I very much like the analogy to Open Space technology that I V N S Raju has
described in LO 9170 in response to Rick's call in "Our Purpose Here on
LO".
Raju's conclusion is:
>I think that the time has come for
>us to check before we let the message go - believe me I did it twice
>before posting this. ( I would like to go by the suggestion given here
>some time back which reads something like this: do not post what you
>prepared today; save, open and read it again tomorrow. Then decide -
>this norm we must adopt when time permits). Any decision to post to LO is
>a decision to reveal the Self. I have just now realised that I have
>exhausted all that I have to share with you.
In a way, I see this as a shutdown of some opportunities created by the
uniqueness of this medium. Raju's initial message questioned our focus.
This follow-up message helped to clarify his meaning. But in being
prescriptive regarding HOW we respond, it ignores these valuable attributes
of electronic message exchange:
In a face-to-face conversation, interruption is rude and it is virtually
impossible to maintain the main thread of the conversation if somebody
leads into a tangent. Here, of course, there is no interruption, and
tangents can run a simultaneous course; sometimes the interplay between the
tangents and the main thread is where the learning lies.
In a face-to-face conversation, people who can respond quickly and
coherently have an advantage - those who need more "process time" are
frequenly by-passed; and those who are shy are hardly ever heard from.
This medium enables triumph over these constraints to rich exchange.
It also enables time delay. I remeber how difficult I found following Ivan
Blanco's ideas when I first signed on to this list because (at that time)
he seemed to be collecting and responding to his mail in a different time
frame - and certainly with less urgency - than most of the rest of us. At
the time I found this annoying; looking back, I feel deeply enriched by
many of his contributions.
Another important attribute of the medium, which I have mentioned before,
is the opportunity to edit one's words and to reconsider one's ideas before
posting them. For many of us, this is the most critical characteristic.
Speaking personally, I have consigned at least five messages to oblivion
for each one that I have posted.
This is not to say that I haven't also often responded in haste. This is a
matter of personal comfort. Some people learn best when they think aloud.
I can remember a couple of posts (one in particular by Jim Michmerhuizen)
in which the writer laid bare his thought processes as he read through a
message. I'll confess that I have regarded many of the posts here as
ill-considered, some as merely posturing. That's my take, and as long as I
don't make an issue of it publicly, I think that's OK. Sometimes there's a
nugget there.
Recently, I've taken to sending private messages to correspondents who have
used the acronym IMHO (which conventionally means "in my humble opinion")
embedded in paragraphs that seemed to me devoid of humility. Only one of
them seemed to get the point. Not always successfully, I attempt to label
my opinions as such, and try to approach the knowledge and creativity of
others with humility. For some of us, Raju's strategy could, in my
opinion, abet this process.
But it would sadden me to think that some of the learning here - which for
me is often the product of an outburst and/or a hastily written reply -
would discontinue because we all agreed to think twice about what we post.
--Jack Hirschfeld Where have all the young men gone? jack@his.com Gone for soldiers, every one! When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>