will emerge–an intrinsic order just waiting to unfold. But it comes about in a nonlinear way, so the order can’t be predicted. When we translate computer models into human terms, the autonomous agents are people and the interactions among them are relationships. Complexity theory underscores the importance of relationships. How people relate to one another affects what emerges in the organization–the culture, the creativity, the productivity.
So if you want a culture that is intrinsically creative, growing and learning, you have to look at the relational level: Can people be real with one another? Is there trust? Do people acknowledge each other and the good work they do? In organizations that have relationships as their bottom line, a culture of care and connection emerges–and it is palpable. In this context, people are more willing to change and are more adaptable because they feel they’re not alone and that together they can manage most anything.
The piece contains good advice on working with a relational, complexity-based model both for consultants (facilitate conversations and invite people to establish real connections with each other) and leaders (“give up the illusion of control and concentrate instead on setting a larger vision for their organizations so that the creativity of their people can emerge.”)
I’ll post the entire article at the Deeper Open Space wiki as well for more conversation, should you wish to join me there.
Just perusing my little collection of poems by Jorie Graham…
Mind
The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop. What is it
they cast for? The poplars,
advancing or retreating,
lose their stature
equally, and yet stand firm,
making arrangements
in order to become
imaginary. The city
draws the mind in streets,
and streets compel it
from their intersections
where a little
belongs to no one. It is
what is driven through
all stationary portions
of the world, gravity’s
stake in things, the leaves,
pressed against the dank
window of November
soil, remain unwelcome
till transformed, parts
of a puzzle unsolvable
till the edges give a bit
and soften. See how
then the picture becomes clear,
the mind entering the ground
more easily in pieces,
and all the richer for it.
Fires continue to burn here in British Columbia. Kelowna, in the Okanagan Valley has suffered some heavy losses with 240 homes destroyed and up to 30,000 people evacuated. It seems as if things are starting to get back to normal for some of those evacuees, but it’s going to take five days of steady rain to get the fire under control.
For a very visceral expereince of what is happening in Kelowna, have a look at this video, produced by Media Button.
A Map, from Micheal Herman’s Inviting Organization
Having Michael Herman here on Bowen Island for a couple of months has been a treat. Usually we communicate by email and phone a lot, but yesterday we went down to The Snug, Bowen Island’s local coffee hangout, and my erstwhile boardroom where we discussed an evolution of the inviting organization.
Seems like what we have been working on for the past little while, grounded as it has been in the model of the four quadrants as described first by Ken Wilber and later by Harrison Owen and then Michael gives us a map for working with the evolution of invitation in organization. What we began to do yesterday was to map out how the practice of compassion in organizations and communities, as a personal practice, can be opened to support ever widening circles of invitation to spirited performance and participation.
We took the four quadrants, as outlined above and changed the icons a bit so that heart stayed with passion, story/vision became eyes (connected to the brain), structure became two feet running to capture the urgency that drives organization and action became a bowl symbolizing the pelvis, or the seat of power, that which supports heart and brain.
Broadly speaking, the four quadrants now collapse into Wilber’s Big Three, (I We and It) which means that we see brain/eyes (I), heart (We) and pelvis/legs (It). Within communities, like with the work we have been doing on Bowen Island, pelvis represents the structures that support the community like municipal government. That is where the power resides. Heart is the courage and the passion of citizens engaged in dialogue, not simply for the sake of contributing to the power/management structure, but also dialogue for its own sake, in support of the connections that arise from the urgency of circumstance. And all that supports a higher level sense making function, captured here on Bowen Island by the Bowen GeoLibrary, but also captured in other places by maps, stories, histories and other clues to the culture.
The same works in organizations, where the power rests in the structures and production activities that are essential to an organization. Heart is the passion people bring to work, passion which can go toxic if, as Michael says, “the passion has not yet extended to include the whole” (a wonderful definition of conflict). All that is supported by the practice of management, which is a head thing, making sense of the world, the structures, the demands and the human resources within and outside of the organization.
It’s possible I think to link these things to personal practices too. Practices like Zapchen Somatics which help the body to rest in the pelvis and clear the central channel that links pelvis/heart/brain together. Open Space Technology is the practice of heart, inviting passion and responsibility and we feel strongly that the practice of compassion in management as outlined by Peter Frost in his book Toxic Emotions at Work and followed up by his work with Compassion Lab is the connection between the heart and brain functions…handling toxins in order to extend compassion within and outward from the organization.
This stuff is all very raw right now, but will continue to evolve. No coincidence that I stopped publishing Open Space yesterday just hours before this conversation took place. Open Space was about the Inviting Organization. We’ve looked at that in practice for 12 months and now it’s time to get bigger.