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OS & Self-Organizing / Living Projects
Convenor: Larry Peterson
Participants: Robert Chaffee, Viv McWaters?, Emily Reich, Helen Patterson, Lisa Kimball, John Moore, Louise Kippist, David Smith, Henri Lipmanowicz, Harrison Owen, Peter Wallman, Anne Hiha
Discussion:
Projects that are complex take on a life of their own – they become living organisms. Most of “project planning” is based in a linear or mechanical view of projects. Project “managers” try to shape and control them using tools that often don’t work. What if we looked at project as living, self-organizing systems? Open Space creates the conditions to enhance to stimulate self-organization. Some of us have been exploring the use of Open Space in project development processes.
The group explored some ideas:
- What does complex mean? Longer term, not just dealing with Materials, requires people and cultures to change, many organizations or communities of organizations involved.
- In many projects we are doing something that has never been done before, even if you have built the building before – not in that location, in that environment.
- Project GANT Charts
- Mind mapping may be more helpful (or a good compliment) to a GANT Chart.
- GANT chart may be seen as the spine of a living projects or as a partial map of the territory of the process.
- GANT charts provide and image, a social construction, of the project
- Keeping everyone informed of a project’s development cannot just be done by linear e-mail. Need a space like and OS wall that is continually updated with what is happening with some chaos as well as order for those who want the “whole” picture. (Could be on a web-site)
- One Coaching model focuses on the now, building on energy that is there and utilizing what we do best. Can enhance leaders in living projects.
- Success in using Open Space in large construction projects to get the whole system to see how they interact. The use of OS in a multi-stakeholder meeting was critical. One engineer said, “It is the relationships that drive the project and they were developed in the meeting.” The relationships between the architect, construction team and the project manager were transformed in the OS. The architect invited construction folks to planning meetings. It was the first time it ever happened to them.
- Executives or sponsors of the project are part of the living system (There are nested living systems where one is environment for the next, even symbiotic relationships)
- Some do not want to be involved, and just assume the project will be behind schedule
- Some give review and feedback to somebody else are often
- All systems are self-organizing systems. We are often in situations where the complexity is incomprehensible. Maybe you can handle it for the moment, but the next moment will have innovation, uncertainties
- If a shift in awareness is needed, you cannot get to the shift by argument
- Increase awareness of what is there
- Not that hard to bring the current paradigm to consciousness if it is not working (Harrison told the Dacron story)
- Calling attention to a transformation that has already happened often requires “Translation” or interpretation of experience
- In projects with multiple communities, “politicians” at one level or another get involved. To make the complexity appear simple, they often “dumb down” the project.
- Mapping emergent project structure is doable. OS can allow the structure to emerge rather than be predetermined.
- Managing individual energy as a new approach is worth considering
Increasingly I am using weblogging and knowledge logging as a way of facilitating communication with people involved in a project. A group of youth working on organizing a conference in Open Space used the Practice Workshop Wiki at http://www.globalchicago.net to help develop the invitation for their conference after a training and practice workshop I did with them in October.
There is software out there that allows for collaborative mapping, none of which I have used very extensively. But some good places to start in looking at knowledge logging include http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/ID/X00141D06?open&p=3022 which is the Gurteen Knowledge Log and Sebastien Paquet's website which is for the more technically minded: http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/
Also check this site out for more collaborative tools: http://radio.weblogs.com/0111988/
Chris Corrigan