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

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Image courtesy of www.NewStories.org

Initiated by: Tom Atlee on 12/29/14

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?

Back to +January 25th Open Space Main Pad

Detailed background statement here

Open Space for Online Conversation

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.

NETWORKS - Use existing networks; develop transformational networks; engage influential well-networked people (or nodes in networks) in transformational conversation. This strategic logic also applies to - and adds further dimensions to - the dynamics of conversations among delegates and stakeholders who represent others.

FULL SPECTRUM CONVERSATIONS - Appropriately use conversations (a) that orient and connect, (b) that unite people's collective life energy, (c) that facilitate emergence (usually through safe exploration of diversity and dissonance), (d) that nurture wise self-organization, and (e) that organize specific action commitments. These five kinds of conversation have very different qualities and requirements, yet all are needed for fully responsive, productive, and transformational conversational initiatives.

META-ISSUES - Convene conversations concerning issues that have a make it-or-break it impact on all other issues and imply deep systemic and cultural transformation - e.g., climate disruption, economic inequity and materialism, degradation of democracy, etc.

Notes for Jan 25 Open Space session - Tom Atlee

Gerry - Permaculture design certification - many of these language structures would fit in permaculture design and development, optimizing regenerative systems. Socially transformation permaculture - interior landscape issues - human nature(al) system as metaphorical. The flow lines and through-lines in human systems (like the river analogy). Buckminster fuller's geometric work in systems design. Teleological assumption (not theological) - positive dynamic/drive as opposed to entropy.

Mark Spain - 12 frames as good summary. Mark's metaphor of the rapids. Systemic leverage is a different way of playing with systemic change; leverage assumes the system is too big and you are outside it, leveraging it. Systemic transformaiton is more about us evolving with it. Tensions among those who want change end up in violence; existing system hangs on tight, and change agents push against that; then system tranforms, then new change agents/Regine in charge, power dynamics shift, Frech revoloution. The new people feel they have truth and hang on to it with fear rather than abundance and love and trust. When they set up their new regime they don't have much love and trust; residue of fear, trust, withholding - dominates how they implement change and end up behaving like the old powerholders operated despite their awareness and attempts to avoid it. Systemic transformation requires understanding that dynamic. How do we have to be as change agents to understand when we're transforming the system to one with love trust openness to tension that creates to avoid the ploys that come when we operate out of scarcity and we know what's best for you. Systemic transformation that mimics nature and about different levels of consciousness. Humans affect everything; not acts of god or mechanical universe; our evolution of our thinking is part of the evolution of the planet. Sharing with all other organisms, how do we transform the choice-making systems so that when we shift we have a system that can evolve from an elite group that dominates. Tom's work and Jim Rough's work in choice creating, Dynnaic Facilitation, and Wisdom Councils. Systemic leverage is one of the 12 but distinct from systemic transformation.

Advocating self-organization can be seen as a "trip"

Jock - swarm intelligence - a few agents can have more influence than others if centrally located in the network. How to put our knowledge of self-org in the center of conversations about systemic change. Very large numbers of conversations about some aspects of systemic change; technologies like this offer possibility of a metaswarm emerging; could we place ourselves in the most populated areas of the networks of swarms so that everyone could benefit from our knowledge.

Lucas Cioffi - Rather than provide content for conversations, you can provide structure - self-organizing, learn by doing, it becomes apparent by the conversation you convene. People self-org at all levels; sometimes they are delegates or representatives of communities (delegates); convening is similar. Maestro is a self-org tool; a social change issue or nonviolence movement - can be broadcast with webinar or maestro for self-organizing.

Gerry - if working with indig population - if they have a pathological trend becoming more of a monoculture, a weed patch. What you intended was to reverse that trend to be a healthy polycultural environment. Notice what is there that you value and want to reinforce; what you want to take out of the system; dialogue to understand what are the collective values everyone shares and what they don't want in their polyculture. Elucidate and report to each other design aspects, goals, processes, time order for changes.

David - just dropping in 6

Jock - How to put the tools we're using today or like them to facilitate a community of people working on climate change MIT conf co-lab from around the world addressing climate change ideas, after 1.5 days everyone went home; then silence.

Tom - this is a practice field to refine how to use these collaborative technologies skillfully integrating language and technology

Lucas - Flipped classwork. Doing pre-work before the main session to be ready for more interactive learning.

SUPERSATURATION - need heat and pressure (and/or evaporation) to create supersaturation. Conversation can (a) create supersaturation (including links) and/or (b) build capacity for when a trigger event happens. What are the solids we want to dissolve in the supersaturation.

PREPARE RESOURCES/CONDITIONS FOR FUTURE - Especially collective traumatic events. Build capacity.

Intro themselves in relationship to the topic (first step of Everyday Democracy process)

NEW FRAME FOR CONVERSATIONAL STRATEGIES - JAN 24 Tom Atlee

Looking over the notes from the 1/13 open space session on this topic and my pre-open space framing, I see the following different (but potentially complementary) approaches to seeking strategic influence with conversation. I offer it for discussion in our next Open Space discussion of this topic, using initial inquiries like

What good examples do we know of each approach?

What is missing from this list?

What synergies are possible among these different approaches to make them even more effective?

TWELVE APPROACHES TO STRATEGIC USE OF CONVERSATION - where "strategic" means making an effort to maximize the transformational impact of our conversational initiatives, knowledge, and networks.

TOP DOWN - Engage the power holders and the decision-makers in transformational conversations, with or without the engagement of other players.

IMMUNE SYSTEM - Enable and engage the whole system as a field in addressing what's important to it on an ongoing basis.

ACUPUNCTURE - Identify places in the evolving society where there is stuck energy which, if freed up, can enable faster/better transformation.

CAPACITY-BUILDING - Improve existing conversations in and among particular change agents and change efforts to increase their capacity to succeed at their work.

WE THE PEOPLE - Use very visible and/or widespread high-quality conversations among diverse people to inspire whole populations to "do it ourselves".

SYSTEMIC LEVERAGE - Target points in system dynamics - purposes, incentives, feedbacks, etc. - for maximum shift in social system operation - and target potentially high-impact systems - political, economic, educational, philanthrophic, etc.

HIGHER POWER - Ask what nature would do, or open ourselves to wisdom and guidance from higher, deeper transpersonal/collective intelligence.

EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS - Focus on the transformational power of certain types of conversation on the participants' consciousness, spirit, heart, worldview....

NETWORKS - Use existing networks; develop transformational networks; engage influential well-networked people in transformational conversation.

META-ISSUES - Focus on issues that have a make it-or-break it impact on all other issues and imply deep systemic and cultural transformation - e.g., climate disruption, economic inequity and materialism, degradation of democracy, etc.

HOPE - Engage people in exploring, practicing, and promoting existing transformational activities, technologies, etc., that counter hopelessness, cynicism, despair and inaction.

NOTES FOR THE JAN 13, 2015 MAESTRO SESSION

Attendees:

Tom Atlee - convener

Jennifer Milewski

Linda Ellinor

Savannah Hawkins

Steve Hinkle

Sharon Joy Kleitsch

Mark Spain

Madeline Snow

Kimberly King

Suzanne Daigle

Heinz Peter

Nancy Glock-Grueneich

Heather Tischbein

Tom Christensen

Everyone was asked to check in saying what brought them to the session.

Sharon Joy - Saint Petersburg FL - juggling strategic planning vs emergence - transform that tension to learning and action research. Connect nodes of networks for large systems change - expanding beyond local to all over country.

Tom Christensen - studied with Fernando Flores - recommends book Computers and Cognition. Did PhD about the different conversations we carry in our heads. "Conversation for results" works by eliciting a commitment in another person, but it requires that we make a request in words easily understood and a by-when. Commitment leads to action but only comes out of clear requests.

Linda - I love your topic. The word "strategic" - if we could be that, highest and best use of these practices, a pivotal question. Like our online D&D experiment. Finds self asking "How can we take this powerful virtual tech + our special conversational approaches out into the public?" See so much fragmentation among groups re climate change locally and even more fragmentation at national/international levels. Can we use our tech and skills to bridge that fragmentation.

Savanna Hawkins - Does workshops starting with making a foundation agreement that we all understand. Then talk for 30 mins, then help people take action on what they are interested in, finding power to be in unity to achieve these goals.

Suzanne Daigle, Canadian in Sarasota, FL - Like the idea of strategic use of conversation - the value of conversation - especially as it applies to the world of work and the future of work. People need to have sustainabiity for themselves, their families and their communities. The rapid pace of work life and hierarchical management styles don't work. Conversation will be required to get out of those modes and generate new alignment. Am an Open Space facilitator, so I ask myself how do we execute what people want? We don't go it alone any more - we invite, include and involve, treat each other as adults.

Madalyn Snow, Boston - Do sustainability groups, strategic questioning and conversations.

Jennifer Milewski - Rockville MD outside DC - Advocacy Institute: worked with social justice advocates focusing on maximizing effect by being as strategic as they could. Conversations that promote coordination and strategy.

Mark Spain - Canberra Australia - We're always starting from the beginning because people who come may be new and conversations are best when they are welcoming but then those who are experienced feel like they're're retracing old ground. Need safe environmeironment for new insights to emerge. Agree with Linda and Tom and Fernanda Flores re making commitments; need to make requests and honor commitments to each other. Holding spaces where fragmentation can manifest and people from different views can safely share insights without necessarily having clear outcomes = allow for emergence. This is different from conversations about commitment and action. All conversations need to honor and acknowledge that we are beginning with new insights and people. How do we spread this understanding throughout society. 3 issues to blend, integrate and play with

We always seem to be starting anew each time eg new people and establishing basic connections (conversation for relationship)

Conversations for requests, commitment and action (conversation for action)

Conversations for emergence and no attachment to a specific outcome (conversation for possibility)

Heather Tischbein - Vancouver, Washington State (not Canada) - Trying to convene conversations that are strategic and meaningful in my community. Resonating with Mark: Experimenting with conversations with people committed to action and with other people allowing for emergence, and am frustrated when starting anew. I ask myself: What would nature do? If we are in a living system and are part of nature and not separate from it... is there an intelligence in nature that has a concept of "strategic"? Does a maple have a strategy for spreading seeds? Perhaps the thing/idea about "strategy" is not the best place for me; the concept of "strategic" just vanished for me. (Thank you Mark Spain for the affirmation.)

Kimberly King - calling from Virginia. The title speaks to why I'm here. Heather's statement is quite provocative. I am intentional and strategic AND committed to natural process.

[Unidentified person] - I live in the applications of this; lean into the listening with other people and see what wisdom emerges.

Tom Christensen - Madison WI - When we're in deep dialogue state (2nd tier in Spiral Dynamics), we don't strategize; we open ourselves to a bigger vision than strategy encompasses. But then we have to bring it down into language and insight we can share with others. Our insights at the deepest level are not narrative, but communication requires "dumbing them down" to a level that fits in language.

Linda - This reminds me of Ben Levi's "supraordinate goal" - the feeling of wholeness we are all striving for. For me dialogue is "strategic" when we combine the fact that Dialogue develops its practitioners' empathy, collective sense, etc., with thinking about "who do I most want to engage in dialogue?" and "where do these conversational practices need to happen to best effect what's happening?" and "how do we show up where there are already conversations which could use our technology for quality conversation?" We need to bring Dialogue into the public domain and at critical places and levels of society: So that's two levels: (1) at the grass roots level generally for the behavioral-improvement aspect inherent in Dialogue and (2) at levels, sectors, places where conversations are occurring where critical decisions are being made.

Steve Hinkle - San Diego - I was inspired to join in based on conversations with @Linda Ellinor

Sharon Joy - My entry into Bohm Dialogue was actually more through quantum physicist David Bohm's science than through his Dialogue process - specifically his theory of the "implicate order" [at the quantum level, out of which our level of reality manifests]. I have explored how do we apply the science and what would the experience be. My work is in the larger community, whereas most people address individuals. How does the whole system work to effect transformation? I think in terms of fields and Theory U and how living systems function and that we are nature (which involves the field of biomimicry).

Savannah - In my work, even though I have a strategy, it is most important to build trust in order to build unity. The group picks some issue THEY want to work on. It is kind of a non-strategy for action. Many people do not understand the communication of other species, rocks, trees - and I, too, have a hard time knowing what they say. My dogs understand that language.

Tom C. - We might benefit from distinguishing who we want to have an impact on - and not individuals, but what kind of consciousness do we - can we - affect. A shotgun approach - thinking we can hit all people - is naive.

Nancy Glock-Grueneich - I'm here but can't talk yet; will talk again soon.

Tom Atlee - We are nature, we are natural, AND we (like other organisms) have evolved certain unique qualities and capacities: In our case, we have been evolving a particular kind of consciousness that arises with civilization (with writing, culture, technology, etc.). Notably we humans have far more choice than the vast number of other species out in nature. The extent to which we can CHOOSE in a sense separates us from nature - or at least can take us away from the evolved ways nature nurtures and balances the larger body of Life. For example, we use medicine and food to keep people alive - which is fine as long as we control our population, because nature uses disease and starvation to keep populations in balance and too much population can cause collapse. Our choice to use fossil fuels can create climate change that can wipe us out (along with much of the rest of Life). We make many choices at an unconscious level and/or are unaware of our impact. So I think strategy is about effective collective choice making. A big part of our evolutionary challenge is to make wise conscious choices - and strategic thinking is part of that. And we should ask what nature can teach us about how to do that. For example, nature self-organizes into healthy systems AND it can wipe out species that are out of synch with itself. So how can learn to do healthy self-organization in human systems (like using Open Space) and how can we be in true partnership with nature?

Sharon Joy - Thank you. I have experiences with some of the things you describe. We've found that cultivating a healthy field is like creating an immune system in one's body; life emerges. We've found that we should and can go where the energy/life is. Every community has its own rich issues of compexity - government, social justice, etc. - and that we need to listen where the hot juice is. I recommend the book Centropy (opposite of entropy = the science of Love). A healthy field of love is letting the emergence come in a healthy way, go with where conversations already are, and bring your conversational gifts to support them. We hosted a World Cafe every Friday night for 4 years; from that ongoing incubator many initiatives arose. Rather than think in terms of "project", we think "mother earth is our client". We need to choose what our place is on this planet - and listen to the field, to where the energy and juice are.

Suzanne - I feel so intellectually drawn, emotionally drawn to the depth, and there's a part of me that struggles, thinking of people not having these conversations, where there's fear, multiplicity of demands and choices, the desire to do good but feeling overwhelmed; the regular living of life. I like Open Space a lot, going where people feel drawn to go, which we often don't allow ourselves to do - and feeling ongoing inquiries. I'm sensing the compassion that we feel for ourselves and others around this tension [between these good possibilities and the struggles in so much of our lives].

@Nancy Glock-Grueneich - wants to hear people's names (Suzanne, Jennifer, Mark, Sharon Joy, Steve....) Recently moved from California, was in China for 3 years, and now in Ohio.

Tom Atlee: Maclean's - Canada's glossy newsweekly magazine - 1991 "The People's Verdict" initiative (detailed on Tom's website) is a good example of strategic use of conversation. They convened a dozen people chosen for their differences who together constituted a microcosm of Canada, and charged them with developing a shared vision for their country within 2.5 days, assisted by Roger Fisher (co-author of Getting to Yes). The process was rocky but ultimately successful - in some ways even despite the facilitation. Maclean's did 40 pages of coverage featuring the individual participants and the hour-by-hour drama, such that readers vicariously went through the process with them. Photos showed the early tension and the final hugging. This and Canadian TV's hour-long documentary about it generated months of spontaneous conversation all over Canada which was ultimately squelched by politicians. Maclean's biggest mistake was not doing it again and again, every year, to provide a feedback loop for the whole country to talk and think together coherently.

Mark: That kind of thing is fine but it's not a self-organizing structure, since it needs sponsorship and participation from power structures, who would be challenged by it. How can we host events like that - or have them emerge - where we get the sponsorship but are able to challenge power as well?

Jennifer: Piggybacking on the idea about people in power structures, in the advocacy work I do there's a lot of parsing who to have conversations with which is contingent on the different accesses people have to power: who are decision makers, who influences them, which people don't have an office or title but are nonetheless causing things to happen, who do you need buy-in from before something happens.... That's a particular way of parsing who to engage in conversations. But on this call I'm becoming aware of other practitioners parsing the world differently from that. it would be a great inquiry to poke at how do we parse the world in light of strategic conversation? We talk - but did anything happen with this group in Canada? Who took up what the Canadians said - officials? People in the street? What are ways to parse things that then result in action? So much talk about emergent non-linear processes, but we also need results.

Sharon Joy - We have transformed the city of St. Petersburg. We now have a progressive mayor and council, city and county. We're working with and in the whole system. It isn't somebody's brilliance, it is energizing the healthy field. It follows the sciences that David Bohm talked about. We are all - all the different players, all together - working to deal wtih social justice, energy, sea level rise, etc.

Jennifer: We need to include politicians, Chambers of Commerce - that's an acknowledgment of elected or self-constituted bodies or action leaders. They are part of your conversation process. Strategic entries for conversation require acknowledging or including them in the conversations or they will throw oil on the water.

Sharon Joy - We've been doing this for 10 years to cultivate the field, create networks with influential nodes. We're now taking on Duke Energy (largest in the country); it seems to be coming out of the field, out of the Republican leadership in Florida!

Suzanne: Also speak of the youth, of the university students and our World Open Space. We held an Open Space on campus which led to a new building being built that would host our World Open Space several years later. Students became the official hosts of it. A young woman (an entrepreneurial activist) committed to create an entrepreneural hub for students. It led to a mega press conference with university officials attending and in the limelight. If we create spaces for people to connect; things do happen - and the connections will continue for years afterwards.

Jennifer - Please post on the hackpad where we can read more about this initiative in Florida.

Mark - I see you have a long term commitment to keep it all open for anyone who wants to show up - esp noting young people showing up and power leaders hearing them. This is remarkable commitment to keep that engagement space open. Very strategic. I'm interested in working on a pattern language for continuing that elsewhere.

[Unidentified person] - This is where "strategic" doesn't fit in any more - it's emergent; we know so little about how these things unfold and what happens next. It's ordinary people being awakened to do extraordinary things, but it doesn't belong to any one person, just multiplying.

Mark: We need an institution like the university or some sponsor who creates a physical space and administrative function to allow it to happen - whatever resources the community has that emerge... I'm going to try it...

@Nancy Glock-Grueneich - The kinds of strategies we're talking about are growing the field for what's emergent, for emergent things becoming more possible. I'd like to dig into that deeper - into engagement of central role-people, commitment, consciousness and intention, leaning into the things that emerged, having a sense of where to go with those... I'd like a deeper conversation about that. We need to find wherever we can the stories of what's working in the world and how people have thought about this. We need to inventory them (I have 10 that are my favorite and continue to look for more).

@Nancy Glock-Grueneich, do you have those stories collected somewhere? Could you provide a link or links? This could start a collection of such "success" stories. Thanks! (Steph Jo, 1/14)

[this material, though typed by Tom, is from what Nancy said:] These stories counter hopelessness; if we lead with them (rather than problems) - i.e., look what happened in this place!!! - it causes us to rethink the nature of the problem in the first place. We can look for common patterns = more generalizable patterns re what things are essential to making conversation strategic or growing the field. My own interest is the role of higher education in human survival - how it can serve a higher purpose - how we might use and shape the massive resources in the educational enterprise and in professions and research and who is on mass media as experts. Higher education could become dramatically part of the solution. We need to spread the capacity to have these kinds of conversation and understand these ways of governance, so that people learn about these things in all their courses. We need conversations among change agents that already exist in these institutions and professional organizations in higher education. What is our particular kind of contribution we can make - skills that can aliven that kind of community. One of the things we might see for ourselves as a community is how do these stories get shared and analyzed and create questions from which we can further enrich our lives. The reflection on our stories is one of the ways we can begin.

Suzanne - I'm an Open Space facilitator and I'm wondering: shall we do our own closing circle? [We had chosen to continue to talk together rather than join the Maestro Open Space plenary closing circle. - Tom A.] I felt a yearning to express gratitude for this conversation with the people who shared together.

Mark - I valued Tom's Maclean's story and Suzanne's Florida story. I'm sensing some really powerful pattern language or key strategic ideas in how they are hosted. Can we distill those and share that successful practice, key elements of being a host in dialogue? I am happy to experiment in my community to build that conversation, being part of a community of practitioners focused on strategic approaches. I love that we can do this work with such heart across the whole planet.

Suzanne - I'm moved to the core on two points. First, I'm so often awed by people with such depth and knowledge; i sometime feel out of my depth, that what i do is more superficial when it isn't. Second, I feel our hearts and minds and purpose connected, so I'm very grateful and feel fueled to take this journey - I don't feel alone.

Jennifer M. - I'm very enlivened by this conversation. My own practice is not what I've been doing most recently, but what I'm moving towards again. Being part of all this is reminding me of bodies of knowledge and strength I'd forgotten I had. I feel resurrected. I feel very grateful to all of you.

Sharon Joy - Thank you all. Deep gratitude for leaning in and entangling, for caring, for insights, commitment, wisdom, hearing what we've been doing that's been hiding for 25 years. It wasn't even until this summer that I created a website for this business, not to make money, but to further the health of the community and planet. I feel heard and loved that Suzanne told other parts of the story.

Sharon Joy's website of their work and stories and learning http://theconnectionpartners.com/#2

@Nancy Glock-Grueneich - I regret not hearing the first part. I appreciated hearing Tom's ideas again. I'm thinking into the story of Florida. interacting with things coming out of the field and begin to shape what we can't know about. Great source of hope. My sense that certainly one of the most significant things working against what we're trying to do is the sense of hopelessness, powerlessness, despair, denial, disengagement, cynicism.... Just the opportunity to see live hope and see these kinds of stories is such an incredible antidote to what gets in the way as well as helping us grow that knowledge we need to answer these questions Tom is asking. Grateful to connect with other people in this and leverage each other's work in the world. Thanks to Tom for asking such generative questions of us and making this space happen.

Tom A - I'm very grateful for everyone's contribution. I initiated this inquiry at NCDD but it burst out with Ben and Linda's leadership and facilitation. I feel there is a lot of generative stuff that came out of it, so I feel a journalistic desire to go over the notes and extract meaning. I'm interested in pattern language and doing it with Mark and others, to help us be conscious of what we are doing and build on our shared understanding of doing it better and better. I sense WE are the seed of a community of practice: there is the WE who are in this session and a larger WE (about 25 people) who came to this virtual Open Space, and then a WE of about 125 people who signed up to be part of this whole inquiry... and then there is the even larger WE which is NCDD and IAP2 and IAF and other conversational professionals... I'm really enjoying how this has generated so much interaction and good thinking even though there was some disturbance at the beginning when I posted my NCDD note...

Creating a Pattern Language for strategic conversation?

Mark: Over the coming days could we create a succinct list here of the key principles or pattern language for the strategic conversations we explored? e.g.

create a consistent, reliable space for conversation to happen in your community eg at a cafe each Friday night

have a compelling intention with deep heart

keep it open, generative, intergenerational and welcoming

provide structure, sponsorship and support but not control

Pose this question continually "What are the conditions that enable vibrant, life-affirming networks to self-organize, flourish and sustain themselves, while simultaneously creating a truly global movement for positive futures?" from Sharon Joy's website above

Tom Atlee, 1/11 - Questions to consider on this topic (initial online discussion before the two Maestro calls)

I've posted the "subsidiary questions" on individual hackpads where you can offer answers/responses if you wish.

OVERALL INQUIRY: What does conversation offer as a tool for confronting existential crises and transforming social systems and cultures? What do we need to know and do to use that tool in the best way possible?

Subsidiary questions:

What does strategy mean to each of us?

What do we each include in the field of D&D and conversation, as it relates to this inquiry?

What are our various assumptions, theories, and stories about how transformational change happens? How does conversation fit into each of these theories of change?

What gifts or services do we know the right kinds of conversation can provide that might be useful in catalyzing the kind of transformations we seek?

What public issues - or kinds of public issues - if any - should we focus on in our transformational conversational initiatives? Which issues would you not consider strategic? Why?

How should we choose the targets for our conversational interventions to have the greatest impact? ("Targets" here refers to who or what we want to engage in conversation, in what situations, circumstances, sectors, or dynamics of society.) What is our reasoning for each approach to targeting?

What forms of conversation offer the most potent transformational benefits in what circumstances / for what purposes?

What are some ways we can spread or magnify the reach of any particular conversational intervention we wish to undertake?

Who do we need to be and how do we need to function - individually and collectively - as practitioners and advocates of conversational approaches, to contribute more to transformation than business-as-usual dynamics?

What might we do in the immediate future to authentically address the issues that have come up as we explored these questions, given our current capacities and resources?

@Stephanie Jo Kent 8 Jan 2015: Overlaps with +OS Topic 4

After I created the topic, @Ben Roberts posted about "+Tom Atlee's observation in his What's Possible? post that we are at the "Kitty Hawk" stage of process development when it comes to systemic change and mass engagement on the scale that is now required. We've got proof of concept, but we're a long way from launching Pan Am, let alone a whole airline industry. {Ben Roberts, 1/7}

My response uses another of quote of Tom's to generate criteria by which we can evaluate whether/how and to what extent this January conversation is a marshalling prototype of adequate type and reach.

+OS Topic 4 Prototyping Crisis Inspired Change through Hybrid Communication Technologies: Are we at Kitty Hawk?

Ben Levi, 3 Jan 2015: Transcend and Include

I just received the latest from Chris Martensen, who's developed a "Crash Course" which describes in detail the basis for our current global problems (identifying the unhealthy aspects of the current system) and how we got to where we are. (Note: free sign-up required). The penultimate chapter summarizes the whole course, and the last chapter provides a "How To" (PDF) of what we can do individually and collectively to prepare for what's coming. There are also Groups one can join to be put in touch with folks who live in your area or have a common area of interest. One idea would be to have those of us interested in this to join a local group and offer these kinds of collective practices we're doing here to our local communities/Groups. The "meme" of Dialogue and Deliberation would strengthen as it rippled out through each of us, and the process would help harvest the local wisdom of each group.

Comments on the response above?

Linda Ellinor 1/4/15: Local and Collective levels of Work

Yes, Ben. I have been following Martensen's work, though not thoroughly. It would seem as though we might all just begin by getting involved in our local communities using the D & D skills and experience. We would be moving our principles into society at grass-roots levels. We do all need to be part of strong, local communities. Especially as things begin to break down around us. Our local community connections begin to take on more importance for us all.

And, I'm feeling into this powerful idea of also working at a collective level. This would be where we champion the principles together in a strategic way across many sectors of society: education, government (local, regional, national, and even international), healthcare, business, etc. If we were able to develop some sort of strategic plan for D & D in the world and created some sort of entity where we could continuously update our understanding of how these principles actually are being used successful (like a learning organization) that we could draw upon, then suddenly we are more than the sum of our individual actions locally. We are acting locally, but in a coherent and coordinated way.

We would stop creating more fragmented efforts if we could form some sort of supra-level entity in this way. Our shared client would be the global human and non-human environment that we are trying to protect and sustain. So a question for me at this moment in our inquiry here is "How could we come together at this macro level of conceptualization and then create an actual implementation plan that we would all be able to work with at different levels?" What might this entity be, how might it be structured, how might it begin to emerge that might prototype a new way of collectively taking action in our world using our D & D skills/experience?

[Ben R. 1/4, trying to simply be curious!] You use "we" quite frequently here, Linda, and also "we all." Why is it important to you that "we all" do this, as opposed to some subset of "us?"

[Tom A. 1/11] Data point: Helene Finidori has a vision to catalyze the creation of pattern languages relevant to diverse theories of change, put them on cards, and then encourage diverse change agents to explore the relationships between their various approaches to change, using the card patterns (much the ways different practitioners of different methodologies can use the GroupWorksDeck process pattern language cards to explore underlying commonalities among their conversational methods). This could be a tool for supra-level conceptualization (complementing or instead of a supra-level entity or goal).

Linda Ellinor, 1/1/15: an initial response

I just read Tom's framing and Ben' Robert's response. I’m impressed with the strategies and leverage points listed that are available for people with D & D skills and experience. I’m now motivated to read Donnella Meadow's book.

What’s missing for me in his list of strategies and leverage points is how can 'we', [meaning people with D&D skills and experience] sustain our own inquiry long enough to be strategic in what we do as a field, groups, and individuals. The last line of Ben Robert's response says "I'm back to wanting a framing that asks what are specific opportunities for applying these eighteen dimensions of leverage to the existing system in ways that might support, amplify, or catalyze its rapid transformation?" I agree. We need to be strategic and specific.

I also feel that what we are doing in the month of January is to come together and sort for specific ways of blending our various skills and capacities in ways that might not already exist. Also we are coming together to find ways we can better support the change efforts all ready in motion. By doing this we can create greater synergy or connection among the various change efforts already in motion. I see the potential for a learning organization emerging in which we figure out how to organize what we are discovering works and doesn’t work. For instance, we might start sharing "stories from the front lines" which become a pooled resource we can all draw upon.

Most/many of us as D&D practitioners work alone. And there is great fragmentation in addressing the many immense systems issues such as global climate change. If fragmentation and isolation of efforts are large problems, we can as organizational/systems professionals play a critically important role. This one activity would lend coherence to our isolated efforts. This could involve creating our own supra-level, or "back-bone" organization that might support activist organizations by helping to guide, inform, and create connections among these other organizations working in alignment around large issues.

Lastly, how can we hold "generative conversations" at strategic places - how might we come together and discuss playing roles at critical global issue junctures like the climate talks this June in Bonn, Germany? How can D & D be rolled into such strategic places?

Many of us as professionals ask for a larger sense of how we can play strategically in the world today. From our time in January, a larger field can be created. We as D & D professionals take our work seriously. We see that we can be so much more by connecting. We can make a difference in our world today!

Making the connections work, is even more difficult. But, as a field that claims we have knowledge and skills in this arena, we of all people should challenge ourselves to step up to the plate.

Comments on the response above?

Ben Roberts, 12/30: an initial response

Thank you, Tom, for starting us off at this level of thinking. For me these paragraphs from your background statement (also linked to above) go right to the heart of the matter:

If we would use D&D to help leverage the deep shift from planetary/civilizational disaster to a sustainable, life serving world, we must learn to think in terms of systems dynamics in the issues we focus on, the outcomes we seek, and the methods we use. That is, we should (a) give priority to issues that impact most/all other issues (like climate disruption and the degradation of democracy), (b) focus on upstream strategic targets (like externalized costs), (c) do what we can to multiply the impact of any initiative, and (d) use methods of conversation and interaction that are most potently transformative.

Any one of the factors listed below, even taken by itself, constitutes and increases transformational leverage in a D&D action. Putting them together, however, vastly increases that leverage. So the challenge of transformational strategic D&D efforts and design is to see how many of these leveraging factors we can synergistically integrate into what we are doing.

You then go on to identify 18 general strategies that divide among the four categories you highlighted in the first paragraph. It's a powerful list, and for me begs the question of how best to work with it. Personally, I'm looking to identify a list of specific, highly strategic conversational opportunities, and to begin planning how to convene one or more of them in early 2015. I have some initial thoughts. I suppose I could offer one or two of them, and then perhaps try to map your general criteria onto each one as a way of evaluating their potential strategic potency. Before I do that though, I want to check in and see if that makes the most sense for this space, as I notice that you have not yet framed the conversation you would like to invite here.

I'm also curious as to why your list of strategic dimensions/criteria does not include something specifically addressing urgency. You open with a statement about the need for "a deep, complex, progressive and interacting set of shifts in the vast majority of people, systems, and cultures - and over a relatively short period of time measured in decades, not centuries." And perhaps ALL the dimensions you then articulate are simply expressions of that underlying assumption, i.e. that the reason we need to go for maximum impact/leverage is that we don't have much time.

Still, as I think about what seems most worth doing at this moment in history, I find that the framing of extreme urgency paired with the need for a fundamental shift across all our major systems, leads to a very particular kind of prioritizing and also challenging of assumptions. These don't seem to flow in an obvious and automatic way for me out of the eighteen dimensions you outline. I'm looking for something that points us towards "scenarios of what's possible that makes enough of a difference to make a difference," or what some people are referring to as "theories of change."

Bucky Fuller famously said you change the paradigm by building a better alternative. But I don't know that we have time to build something new that is separate from what we have now. You appear to see this similarly, Tom, noting that the change we seek cannot come from "somewhere outside the transforming systems." Maybe it could if we didn't have the element of extreme urgency. But if we need to move fast, I don't see how we do it without working with the existing power systems of corporations, government, large NGOs, the "philanthropic industrial complex," etc. So, again, I'm back to wanting a framing that asks "what are specific opportunities for applying these eighteen dimensions of leverage to the existing system in ways that might support, amplify, or catalyze its rapid transformation?"

Comments on the response above?

My 18 dimensions of leverage are just a model (which overlaps another model I offer in my background writeup). My models are almost surely not complete, nor are they the only models that could be constructed. They are offered for exploration, expansion, alternatives, etc., at a theoretical/visionary/worldview level. The issue of the hundreds of ways to actually use them to clarify or increase the potency of various initiatives is another issue entirely - which, of course, is another excellent branch of the inquiry I've posed here in this OS session. And, of course, issues like Linda's concern about the resourcing and sustainability of our efforts - and her desire to focus on weaving existing social change efforts into coherence (as well as your desire to inject conversational initiatives into existing activities and institutions) - are all valid parts of the inquiry. My own approach was to start from a theoretical place to gain greater understanding about criteria and principles we might use to make our choices strategically. They weren't designed to address the urgency, except to point out that non-systemic approaches - while doable in the immediate future - are not likely to actually deal with the crises we face.

To me a truly effective systems-targeting approach that took the urgency we face seriously would not and could not come from the kind of inquiry we are sponsoring during January (which happens to be a powerful format to launch this important inquiry as an inquiry, which is a profound contribution in its own right and what I was trying to launch with my original NCDD note). IMHO an adequate initiative would necessarily need to be generated by a well-selected group of around 6-36 people (the existing team - all of whom have made very substantial contributions of possibilities, like those above and Nancy's answers to her breakdown of my question just today - plus some other folks) coming together in person for at least a week (with some flexibility for extending that if necessary) using potent interactively creative processes which are also capable of generating coherent results. I can imagine a series of conversations using Dialogue, World Cafe, Open Space, and Dynamic Facilitation (e.g., Dialogue for the first night, WC the next morning, OST in the afternoon, Dialogue at night - then repeat the last three on Day 2, and then the next two days do DF and see where we are at that point).

The contributions we have each made so far in this specific OS session (and related contributions, like Nancy's) are already SO VERY SUBSTANTIVE and SO VERY DIFFERENT in their ways of "cutting the pie" that it will take some serious interactions to break through to a new level of inclusive theoretical/visionary simplicity (backed by well articulated complexity with adequate guidance on what to do). This forum will be great for surfacing possibilities, issues, and further inquiries, but I think we need a more dense/intense form of interactivity to discover non-reductionist coherence out of the rich diversity of perspectives we have and need.

So, in response to "I think we need a more dense/intense form of interactivity to discover non-reductionist coherence out of the rich diversity of perspectives we have and need."

what would you recommend? I mean that is the $2 million queston in ways. We have come close, but other than something approaching and beyond what we now think of as Dialogue, what can we do? It is probably Dialogue along with another way of viewing the possible human and how we change over time given things like our stage of life, and even there, what time of life most needs working on, etc.

I'd be excited that we could convene 6-36 people for that number of days using those kinds of methods. And the time factor that Tom mentions is also key - not just the methods chosen but allowing enough days and sleeps for people to move through the fairly natural U shape of engagement. I'd like to be involved. -- Sorry, I haven't introduced myself. Jeff Aitken (I'm on a deadline and can't participate today but will be in touch with Ben and here.) Thanks I'm enjoying reading all this great thinking.

It is suggested that you post new responses (as opposed to comments on the one above) at the top of the "Open Space for Online Conversation" section, i.e. blog-style.

Suzanne Daigle, 1/22

Before we can engage on the urgent issues, on what matters to us, I believe we must first connect around who we are, what we yearn and desire most. It is magnificent when we can discover each other, curious and prepared to be surprised without pressure in a welcoming spirit. This happened in the conversations that I was privileged to be a part of. No matter the depth, experience and expertise of the host, of others who participated, there was an essence of us feeling equal, whether strangers to each other or new colleagues. I personally revel in the inclusiveness that invitation can offer where we have the possibility to connect head and heart -- ordinary people that we all are, feeling our presence, feeling our stories, our passions, our talents, gifts, pains and joys. When there is time to create those foundations, to pause a little, to smile as we listen to each other, it seems that that every thing is possible. We can better focus on what we have rather than what we are missing, what's urgent, what angers or frightens us and from this place of power, of gratitude, of self with others, possibilities emerge with greater ease, more confidence and often a higher degree of success. Rather than anyone imposing accountability, most often, we feel pulled in a positive way that we want to engage and be involved. Or alternatively, it may be that the minutes spent together were enough, and like a bumble bee or butterfly in Open Space, the ideas, inspirations and energy will simply spread forward to others in the future with other groups. This was the energy of what I felt when I stopped by for a few delightful hours. Thank you Tom Atlee for being such a wonderful host and all for just being who you are!

[Ben R. 1/22, wondering if this should be moved to the top of the pad, blog-style] Thank you Suzanne, for this heartfelt appreciation. So... who are you, and what do you yearn for and desire most?!

Tom Christensen 8 years ago

In the list above, how do we balance or integrate affiliative, feel good, bondin

Tom Atlee 8 years ago

I'm curious how the GroupWorks pattern language card deck might fit in with this

Ben Levi 8 years ago

This is a comment...

OS Topic 2: Strategic Use of Conversation — Tom Atlee
Including notes from the 1/13 and 1/25 Open Space calls
Main Menu: Welcome | About | Intros | World Cafe | Bohm | Open Space | Resources | News | Calls | Help
Back to January 25th Open Space Main Pad
Detailed background statement here
Open Space for Online Conversation
Post Initial Reactions to Tom's framing at the top, and responses to the reactions of others below the post you are responding to.
SIXTEEN APPROACHES TO THE STRATEGIC USE OF CONVERSATION
Notes for Jan 25 Open Space session - Tom Atlee
NEW FRAME FOR CONVERSATIONAL STRATEGIES - JAN 24 Tom Atlee
What good examples do we know of each approach?
What is missing from this list?
NOTES FOR THE JAN 13, 2015 MAESTRO SESSION
Creating a Pattern Language for strategic conversation?
Tom Atlee, 1/11 - Questions to consider on this topic (initial online discussion before the two Maestro calls)
Ben Levi, 3 Jan 2015: Transcend and Include
Linda Ellinor, 1/1/15: an initial response
Ben Roberts, 12/30: an initial response
Suzanne Daigle, 1/22