In response to Bill and Rol, I want to stress that I suggested "take the
position" - to try it on to see what you get. I'm not attempting to prove
that the way I'm proposing is the right way or the only way. I am
suggesting that it will give new insights and new openings for action (and
design).
In this light, I'll not take on the points raised against what I've
proposed. I leave you with the statement to try on. "Communication can
be seen independently of individual senders and receivers (and even
independent of acts of sending and receiving) and as something that occurs
in the space between people - and that space can be designed for great
effect."
But I will attempt to respond to the suggestion I made and which Rol asks
for examples and Bill refers to in his reference to facilitation.
If emergence is a valid term of cause and effect, then how can we design
the spaces in which it will occur? (Bill, this seems pretty close to an
"Alexander space" question in design.) If we approach the question as
being about "senders and receivers" then we'll have to concern ourselves
with choosing the right ones, getting their intentions right, teaching
them better communication skills, etc. If we approach the question as
designing space, we need much less concern for who shows up. Those who
show up at a pool hall or a concert will tend to get what they came for.
By inviting a group to a meeting (face to face, electronic, or other)
where the invitation states the purpose and the process, by holding the
meeting in a space that is appropriate to the purpose and process, by
displaying the rules of the meeting and by supplying a facilitator - for
example - I count on the intended results of the meeting being realised.
(With the backgroun assumption that the intended results were appropriate
to the process and emergent nature of communication.)
A concrete example of a small and a large meeting might help here. A
union/management dispute was closing a plant down and the main
participants had not communicated successfully for years. I had the GM
invite the managers and union exec to a meeting to consider a plan for
transforming the relationships at the plant. When they arrived, I set a
single ground-rule and had them either accept it or leave. That was that
they would follow the process instructions that I gave. They all agreed.
The first process rule was that they not do anything for themselves (ie.
get coffee) but ask that someone "from the other side" do it for them.
Then, after a brief talk and introductions, I had them sit in "mixed"
pairs and just look at each other. Then gradually say a bit about what it
was like at work for them with a lot of silence and "being with each
other" in between.
This meeting created a breakthrough in communication which persisted and
was the beginning of a programme which transformed the plant.
In a meeting of 200 (workforce and management), .... but why go on.
Anybody that has had successful large group meetings has seen miracles
happen and knows that it comes from the design of the space and not from
the individuals in the room. Those of us who do this kind of thing each
have our own design of space for doing it.
Bill refers to developing facilitators and suggests it is all about
designing relationships. That is the kind of space that I'm referrring
to. That is, it's not "empty space" with no awareness of what isn't
"empty". The space begin referred to is that space which is created by
the relationship of things. This is not so much between those things as
it is created by those things. Yet, for emergence to occur, it must not
be "hardwired connections".
This is the nature of communication itself. That is, if a sentence has a
"hardwired" meaning, then there is no room for emergence and minimum
information is contained in that sentence. It is unlikely that there is
any such sentence but there are many that are close once the context is
known. These are trivial, in my view, compared to all those which have
much more possibility of generation, creativity, exploration and
information.
Michael McMaster : Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk
book cafe site : http://www.vision-nest.com/BTBookCafe
Intelligence is the underlying organisational principle
of the universe. Heraclitus
--Michael McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>