At a workshop last year, Harrison Owen commented that he thought all organizations were self organizing, that they all manage to "muddle through", making their own way, in spite of CEOs, strategic plans, budget constraints and horrible (or sometimes excellent) management practices (including OD consultants). This is one perspective. And, I suspect, that our conscious or unconscious awareness and appreciation (this does feel good when you area a part of it) of this aspect of organizations is what moves us to try to make systems self-organizing. What we are probably really doing (and OS is a prime example of this effort) is to get out of the way of this process as much as possible. How many leaders have thought they were running an organization only later to realize that the organization was very well running itself?
In addition, there are many people who have tried to list characteristics of "self-organizing" systems and many large group consultants whose work is about trying to support these characteristics. Thus we do things like give people a chance to tell each other their stories, talk about past and present experience, reflect on what has worked in the organization, make decisions, share "successes" together and dream together. And then there is the quality of "group", the added element and experience that results from doing things together, sometimes, feeling almost spiritual. For a wonderful treatise on this see "Centered on the Edge: Mapping a Field of Collective Intelligence and Spiritual Wisdom" published by the Fetzer Institute (http://www.fetzer.org). The power of group may be a next step in human development. Kenoli -- Kenoli Oleari, Horizons of Change, http://www.horizonsofchange.com 1801 Fairview Street, Berkeley, CA 94703 Voice Phone: 510-601-8217, Fax: 510-595-8369, Email: ken...@igc.org (or click on: mailto://ken...@igc.org) * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html