OS Topic 2: Strategic Use of Conversation — Tom Atlee
Including notes from the 1/13 and 1/25 Open Space calls
Part of"DandDTrans," a"community of inquiry and action" regarding the role that Dialogue & Deliberation can play in addressing the mega-crises of our time
Description:How can we increase the leverage - the depth and breadth of systemic impact - of our conversational methods and initiatives so that we can better catalyze the profound transformations we seek in the limited time we have available?
Post Initial Reactions to Tom's framing at the top, and responses to the reactions of others below the post you are responding to.
Here is my new summary of all the conversations held on this topic in this process:
SIXTEEN APPROACHES TO THE STRATEGIC USE OF CONVERSATION
In this compilation"strategic" means making an effort to maximize the transformational impact of our conversational initiatives, knowledge, and networks. The strategic modes listed below, while distinct in their own frame of reference, often overlap or offer synergistic possibilities.
TOP DOWN - Engage the power holders and the decision-makers in transformational conversations, with or without the engagement of other players.
IMMUNE SYSTEM/RESILIENCE - Enable and engage the whole system as a field in addressing what's important to it on an ongoing basis. Example: Conversations that build relationships and trust in communities and among players/stakeholders and engage them in co-creative initiatives to advance shared values, needs, and dreams.
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE - Similar to the"immune system" strategic mode above, but with an additional focus on the knowledge and wisdom needed for the whole system to be aligned to the changing realities of the situations it faces. This involves a capacity to learn as a collective entity. Intelligence involves a cognitive cycle that includes perceiving, reflection, insight, intention, planning, implementation, feedback and assessment which generate insight, etc. In collective manifestations of intelligence, conversation is involved in all these functions.
ACUPUNCTURE - Identify places in the evolving society where there is stuck energy which, if freed up, can enable faster/better transformation. Example: Resolve or transform key conflicts that are dispersing transformational energy in and among certain groups or players.
MOVEMENT CAPACITY-BUILDING - Improve existing conversations in and among particular change agents and change efforts to increase their capacity to succeed at their work.
COMMUNITY/SOCIETAL CAPACITY-BUILDING - Especially in preparation for collective traumatic events as might be expected from the impacts of extinction-level issues. Includes providing conversation-enhancing resources that would enable communities to rebuild a more sane culture from the ruins of a collapsed industrial one.
SUPERSATURATION - Conversations(a) that dissolve people's perspectives into a common concentrated pool,(b) that build pressure for shift within the system and/or(c) that seed the"field" with stimulants - ideas, visions, small groups with shared intention, commitments, exchanges of requests and offers, etc. - that could shift the whole system when shift is triggered by some event.
WE THE PEOPLE - Use very visible and/or widespread high-quality conversations among diverse people to inspire whole populations to realize they can think, feel, and act together and thus"do it ourselves".
SYSTEMIC LEVERAGE - Target points in system dynamics - purposes, incentives, feedbacks, etc. - for maximum shift in social system operation. Also target potentially high-impact systems - political, economic, educational, philanthrophic, etc. - that shape other social systems and collective awareness and behavior.
HIGHER POWER - Ask what nature would do, or open ourselves to wisdom and guidance from higher, deeper transpersonal/collective intelligence. Do this both within conversations and when considering what conversations to convene.
EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS - Focus on the power of certain types of conversation to transform the participants' consciousness, spirit, heart, worldview, presence, awareness. Target both key players and ourselves, for we need to see more clearly and be more present and empathic in order to stimulate life-serving transformation. This can include shadow work and working through despair to connect with the life energy of our caring.
POSSIBILITIES/VISIONS/HOPE - Conversations that invoke the power of human aspiration and co-creativity, rather than just problem-solving. This includes conversations engaging people in exploring, practicing, and promoting existing transformational activities, technologies, etc., that counter hopelessness, cynicism, despair and inaction.
PERMACULTURE/SOCIAL SELF-DESIGN - Conversations through which a community designs new ways of being and doing that they then live into together - over and over again into the future.
Open Space for Online Conversation
SIXTEEN APPROACHES TO THE STRATEGIC USE OF CONVERSATION