Hi all! Harrison wrote
There is never a point to making people uncomfortable. And for sure if the resources (chairs, flip charts etc) are available, certainly they should be used. But as you noted above -- very little of all that is essential. My questions are always -- What is possible? and What is appropriate ? And I know from long experience (sorry for the "elder" statement) that the people will not only survive -- but thrive. There is another consideration: The more you do for somebody, the less they have to do for themselves. I am by no means advocating being hard-nosed and nasty, but I have often noted that adversity is often the mother of invention. Adversity can even heighten and sharpen the experience. And here we are close together again: It is very important to be aware what is really essential. To know what to to keep carrefully in, anyway. Würzburg for example showed, that it is not esssential to provide chairs for this kind of folks. My philosophie from my work as trainer-trainer always was "Never do, what people can do by themselves". Sounds a little bit like your formula, isn't it? But we know, that one of the conditions of self-organization is a "nutrient enviroment". And here we come again to the question what is possible and appropriate in a certain context. For sure it would not been appropriate to skip, for example, the catering supply for 2108, though in my opinion catering is not essential to Open Space. People would have survived one day without food easily, maybe a little uncomfortable, but would have survived. So what is appropriate? It is appropriate to leave the comfortzone and bring in challenges to stimulate people to move by themselves. But I would not support a philosophy of slimming down to nothing, without looking at the circumstances Erich * * ========================================================== 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