Creating Value Through Interaction: Gardening, Listening, Understanding & Letting Go of Control

Since being a recipient of a Dave Snowden fireball in response to my suggestions in  responding to Euan Semple that the kinds of changes organizations confront implementing any new technology, I'm taking stock and looking for the value in these interactions. (I've discovered in some circles being the target of Dave's differing perspective is a badge of honour.) 

Introducing "The Social Life of Information" in 2000 John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid write:

"The way forward is paradoxically to look not ahead, but to look around."

I'm looking around to see:

1.  Gardening

Simon Wardley used this term describing his experiences using a wiki:

"So as an organisation we are needing to introduce "gardening" structures in order to maintain it's usefulness."

and Euan confirmed:

"One of the things we discovered with our wiki is that some people, often our librarians, liked gardening!"

Forum hosts in the earliest online days were charged with:

• FEED - respond to contributions to fuel participation
• WEED- remove the trash, and
• SEED-  start new threads to nurture fresh conversations.

I hadn't paid attention to "wiki gardening" as accepted use so thank you both.

2.  Listening

Euan Semple's closing comment here was:

"How many managers do you know who feel listened to at the moment?"

So how can participatory tools be used to promote "listening" in organizations?

3. Understanding & Letting Go of Control

On his blog Euan Semple writes:

"How many managers do you know who feel really listened to by their staff at the moment?

How many managers feel really understood by their boss?"

It will be interesting to see what comments emerge.  Will "misunderstood managers" contribute or are they so busy trying to survive in "misunderstanding" organizations they have no time to participate in conversations like this? Or because they work for "control freaks" are unable to express their experiences only?

Dave Snowden cast aside my suggestions for the changes organizations confront as "deeply flawed" and a "list that could have been produced anytime in the last 100 years (and has been)."  Perhaps we need look no further than Euan Semple's observations about "managers not being heard" and argument for liberating "control freaks" for why the list has longevity.  While technology buffets organizations people inside them, especially in positions of control, are reluctant to change.

John Seely Brown and Estee Solomon Gray wrote in the first "Fast Company" Magazine, October 1995 "People are the Company" and

"Organizations are webs of participation. Change the patterns of participation, and you change the organization. At the core of the 21st century company is the question of participation."

The arrival of participatory media tools challenge and demand organizational change but because "People are the Company" do not guarantee it.  Looking around perhaps "gardening", "listening", "understanding" and "letting go of control" offer clues to the way forward.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Comments

[Nancy White]

I'm struck by a few things as I read this really good post, Jenny.

First, the three elements you have in here could also be the base of so many things. Of learning. Of facilitating. Of living successfully through a change. Of catalyzing change in a system. They are almost like values, eh? The "way" we work.

Second, about the response to your earlier posting.

I'm struck by how easy it is to read, to create in my head the tone of others. One tone that often comes - right or wrong - is a voice of certainty of the author. Why I grant or attribute certainty to them is all in my head, I don't know. But I do.

Is their tone of certainty intended? I don't know. What I feel (note, I did not say 'know'), is that living with uncertainty, with ambiguity, is for me a survival approach today, 2.0 version numbers be damned, and thus I tend to recoil a bit when others "seem" so certain. It is almost an allergic reaction. It may lead to wishy-washism, but it is a risk I'm prepared to take.

So for me the "listening" bit from above is more challenging online because I can read easily what I want into someone's words. To really listen, I have to go and ask questions, to help hone in more. To ask, I have to risk looking uncertain or wishy washy. That's fine for me.

With all this change we are experiencing, I find it pretty hard to believe they/we ARE all so certain. ;-)

[Dave Snowden]

Jenny, if you want to throw fireballs (and you threw several at Euan along with a few cold water bombs for good measure) you should be prepared to take them.

Your list has longevity, because it sees the issues or problems relating to technology adoption from an idealistic, not a naturalising perspective. They persist, becuase the perspective of top down determination of necessary values and behaviours by employees, persist as a way of getting people to accept new systems.

So wear your badge if you want to, but I would pick up on your gardening metaphor rather than (fireball on its way) rehashing the plaitudes to too many a consultancy report on the reasons for systems failure.

[Jenny Ambrozek]

Dave, I'm wearing no badge of honour. I haven't enjoyed these exchanges and learning that what people understood in what I wrote was not at all what I intended.

I've heard you speak more than once. I understand organizations are complex systems: that committed individuals representing the networks of people in organizations need to engage and interact for sense making and value creation.

The model workshop you ran at NYU, my introduction to Cynefin approaches, was seminal for me in seeing a process for moving organizations forward in a networked world. The KIN Workshop where I heard Euan speak first used a tagging exercise to emerge the themes from the keynotes presentations.

Absolutely as you wrote:

"If you aim to influence, but not design evolution you have more control than if you attempt to design an ideal system."

The earliest publication date in your site bio is 1997. So you've been at the edge of promoting simple rules for complex organizations for at least a decade. Valdis Krebs has been doing SNA in organizations since 1987. Interestingly starting with IBM I believe where you launched Cynefin. I wonder what that tells us about their organizational structures and willingness to innovate? David Krackhardt wrote his HBR piece "Informal Networks: The Company Behind the Chart" in 1991, JSB and Estee "People are the Company" in 1995.

The point I was, and am still trying to make, is that operating with an emergent mind and supporting McAfee's "anthills" is for a LOT of organizations a real challenge. People like yourself and Euan who have practiced this understand it. The body of knowledge and tools to support your "naturalizing", creating business value through interaction and participation, exist and are growing.

Through this difficult exchange more people are aware of "naturalizing" and letting go. I hope there is some value in that. Your willingness to comment openly here sincerely appreciated as is any clarification if I've failed in anyway to understand.

[Nancy White]

I know what 'naturalizing' is from a gardening perspective (and it can be idealized and misused as well as used brilliantly) but I'm not sure what it means in organizational systems. Anyone care to elaborate?

[Dave Snowden]

Jenny - interesting response, I plan to blog in return and will cross reference.

Nancy, naturalizing epistimology has a long tradition and is a relocation of philosophy into the natural sciences. That is one aspect of the naturalising movement in sense-making (myself Klein an others). The other aspect is represented by the quote below. More details at:http://www.cognitive-edge.com/2006/10/a_return_to_manege_rather_than.php

In the idealistic approach, the leaders of an organization set out an ideal future state that they wish to achieve, identify the gap between the ideal and their perception of the present, and seek to close it. This is common not only to process-based theory but also to practice that follows the general heading of the “learning organization”. Naturalistic approaches, by contrast, seek to understand a sufficiency of the present in order to act to stimulate evolution of the system. Once such stimulation is made, monitoring of emergent patterns becomes a critical activity so that desired patterns can be supported and undesired patterns disrupted. The organization thus evolves to a future that was unknowable in advance, but is more contextually appropriate when discovered.

[Nancy White]

Thanks, Dave

If I were to do a comic sketch of my life it would be dueling characters on each shoulder, one idealistic, one naturalistic, and me rolling my eyes in the middle. As I age, the naturalistic character seems to be gaining ground. I'm not sure how conscious my naturalistic character is of it's (his? her?) target for evolutionary stimulation beyond the next bit of chocolate for me. (Sorry, I'm in that kind of mood today.)

More seriously...

What happens when it is not the leaders that set the idealistic future state, but the whole system?

Have you seen situations where there is both idealistic and naturalistic perspectives in play? I'm thinking about some of the more effective NGO work that I've seen, and if I'm understanding correctly, they use the idealistic side to move them in (nearly) impossible situations. It is an emotionally useful strategy. But their pragmatic field work experience seems to very much embrace the naturalistic. They are keen observers of boundary conditions, changes in patterns and, I might add, listening to their gut as well. Nimbly hopping around input and sense making. But it is often very driven by the idealistic perspective. Or maybe that is a misuse of the word.

Still sorting it out. Will follow links after I get a few things off of my to do list.