Samenspraak: conditioneren van situaties

This week, I’ve visited Spilter for a training / demo of their “hybrid brainstorming” tool, computer supported brainstorming, with printing of ideas. I’ve been using this kind of “hybrid” – I don’t like the word, I prefer “blended” – brainstorming for over 15 years, pre-dating Spilter. There is no ultimate solution. I prefer using it in a same-place same-time environment. Here are some of my observations.

Tool for brainstorming
I see it as a tool, like pencil and (hexagonal) paper. There is however no “neutral” tool. We have a choice in intervening techniques. Pen and paper – it has been said – works better kinaesthetically. It also always works. Participants are experiencing themselves as intelligent and in control; The drawbacks are:

• hand writing (=> feeling seen personally),
• limited space (=> short, incomplete messages, single words),
• possibility of spelling errors (=> loosing face),
• messages only readable when being put up.

Mirror, mirror on the desk
A screen works both a “wall” and a “mirror”. with the use of computers, people tend to feel impressed, less intelligent and not in control. As a facilitator, one has to compensate for this. For instance, in our application (mind@work), people didn’t have to supply a given pass word; they could make up their own, just to show that they are in control and not the application.
The advantages are:

• screen offers better inner reflection (=> more complete messages, conscious messages projected on subconscious),
• spell check (=> feeling more comfortable),
• messages readable before they’re being put up (=> inspiration).

Use of a computerized tool speeds up brainstorming.

Using a projector to show the ideas enables you, as a facilitator, to tweak the brainstorm: repeating ideas, noticing incomplete messages, stimulating the brainstorm. It is harder to use it in categorizing, as it tends to be superficial, when using a screen. I think it makes sense to get the ideas out of the machine and into the social environment. “the camp fire”, I use this metaphor often: “2 million years of decision making over a camp fire is not going to be changed by 40 years of computer use”.

How to cluster?
Standing up, facing a “brown paper”, makes it easier and faster to cluster or categorize. You can work parallel, in several subgroups. The “blended” computer application made it possible to print the ideas (our application just uses a smaller font-size with longer messages) on (coloured) hexagons. I’m a big fan of hexagons, like LogoVisualTechnology (LVT).

Naming
In my experience, the crucial step in facilitating a group is in the naming of the clusters, sets or categories of the input. Here we have to slow down. This is a social, concrete process, where I need to experience the participants working together. The meaning of a message – I’ve learned this from Watzalawick – is in the interpunction: the way people say something, tone of voice, use of body..,. It is not in the content. One sentence can have different meanings, depending on the context and subtext.

Changing frame
Generally, people have difficulty in expressing what is bothering them, what the need or really want in a group (called “regression” or “group think” or … ). Here a group needs support, in a kind of “voice dialogue”, looking for the, usually more intraverted, people who are able to say what tends to remain unsaid. For instance, the initial epitome “communication” will be changed into: “we have to listen better to our customers”. In many cases, the chair person is unable to deliver this kind of support, as he or she is involved, or has a stake, in the situation.

Expressing paradoxes.
In this post, I hope to explain how Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty First Century is also the expression of the paradoxes of “Speaking” of “Expressing”.

Paradoxes as emergent phenomena
In “Paradoxes of Group Life”, Smith and Berg show how paradoxes rule our lives. Varela showed in “The Invented Reality” how a paradox also gives rise to emergent properties. This is an autonomous process, again governed by paradoxes. In their own special ways, paradoxes are inventing “reality”, reality is being invented through paradoxes. Spencer Brown shows this without a shadow of doubt. It is not the lack of words, that makes it difficult for me to express “how these paradoxes work”; the words themselves are part of the paradoxes of expression. They’re both the results – emergent – of reality becoming aware of itself and what prevents reality to become aware, I’m afraid.

Against contradiction
A paradox is an apparent contradiction, seemingly an opposition. In fact, a paradox is just the combination of mutually exclusive elements, like female or male, positive or negative, good or bad. The “or” here is the “inclusive-or”, it can be the one, the other or both. The opposition takes part in the system-as-a-whole, for instance in a parliament. (Religion, but this is another story, makes a way to resolution of these paradoxes; that’s why a religion liberates.)

The way paradoxes invoke each other works like this: one side of a paradox expresses itself. It has to, as it is an emergent property. It shows itself, for instance, in “apple” or maleness (use of apple, malus, intentionally). A paradox, has to become “embodied”, like energy, having manifesting itself in a particle. An “apple” or a male is not a pear or a female. Yet, “not a pear” is not an apple, just like “not female” doesn’t bring a”male”. Both aspects, both element invoke other “properties”, for instance “fruits” or “beings”. Male and female contradict each other and complement each other. You cannot have the one with out the other, like a horse and a carriage.

Paradoxes of Expressing
In their third group of paradoxes, the paradoxes of “Speaking”, which I tend to call “Expressing”, they illustrate four interrelated paradoxes: Authority, Dependency, Creativity and Courage. You probably can figure out, why I speak about “expressing” in stead of “speaking”. And also how this paradox is expressing itself. The intergroup paradox associated with this intragroup paradox is “Power”.

To illustrate: a entrepreneur has the courage to create something new and – depending on circumstances (for instance, an i-pad could not exist without a large infra-structure) – becomes successful and an authority. In doing so, he or she changes perceived ideas and opinions, creates a new “market”, while destroying “old” ones. This is the cycle of creative destruction. From this emerges “capital”, the proof of success. (In the old days, lets say Roman or mediaeval times, a capital would be a city)

Cycles
So, as Piketty’s research shows: “wealth or property be-gets wealth”. Irrespective if this is “good” or “bad” for an individual, group or society. The process is explained in “Paradoxes of Group Life”: scarcity creates groups, groups create differences in perspective and these create power differences. These can be applied to … get more wealth and less scarcity, a stronger group and weaker opponents, and more power…. Capital accumulates through cycles. Small initial differences are amplified through repeating cycles, until the run into a limits, posed by other cycles, more often than not invoked through these very cycles.

Wealth is an expression of power and power will get you (more) wealth. Money attracts money. In the end, everything must end. And so does the accumulation of power or wealth. It runs into “stuckness”: a limit imposed by, normally, physical conditions. However, capital is not a physical phenomenon, but a mental one (please note that the word “capital” comes from “capus“, “head”). With the abolition of gold as our currency, there is no physical limit to capital. Also, nowadays, a capital (i’m implying the town) has also become limited as an expression of power. There are still heads of state who want to express their power through buildings. No owner of wealth and power is building its own city, perhaps a campus here or there. We’re now stuck in a financial crisis: a crisis on paper. We’ve arrived at the limits of our current way of thinking. There is no way we can understand the situation we’re in through “normal” understanding. We’re looking paradoxes right in the face and they’re just staring back. We´re heading (use of the word head intentionally) towards a new understanding.

The book (and others, like “The Price of Inequality” and “The Spirit Level“) and the interviews with Piketty, show how we’ve run into “stuckness” through this apparent contradictions.

Wealth, the answer is rather simple, should be shared. What’s preventing us, are the very processes that made us gather wealth in the first place. I’ll deal with these later.

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Derek Cabrera and others have introduced a way of explaining Systems Thinking based on DRSP: Distinction, Relationships, System and Perspective. I do not disagree, but like to put things into perspective.

As I see it, it is the other way around.

P
First you’re having a perspective (P = You), as you cannot be without your self. Any observation and statement about that observation is made by you. You are reading these lines.

R
This perspective consists of relationships, which work both ways: you’re connected and connected to (and connected too). In a way, your perspective consists of the set of relationships (P = You = {relationships}). In its own way, this Linked-In we’re using, consists of a subset of these relationships. It mirrors what we call reality. The word reality consists of “res”, things and “li”, connection, so reality “is” connecting with things.

S
Your set of relationship is complex, you’ve adapted yourself to it and you’re adapting to it continuously. This is what living systems do. So, basically, this set is the Complex Adaptive System. (P = You = {relationships} = System). Systems Thinking is one way of adapting your self to system. I assume there are other ways to.

D
Then we’re at distinction: Systems Thinking is a way of making distinctions. As it is made by you, your way of Systems Thinking is truly yours, your own way of thinking about yourself, your relationship and your system. Its your own invention. (P = You = {relationships} = System = P ). Systems Thinking, like any other model, is a tautology. Interestingly, the very word tautology is derived from the Greek: t-auto-logos, “to say to one self”.

Here You see, as Spencer-Brown also observed, that universe (please note that I’ve dropped the article “the”: I’m referring to the archetype of universe, not the universe itself). seems to observe itself. This is of course how Spencer-Brown and I see our universe. In fact, and in my opinion, I cannot make a sensible distinction between my self, my way of perceiving universe, my system and my system thinking. As a result, to me, the universe seems to be alive.

As a part of the system, the universe, I cannot contain the whole of the system. And: being a living part of system, I have to accommodate, to adapt, to appropriate, to adjust, to attune to system of universe. Human beings have been evolved to do just that. We’re a fractal mirror image looking at ourselves and wondering: What shall I do next?

In order to survive, we do what we always do, adapt. So Systems Thinking is being adapted continuously. It is not that I’m not convinced of the usefulness and adaptability of Systems Thinking; for me, it is just as good as any good tale, story or narrative.

“Het is paradoxaal: “je kunt niet geen lichaamshouding hebben”. Met andere woorden, het lichaam “maakt” een houding; die lichaamshouding refereert (let op het gebruik van refereren: hermaken) ook altijd naar jezelf. Er ontstaat een feedback loop, waarbij je lichaamshouding met je referentie (beter bekend als “intentie”) naar jezelf vergeleken wordt en er een (dynamisch) evenwicht gevonden wordt tussen “wie je bent” en “als wie je je voordoet” (een acteur zou dat toch moeten weten 🙂 ) .” Less than a minute ago
Jan Lelie

Jan Lelie “Lewis Carroll – een pseudoniem, iemand die zich anders voordoet dan hij is – beschreef het via de hertogin als volgt aan Alice ”

Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”

Of, zoals ze ook uitlegt, “be what you would seem to be”, “wees wie je zou willen zijn”. “