Life in Organizations- applying complexity ideas to groupwork LO9614

arthur battram (apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk)
Fri, 30 Aug 1996 11:26:51 +0100

replying to Kent Myers Thu, 29 Aug 1996 Subject: Life in Organizations LO9604

kent has hit on 2 biggies for me-

1. 'the edge of chaos' as a key point in groupwork/team
discussion/dialogue [and in our personal learning of course]
2. process focus rather than content focus. I'm dimly beginning to see
that a lot of ideas/practice I've absorbed about groupwork is v. congruent
with complexity ideas [and the opposite IMHO, the stuff I've rejected
similarily feels un-congruent with complexity ideas] in this case its that
old idea of 'trust the group, trust the process, which is tranaslateable
into complexity terms as 'tune the tau or lamda factor until
connectivity/interaction reaches the 'the edge of chaos' and an attractor
will emerge'...kinda thing.

The potential power of complexity ideas is that [I hope at least] we can
use science to back up assertions like ''trust the group, trust the
process" when we're trying to persuade managers to loosen up control.

>I've been action-learning the last few weeks in terms of complexity
>theory. This has tempted me into some spectacular errors but also
>surprising successes. My strategy has been to judge where the group is
>in relation to the edge of chaos, then take only those actions that will
>efficiently move the group toward the edge. This is very different from
>my conventional practice. --snip--The other difference is that I have cut
>down actions and made them>matter in terms of process. I'm not worried
>about the content; I'm not>speaking when I have the urge; I refuse to be
>irritated or hope that>anybody likes my ideas.
>
>There's more to tell, but in keeping with the strategy, I'll stop.

why? I don't understand. please don't !

please tell me /us more, more examples from your group work please!

--

from Arthur Battram, organiser of the LGMB project 'Tools for Learning': helping local authorities to apply complexity concepts to personal and organisational learning. apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk "complexity is in here... and simplicity is out there...if we want it to be..."

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>