In preparation for an upcoming Open Space event I will be facilitating for the Raleigh-Durham Agile Leadership Network (ALN), I have been reading books by Harrison Owen. He is the originator of Open Space Technology, and writes extensively on the topic. He has several books covering the concepts of open space and how self-organizing systems exist. In fact, he makes an argument that
there is no such things as a non-self-organizing system.
After reading Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, I dove into Wave Rider. This was an extremely far reaching and thought-provoking read on many aspects of organizational behavior, systems, and human dynamics. Read more about Wave Riders on OpenSpaceWorld.
Owen’s central premise of the book is
High Performance is the productive interplay of diverse, complex forces, including chaos, confusion, and conflict, and characterized by wholeness, health, and harmony.
and that
All human systems are self-organizing and naturally tend toward high performance provided the essential preconditions are present and sustained.
After a solid overview of several concepts from Stuart Kauffman, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and others, Owen goes on to describe the eight essential steps for the care and feeding of self-organizing systems.
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Do Your Homework Before you Start — consider where you want to go, why you want to go there, and what might happen along the way.
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Extend and Invitation — effective self-organization in human systems starts with voluntary self-selection in response to genuine invitation.
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Come to the Circle — this can refer to a circle of the mind, the image of an organization, or a real time/space circle of chairs, but a circle nonetheless.
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Welcome Passion, Responsibility, and Authentic Leadership — make sure the whole person is welcome.
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Remember the Four Principles — 1) Whoever comes are the right people. 2) Whatever happens is the only things that could have. 3) Whenever it starts is the right time. 4) When it’s over it’s over.
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Observe the Law of Two Feet — If at any time you are neither learning nor contributing, you should use your two feet and move to a more productive place.
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Keep Grief Working — the forces of chaos, confusion, and conflict do their essential work, and some inescapable level of destruction occurs . . . all good, all useful, and all attended with some degree of pain.
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Formalize the System — In the world of self-organizations all the “heavy lifting’ of system design and implementation is taken care of by the system itself. . . But there is still much work to be done.
Until the Next Iteration . . .
Jason