Searching: The Theory and Practice of Making Cultural Change (Dialogues on Work & Innovation)

SEARCHING

Dialogues on Work and Innovation The book series Dialogues on Work and Innovation presents empirically based studies as well as theoretical discussions on the practice of organizational renewal. Its publications reflect the increasingly urgent need for the development of new forms of work organization. In today’s interdependent world, workplace reform and organizational effectiveness are no longer solely the concern of individual organizations; the local and the global have become closely interconnected. Dialogues on Work and Innovation mirrors the fact that enterprise development and societal development cannot be kept separate. Furthermore, the Series focuses on the dialogue between theory and practice, and thus on the mutuality of knowledge and action, of research and development. The Dialogues stress the critical significance of joint reflexivity in actionoriented research and the necessity for participatory processes in organizational change.

Editors Hans van Beinum, Halmstad University (Editor-in-Chief) Richard Ennals, Kingston University Werner Fricke, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Bonn Øyvind Pålshaugen, Work Research Institute, Oslo

Editorial Board Oguz ¦ Babüroglu ¦ (Bilkent University, Ankara); Claude Faucheux (CREDS, Fontainebleau); Davydd J. Greenwood (Cornell University); Denis Gregory (Ruskin College, Oxford); Björn Gustavsen (National Institute for Working Life, Stockholm); Friso den Hertog (University of Limburg); Frieder Naschold (Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin); Kurt Aagaard Nielsen (Roskilde University); Robert Putnam (Action Design Associates, Natick, USA); Annemieke Roobeek (University of Amsterdam); John Shotter (University of New Hampshire); Stephen Toulmin (University of Southern California); René van der Vlist (University of Leiden).

Volume 4 Merrelyn Emery Searching The theory and practice of making cultural change

Searching The theory and practice of making cultural change

MERRELYN EMERY

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Emery, Merrelyn. Searching : the theory and practice of making cultural change / Merrelyn Emery. p. cm. -- (Dialogues on work and innovation, ISSN 1384-6671 ; v. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Corporate culture. 2. Organizational change. 3. Organizational learning. I. Title. II. Series. HD58.7,E435 1999 658.4'063--dc21 99-39746 ISBN 90 272 1774 2 (Eur.) / 1 55619 829 9 (US) (Pb: alk. paper) CIP © 1999 – John Benjamins Publishing Company No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O.Box 75577 · 1070 an Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O.Box 27519 · Philadelphia PA 19118–0519 · USA

FRED EMERY 1925 – 1997

Thank you Fred

Contents

Introduction and Overview Cultural change Basic concepts World hypotheses Open and closed systems Historical contexts The methodology: The 2-stage model Diffusion and diffusive learning

xiii xiv xv xvi xviii xix xxi xxiii

PART I: THE THEORY OF MAKING CULTURAL CHANGE Introduction

1 3

Chapter 1: The Foundations of the Complete Model of Active Adaptation Failures of implementation The building blocks of open systems thinking Open systems thinking and directive correlation Implications of open systems thinking The conceptualization of environments Directive correlation, environments and adaptation The open systems view of people Open, purposefully adaptive systems Autonomous and homonomous Potential for ideal seeking Explaining failures of implementation: Arriving at the complete model Adding purposeful people to the open system The open jointly optimized socio-technical system Explaining failures of implementation more precisely Practical solution: The two-stage model Conclusion

5 5 6 6 8 9 9 12 13 14 15 17 18 20 21 23 24

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CONTENTS

Chapter 2: The complete (2-Stage) Model of Active Socio-Ecological Adaptation Active socio-ecological adaptation The model in terms of directive correlation The model in practice Elaborating the concept of active adaptation to cultural change The human capacity for potential directive correlation Adaptive open systems as a system of concepts The shift in learning and planning from type III to type IV Active socio-ecological adaptation and community development Why we need a new theory of diffusion and learning Closed systems models Previous open systems models Herbst: alternatives to hierarchies Schon: beyond the stable state Integral organizational renewal In conclusion

25 25 25 28 29 31 32 35 40 42 42 43 43 45 46 47

Chapter 3: Towards A Heuristic Theory Of Diffusive Learning A Model of Diffusion Premises The AXB model Diffusion in the type IV environment in terms of directive correlation This new theory of diffusion requires a new theory of learning Ecological learning:The epistemology of direct perception and knowing Origins of ecological learning Ecological learning elaborated today Babies are ecological learners Two distinct epistemologies of knowing and learning Type II and type III epistemologies Searching as ecological learning Consciousness and learning as primary human adaptations Formative work The model of consciousness as adaptive behaviour Definitions of learning and diffusive learning The wholistic nature of ecological learning Remembering and forgetting: Consciousness and the concept of memory Contextualists don’t have memories Contextualists simply remember and expect

49 50 50 51 51 53 54 54 56 59 62 67 69 70 71 73 77 79 80 80 85

CONTENTS

A model of remembering and expecting Searching, remembering and reconstructing Explaining forgetting Forgetting and not knowing means failure The concepts of imagining and expecting The choice model, learning strategies and knowings Knowings and understanding Wisdom Summary of choice model, knowings and consciousness

ix 87 89 92 93 94 95 96 99 103

Chapter 4: The Design and Management of the Learning Environment 105 The design principles 105 Design principle 1: Redundancy of parts, bureaucratic structure 106 Design principle 2: Redundancy of functions, participative democratic 108 structure A note on laissez faire 108 The combination of ecological learning and design principle 2 109 The conditions for creativity 110 Managing the conditions for influential, effective communication 111 The four conditions 112 Openness 112 Basic psychological similarity: We are all human with the same 113 human concerns Emergence of a mutually shared field: We all live in the same World 114 Trust: The development of individuals as open systems 115 Group dynamics 115 Relation to learning 117 Relation to structure 117 Committees 119 The mixed mode 121 The asymmetricality of the design principles 123 The battle for Orillia 123 The basic assumption of ‘pairing’ 127 baP: One assumption, two forms 129 Forget forming, storming and norming-go straight to performing 132 Summary of design and management of learning 134 The question of the adaptivity of the basic assumptions 136 Chapter 5: Completing the Conceptual Circle The engine of diffusion: The joy of learning Re-searching the search search

137 137 137

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The search for Joy Affects and ideals Both are innate and adaptive Time freedom Ideals and positive affects Joy with its feet on the ground Summary to this point The joyful leader Completing the conceptual circle Ideals and organization Organization and affects And once again-democracy or laissez-faire? Experience and consciousness In summary A simple process model of learning to act wisely Other explanatory powers The new type II culture-associative, joyful and wise

138 139 139 140 143 145 146 147 150 150 157 158 159 161 162 163 164

PART II: THE PRACTICE OF MAKING CULTURAL CHANGE Introduction

167 169

Chapter 6: The Search Conference The design and structure of the search as learning environment External structure or design Common variations More complex designs Variations in sequence The dynamics of external structure Internal structure The role of designers and managers Managing the process: Key features in chronological order Preparation and planning Research Selection of participants Timing Venues Numbers The intensive event: The search conference Introductions, briefings and expectations The first session: Learning about the L22 (extended social field) Learning about the L11 (system) Integrating environment and system

171 172 172 173 175 175 177 178 181 184 184 186 186 189 190 192 193 193 194 201 204

CONTENTS

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A further note on managing learning Some particular problems

207 209

Chapter 7: Successful Implementation, Variation and Unique Desgins Successful Implementation The second stage: Participative design workshops (PDWs) The original participative design workshop for redesign Modified participative design workshops to design an organization The most simple follow up design Implementation for an existing DP2 organization Implementation for DP1 organisations Search unrelated to organizational change Search for total organizational change Implementation of community, industry and issue searches From searching to way of life Variations on a single search The multisearch A series of searches Unique designs Contextualizations Mixtures of SC and PDW Flockings In Summary Comparisons with other forms Delphi Academic conferences Some don’ts

211 211 212 212 214 215 216 216 216 217 217 218 218 219 223 225 226 226 229 230 231 231 231 234

Conclusion: Towards Association, Wisdom and Joy

239

References

245

Introduction and Overview

This book is about a powerful way of making cultural change. Its power derives from its comprehensive, internally consistent theoretical framework, developed over many years. It is the framework called open-systems theory or thinking (Emery, F. 1981), OST for short. Open-systems theory is not to be confused with any of the burgeoning variants of closed systems theory. The difference lies in whether or not there is a conceptualization of an environment for the many and various systems in the world. OST argues that people are also open systems. It further argues that people are purposeful open systems who can create and change their systems and their environments. As the theory chapters explain, OST’s basic components of purposeful people within systems which function as environments for those within them, within an extended social field or environment, provides a dynamic framework within which cultural change is readily conceptualized. Because OST has developed from tested practical human applications, it is a genuine social science rather than a derivative of physics, biology or other non human based discipline. The method of cultural change discussed here has historically gone by the names of the Search Conference, the Future Search or simply Searching or the Search. We no longer use the name ‘Future Search’ (Weisbord 1992; Weisbord and Janoff 1995) as it now applies to an entirely different method (Emery, M. 1994a). The power of Searching derives from the fact that it creates an environment, an econiche in which people plan cooperatively towards a shared future and rise above individual and everyday purposes to be ideal seeking. Collectively they engage in creative task oriented work which generates high levels of learning, positive affects and energy. OST explains why this exciting creative behaviour is intrinsically motivating of further such behaviours and the learning required to sustain the systemic and personal development it entails. This motivated learning is, therefore, diffusive in its effects. People are motivated to not only involve others in the implementation of their action plans but also to create opportunities for others to use more directly, the method they themselves used. Our cultures are currently in rapid transition as the world has changed for ever since the early 1950s (Emery, F. 1977a). While some see only a change for the worse, others perceive clearly the positives in the massive value shifts that have occurred. A greater valuing of people and community above their institutions, of the right to self govern, and a dramatic shift towards environmental awareness and

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care are among the most obvious changes. But all of these are changing too slowly for some and there are many calls for a radical change towards a future in which we contribute to the solution rather than the problem. Such a future sounds good but how do we get there? Obviously there must be continued cultural change on a grand level. Do we have the tools? And if we do, what are they and how are they to be diffused? If they need to be taught laboriously from generation to generation with all the pain and very chancy results that goes with what most people understand by being taught, they stand no chance. Searching is not about teaching but about learning at many levels. It produces an econiche within which people mobilize their most adaptive features and competencies. Its long track record of success and development leading to greater success has fueled high expectations of change at the system level and these are certainly fulfilled. But it has become clear over time that the effects are broader than change at any single system level. Behaviours and values can be irrevocably changed through the processes of learning and perceptual reconstruction that characterize the method. Over time as these direct and indirect forms of diffusion occur, individual systems cooperate and coalesce forming larger systems of an entirely different character. They create pockets of a new culture. As systems and environments define and redefine each other over time, these pockets of new culture accumulate, eventually becoming a new extended social field or environment of every system. From the historical point of view, this discussion of Searching occurs after a long-standing problem has been solved. This problem entailed too many failures of implementation. The solution required a reconceptualization of the concept of active adaptation and a concomitant change in practice. For Searching to be maximally effective, it requires a 2-stage model or process. Rather than simply learn about the theory and practice of the Search Conference (SC), the practitioner must now also learn about a companion method, the Participative Design Workshop (PDW) whose purpose is the design and redesign of organizational structures. Without effective implementation, there is little chance of diffusion and therefore, widespread cultural change. The book discusses, therefore, three intertwined themes: cultural change, diffusion and the methodology through which they can be brought into being. These themes run through Part I which explores the theory and Part II which provides guidance to practice.

Cultural change The major argument is that despite our recent misadventures with mechanistic assumptions and ways, bureaucratic structures and the strong trends towards dissociation which they created, we have both the capacities and methods to put

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these behind us. While the ‘relevant uncertainty’ in our social environment is currently out of control, we can tame it. We can restore at all levels, a more appropriate culture, one in which people have knowledge of and respect for their environment in its broadest sense. Its basic unit is ‘people-in-environment’ who proactively and creatively make adaptive changes as a matter of course. The resulting culture is associative, joyful and wise. It is the expression of a ‘participative democracy’.

Basic concepts The framework within which this thesis unfolds is that of open systems, systems which are inevitably open to their environment, and more specifically that of directive correlation. The directive correlation is a simple model expressing the relationship of the actions of a system and its environment relative to a starting point and a goal. It allows us to assess adaptation of system and environment and can be elaborated in many ways. Within this framework there are many integrated concepts not the least of which are the organizational design principles (Emery, F. 1967 and Chapter 4, this volume). The design principles operate at all level and sectors of society. They underlie the nature of political or governance systems in the same way as the structure of single organizations. Representative political systems derive from Design Principle 1. Alternatives flowing from Design Principle 2 have existed and currently exist (Emery, F. 1976a,b; 1989). The first design principle (DP1) is called ‘redundancy of parts’ because people are treated as replaceable parts, cogs in the machine. Its critical feature is that responsibility is located at least one level above where a particular activity is being performed. It produces the organizational structures called ‘bureaucratic’ or ‘hierarchical’ where the hierarchy is one of dominance. A DP1 structure is one in which everyone, except the person at the top, is licensed to be irresponsible. The second design principle (DP2) is called ‘redundancy of functions’ because as many functions and skills as possible are built into each job. Responsibility is located where activities are being performed. It produces organizational structures called ‘participative democratic’, not representative. Participative democratic organizations, particularly large ones, may still contain a flat hierarchy but this is a hierarchy of functions, not dominance, where different levels negotiate as peers in order to accomplish the goals of the whole. Contrary to DP1 structures, DP2 structures motivate. A participative democracy, therefore, is a system structured entirely on DP2. That is, all its subsystems (organizations and communities) and their interrelationships are democratic as well as its overall system of governance. A participative democracy is an open responsible system. People are taken to be purposeful, potentially ideal seeking systems (Ackoff and Emery 1972), simultaneously pursuing autonomy, belongingness and mean-

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ing (Chapter 1). Human behaviour and environments can be recognized as mutually determining. Organizations structured on either design principle affect our behaviour and, of course, the design of organizations is entirely under human control. DP2 structures provide an environment within which we may rise above everyday purposes, to seek ideals. Searching is designed to create such an environment that can have far-reaching effects on behaviour. Environments are defined as extended social fields with a causal texture (Emery and Trist 1965), where the properties of the extended social field affect the behaviour of all systems within it. This conceptualization provides both a conceptual and historical framework for cultural change and its fluctuating adaptivity. The nature of human systems and their environments are discussed in Chapter 1. Ecological learning (Emery, F. 1980) comes from our inbuilt adaptation to our world and our ability to immediately and directly extract meaningful knowledge of it (Chapter 3). This perceptually based learning applies to human behaviour as well as the physical environment. When placed in DP1 structures which inhibit their potential, people directly perceive this, and make and act upon ‘group assumptions’ about what must be done to ameliorate the effects. This further paralyses communication and learning. In DP2 structures which maximize opportunities for development, people adopt the ‘creative working mode’ (Chapter 4), become cooperative and task oriented which promotes communication and learning towards shared purposes. DP2 structures are ‘learning organizations’. Therefore, the most comprehensive definition of participative democracy is a DP2 system, actively adapted to its environment in such a way that it meets the needs of its people for purposefulness and ideal seeking, so that they want to continue to learn how to increase the adaptivity of system and environment for mutual benefit. This is the ultimate goal of cultural change through the SC, which achieves continuous dynamic adaptation at the largest, realistic system level. This ultimate goal is the culture I describe as associative, joyful and wise (Chapter 5). World hypotheses Over and above the theoretical framework of open systems is a world hypothesis called contextualism. World hypotheses (Pepper 1942: 105) are “modes of cognition”. They purport to inform us about the structure of the world and how best to approach knowledge of the world (1942: 74). Each flows from a root metaphor. They are mutually exclusive. The adequacy of a world hypothesis depends on its potentialities for description and explanation. At the moment four world hypotheses are considered relatively adequate which means that “they are capable of presenting credible interpretations of any facts whatever in terms of their several sets of categories” (1942: 99). Inadequacies arise mainly from internal inconsis-

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tencies so that the minimum requirement today for a world hypothesis is unlimited scope. Three world hypotheses are particularly relevant here. The first is mechanism which is currently still endemic in the industrialized West. Its root metaphor is the machine and it assumes that everything is and works like a machine. The second is contextualism whose root metaphor is the historic event in the life of a whole in context. Table 1 shows that each bears a direct relation to the more detailed frameworks and adaptation. Mechanism springs from the assumption of a closed, static mechanical universe and consequently views people as goal seeking within closed systems generally (Wertheim 1995). Pepper has traced the intellectual origins of mechanism back to Leucippus and Democritus (1942: 95). Theories of learning based on mechanism assume a fragmented perceptual or sensory system from which it is difficult to conceptualize the production of fully meaningful knowledge, particularly abstract knowledge. Within mechanism, there is a place for everything with everything in its place. Rather than flexible structures within open systems, there is rigid unchanging hierarchy, the expression of DP1. This organizational design principle and the structures which flow from it, inhibit learning and creativity. People are viewed as only goal seeking and unable to extract meaningful information about their world. When people become prisoners within these systems, they gradually become unable to make the purposeful creative effort required to affect the nature of their extended social field. If they cannot do this, they cannot bring this field under their control in such as way as to preserve the health of people-inenvironment. The assumptions of mechanism preclude active adaptation.

Table 1. Mechanism and Contextualism, people and organization World Hypotheses

Systems See People as See Learning as Design Principles

Produce:

Mechanism

Contextualism

Closed/Static Goal seeking, Objects Irresponsible Inadequate for Meaning, Need Teaching (DP1) Redundancy of parts People as redundant parts Responsibility located at least one level above actors Group assumptions which inhibit learning, communication Maladaptions

Open/Dynamic Purposeful, Potentially Ideal seeking Responsible Adequate, Direct perception, Encourage Ecological learning (DP2) Redundancy of function People as valuable, resourceful peers Responsibility located with actors Creative Working Mode which increases learning, communication Active adaptation, commitment

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The integrated system of concepts which are subsumed under contextualism lead to the opposite conclusion. If all systems are open to their environment and if those within them can directly extract meaningful information, and learn about it, there is constant change and the possibility of purposefully designed change. Contextualism is the only root metaphor based on constant change. If human systems are structured on the second design principle, the learning and creativity of their members is enhanced. Even the most difficult ecosystem can be subjected to intensive learning towards creating an adaptive and mutually beneficial relationship between system and environment. Therefore, both in theory and in practice, we can only sensibly explore and establish active adaptation within the world hypothesis of contextualism. Open and closed systems The third world hypothesis of relevance to us is organicism whose root metaphor is integration. Its relevance lies not in its ubiquity but in the surging popularity of ‘systems’, particularly whole systems and ‘holism’ more generally. The process of integration is towards an absolute or ideal whole and according to the organicist, “facts are not organized from without; they organize themselves” (Pepper 1942: 291). The absolute is implicit in all of its fragments or parts (1942: 307). In organicism as in mechanism, unpredictability is inherently inconsistent and explained away whenever it happens to emerge. If everything else fails, the unpredictable is declared predictable (1942: 145), the disorder or chaos is found to contain order. While organicism and contextualism have much in common, they diverge around matters of time and change, and these relate to the core difference. Like the other three adequate world hypotheses, organicism admits of no context while it is of course an essential component of contextualism. When we look at the ever increasing variety of ‘systems’ and systems theories available today, we can see that we are faced with a very basic choice — open or closed. The choice will depend on your purposes. Both open and closed systems meet Stulman’s (1967: 25) specifications for approaching a more desirable future, namely: To deal with the world’s complex problems, we have to develop and apply widely a new methodology for thinking that leads us from the singular viewpoint to a system of thinking, from system to an organisation of systems to synthesis, and from synthesis ultimately into metamorphosis — in other words, a methodology of integrated thought and action in which there is a continuing feedback and flow forward to deal with constant changes at all levels.

Open systems theory also includes aspects of the many varieties of whole system formulations as that expressed by the word ‘synergy’ where synergy means “behaviour of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed

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behaviours of any of the system’s separate parts or any sub assembly of the system’s parts” (Fuller 1969: 64). It encompasses many of Bohm’s (1980) observations. The choice can be illustrated by examining ‘diversity management’ which is about “managing the increasing diversity of issues that confront humankind in contemporary organisational and societal affairs” (Flood and Romm 1996: 9). Diversity management also includes choosing responsibly and intelligently between the increasing range of models and methods available for dealing with these issues. The management of these social issues ”requires acceptance of (some) responsibility for the impact of decisions and policies made on the physical, biological, and social environments” (Flood 1996b: 8) but their total (or local) systems interventions do not include a concept of environment or an analysis based on such an environment. Rather, the approach is defined as ‘holism’ and falls squarely within the world hypothesis of organicism as it is built on layers of systemicity where each is integrated or embedded into the other (Flood 1996a: 1). It is “a novel attempt to solve the problems of the unity of science, using the assumption of the legitimacy and applicability of general principles to all levels of reality, as all these levels consist of systems” (Dudley and Pustylnik 1996: 10). The environment as defined in OST is an explicitly knowable entity in its own right, governed by laws which are very different from the laws governing systems. The inclusion of a discrete environment is the major defining difference between open and closed systems models. Without losing the concept of whole system, open systems theory escapes the many dilemmas involved in closed systems. Not the least of these is that closed systems theories are attempting to deal with social issues which are a product of change, and whose solution will involve further change, but closed systems are by definition static, incapable of change. In terms of the purposes central to the work described in this book, they clearly have no answer to questions such as ‘adaptation to what? Without a concept of environment, this question makes no sense. As well as escaping the dilemmas involved in such organicist models, open systems also avoid mechanism and closed systems thinking in general. The terms ‘systems’ and ‘systems theory’ should not be taken to cover a unitary phenomenon. Open and closed systems are incommensurate in terms of change. Active adaptation for cultural change and open systems theory have developed together through integrated theory and practice. This book describes their development to date. Historical contexts Adopting the world hypothesis of mechanism suppressed our group life and capacity for ideal seeking, reducing our collective purposefulness and ability to work adaptively with our extended social field. Its many legacies include the

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widespread introduction of the first design principle and bureaucratic structures which treat people as cogs in a machine. This design principle has affected every institution and facet of our lives. The epoch in which mechanism flowered in the West created what is known as the Type III environment, a disturbed reactive environment characterized by competition (Emery and Trist 1965). Its life expectancy in the West was inevitably short lived as it conflicted with predispositions to the earlier Type II environment, the most long lasting and adaptive option yet tried by the human race, in all ways different to the Type III. The Type II, called placid, clustered, was characterized by cooperation at all levels. Figure 1 shows that while the concepts are pure, the reality of transitions is that there will be remnants of previous epochs carried through into the new. The old learnings from this time are being rediscovered and new visions are constantly being generated. They have a common core which is described here as associative, joyful and wise, a new form of Type II. But since about 1955 we have been living in a new environment, the Type IV, which is the result of the unintended consequences of mechanism, a breakdown of its assumptions and structures. People have reacted to the Type III environment, increasingly taking things into their own hands (Emery, F. 1977a). They are sorting out their values and the Type IV environment is known as ‘turbulent’ because it is characterized by rapid value shifts and discontinuities. It is an intrinsically dynamic environment which induces relevant uncertainty. This makes it unpleasant and unhealthy. There has been a growth of maladaptions, particularly dissociation and superficiality (Emery, F. 1977b), illustrating reluctance to engage at a meaningful level. Obviously just simply reacting to this Type IV will exacerbate its nature and effects. Some have trod this path, attempting to reassert the authority of the

Type II Placid Clustered

* * * * * * # * * 50,000 yrs BC

Type III Disturbed Reactive

# # # # # # * # *

Industrial Revolution

Type IV Turbulen

Type IV->New II Transition

# #

New Type II Associative, Joyful and Wise

# #

*

# * # * * # *

*

* * * # * #

ca 1950

Today

# = DP1 and teaching abstract knowledge, * = DP2 and ecological learning

Figure 1. Cultural change and environmental texture over historical time

* *

* *

*

* *

# Future

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mechanistic way. But some have accurately intuited adaptive moves and over time, these trends have also strengthened. The mix of opposing trends has created even greater uncertainty within the field itself. Clearly deliberate interventions to create adaptation out of maladaption must carefully elevate them as a unitary phenomenon above the confusion in the field. Fortunately there is evidence that they can achieve adaptation and a new cultural way. In terms of cultural history, therefore, the book is framed against the sequence shown in Figure 1. Figure 1 shows our current cultural status in the context of the previous stages of human history and a possible future. Searching creates pockets of this more human, ecologically oriented culture. The people within these pockets create others and they link up. The desirable end point is a modern form of the adaptive Type II environment.

Methodology: The 2-Stage Model Searching is the translation of a system of understandings into practice to extend the emerging culture and to bring it under conscious control. As it is the theory in practice so it is demanding of attention to all detail of its underlying dimensions. Since the first SC in 1960 (Trist and Emery 1960) theory and practice have undergone intensive integrated development. The SC is the intensive blip in the middle of an extended period of preparation and planning, and implementation. Its success depends upon the quality of the preparation and the structures consciously understood and built into the implementation phase as well as design and management of the event itself. A Participative Design Workshop modified to design rather than redesign organizational structures, is included at the end to increase the probability of successful implementation. Searching includes all of the critical concepts discussed in Part I. It is an operationalization of open systems thinking, uses ecological learning and the second design principle which together produce the ‘creative working mode’. It establishes the conditions for influential communication and rationalizes conflict, celebrates diversity and produces diffusion through positive affect. It focuses on action plans embedded in the Strategy of the Indirect Approach and effective structures for successful implementation. Translating the open system into practice provides its characteristic schematic or minimal external structure or design (Figure 2). System, environment and their integration for adaptation provide the content. The process consists of the ‘transport equations’ across the system-environment boundary, the functions of learning and planning. The V shape or ‘funnel’ is symbolic of the creativity inherent in the process, as all possibilities are searched,

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Environment

System

Changes in the extended social field Most desirable and probable worlds History-significant events and changes Analysis of system today Desirable future of the system

Active Adaptation

Constraints & dealing with them Desirable and achievable system Action plans

Structural Design

Participative Design Workshop Community Implements and Diffuses

Figure 2. Schematic design of Searching as the 2-stage model

not merely the probabilities. By the time the desirable future of the system (its set of strategic goals) is decided, every possible variable pertaining to that future has been considered. All dimensions cohere into a wholistic, systemic internal structure and process. Taken together they form a unique entity. Searching as econiche provides maximally conducive conditions for the development of ‘learning-planning-communities’, those which continue to take responsibility for control and coordination of their own affairs. The ultimate goal is a productive, psychologically healthy and therefore creative, pocket of learners. Searching requires theoretical and practical knowledge of the design, organization and management of dynamic open-learning environments. Theoretical understanding is critical. The SC is a large group method requiring knowledge about and experience with the total set of concepts, their internally consistent nature and the dynamics they produce. The long developmental history of the SC has shown that there are, unfortunately, no short cuts. It also demands a high level of maturity and responsibility in collaboration with participants. There is both equality and a strict division of labour between managers and participants. Participants are wholly responsible for the content and the outcomes. Managers are responsible for the design and for the management of the learning environment and process, until such time as the community becomes self managing. A good manager produces a totally self-managing community. Chapter 6 spells out the practices of Searching as they fit the theory and accelerate the emergence of the new culture. It describes the design and management involved and guides the reader through a chronological account. The SC is, therefore, an environment or econiche specifically designed and managed for learning and the emergence of ideal seeking. Those observing a Search for the first time are struck by the profound differences in behaviour during the event from that ‘normally’ seen in everyday life. This is simply

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because the structures within which we conduct most of our everyday life are not conducive to learning, ideal seeking or taking control of our futures. The Search is quite explicitly an experience of participative democracy. The learning required here is that of ecological and puzzle-learning within DP2 structures. It includes learning about the nature and effects of these structures themselves. Participants see a large group producing a vast amount of creative work and learning, efficiently and responsibly with good order and with energy, humour and positive affects. They are reassured that participative democracy does not mean anarchy or chaos, laissez faire. It has a tight functional DP2 structure which fulfils task and people at one and the same time. Such awareness is not, however, an adequate substitute for direct conceptual knowledge of organizational design and the design principles underlying it. The 2-stage model incorporates the Participative Design Workshop (PDW) which has been developed for that purpose. At the end of the 2- stage model, the community not only has a strategic plan for active adaptation, it also has an effective democratic structure to carry it through its implementation. Chapter 7 deals with implementation as well as design variations for very large systems and unique designs which are neither SCs not PDWs. Because the framework of the Search is conceptual rather than mechanistic, as in a fixed series of steps, it provides enormous flexibility in its design and application. New issues will constantly arise and demand attention. People must know how to define systems and draw appropriate boundaries for effective new systems to take responsibility for these issues. Similarly, as existing systems themselves coalesce or fragment, new systems emerge demanding open systems knowledge and design skills. Searching is a wholehearted and consistent commitment to and demonstration and learning of contextualism. It sharpens the choice faced by all of us (Emery, F. 1985) and creates through its practice a higher probability of a new contextualist future.

Diffusion and diffusive learning The focus of diffusion is, as above, a cultural transformation based on active socio-ecological adaptation and methods which produce learning about and adoption of it. But the theory presented here differs radically from previous theories because it accepts not only the reality of the Type IV environment, but also adopts an internally consistent view of humans as systems in their own right. As individuals they, therefore, bear the same open relationship with their broad social field as do the organizational systems they inhabit. Once the concepts and practices of transformation are alive and well in the field itself, the concept of the leading edge of change becomes irrelevant. Behaviour which diffuses is, therefore, a result of the nature of the relationship between people, their organizational

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environments and the extended social field. As people themselves are purposefully adaptive, they make choices towards adaptive change. They do this as unitary open systems within which cognition and emotion cannot be separated. Chapter 2 elaborates the new complete model of active socio-ecological change and the logic of how it produces cultural change. It also documents previous theories of diffusion. This section makes it clear that we need a new theory. Chapter 3 sets the ground for a more adequate theory by establishing a new and more comprehensive approach to learning within the open systems model. A new definition of learning, encompassing the whole open system, is then available as a base for a definition of diffusive learning, the learning which intrinsically motivates further learning for self and others. Diffusers are also life long learners. From the open systems perspective, human behaviour and motivation is the property of an ecosystem. It is not possible to ascribe behaviour to ‘motives’ inside the skin. Human systems and environments constantly redefine each other. This emphasizes the importance of conscious conceptual knowledge of how to deliberately create all the environments within which people live, work and learn, so that people are enhanced rather than diminished. Chapter 4 establishes the systemic relationships between structure, affects, energy and learning, the theory behind the design and management of the learning environment. Chapter 5 completes the conceptual circle. The motivational power of the positive affects, particularly joy, are shown to be the driving force of diffusive learning and thus a motivated move from the hatred of learning to the joy of learning. Chapter 5 finishes with a simple process model of ‘learning to act wisely’. It includes the basic components which have found to be essential for diffusion. Both experience and conscious knowledge of these components are essential for continued long term diffusion of the new learning for cultural transformation. This is a new theory of diffusion. Within the open-systems model of active adaptation and its assumptions about whole people-in-environment, diffusion can be seen to be a product of and dependent on the generation of positive affect. When conscious learning takes place within and about an econiche in which ideals are elicited and positive affect and energy are generated, the learning is intrinsically motivating. People are motivated to recreate such econiches for themselves and others.

In this way cultural change is continuing and can be accelerated. The associative, joy and wise way is within our grasp.

PART I

THE THEORY OF MAKING CULTURAL CHANGE

Introduction “Nothing is as practical as a good theory” (Kurt Lewin 1945)

The task for a social scientist concerned with cultural change is to use the best possible framework in such a way as to pursue the joint responsibilities of social science, the mutual enrichment of social science and the practical affairs of humanity (Emery, F. 1977b: 206). If you accept that cultural change is no longer a luxury but a necessity if the human race is to survive, the question is how do we learn to change? Fortunately, there are effective tools and they are to be learnt rather than taught. Fortunately also, there also appear to be many people prepared to do the learning that must precede the fuller implementation of this desirable and necessary future. Part I provides the theoretical base for that learning and its diffusion. This part, therefore, attempts to spell out the practical theory of Searching as an effective tool for cultural change. It overviews the fundamental system of concepts which has led to and simultaneously evolved from practice and in the process of doing this, it attempts to explain why the method is effective in producing diffusive learning, the learning which people spread spontaneously because they are motivated to do so. In explaining the ‘why’ of diffusion I have had to explore a more comprehensive concept of learning. In this part I put some theoretical flesh on the bones of contextualism. This part with its many variables is founded in the model of directive correlation and open systems. These are the fundamental tools for contextualism and are sufficiently powerful to sustain an elaborate theoretical structure. This involves a convergence of theoretical perspectives, evolving from and developed to explain and predict the changing world. All are ecological, fitting within contextualism and all promote a science to genuinely serve humanity-in-environment. They take as axiomatic an image of people as active, responsible parts of their world (Chein 1972). From this comprehensive and internally consistent framework, it is possible to explore adaptive human change and the role of consciousness within it. This part, therefore, proposes a new, more specific body of theory to guide our practice of change, that practice which can move us towards active socio-ecological adaptation. CHAPTER 1 spells out the building blocks of open systems thinking and my most recent reconceptualization of its core. This reconceptualiztion arose from the search for a logical way to prevent failures of implementation of Search Conference plans. The logic shifts the emphasis from system in environment to purposeful people in systems in environment. This recentering of the open system led to a more complete model of active adaptation and from there to the 2-stage model of Searching. CHAPTER 2 spells out this complete model and shows how it produces long

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PART I: INTRODUCTION

term cultural change. The active adaptive open system is then explained as a detailed system of concepts with internal consistency. All relevant elements cohere towards the development of ‘learning planning communities’ and provide a sufficiently wholistic framework to guide practice and produce spontaneous diffusion. Other frameworks are surveyed and found to be inadequate to explain the cultural diffusion which has already occurred or to accelerate it. CHAPTER 3 develops a comprehensive model of diffusive learning appropriate for today’s environment. It builds on the epistemology of ecological learning, that ability to directly extract meaning from the invariances in the environment. This is given by the structure of our perceptual system. It also establishes that consciousness is a primary human adaptation. Definitions are derived for both a wholistic open-systems learning and diffusive learning. Remembering and forgetting, and imagining and expecting, are also reconceptualized within the new framework. All of the conditions required for diffusive learning are found to be present in Searching. This analysis also throws light on instances of success and failure with transformative methods. From this framework, a complete set of learning strategies and knowings are derived. CHAPTER 4 spells out the conditions for learning in terms of the design and management of the learning environment. It elaborates the critical dimensions of the design principle underlying the structure, the conditions for effective communication and group dynamics. These involve our inability to escape from the laws which govern our nature as social beings, our ‘group life’. A brief summary of a failed participative conference is used to illustrate many of the lessons learnt about design and management over the years. It also helped me to clarify a long standing confusion over the basic assumption of ‘pairing’, showing that it can take two forms. CHAPTER 5 looks more specifically at the fundamental and ubiquitous function of affects in our lives and ties together some loose ends, completing the conceptual circle or system of dimensions critical to making change towards an active adaptive society. It lays the final ground for the learning of new rituals necessary for cultural reconstruction. It is, therefore, also concerned with the revitalisation of our intrinsic properties and abilities, knowing and thinking systematically and making wise decisions. From the order which is inherent in this conceptual system, I suggest a model of ‘learning to act wisely’. It is proposed as a guide in creating environments for adaptive, ecological learning. Once it is grasped that learning, the prerequisite for survival of humanity, is an indivisible function of human life, it becomes easier to transform not only the intellectual appreciation of human learning but to begin to translate this perspective into practices which enhance the probability of active adaptation and survival. While the more practical matters relating to the design and management of the methods or learning environments can be found in Part II, this part provides the groundwork for understanding those methods, practical theory.

Chapter 1 The Foundations of the Complete Model of Active Adaptation

The theory and practice described here have coevolved with their cultural context for over forty years. We pick up the history at a critical stage for the long-term success of Searching.

Failures of implementation From the beginning of the seventies, it became clear that there were two classes of Search-Conference (SC) failure, those that failed because of inadequate preparation, design or management and those that failed during implementation. The former attracted by far the most attention and much conceptual and practical effort was put into developing the method to its current high reliability. The latter class, failures of implementation, received far less attention. The early SCs in Australia were predominantly community and issue based Searches. Pretty soon, however, after the first few had been tried and news of them diffused, organizational Searches began to be held. A consistently different pattern emerged with a much greater success rate during implementation for these organizationally based events than for the geographical community, industry and issue Searches. Organization was clearly involved. Some SC managers faced with imminent failures of implementation of their community Searches, but without a clear theoretical answer, reverted to the older consultancy practice of holding the client’s hand during implementation and working to create the results on the ground. While this almost certainly increased the success rate on the ground, it in no way solved the dilemma and just as certainly slowed the growth of confident self-managing communities. Even when there was understanding of the cause of the failure, the cases were dealt with in isolation. We worked to restore a participative group process in order to put energy and motivation back into the system. But nobody made the leap to prevention. This had long been a serious issue on the back burner and my

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attention was drawn back to it in late 1991. The theory came together quickly. But before I explain these failures and show why they led to the complete model, we must examine the basic building blocks of open-systems thinking.

The building blocks of open-systems thinking The basic building block is the open system which can also be expressed within the concept of directive correlation. It includes the major components of environment and people. Although environment and people are components, their various natures are so critical to understanding Open-Systems Thinking (Emery, F. 1981) that they must be dealt with as major building blocks in their own right. Open-systems thinking and directive correlation The open system and directive correlation are different expressions of the reality of contextualism, an old model of human affairs. It is particularly applicable to today’s uncertain world as it specifically acknowledges and uses the environment as a variable in its own right. This environment is governed by laws which are very different from the laws governing systems. Angyal (1941b: 38) has given us the clearest exposition of an open system : “The logical formulation of a given system states the construction principle or the system principle of the whole. Every system has one and only one construction principle.” The system principle expresses the unique relationship between the system and the environment. A system is therefore “a discriminable distinguishable invariant that can be identified amidst a host of different conditions and circumstances” (Jordan 1973: 60–1). A system, therefore, exists in an environment which is “a set of elements and their relevant properties, which elements are not part of the system, but a change in any of which can cause or produce a change in the state of the system.” (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 19). In Thing & Medium, Heider (1926) began the task of specifying the structure of the environment and concluded that it had a causal texture which underlies the distinction between objects and mediators, and is the basis of observed correlates between perceptions and thing events. Taking his argument further in 1930, he arrived firstly at “the performance of the perceptual apparatus is to a great extent determined by the structure of the environment” (Heider 1930: p46) and in essence spelt out the death knell of sensationalism. It is not adequacy or richness of stimulation which determines perception, for perception is purposeful (1930: p 51). “A function is called purposeful if it can be meaningfully referred to two different systems” (1930: p52), or in more current terminology used below, perception is a purposeful function of an informational ecosystem. This is clear in

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his review of the Gestaltists’ progress in perception where he concluded that they failed to account for “the fact that contact with the environment makes the organism more coordinated with it”. (Heider 1939: 83) He thus also arrived at the concept of directive correlation (Sommerhoff 1969). (See Figure 3b.) Directive correlation expresses the mutual shaping of a system’s behaviour and its environment towards an adaptive goal. The basic open system (Figure 3a) expresses the view that system and environment and their interrelations are governed by laws (L) which are able to be known. The function of a system (designated ‘1’) acts upon the environment (designated ‘2’) This is the planning function (L12). Environment acts upon the system and is known to us through the function of learning (L21). L11 and L22 express the intrinsic nature of the system and environment respectively. The laws that govern them are implicitly learnt about in the Search Conference. In the directive correlation model (Figure 3b), it is a necessary condition for the subsequent occurrence of a certain event or goal that two or more variables, environment and system, should at a given time be in exact correspondence or in an adaptive relationship. There must also have existed a previous point of time when there were at least two variables which define the starting conditions. There must also exist a set of values for each variable so that there are at least two possible functions for each variable, i.e. for environment and system. When all these conditions are satisfied, then those functions of environment and system are directively correlated in respect of the goal and the starting conditions (Sommerhoff 1969). In other words, system and environment are correlated in terms of direction. They are acting to bring about the same state of affairs from the same starting point. Searching produces active adaptation because it uses those trends in the environment which express the new culture and works out how to neutralize opposing trends. From the original condition at t0 which consists of the system and its environment, both system and environment are making changes at t1. These result in a new set of conditions consisting of a changed system and a changed environment at t2. In this case (Figure 3b) the changes are directively correlated and, therefore, adaptive. There are of course, an infinite number of cases in which system and environment are not directively correlated and, therefore, stand in a maladaptive relationship. In Figure 3 the two models show how system and environment are coimplicated in any current state of affairs and act jointly to produce a new one. The critical differences between the two models are that: • the open system is a picture of a point in time with change expressed through learning and planning while the directive correlation is a picture over time, • the open system includes adaptive and maladaptive relations while the directive correlation expresses precisely when adaptation is or is not occurring.

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a. Open System

b. Directive correlation (adapted from Sommerhoff 1950: 173-4)

L22. Environment:

L21 Learning

L12 Planning

L21 Learning L111 L221 Goal

L11 L22 Starting Condition L12 Planning

L11 System t0

t1

t2

Figure 3. The basic models of Open System and directive correlation

Implications of open-systems thinking Open-systems thinking is quite different from linear causal or relational thinking. In causal thinking and research the task is to single out, from a multitude of data, pairs of acts between which there is a necessary connection. In systems thinking the task is not to find direct relations between items but to find the super-ordinate system in which they are connected to define their positional value within such a system. (Emery 1981a.1: 10)

The task then of an open-systems thinker becomes that of identifying the system principle, that which generates, organises and gives meaning to the system, and also to the set of lawful relations which exist in the totality of the systemenvironment complex. Until this total set of lawful relations is understood, methods and strategies for diffusion will be inadequate. It follows from this that open systems thinking is socio-ecological rather than disciplinary. It is by definition concerned with wholes rather than with parts. It links social science to major systems and sectors of social concern. The problems addressed almost always have a generic theme rather than merely specific. It is future oriented and comprehensive. Unlike the basically taxonomic approach to learning and diffusion (e.g. Rogers and Shoemaker 1971; Zaltman and Duncan 1977), particular questions cannot be isolated from their immediate and future practical context. Because it is concerned with wholes, it is also by definition concerned with human ideals and values. These human dimensions are as essential as physical or economic properties. This together with its adisciplinary nature is sufficient to cast it as heresy in the eyes of the ruling disciplinary, ‘objective consciousness’ myth. (Roszak 1968 [1971]) But heresy regardless, open systems thinkers must work with ideals and values. This is necessary for utilitarian as well as philosophic purposes (Trist 1972: 182). The reason that the sixties’ revolution was not

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9

immediately translated into action was simply because there was not enough knowledge of the practical concepts relevant to the values. The dominant school of change was human relations and it was basically a closed-system model. Open Systems must then be elaborated in two ways, in terms of the nature of the L22 and in terms of the human systems, the people who comprise the econiches within it (L11). When these two critical components are explicated, it becomes easier to see how the concept of an open system coheres and is operationalised through the structure and process of Searching. The conceptualization of environments Closed systems and the second law of thermodynamics were derived from the realm of the physical sciences and involved the concept of equilibrium. When biological systems came under the microscope, so to speak, the laws and concepts of the physical sciences were shown to be inadequate for the task. Organisms are in all cases open systems exchanging energy and matter with their environments (L21 → L11 → L12). Early versions of open systems (e.g. von Bertalanffy 1950) explicitly recognised that the environment must exist but left the equation open at the point at which the environment was specified. Until 1965, the open system was incomplete. Today’s formulation is as explicit about the nature of the environment as it is about the system (Jordan 1973: 60–1) because Emery and Trist (1965) conceptualized the L22, identifying its changing nature or causal texture over time, a texture which directly affects what systems can and cannot adaptively do. Baburoglu (1988) followed up and their formulations take directive correlation and adaptation out of the abstract, allowing precise answers to the question of ‘adaptation to and for what?’ Directive correlation, environments and adaptation Emery and Trist defined the environment (L22) as the extended social field of directive correlations. When there are many systems operating, their interdependencies constitute a richly interactive field of causation whereby a change in the nature of one system sets off effects in other systems which sets off, etc. Only three of the five environments identified concern us here. The Type II environment called placid clustered contains goals and noxiants clustered in lawful ways which are congruent with the physical ecological environment. Values are stable. Most of human history has been spent in the Type II. The Type III called disturbed reactive emerged with the industrial revolution when new large identical bureaucratic systems began to compete, disturbing the previous Type II. It was the mechanistic epoch in the West described above. But values were still stable. The Type III, however, was short lived. Because of inherent flaws, it rapidly transformed into the Type IV, the turbulent environment. Unlike

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the others, this environment is itself dynamic, not placid. Values undergo rapid shifts producing massive discontinuities in lines of development. Its characteristic feature is relevant uncertainty. (Emery and Trist 1965; Emery, F. 1977b) When there is a placid clustered (Type II) or a disturbed, reactive (Type III) field, systems will be making aligned responses to the field, providing predictability and stability. Figure 4 shows the internal dynamics of the current Type IV. Each system is going in a different direction because they are responding to what they perceive to be the nature of the field. Unless systems Search, they will not focus on the L22. Each perception is, therefore, an incomplete perception of the L22, e.g. the business environment. The directive correlations are, therefore, adapted to a fraction of the L22 but maladapted to the whole. That diversity of response further contributes to relevant uncertainty, i.e. to the Type IV. As these perceptions continue without benefit of learning about the L22 in its entirety, as an entity, systems tend to run faster from one fashionable recipe for change to another, intensifying the Type IV. For active adaptation to the Type IV, there must be knowledge about this field itself and every move the system makes must be coordinated, rising above fragmented reactions to the field. Adaptation cannot, therefore, be precisely specified without a specification of the nature of the environment. Adaptation is a property of ecosystems. (Johnston and Turvey 1980: 157–8) A human system stands in some relationship to some environment. It is just as legitimate to inquire into an environment’s appropriateness as it is to inquire into the nature of a system’s adaptation. An environment is only appropriate in relation to the systems within it (Johnston and Turvey 1980). Adaptation must also be specified over a time frame and as humans can consciously learn to change, I use Johnston and Turvey’s medium term directive correlation which is specifically concerned with learning. Characteristics are adaptive if they enable a system to survive (and reproduce) in its environment. To establish adaptation as both interdependence and characteristic, we have the specification of environmental type and a wealth of human cultural history and change as a guide. For Type III environments, the growth of Design Principle 1 structures and the emergence of Western science as L22 = extended social field of directive correlations.

L11

Figure 4. The Type IV extended social field of directive correlations

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11

a dominant belief in mechanism can be seen as maladaptive. They were destructive of both the human ecosystem, the planet, and the Type II field which had preserved adaptation for so long. The fact that people behave differently within Design Principle 2 structures makes it clear that there are quite specific human characteristics which need to be mapped against environmental features in order to determine adaptivity over time. If we work from Ackoff and Emery’s (1972) definition of purposeful system, it follows that people can ensure that they stand in an adaptive relation to virtually any environment as long as it does not include some quite specific feature which exceeds their capacity to adapt. An example is the cathode ray tube which exceeds the capacity of the central nervous system to process the information received from it, which consequently reduces the capacity for purposeful behaviour (Emery, M. 1986). However, just because individual people can behave adaptively in any environment, does not mean that their behaviour will contribute to overall adaptation for all in the long term, particularly if it is passive adaptation (Emery, M. and Purser 1996: 61–2). Searching concerns a process of adaptation, one that produces an adaptive ecosystem as the totality of interdependence between a human system and its environment. We may or may not be sensitive to and conscious of the value of the original conditions in which we find ourselves today, the Type IV environment. But we can develop an appropriate response or function to that of the environment, an exact correspondence through direct perception and learning. Then through planning and implementing, we can attain and maintain it. This is active adaptation in practice. While individuals have different sensitivities to their environment, they collectively as a system have access to more relevant environmental data than they need. From this data they distil the critical response functions of themselves and their environment over a defined interval (say, 1995–2001) producing desirable and probable futures at both the global (L22) and system (L11) levels. By juxtaposing these data sets, participants can identify Desirable and Realistic Goals which by their nature and derivation represent the best possible approximation of correspondence of system and environment. Given that participants maintain the learning environment of the Search, active adaptation should approximate more and more closely the desired correspondence. As adaptation is the property of an ecosystem, we are behaving adaptively when there is perfect symmetry between the information states or events of the environment and our psychological states, events or behaviour. The concepts of affordance and effectivity are central. Affordances are properties of the environment relative to a system, the acts or behaviours permitted by objects, places and events. They define what the environment means to a perceiver, what he or she can do with it. “It is the affordance that is perceived.” (Gibson 1967; Reed and Jones 1982; Michaels and Carello 1981: 42) Affordances do not change as a perceiver’s needs change. They are therefore real and persistent properties, objectively defined over the components of an ecosystem regardless of time to

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time use. An affordance is therefore not a force in the field but the basis of a potential directive correlation. The concept of effectivity is derived from the term used by John von Neumann to mean purposeful activities (Shaw and McIntyre 1974: 307). An effectivity is the potential purposive behaviour of a perceiver in the field, and again is relative to the field. For perception to be valuable it must be manifested in appropriate and effective actions on the environment. Similarly, for actions to be appropriate and effective they must be constrained by accurate perception of the environment (Michaels and Carello 1981: 47). Affordance and effectivities are species-specific (Reed and Jones, 1982: 410). What a desert affords to a snake which is temperature sensitive is very different to what it affords to a human being (Michaels and Carello 1981). For an animal the effectivity is a goal-directed act, for the person, an intentional act (Fowler and Turvey 1982). It is similarly environmentally constrained, but clearly also defined in relation to a hierarchical set of goals, purposes and ideals. Taken together, affordances and effectivities for a human being express the process of living in a meaningful world where “Meaning is a property of the ecosystem and individually, the animal and the environment constitute partial systems with reference to meaning” (Turvey and Shaw 1979: 209.) The invention of the Search marked the practical recognition of the L22 and its affordances. In today’s world, it is essential to focus on understanding its current internal dynamic of interdependence and change. A system can be moved towards its strategic goals only as far as the environment will allow. Without this focus it is possible to make beautiful plans which have no chance of implementation. The current L22 is a ground of value shifts and possible sharp discontinuities, a mine field for planners who follow linear logic and/or concentrate only on the L11 and L12. The above is a brief look at the nature of environments. The third major building block, the people, also needs elaboration. The open-systems view of people In today’s world with its changing values, it is a truism that relevant uncertainty is the name of the game. However, the current nature of the environment is the consequence of people exercising their power as purposeful systems and opposing the denigration of their capabilities as ideal seeking individuals (Emery, F. 1977b). Here we have an image of a person “as an active, responsible agent, not simply a helpless powerless reagent” (Chein 1972: 6). Purposeful people have long been recognized as being at the heart of the open social system (Emery, F. 1959b; Ackoff and Emery 1972). But people are systems in their own right. No fewer than three characteristics must be taken into account when considering people: their openness and purposefulness, their needs for both autonomy and

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homonomy, and their potential for ideal seeking. Open, purposefully adaptive systems The significant elements here are consciousness and purpose as distinctively human properties defined over the ecosystem (Sommerhoff 1969; Johnston and Turvey 1980). Human learning is a phenomenological given but our learning and behaviour as learners will differ depending on the ecosystems of which we are a part. As consciousness, purposefulness and learning are axiomatic, then adaptation includes the ability to search the environment in order to choose the most appropriate learning strategy to pursuing specific purposes within that environment. Maladaption for human systems in a Type IV environment may therefore be generally defined as a failure to search the environment, or the choice of a strategy which is inappropriate and thus ineffective in fulfilling these purposes. But as we have learnt through Searching, normal individual people constantly note changes in the environment. They are simply not provided with opportunities to consider the implications of those changes and make meaning of them. The fault, and therefore the maladaption, lies in the larger systems within which the people are organized. Open-systems thinking has, therefore, through extensive practical and theoretical work arrived at a rigorous conceptualisation of people as open systems in their own right. Above we took as one of our basic assumptions the fact that people are purposeful and can in appropriate conditions, be ideal seeking. There may appear to be an incompatibility between Bohm’s consideration of the individual human being as “a relatively independent subtotality” (1980: 208) and their definition as purposeful systems. They are purposeful in that they can produce the same functional type of outcome in different structural ways in the same structural environment and can also produce functionally different outcomes in the same and different structural environments. A purposeful system can, therefore, change its goals in constant conditions. It selects goals as well as the means by which to pursue them. It displays will. (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 31). For human behaviour to be directively correlated with its environment, it must be orthogonal to it (Sommerhoff 1969) and subtotalities appear not to be such independent parts. The difficulty is resolved by Sommerhoff himself in his discussion of free will and causal determination as a false antithesis. Freedom of choice may be no more than the implicit recognition that people’s overt actions are orthogonal to environmental variables but that we are “a system in which arbitrary combinations of action and environmental variables are possible initial states of any chosen time-slice”. (Sommerhoff 1969: 197–8) Human beings are then taken to be purposeful learning systems, capable of expressing their uniquenesses at the individual system level, within the limits laid down by their environments.

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Autonomous and Homonomous People as one arm of the basic directive correlation display will and act on their environment but concomitantly are acted upon by that environment. They are part of the whole whether they like it or not. The degree of adaptiveness in an ecosystem will vary but people are behaving adaptively when there is perfect symmetry between the nature of the environment and our psychological state or behaviour. Our saying ‘he or she is not coping’ expresses a perception that the person is not behaving appropriately for the environmental circumstance, not adequately sharing control and determination of present and future. Adaptation is central to many concepts of mental health. As individuals exist in cultural ecosystems it is possible to discuss the mental health of a culture and the mental health it induces in its membership. Without such a benchmark it would be difficult to sensibly discuss and evaluate cultural transformation. Mental health is achieved if man develops into full maturity according to the characteristics and laws of human nature. Mental illness consists in the failure of such development. From this premise the criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for all men, of giving a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. (Fromm 1963: 14)

Fromm saw the current but fortunately disintegrating ‘pathology of normalcy’ as the result of various sorts of oppression that attempt to destroy people’s ability to experience themselves as whole and purposeful. These oppressions reduce the ‘productive orientation’ which relates person to person and person to world. Two fundamental dimensions of human nature are commonly isolated. “Each and every man is at the same time separate from his fellows and related to them... Personal relatedness can exist only between things who are separate but who are not isolated”. (Laing 1959: 25) Mental health is “the capacity both for autonomous expansion and for homonomous integration” (Angyal 1965: 254). No person is an island. ‘Autonomous’ means governed from inside. Without such a concept, central matters of the life process such as “selection, choice, self-regulation, adaptation, regeneration” could not be understood. (Angyal 1965: 33–35) It is a concept of purposeful activity, a general systemic direction towards expansion through coherence. But “life is an autonomous dynamic event which takes place between the organism and the environment” (Angyal 1965: 48, emphasis is mine). The trend towards ‘homonomy’ is “a trend to be in harmony with super individual units, the social group, nature ....” etc. This penetrates “the whole realm of human life” (Angyal 1965: 173) and is visible through moves towards sharing, participation and union. “The homonomous tendency is the dominating factor in forms of inter-human relationships where the other person is recognised to be a value in himself” (Angyal 1965: 202). These qualities of autonomy and homonomy obviously contain elements

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intrinsic to the individual such as the adaptive potential for pursuing ideals which are innately attractive to all humans. Similarly they involve elements which are external to the individual such as objective conditions of life. These may or may not be under the control of the individual, but constitute specific forces towards either liberation or oppression. In other words, it is the knowledge about and control that an individual may exert over his or her subjective and objective conditions of life which guarantee the possibility of health and the joy of life that accrues from an integrated sense of autonomy or homonomy. Angyal argues that autonomous behaviour is generally supported by rational logic while homonomous strivings are more deeply rooted in our non rational nature. It may however just appear this way because the tendency in the last three thousand years has been to prevent us seeing the rationality in the homonomous trend. In The Sane Society (Fromm 1963), the balanced integration of autonomy and homonomy results in an ever increasing expansion of self through more participation and better relatedness to superordinate wholes. People and their worlds grow together. This is a critical dimension for the concept of wisdom below. Our Western culture has encouraged autonomy to run amok and one of the aims of the new learning is to restore the balance. Autonomy without corresponding homonomy actually restricts and inhibits personal growth. There would be few people today who would disagree that dimensions of mental health reside in conditions external to the individual as well as in intrapsychic processes, in the relationships between person and environment, including the ‘panorama of social ties’ (Greco 1950). It is by learning to restore relationships with these external conditions that individuals can achieve the growth, self expansion and self determination that are seen as the crux of mental health problems. Focusing simultaneously on the environment (L22) and system (L11) creates the potential for adaptation. Through its design and process, the SC uses forms of learning (L21) and planning (L12) appropriate for restoring an adaptive ecosystem. Potential for ideal seeking But people are not limited to being purposeful. As purposeful systems they can be confronted by choice between purposes and they may choose outcomes which are not necessarily possible in the time available, or perhaps, ever. These outcomes are the ‘ideals’. They are endlessly approachable but unattainable in themselves (Emery, F. 1977b: 69). This set of ideals was derived from the open systems framework (Emery, F. 1977). The first is Homonomy — from Angyal (1965), the being with others in a sense of belongingness and interdependence. It relates part to part within the whole for the benefit of the whole and all its parts. It is the opposite of selfishness. The second is Nurturance, cultivating and using those means which contribute to the health and beauty of the whole and all its parts. It is the opposite to exploitation.

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The third is Humanity, expressing what is appropriate, fitting and effective for us as people; regarding people as superordinate to institutions and putting their wellbeing and development (spiritual as well as physical) above bureaucratic and/ or material criteria of progress. It is the opposite to inhumanity. The fourth is Beauty, that which is aesthetically ordered and intrinsically attractive; moving within the social and physical environments so that they become increasingly desirable, more dynamically balanced. It is the antithesis of ugliness. Ideals are integral to the concept of learning I am developing here and it is important to recognise that the pursuit of this set of ideals has for some cultures, long been their system principle, defining their being and purpose. This is not to say that the culture itself pursues the ideals but that it is composed of systems of shared ideas and conceptual designs (Keesing and Keesing 1971) which provide an environment within which an individual can pursue the ideals through everyday life. Many ancient cultures provided those Type II environments as discussed above. Those ideals which appear in the practices of old cultures display a consistency which is quite remarkable in human affairs. This exemplifies the power of groups to arrive at the highest common denominator. Pursuing ideals appears to be an innate capacity which operates at the highest level of system function when the conditions are conducive. The most basic condition is that the organization is a purposeful system, that is an entity which can fulfil the definition above and one in which its members agree and cooperate with its purposes. In DP1 structures, the organization uses its people as instruments, reducing their variety and attempting to reduce them to goal seeking rather than purposeful systems. The dynamics of these organizations are such that they produce conflict and/or apathy reducing its capacity to act purposefully, (see Chapter 4). With DP2, the purposeful organization itself becomes instrumental to the organization’s purposes which includes a core of the shared purposes of its people, increasing their variety and providing for the higher system function of ideal seeking (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 31, 215). The conscientisation of ideals produces a very special and powerful form of knowing, one that has become rarely visible or acknowledged in our society and certainly in our education systems. Our learning needs have outrun the capacities of all the formal institutions to meet them. “The task of our generation ... and the task of all education ... is metaphysical reconstruction ... to understand the present world, the world in which we live and make our choices”. “More education can help us only if it produces more wisdom” (Schumacher 1973: 83, 66). The SC is designed and managed as learning, to provide those conditions conducive to the elicitation of the ideals. The opportunity to make conscious and mobilise the ideals is provided by the task of collectively agreeing upon desirable futures. Because our new visions centre around our world and our participation in its making or restoration, the most powerful and effective vision for any of us

ACTIVE ADAPTATION

17

personally will be that one we helped ‘dream up’ which expresses ourselves and to which we are committed. “Dream prepares the way for action; man must first dream the possible before he can do it”. (Caudwell 1937: 82). But the ritual of agreeing upon a desirable future must be an opportunity to dream a collective dream. It should be, to use Caudwell’s term, an opportunity for “emotional introversion”, a form or communion or subjective unity where each person returns to “the genotype, to the more or less common set of instincts”, (Cauldwell 1937: 124) or ideals. This form of introversion achieves power as a social act because it establishes congruence between inner and outer realities. The work of establishing desirable futures is then, as with any form of art, a struggle to achieve a form of insight from which development is inspired and may proceed. To the extent that as a social act it incorporates individual experiences, it will produce a strong social organization within which participation is felt as pleasurable and exciting. Both the insight and the reality of its means of production become a single social image of the possible. It is thus a synthesis of many levels. Participation in such an act is a necessary element of an education for change, which by its very nature, is a step in the implementation of change through the practice of seeking ideals. The compass that guides the learning about desirable futures is that set of ideals which enter into and shape the organizations that people create in their pursuit. “Instead of following pre-determined plans, leaders and people, mutually identified, together create the guidelines of their action” (Freire 1972: 148). By recognising that organizations are indeed created by people and that once created, these organizations affect the behaviour of those who work within them, it becomes possible to begin the process of designing forms of social organization which will produce adaptive behaviour and a more stable environment. “Cultural synthesis serves the ends of organization; organization serves the ends of liberation” (Freire 1972: 150). “A commitment to a desirable future must be activating or have a consequence in action which itself furthers development towards itself. If the energy poured into a vision cannot sustain the process of producing a form of social organization which positively encourages ideal seeking then the said commitment is really no commitment at all” (Etzioni 1968: 12). Now that the building blocks are in place we can return to explaining failures of implementation and through that explanation, see the form of the complete model of active socio-ecological adaptation.

Explaining failures of implementation: Arriving at the complete model Not all are as honest as Alan Davies when he noted (1992: 281) that many of the Searches he has designed and managed “failed to meet their primary organizational objectives”. A well designed and managed Search usually only runs into

18

CHAPTER 1

problems in the third phase of implementation. When participants are asked why the Search worked so well, they often say it was because everybody worked so well together as equals, regardless of status and other differences. This observation is accurate because the SC has a DP2 structure. Implementation however, particularly for organizational Searches, proceeds through the current organizational structure which is usually DP1. People, therefore, do not work together as equals, nor do they communicate accurately or when they should. The DP1 structure overcomes the positive experience of the SC. What is missing is the conceptualization of the design principles and their effects. Without it, there is no clearly articulated and understood alternative to DP1 and no barrier to reverting to it. Implementation can then just fade away. While the Search Conference is designed to produce adaptive relations between system and environment, it is insufficient on its own to maintain the adaptation in the long term. Adding purposeful people to the open system You will note that the formulation in Figure 3 says nothing specific about internal changes in the system, or about people per se. Up until now, there have been two discrete components of adaptation, between the system and environment and intrasystem. As we see below, a connection was perceived in the early theorizing about open jointly optimized sociotechnical systems. However, while a more complete conceptualization of active adaptation was implicit in some of Fred Emery’s work, this more complete definition was never explicitly formulated. Nor were its practical implications spelt out. As we have seen, this caused problems in practice. The necessity for a complete conceptualization is easier to see if the basic model above is elaborated into a slightly more complex picture of adaptation between system and environment. What is a system in one context is an environA

B

Open System L22

When in active adaptive relation (Directively Correlated) L1p L2p L21

L11 Lpp Lpp L11 L22

Lpp1 L111 L221

Lp2 L12 Lp1 t0

t1

Figure 5. Individuals within systems within the extended social field

t2

ACTIVE ADAPTATION

19

ment in another depending on the focus of the inquiry. Let us redraw the open system diagram with purposeful people at the centre (Figure 5a). Figure 5 shows people as purposeful systems living and working within larger systems which function as task environments. There are, therefore, three sets of relations. The third set of arrows representing the relation between individuals and the extended field is often forgotten but it is required to completely explain the dynamic nature of the set. It is obvious that people bring to any system or organisation, values and expectations derived from the whole of their life and their immersion in the broad social field. When these expectation and values are not met, a intensifying spiral of discontent is generated. While the system or organization may be aiming for outcomes which are adaptive in terms of the environment, it is producing behaviours which are maladaptive in terms of these desired outcomes. The system (L11) acts as an environment for the individual systems within it. Rather than have the simple model of open system in environment which yields the one set of transport equations (L21 and L12), the more complex model yields 3 sets of cross boundary relations, the original plus two sets involving the individual purposeful people themselves. If staying with the original notation (1 for system, 2 for environment) and adding a p for individual people, the diagram looks as in Figure 5. The Lpp then is the lawful nature and internal dynamics of people themselves as above. The relations L1p and Lp1 then define the system acting on the people or the people learning about the system and the people acting on the system, ‘beating the system’ or otherwise working with it. This model also shows that when people are living and/or working in a system, they also have a continuing set of relationships with the environment or field, learning from it and acting upon it as individuals regardless of the behaviour of the system. In Figure 5b, adaptation can be seen as a constant state of change appropriate to both the nature of people and a continuously changing environment. Learning and dynamism are inherent to active adaptation. Note however that these sets of relations with the environment (L12/21 and Lp2/2p) cannot be totally independent if the system is a human system as it consists of these people in some type of structured relationships. There is, therefore, constant interdependence between the people and the system but the implications of the model for active adaptation are quite clear. If there is to be genuine active adaptation between the system and the environment, all sets of relations must be congruent in meeting the needs of the people and securing a directive correlation with the L22. The system itself must be one which is appropriate for people. Amongst other things, the system must provide the six psychological requirements (Emery and Thorsrud 1969)which balance the tension between autonomy and homonomy (Angyal 1941a). Critical to this striving for balance is the need for the organization to be structured in such as way that the people within it can learn and go on

20

CHAPTER 1

learning, ie. it must be a ‘learning organization’. There is no implication here that organizations can learn. By ‘learning organization’ is meant “an organization that is structured in such a way that its members can learn and continue to learn within it” (Emery, M. 1993: 2). It is more accurately called a ‘learning environment’. Only organizations or human systems designed on the second organizational design principle (DP2) can provide these conditions. So the full set of conditions for active adaptation must include a DP2 structured system. The three sets of relations in directive correlation are shown in Figure 5b. The open jointly-optimized socio-technical system Right from the very early days of theorizing about sociotechnical systems, it was made clear that there was a need for the concept of an ‘open system’ as opposed to a ‘closed system’. Open and closed were stated as alternative concepts in the development of theory but the intrinsic nature of enterprises dictated that only open systems thinking had the power to comprehensively explain the relations between an enterprise and its external environment. If it is to achieve its ends, an enterprise must reckon upon the constraints implicit in its means and resources, both human and material. Beyond this, the people within an enterprise, particularly those concerned with leadership must come to see that: * they must organize themselves in ways appropriate to the nature and order of the tasks required by their environment * their institutional ideologies and self-perception must in some way reflect their real relations with their environment. (Emery, F. 1959b: 39–40)

The success of the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Program proved that open jointly optimized socio-technical systems had far superior ability (than non jointly optimized socio-technical systems) to meet human needs and achieve directive correlation with the environment, or the goal of active environmental adaptation. Jointly optimized sociotechnical systems are today more briefly referred to as DP2 systems as they are structured on the second organizational design principle, redundancy of functions (Emery, F. 1967; Emery and Emery 1974). This early work clarified that if one wants an organization or system to be in directive correlation with or actively adapted to its environment, it is necessary to have a jointly optimized or DP2 system. The method used until the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Project was pronounced a success was sociotechnical analysis and design, known today as ‘STS’. It was the appropriate method for proving unequivocally that there was an alternative to autocracy in the workplace. It was never the appropriate method for diffusion and once the proof was in, STS had outlived its usefulness. The Participative Design Workshop (PDW) was specifically invented as a method for diffusion, doing exactly the same job as STS but custom designed to provide the concepts and conditions for speedy and

ACTIVE ADAPTATION

21

effective redesign of existing organizational structures, i.e. currently bureaucratic or DP1 structures into DP2 structures, by the people who work and live in those structures. Of course ‘joint optimization’ was the concept that acknowledged that people are purposeful systems, not machines and, therefore, there can be only optimization of both incommensurate parts, not the dominance of one or the other. Joint optimization is implicit rather than explicit in the PDW process. Once responsibility for coordination and control is co-located with the action, effective use of the technology (or appropriate work with the people if it is a sociopsychological system) is part and parcel of the new responsibilities and acountabilities encapsulated in their comprehensive set of measurable goals. Putting together the conceptualizations of the SC and the open sociotechnical system and redrawing it in the form of the open system, it is easy to see the implications for implementing the action plans of a Search Conference. The model has been incomplete. For continuing long term adaptation, the system itself must be organised as an environment for learning. Only in such an environment do people have the opportunity to continuously learn from and about their changing environment and to continuously and actively adapt their systems to it. It is now necessary to see the focus of active adaptation as ‘purposeful people in environments’. We should perhaps now regard Figure 5 rather than Figure 3 as the basic concept of the open system. It could then act as an intrinsic immune response to those approaches which prey on humanity through appeals to the efficiency of the ‘system’. The relations L21 and L12 as part of the set required for active adaptation define the process of the SC and are necessary but on their own insufficient. The other necessary part is given by the adaptive structure of the L11 such that the relations L1p/Lp1, L2p/Lp2 and L21/L12 are directly correlated. Therefore, the Search Conference cannot achieve active adaptation unless the organizational structure of the system which implements the action plans is also either designed or redesigned as a DP2 structure. Explaining failures of implementation more precisely Because the SC is designed and managed as a DP2 system, at the end of it one of two things may happen, depending on whether there is an already existing system or not. For an existing system, as in an organizational SC, the system begins to implement the action plans, still with the existing DP1 structure. The people walk out of a democratic system within which they have determined their new future straight back into a bureaucratic one within which they are supposed to implement it. Immediately, there is a conflicting or maladaptive relationship instituted between the system and environment on the one hand, and the system and the people on the other.

22

CHAPTER 1

In the cases of a geographical community, new networks or issue Searches where there is no pre-existing organizational structure, one must be designed to implement the action plans. Our original hope that the experience of the Search as a DP2 structure would be sufficient to overcome the conventional but implicit assumption that there must be a DP1 structure was naive. It sometimes wasn’t sufficient and, therefore, they set up what they knew, usually a committee structure with the normal results. Again, the same maladaptive relationship is instituted as is in the case of the existing organization. Conscious conceptual knowledge of an alternative is required. But there is another factor in maladaption. The interval t1–t0 is called the back reference period. It helps to conceptualize maladaption. In order for a person or system to make an adaptive response to the L22, that response must be determinate and single valued. That is, it must always map a given value of the starting conditions onto the same values of the L22 at t1. “It is the timescale of the change and the back-reference period of the response that determine whether the response can be adaptive with regard to the change.” (Johnston and Turvey 1980: 163–4) If a system or person is still responding to an environment which no longer exists, its behaviour cannot be said to be adaptive. Search-Conference failures due to lack of an adaptive organizational structure to carry implementation can now be explained precisely in terms of directive correlation. DP1 organizations are a hangover from a previous environment, the Type III described above. In this Type III environment people were literally treated as replaceable parts of the industrial machine and, therefore, the relationship between people and DP1 systems belongs to this previous era. During the Search, all of the interrelationships between people, system and environment belong to the current era, the Type IV environment. The Search establishes a new adaptive relationship between the system and the Type IV environment. Up until the end of the Search and the beginning of implementation, there is no conflict in direction between any of the elements. In Figure 6, we see the results of continuing with a DP1 (non jointly optimized) system while attempting to implement an active adaptive relation between system and environment. The notations in brackets indicate that while these people and systems are real, existing in real time, their interrelations are not contributing to the desired goal of complete adaptation. The starting point for the people-system or internal relation predates that for the system-environment relation, indeed, it belongs to an entirely different historical and cultural environment. As the diagram indicates, it is strictly impossible for a directive correlation to be established. The actions, learning and planning, of people, system and environment are not at any point in time going to coincide.

23

ACTIVE ADAPTATION L1p L21 L2p

L11 Lpp

. .

L221 (L111) (Lpp1)

L22 (L11) (Lpp)

L12 Lp2 Lp1 Type III

Type IV

.

L111 Lpp1

. .

.

.

Figure 6. Lack of adaptation between people-system and system-environment relations

Practical solution: The two-stage model The model is clear. Adaptation must inhere in all sets of relations of people, system and environment. But at the end of a community SC, either a geographical community, industry or issue based Search there is no organization (system) to redesign. One must, therefore, be designed. Note that whether or not this is consciously conceptualized, an organizational structure will be brought into being. And as above, this is precisely where so many failures of implementation have arisen. The very act of people coming together to implement a set of action plans means that an organizational structure has been decided. And when people know of no alternative to DP1 (bureaucratic) structures such as committees, this is what they design. They then experience the disillusionment of watching the inevitable results: attendance at meetings fade, energy rapidly drains away and implementation stalls. If there is to be an organizational Search, e.g. the Future of Existing Organization X, best results over the long term will be realized only if the existing structure is redesigned on the second design principle. As stated in the introduction, Searches for existing organizations have a better track record of implementation than do community Searches. And that is simply because there is a known structure regardless of its design principle. Any reasonably well run organization, and most that initiate SCs are amongst the better run, will use the most appropriate parts of the organization to carry out the implementation. And for the short term, this is sufficient. The problem for existing DP1 organizations begins later in that the people who live and work within them are not motivated to maintain the adaptive relation between organization and environment. Without a change of

24

CHAPTER 1

design principle and the creation of a learning environment, all of the implicit individual learning of environmental change and its implications is lost to the organization. Worse, when the people realize that the new relation between system and environment has little relevance to their daily work, they will come to regard it with the same cynicism as any other non fundamental change, that is change which does nothing for them, the people. The two stage model has now been tested over seven years in a wide variety of circumstances. In practical terms, all that is required to prevent these failures is to tack a modified PDW onto the end of the Search. It is modified because it is to design an organization rather than to redesign an existing structure, which is the purpose of the original PDW. We look at PDWs to design organizations in Chapter 7. But now that we have all the building blocks in place, let us first explore the complete model for active socioecological adaptation.

Conclusion The deficiency in the original concept of active adaptation has now been recognised and addressed. Each of the testings so far for the two-stage model has been successful. People can design a DP2 organization from scratch. Why has it taken so long for the preventative method to implementation failures to emerge? The first and foremost answer appears to be that the two methods of the Search Conference and the Participative Design Workshop were conceptualized and, therefore practised, as separate and discrete methods doing two quite separate jobs, the SC for participative strategic planning and the PDW for redesigning existing organizations. They had not been seen as complementary parts of a whole change towards active adaptation and therefore, continuous change. The second answer is that only specific conscious conceptual knowledge of the design principles can halt and reverse our culture’s wholescale rush into mechanistic thinking, and therefore bureaucratic structures, from the beginning of the industrial revolution. Active adaptation has to include both an active adaptive relation between the system and the environment, and active adaptive relations within the system itself. This more comprehensive and learningful model fulfils the original promise of the open jointly optimized sociotechnical system. It is that complete model which forms the basis for this book.

Chapter 2 The Complete (2-Stage) Model of Active Socio-Ecological Adaptation

All the building blocks are in place together with the necessary and sufficient relations for active adaptation between them. The model is complete but we need now to put specific values on all the variables in the model as it applies to the current environment and hence to Searching. In the following chapters the model will be developed in both theory and practice.

Active socio-ecological adaptation Socio-ecological means ‘people in environment’ where environment is ‘the extended social field of directive correlations’, a social field within a shared natural environment (Emery, F. 1977: 2). Active Adaptation is being in a constant state of purposeful change appropriate to both the nature of people and a continuously changing environment as above. Learning and dynamism are inherent to active adaptation. The model in terms of directive correlation In Figure 7 below we see socioecological adaptation in terms of directive correlation. In (a) there is environment and system, in (b) we specify environment, organizational system and person. In Searching, the goal (G) is a desirable future and for it to be desirable, which includes such concepts as ecological sustainability, it must be adaptive. The values of G, therefore, are specified as the hierarchy of goals, purposes and ideals, the last of which is required for a desirable adaptive future. The starting condition is the broad social field or environment, L22, which includes all existing systems. The set of values of L22 are taken to be the causal textures of this field with a current relevant value of Type IV. This application does not have the concreteness usually found in physical ecological studies but

26

CHAPTER 2

(a)

Puzzle Learning (L21)

Type IV

L22 Desirable, . G Adaptive Future

. Active Adaptive Planning (L12) t0

L11

tk

(b)

................tn

L22 Puzzle Learning L11 Active Adaptive Organization Design Principle 2

Type IV.

Desirable .G Adaptive Future

Ecological Learning Lpp t0

tk

.....tn time

Figure 7. Model of directive correlation for contextualism and socio-ecological adaptation

the gap may well prove to be more apparent than real. As Gibson (1966) and Tomkins (1963) have argued, living systems learn and hence adapt because of their ability to react to the general and less variable properties of the environment, rather than because of their sensitivity to the concrete events and objects which yield a constant flux of stimulation. Using hierarchies of directive correlations, we can specify that there will be environments within environments as there are goals within purposes and purposes within ideals. People live and work within organizations where an organization is taken to be two or more people in a structured relationship. These structures are genotypically defined by the nature of the design principle underlying them. Redundancy, necessary for adaptability, can be achieved organizationally in only two ways: by adding redundant parts to the system which is known as Design Principle 1, or by adding redundant functions to the parts (Design Principle 2). These structures may or may not stand in an adaptive relation to any given causally textured field or environment. They are environments for the people within them and fit the notion of econiche. Johnston and Turvey (1980: 152) defined an econiche as an environment possessing the necessary support for an actor (animal or person) possessing a particular set of effectivities, or an effectivity structure. “A description of the ecological support for an effectivity defines an affordance which is a specific

COMPLETE MODEL OF ACTIVE SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL ADAPTATION

27

combination of physical properties of an environment taken with reference to a particular effectivity. A description of the physical properties of an environment, taken with reference to the effectivity structure of an actor, defines the affordance structure of an econiche for that actor.” Actor and econiche are coimplicative and cannot be defined independently of one another. The concept of econiche represents a consistent and intermediate level of environment which we may translate from the purely physical to a social concept using the same logic as that employed in the derivation of the L22. Econiche here is analogous to concepts such as that of ‘task or learning environment’ and in this case is the environment which is afforded by an organization. For each type of L22 we must then describe the affordance structure of its embedded organizations in terms of the organizational structure and effectivities it supports, in other words describe the econiche (L11). We have seen above that it is necessary to have systems with DP2 structures if they are to function as learning econiches or environments. If they are not, they cannot provide the conditions and support for the search for active adaptation. In order to achieve adaptation in the current Type IV environment, the system must engage in puzzle learning which is based on ecological learning (Emery, F. 1980) and active adaptive planning which is based on this learning and in Ideals (Emery, F. 1977b). The Search Conference is designed to produce active adaptation between system and environment and, therefore, a new adaptive ‘system principle’ which defines the system in terms of its unique relationship with the environment. In Figure 7a the functions are those of the environment (L22), the changes which afford the puzzle learning (L21) of the system (L11) and those effectivities of the system, its active adaptive planning (L12). These two functions are held to be functionally equivalent or adaptive in respect of both the Type IV causal texture and the goal (G) of a desirable adaptive future. In 7b we have by definition a purposeful person (Lpp) in a system (L11) within the environment (L22). L22 still functions to afford puzzle learning for L11 and the function of L11 is still active adaptive planning in respect of L22. However, L11 as econiche also functions as an environment for adaptation and ecological learning or direct perceptual learning for its members. It is specified that L11 affords ecological learning and self management by virtue of its adoption of DP2 structure. L11 therefore, has joint functions in respect of its environment and in respect of the individual purposeful systems for whom it is an econiche. Therefore, we can see from (b) that for active adaptation through the whole open system, all entities must be in direct correspondence. But any function of person, system or environment can fail to be functionally equivalent or directively correlated, i.e. adaptive in respect of both the starting conditions (L22=Type IV) and the goal (G). If they deviate from directive correlation, any or all of the functions may be maladaptive.

28

CHAPTER 2

Most commonly, the person will be adapted to the field but not to the system because the system is not adapted to the field. This is of course one of the core problems of our present era resulting in increasing levels of dissociation (Emery, F. 1977b) at the level of the person, and corporatism (Saul 1997) at the organizational and government levels. The most powerful variable in determining whether an organization will become active adaptive is its genotypical design principle. Use of the two-stage model provides opportunities to start reversing these maladaptive trends. This formulation of directive correlation allows for a multiplicity of values of starting point, a multiplicity of responses in terms of parties and future states, and degrees of directive correlation or adaptation. Depending on the nature and purpose of an enquiry, we can for practical purposes draw the system boundary around any entity and analyse all sets of relationships between it as system (if it has one and only one system principle) with its multiple levels of environment. This includes its own nature as econiche for the people as individual systems within it. This inherent flexibility of open systems and the model of directive correlation permits work at any level of analysis as a guide to better theory and practice. Directive correlation would appear to be the model Sheldrake (1988) was searching for when he arrived at his concept of the morphic field: “a field within and around a morphic unit (biological life form) which organises its characteristics structure and pattern of activity” (1988: p391). We return to Sheldrake’s theory when we examine remembering and forgetting within the framework of directive correlation but in the meantime, we can now put the model simply in terms of the methods for achieving active adaptation (Figure 8). The model in practice The work of the Search is to establish an active-adaptive relationship between the system (organization) and the environment through the creation of a new system principle which expresses that adaptive relationship. The system principle is contained within its new goal, the Most Desirable Future of the system. In macro terms, the work of the Search is strategic planning in a Type IV environment, establishing that goal of the system. It achieves this by using the inbuilt capacity of the people to search and directly extract meaning from the environment and creatively combine that meaning with their ideals. The desirable future is translated into a set of action plans. It answers the question ‘where do we want to be and what should we look like in year X?’ The work of the Participative Design Workshop (PDW) is to produce an active adaptive (DP2) organizational structure to implement the action plans. Unless the organization as econiche affords the learning and support for learning that is required for implementation, the work of the SC will be ultimately wasted.

COMPLETE MODEL OF ACTIVE SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL ADAPTATION

L22 Environment: Extended Social Field of Directive Correlations Type IV Type II (pockets) New Type II

Purpose The work of the Search Conference

29

L12 Active Adaptive Planning (through ideal seeking)

L21 Puzzle Learning (based on ecological learning)

The work of the Participative Design Workshop

L11

Design principle 2 (DP2) system (jointly optimized socio-technical) “Learning organization”

Figure 8. The 2-stage model for active socio-ecological adaptation

The PDW, therefore, answers the question ‘how do we organize ourselves to ensure that we reach our Most Desirable Future?’ As we have seen above, the necessary and sufficient set of conditions requires both methods. The overall purpose is to change the extended social field through cultural change for active socioecological adaptation. The current Type IV turbulent environment is unpleasant and more importantly, unhealthy. The change we require is one that will slow down the rate of change and restore some placidity or stability of values. In other words, we are attempting environmental domestication. We need to tame Type IV and restore it to human scale. Only Type II has the required characteristics and as the longest period of human history was spent in this environment, at least 50,000 years, it stood the test of time. There are pockets of it surviving around the world today. Its structures were predominantly democratic and its people lived in harmony with the earth, practising the ideals (Boyden 1973; Keesing and Keesing 1971; Keesing 1979; Michell 1975). However, before we can conclude that Searching will result in a new Type II, we must establish that deliberate cultural change is possible and that Searching in its comprehensive form can accomplish it.

Elaborating the concept of active adaptation to cultural change The model can be extended infinitely to address adaptation at the cultural level over much longer time spans. Culture is defined as a system of behaviours in context. In open systems thinking culture cannot be defined without reference to the causal texture of the field. In Figure 9, while L22 represents a certain condition of the environment, and L11 represents a certain state of human system (person or organization), we need a sense in which a system can be shown to be either a social or living unit whose

30

CHAPTER 2

ultimate goals include self preservation, a temporal dimension. The necessary concept is that of “an integrated sequence of activities (which) stands for a relation between these activities which enables us to attribute an individual goal to each, and at the same time an ultimate goal to the whole sequence.” (Sommerhoff 1969: 187). This concept is provided by Sommerhoff’s integration theorem: “If GA is the goal event of a directive correlation A and if the occurrence of GA is a necessary condition for the occurrence of the goal, event GB of a directive correlation B, then Gb is also a goal-event of A.” (Sommerhoff 1969: 188). As L22 and L11 are co-implicative, mutually determining through a process of co-evolution, sequences of directive correlations will then look as in Figure 9. Figure 9 shows a sequence of change over time. At each point in time, the environment is defined in terms of the systems which form it. Similarly the systems within it are defined by the nature of the field or environment they form. Any one system has only a limited effect on the field but as systems influence each other and coordinate their directions relative to the field, they can have a significant and visible effect. After both system (L11 (L22) and environment (L22 (L11)) have responded to the starting variable, they have changed or redefined each other at t2 (Emery, F. 1993: 88–89). This continues to happen. If such a sequence is adaptive over time, it will result in a more coordinated movement of L22 and L11. At tn there is a distinctly different culture which when sufficiently widespread, becomes a new environment. The open systems model is inherently and continuously dynamic. This has implications reaching far beyond our practical concerns here. If the implicate order (Bohm 1980) is the ultimate system principle, then, as subtotalities or parts within it systematically redefine each other and, by definition, the larger whole of which they are parts, we must agree with Sheldrake (1988: 114) that “the invisible, organising principles of nature, rather than being eternally fixed, evolve along with the system they organise”. Now to return to our more limited focus. L121

L12 GA L11(L22)' . L22(L11)'

L11(L22) . L22(L11)

t1

GB L11(L22)" . L22(L11)" L211

L21 t0

L1211

t2

t3

GN L11(L22)"' . L22(L11)"' L2111

t4

Original culture in Type IV

Figure 9. Codetermination of cultural change over time

..........................tn New culture, Type II

COMPLETE MODEL OF ACTIVE SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL ADAPTATION

31

Let us translate Figure 9 into the process of the SC. L11 is an organization or community, an econiche which is engaging in a process of participative strategic planning. It will have arrived at its comprehensive set of strategic goals which incorporate human ideals, GN. As it implements its plan, the L22 (environment) is itself changing. By the time L11 arrives at GA, the first level of subgoal in the nested temporal hierarchy of strategic goals, (GN includes GB which includes GA) the organization must, as it assesses its progress, continue puzzle learning, reevaluating changes in L22,and its position in relation to them. This is an intrinsic element of the Strategy of the Indirect Approach and is the essence of active adaptation. Where there have been discontinuities in the field or even moderate shifts in areas of relevance for the progress of L11, priorities will need to be revisited and possibly reordered. For an active adaptive econiche, monitoring the field becomes a way of life. If L11 has democratised itself (its first goal, GA) to become structured for learning and flexibility, it will be in a position to respond adaptively in terms of modifying its GB. In addition, the creativity of its people released by the change of design principle will also have resulted in innovations which themselves require redefinition of GB. If the guiding framework of strategic goals has been based in the ideals, then the process of mutual adaptation of L22 and L11 can continue towards GN. Because GN is ideal based, it can only be approximated over time. Therefore, active adaptation is a continuing process in which the subgoals GA onwards, become milestones or deliberate pauses for reassessment of both field and econiche and adjustment of further goals towards GN. But of course, as more systems Search and follow the process approximating GN so L22 itself evolves through Type IV towards a new Type II. This is exactly the thinking behind some current forms of strategic alliance and other dedicated relationships. As systems become adaptive through ideal-based processes, they establish protected sanctuaries of ideal-based structures and processes which function as modern Type II environments. Over time, as more systems become adaptive, these pockets of Type II environment cohere into larger, more encompassing systems, finally evolving into a new, modern form of clustered, placid environment: the new Type II. The human capacity for potential directive correlation Sommerhoff has also provided us with the tool of potential directive correlation, the objective system property of being prepared or alerted for the appearance of a particular environmental condition. That is, the state of preparedness is definable in terms of the response function that would characterise the behaviour of the system if that specific environmental feature or condition were to materialise. We can imagine and expect. It is this state of preparedness for a new or changed

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response which also requires adaptation to be inherent within the system itself. Rapid shifts in values and expectations of customers for example demand that potential directive correlations exist within each member of a system to ensure moment to moment adaptiveness for customer satisfaction. Should this preparedness and its response function not exist, not only will there be dissatisfied customers but there is likely to be a lack of consciousness of change and, therefore, lack of feedback to the system as a whole regarding the change, its nature and implications. In terms of consciously learning how to actively adapt, the potential directive correlation or expectation involves intimate knowing of the field and its dynamics by the members of an econiche. In the first phase of learning in the Search, people must use their perceptual abilities of figure-ground relations and their reversals (Koffka 1935). We can recognise an object as a figure on a background and a background as an object, and make reversals in this figure ground perception. This ability can be improved with learning. This is a critical concept for learning about, and planning in relation to, the extended social field. This ground must be brought into focus as figure. The most effective method for enhancing this ability to see the environment as figure is to focus on the ‘embryos of social change’ (Emery, F. 1967, 1977b: 207–218). These are the emerging systems which may indicate value shifts and develop into major social movements. Unlike systems which have been around for some time these newly emergent systems have the sort of characteristics which mark them as possible forerunners of significant future trends. They will be among the many diverse directive correlations seen above in Figure 4 as constituting the extended social field. Identifying these embryos and keeping an eye on them is a powerful form of preparation for change and is the basis for an active adaptive response should the potential directive correlation actualise. By first identifying these embryos and their interdependencies, it is possible by an integrative process of exploring possibilities and ideals to arrive at a shared picture of the most desirable and probable future. Through these two practical concepts, the extended social field becomes an object of creative learning. Then by focusing on the intrinsic character of the system, the system becomes the figure. Through this process of figural reversals, the learning/planning process becomes the manifestation of adaptation in the open-systems set. The complete model of concepts, methods and goals has internal consistency. Searching is therefore, a powerful learning strategy of system-in-field transformation. Adaptive open systems as a system of concepts The predominant characteristic of the current Type IV environment is relevant uncertainty and it causes distress. Nothing less than transformation of the whole open system is required if we are to tame this dynamic social field and obtain

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some increasing measure of stability. The change from mechanism to contextualism, from maladaption to adaptation is already underway and ultimately this will touch everything we have come to take for granted. To guide this transformation we can take open-systems thinking further as there are other identifiable lawful relations. The current state of the conceptual map is found in Table 2 below (adapted from Emery, F. 1977b: 90). At the root of this complex is the correspondence of the open systems model and the parameters of choice or decision making. Open-systems thinking contrasts with disciplines such as economics, which flows from mechanism and views decision making as involving only two dimensions, those of the: • Probable Effectiveness of a course of action in achieving a given purpose; and • Relative Intention or the seriousness attached to the matter about which the decision is to be made. Economics neglects the dimension expressing the individuality of human systems which means that it can more easily mechanically and quantifiably model decision making. But such models of human behaviour and the plans and designs derived from them are increasingly seen for what they are: lacking in humanity and inadequate. Following the logic of an open system, Ackoff and Emery (1972) postulated the existence of a parameter which is expressive of the individual nature of a system (L11). This is the Probability of Choice. Probability of Choice is the probability that a given system will choose a particular course of action in a particular choice environment (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 35). In more general terms, it is that dimension of decision making which expresses the fact that a system will tend to conserve that with which it is familiar or that which intrinsically fits its own character or idiosyncrasies, its ‘specialness’ (Megill 1970). It is what optimising economic and technocratic planners leave out of their equations with the obvious results of resistance from those who have to live with the consequences. By restoring to our understanding of human decision making the sort of ‘knowledge of self’ which acts as a force on people to choose courses of action that they feel at home with, Ackoff and Emery confirmed the possibility of evolving methods of participative planning which capture the individuality of organizational and community cultures over long time frames. Related to Probability of Choice is Distinctive Competence: a set of special abilities, skills, understandings which some people or organizations display as a unique competence in pursuing their mission (Selznik 1957: 42–56). Probability of choice is one of a set: L11 L21 L12 L22

Probability of Choice Probable Effectiveness Probability of Outcome Relative Intention

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The ideals have been derived from this inclusive model as they are but choices to be made at one level of function higher than purposes. From this base, the more complex matrix of environmental texture and practical concepts of learning and planning could be derived (Ackoff and Emery 1972; Emery 1977b). These correspondences guide practice, not in the sense of prescription but as aids in the design, support and evaluation of learning and planning environments. It will be noted here that I have deviated from the original notation for Type II environments (Emery, F. 1977b: 81–91). The ecological approach to perception and meaningful learning necessitates a rethinking of this relation for which the notation L21 more appropriately expresses the concept of affordances (Gibson 1979). This constitutes a powerful base for cultural change. To simply study the intrinsic characteristics of a system (organization or community) and extrapolate from these to its future, or to isolate one or two parameters, would leave such a future uncertain. Futures determined by planning from less wholistic paradigms have proven less than satisfactory. Hall documents examples where forecasts totally ignored various of the parameters as above, but particularly that of probability of choice or intrinsic value. Similarly ignoring the dynamic nature of the environment with its sudden value shifts and discontinuities caused planning disasters (Hall 1980: 11). We need not consider the Type I environment here, but the characteristic features of the other three are instructive. In Type II, meaningful learning involves knowledge of what the environment affords and the intrinsic nature of the system and its behaviour. To retain the nature of the environment, people and all other resources are nurtured as there is a sense of belonging to the whole (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992). Planning is little more than deciding who should perform each well known part of the established procedure. Neither of these Table 2. Pattern of relations between basic elements Environmental levels

Forms of Parameters of choice

Forms of learning (L21)

planning (L12)

Salient ideals

I

Randomized

L11

Conditioning

Tactics

Homonomy

I

Clustered

L11, L21

Meaningful

Tactics, strategies

Homonomy, nurturance

III

Disturbedreactive

L11, L12, L21

Problem solving

Tactics, operations, strategies

Homonomy, nurturance, humanity

IV

Turbulent

L11, L12, L21, L22

Puzzle solving

Active adaptive planning

Homonomy, nurturance, humanity, beauty

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environments requires such a method as Searching and as explored above, Type II environments commonly employed DP2 forms of organization. Both learning and planning were integrated as normal, everyday parts of life. There is a real breakpoint between Type II on the one hand and Types III and IV on the other. In the latter, there is vastly increased complexity which puts demands upon our capacities for both learning and planning. Competition in Type III requires conscious attention to how we go about learning, accumulating the data to solve problems and win. Detailed operational and optimising planning requires the sense of strategy that relies upon the massing of resources, confidence in the reliability of information and communication and the power to push through obstacles. It is very much the Strategy of the Direct Approach, otherwise known as ‘Crash Through or Crash’. Our generals and bureaucratic empire builders are well versed in it. The shift in learning and planning from Type III to Type IV An even more dramatic watershed occurs between Type III and IV (Table 3). The decision to plan implies some commitment to bring into being a state of affairs that does not presently exist and is not expected to occur naturally within the desired time. In Type III, a risk to resources could be assessed and assigned a definite probability. But the dynamism of Type IV environment itself makes the probability of success and even such calculations themselves improbable. Some of the resources may change their mind! The inherent dynamism of the Type IV field and the relevant uncertainty it provokes causes a radical shift in the possibilities for adapting to that field. Planning for Type III has been characteristically problem solving. It assumed an end point and concentrated on designing the best means to this end. When values were stable, it was necessary only to make linear projections. But in Type IV environments where such stability cannot be assumed, the focus shifts to the end point. What can we aim for that captures the ideals and values driving the open systems that constitute L22? Because in this Type IV environment people are reasserting their individual and community uniquenesses, plans which ignore this dimension as a limiting condition to implementation, founder. The Type III decision-making model has been incomplete (Emery 1977b) in its reluctance to consider the shaping forces of the historical continuity of unique character (Dubos 1976: 11–28). The cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s also shifted the emphasis away from an individualistic and material culture towards one embodying ideals. In most desirable futures, these ideals are reshaping the guidelines for human development and serve to identify the nature of progressive approximations to end points. Their identification is therefore the first and single most important function of strategic planning. (Emery, F. 1997b).

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With relevant uncertainty, ends cannot be assumed. Their determination is, therefore, the first planning task. Without a set of end points, the overall G or hierarchy of goals, purposes and ideals, planning for all practical purposes cannot proceed. Once this G has been agreed, then the choice of paths and means to that end point can also be made. Table 3 summarises the critical differences between planning for Type III and Type IV environments. Strategic planning is very different from the type of short term planning required for your next weekend barbecue. For the BBQ you would need to consider only a handful of variables within a short time period : who to invite and what do they prefer to eat and drink? You would not expect major changes in the preferences of your friends within the space of a week or so, although today such shifts cannot be ruled out. Virtually the only variable not under your personal control would be the weather. But strategic planning is specifically concerned with long time frames and this imposes the necessity for a clear, explicit philosophy and set of guidelines. In a Type IV field, relevant uncertainty renders the chances of a successfully implemented strategic plan based on BBQ type planning extremely problematic. The longer the time frame, the greater the uncertainty and the more variables outside the control of the planning system. The guidelines themselves must be able to survive the test of time, be time free and must themselves be intrinsically adaptive. Only ideals have these properties.

Table 3. Strategic planning for Type III & IV Environments Type III Assumes Aim Method Uses

Strategy Product

ends, concentrates on means

Type IV

concentrates on ends, choice of paths and means follows is feasibility, extrinsic excellence high probability of implementation based on extrinsic and intrinsic value. is therefore problem solving puzzle solving (i) expert, fragmented knowledge context plus facts to produce understanding and - facts not context commitment (ii) ‘rational’ decision making, ‘irrational’ decision making, 3 dimensional by 2 dimensional - probable including probability of choice (intrinsic value efficiency and relative value of of course of action. outcome. of direct approach of indirect approach is the plan the planning community Creates fear of change and Why resist your own desired change? resistance, self defeating Narrow definition of cost Broad definition of cost effectiveness effectiveness

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The basic shift in planning mode is therefore from Purposes to Ideals. In turbulent fields it is not sufficient simply to choose purposes. Because longer or perhaps infinite or shifting time scales are involved and continuity of direction must by maintained, people must be able to choose between purposes or sacrifice purposes towards more enduring processes. Ideals are unattainable in themselves but capable of being forever approached. They represent therefore ultimate strivings, in contrast to values which act as guidelines for behaviour. In contrast to purposes they are properties only of people, not of organizations, but the form of organizational or group life determines whether or not ideal seeking behaviour emerges (Emery, F. 1977b). Measuring only extrinsic value without taking note of the intrinsic appreciations of individuals is the hallmark of Type III planning. It is not enough today to have a technically feasible plan. The kind of planning we need now is that which will produce plans that will probably come to pass. We need plans which will probably come to pass because the people involved in or served by their implementation want them to succeed (Emery 1977b: 124). “There are no humanly ‘neutral’ acts of creation or invention” (Sennett 1970: 86) and “the planners’ own form of ostensible ‘value-free’, ‘scientific’ methods have contributed to repression” (Goodman 1972: 52). “No just plan can be conceived or implemented without the consent and willing involvement of the people most affected” (Palmer in Goodman 1972: 49). There are already many roads that go nowhere, partial urban redevelopments which will never proceed. The world is awash with protest groups and coalitions of the most unlikely bed fellows who fight on single planning issues. They have rejected plans drawn up by experts based on facts, statistics and operations research — those which are technically excellent and impress bureaucrats. These plans do not contain the probability of choice of those who have to live with and within them. These rejections also involve a contextualization of the ‘facts’, those matters which involve long-term environmental consequences for the people concerned. Our well educated and sophisticated populations understand the behaviour and dynamics involved in Type III planning. Their commitment now is to a more broadly defined and adaptive future and it strengthens as participation grows. But because the search shifts from means to ends, the learning component of the adaptation required cannot continue to be problem solving. The appropriate form becomes puzzle solving or learning to do jigsaw puzzles. ‘Puzzle learning’ is unlike problem solving in that until each piece is individually located and placed, it is not possible to determine which piece must be found next. There is no necessary set of steps which, if followed, will solve the problem as determined by the starting condition (Emery, F. 1977b: 125–6). It is dependent on and a function of perception because all possibilities must be searched, not just the accepted conceptual probabilities. It is learning to be creative, that form of intelligence which is congruent with Hudson’s ‘divergence’ (Ackoff and Emery

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1972: 52). The way back to a harmonious or placid, clustered Type II environment where meaningful learning is the primary requirement may involve traces of all of these learning modes, but none other than puzzling provides the means whereby new end points and directions can be glimpsed and grasped. Puzzling involves all four components of the open system and must mobilise all of the ideals. If people are to be committed to the process of active adaptive planning, they must have a sense that the relations they are establishing between the pieces, themselves and L22 are intrinsically ordered and attractive, that they do encompass and tie together the essence of both system and environment. When one has searched and finally found the piece of the jigsaw puzzle which is the one and only right piece for the difficult one set down previously, positive affects are generated. There will be feelings of satisfaction, excitement and joy. Without this aesthetic sense of fittingness or beauty, a participative planning process will not be adaptive and without the energy generated by the positive affects, there will not be commitment and active continuation. The probability of implementation will reduce dramatically. These thoughts immediately create dilemmas for the traditional expert planners who have consistently applied their technical expertise in such a way that the social distance between the planners and the planned for, or the plan and the people has increased. Professional planners of highways, of redevelopment housing, of inner city renewal projects, have treated challenges from displaced communities or community groups as a threat to the value of their plans rather than as a natural part of the effort at social reconstruction ... What has really happened is that the planners have wanted to take the plan, the projection in advance, as more ‘true’ than historical turns, the unforeseen movements in the real time of human lives. (Sennett 1970: 18, my emphasis).

The joy of decision making, the narrowing of the distance between planners and the planned for, and the basis for further participation, is an affectual phenomenon and looks ‘irrational’ to a two dimensional planner. To our economic rationalists and optimising planners, such complex human matters as affect and ideals are originally an irrelevance. They simply cannot be easily encompassed within a mechanistic equation. Only those dimensions of probable effectiveness and relative value of outcome which can be treated as externalities have been accorded a quantitative value, that is, have been accorded to be of value. But what is the cost of leaving out consideration of the probability of choice and probability of outcome? What is the cost of resistance, the failure of implementation of the glossy plan? The very concept of a physical document, the static written plan, is a product of the mechanistic world hypothesis in which nothing changes. But when people have made the leap from the mechanistic to the contextual perspective, they will react to the production of a plan which is not theirs, does not involve their deepest selves. Such a plan shows lack of respect

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and is an imposition. And the various forms of resistance to these impositions increasingly cost dearly not only in narrow economic terms but also in the sense that Type III professional (bureaucratic) planners further destroy their image, credibility and ability to act appropriately as skilled resources to the planning community. By continuing to push ahead, to employ the strategy of the direct approach, attempting to win by pouring in more resources, more power, the bureaucratic systems which pursue these policies and that strategy are being self defeating. Strategy is a term taken from the art of war. It means the art and science of manoeuvring. In a Type III environment this has come to mean operational planning in order to deliver the most fire power quickly to presenting points of resistance, to throw everything you have at the enemy. The Strategy of the Indirect Approach (Sun Tzu 1943; Hart 1943, 1946; Boorman 1971) in contrast to the direct approach which looks to win battles in the short term, takes a much longer time horizon. Its goal is to maximise progress including support while minimising the waste of resources. This difference encapsulates most of the dimensions above. Rather than concentrate on how to defeat the enemy or push a plan through against resistance, you concentrate on how to involve the whole human potential of those who have to live with the consequences of the planning. Don’t waste costly resources fighting battles, prevent war. If conflicts arise, they can be rationalised during the participative planning process. The internal logic of this summary represents a formulation for both tracking history and for making choices. Today it presents us with a clear choice between choosing Type III and Type IV as the relevant ground for learning and planning. For some people emersed in large bureaucratic structures where the leadership is still dedicated to mechanism and the win-lose game, Type III may look like a good bet. But their plans are increasingly falling short of expectations. Some large bureaucracies have already adopted Type IV planning. If it is accepted that the current nature of the field is indeed turbulent, then to collaborate with others in a meaningful and effective way means using methods which mobilise all the parameters of decision making and all the ideals. Similarly, our individual perceptual abilities and our group nature are the fundamental and mutually reinforcing bases of learning which is here by definition, a unitary and continuing process (Jordan 1968: 146). This learning is a guiding concept of Adult Learning and effective social science in general. Its methods of group puzzling or Searching acknowledge the relevance of one’s own learning and experience to the pursuit of one’s own ends. They involve an understanding of how to obtain the further knowledge that one may require and an understanding of how to continually formulate challenging questions which sustain motivation to learn. It is learning to participate by participating (Pateman 1970: 105). These also imply an awareness that learning is an implicit as well as explicit purpose

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within a wider set of activities. Learning to learn continually generates new learning (Emery, F. 1975). As planning becomes learning, people themselves through their daily lives become their own educators and accept the responsibilities that this entails. Active socio-ecological adaptation and community development Searching develops learning-planning communities and ideals are central to the process. But no individual or institution has special claim to human ideals, certainly, social scientists do not, nor do professional ‘planners’. People must become their own planners, purposefully acting upon the world in ways which are most appropriate to survival in and the stabilisation of the turbulent field. This can be seen to involve: (a) conducting some search process whereby the main parties to the proposed change can clearly identify and agree about the ideals the change is supposed to serve and the kinds of paths most in character with them; (b) designing a change process which will enable relevant learning to take place at rates appropriate to the demands of time. This being the time within which change must occur to avoid intolerable costs of not changing and the time by which decisions need to be made if adequate resources are to be mobilised; (c) devising social mechanisms for participation whereby the choice of paths will reflect the intrinsic value of these paths for those who will have to traverse them. (Emery 1977b: 127) These are the key steps in active adaptive planning; creative, participative planning which through its process brings into being the necessary components of social infrastructure which will maintain the process into the future. The children of White Gum valley and many adults who have engaged in similar planning processes during the 1970s, have demonstrated the continuous nature of pursuing the new directions. As people identify and begin to pursue directions which they find more desirable than the course they are presently on, they can also discover the possibilities for progressively enlarging their aspirations for the future.

Community is therefore a core concept for the development of a socio-ecological perspective (Williams 1982: 27, 173–178). This concept of community implies productive activity. Active socio-ecological adaptation is that “work which changes the world ... the praxis which goes beyond experimentation” (Megill 1970: 61–2) and speaks a concrete language (p. 97). It is the work that must be done to change the environments within which our lives are pursued. It creates democratic communities in the process of adaptation itself, producing higher quality of life. Central to the notion of active socio-ecological adaptation is of course the exercise of cooperation. “Cooperation is the law of life ... the most deeply rooted

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theme running through the success of man” (Gorney 1968: x). “Any form of politics will ultimately fail if it is not consistent with people’s most fundamental needs for cooperation, and a sense of love and joy in human experience — in essence, a humane existence” (Goodman 1972: 216). Widespread bureaucracy and the competition it produces is abnormal and bound to fail. Sennett (1970) makes clear that it is necessary to distinguish sharply between a pluralistic and diverse society based on cooperation and one which is competitive. By Searching we are building a pluralistic and diverse cooperative community through redeveloping awareness of character and uniqueness and shared purposes. Only shared understandings can maintain mutual tolerance of individualities (Freire 1972: 16). Use of the model results in democratic structures within which cooperation and individual growth develop and reinforce each other. These democratic structures or organizations take on the characteristics of communities. A community is a social group that provides its members with, or provides them with access to, instruments for the satisfaction of some of the analogous objectives — instruments that some of its members are responsible either for producing and maintaining, or for providing the group with the means for acquiring and maintaining them, and that all of its members are responsible for using in a way that does not reduce access to them by any others in the group. (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 218)

Active socio-ecological adaptation is a process of community development which by its nature unifies the concepts of learning and planning. To plan actively and adaptively is to learn by puzzling. As we have seen the central function, the pursuit of ideals as guidelines for effective long term change, is rooted in the reality of people coming together in groups. “It is only in group life that ideals emerge” (Emery, F. 1977b: 79). This coming together to use accumulated experience and expertise towards the common purpose is the first step in ensuring that a genuinely democratic learning-planning community will emerge. Planning and design become a ‘joint educational process’. Through sharing ideals in a task oriented and directly participative social structure where mutual respect and support is the name of the game, people find the freedom and necessary psychological strength to gain confidence in learning to perceive, to think and to construct. This is contrary to the philosophy of ‘self expression’, that phenomenon which in practice has shown less than a concern with the human condition. The philosophy of individualism has led straight into the trap of The Private Future (Pawley 1973). “The development of communities is the alternative to the futile search for individual liberation in an unfree society” (Megill 1970: 137). Community development is neither collectivism, conformity nor consensus. Many people today have been socialised to feel that being angry, and negative affect in general, is bad and that consensus and happiness is the only desirable goal. But by the law of the oscillation of the affects (Tomkins 1963) this is an unrealistic belief, an unachievable aim and an unnecessary one. The search is for micro and macro environments which allow the full range of expression of human affect, but which

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can be used towards constructive rather than destructive ends, where conflict can be constructively and realistically ‘rationalised’ (Emery, F. 1966). The concept of community expresses the substantive reality of this goal. As community development, active socioecological adaptation is a comprehensive new ritual.

Why we need a new theory of diffusion and learning Over 30 years of practical experience with the SC and 25 with the PDW has proven how powerful they are in their own right. Their powers separately and in tandem, however, go far beyond each individual application. They have a power to excite and to motivate participants to diffuse over the long term. Why? Developing a theory carries responsibilities to explain. Part of the explanation clearly involves L22. When L22 is not conceptualized it is possible to postulate the existence of L12 and L21 relations but not possible to specify their nature and effects. If there is no awareness of L22, it is possible to behave as if there were no ultimate consequences of the action of a single system. The assumption, and subsequent perception and conceptualization of an extended field with its own lawful dynamics necessarily takes any unique system out of an ego- and ethno-centric, preCopernican, universe. The concept of ‘open’ is inescapably that of identifiable two-way flow. Individuals do perceive the extended environment, but our culture has been notably deficient in providing opportunities for conceptualising its nature and influences. If people are to gain the maximum from their inbuilt capacities then they must know methods for bringing into consciousness the nature of this environment. This dimension is as critical as any other if people are to become truly ‘wise’. The alternative is, of course, what many have already observed; organizations and individuals becoming confused and distressed as the environment does change its character, their traditional modes of planning and operating no longer producing the desired results. Searching for a better world via mutual adaptation of environment and system can only be valid when the environment is consciously perceived and known. Data pertinent to the current and future state of L22 must be analysed and synthesised so that the very best possible appreciation of its nature and meaning is obtained. The SC was the first method to feature L22 as a critical component. Without this major feature an event really isn’t a SC. As L22 has changed, any theory of diffusion must also be able to account for that. Closed-systems models Despite the proven efficacy of open systems, closed-system models still abound. Awareness of L22 is still neglected and this is without doubt one of the greatest

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weaknesses in the chain of social science theory. It was stated unequivocally eight years after Emery and Trist’s (1965) paper had become a classic in the field that “we need to aim at a synthesis of these two paradigms (the exogamous and the endogenous) to arrive at an interactive model of internal processes and external intrusions between units, their neighbours and their environments. If so, I know of no such attempt” (Smith 1973: 163). Today, there are some university texts and courses which touch upon these matters but they take their place within the hotchpotch which passes for current thought. Few attempt to explain the change which is taking place, or mention diffusion. Previous open-systems models Diffusion is not a particular mainstream concern but two theories of diffusion have attracted attention in the literature (Schon 1971; Herbst 1976). Herbst: Alternatives to hierarchies Herbst modified the theory put forward by Emery and Oeser (1958) to account for the diffusion of innovation amongst farmers in Australia, but ignored the emergence of Type IV. He did, however, mention changes in such aspects as gender roles. Taking the building blocks of his theory one by one we find the following: The basic unit of change is still held to be the project, experiment or demonstration. This is despite his own lengthy discussion of the problems encountered by the notion of experiment and the encapsulation and paradoxical inhibition engendered by the use of demonstrations during the sixties. Australian examples have reinforced the lessons. First, where proposals for redesign are developed by researchers or consultants and approved by management before members of the selected units are asked to try the redesign, the proposals may not be accepted in the workplace. No matter how carefully the proposed changes are explained to members of the units, often they have difficulty in understanding them, they may be suspicious of the reasons for introducing change and they may not share the commitment and enthusiasm of the originators of the redesign proposals. The redesign is likely to be perceived as foreign and imposed. Second, when change is initiated within one organisational unit, this can lead to tension and conflict with the wider organisation. For example, supervisors, middle managers and other units may regard the increased autonomy and scope for self management of operatives in the experimental unit as threatening their own functions and prerogatives. Third, even where pilot experiments are judged to be successful, often diffusion is constrained by several factors. During the early stages, usually special measures are taken to protect experiments from pressures and disruptions which the units ordinarily would have to deal with. This may assist members of the units to become familiar with the new ways of working and to develop the necessary knowledge and skills, but it also tends to create an impression of artificiality and a belief in the wider organisation that the new designs would not be practical without special protec-

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CHAPTER 2 tion. Attempts to communicate information about the initial experiments, in order to encourage further innovation, may be met with doubts as to whether the same kinds of changes would be feasible in other areas under different operating conditions. Moreover, the strategy of diffusing innovation on the basis of successful pilot experiments can place those who are expected to follow suit in a difficult position. Successful redesign in one unit does not necessarily reduce the risk of failure in others, but failure of subsequent innovations may be viewed more critically by management than failure in the first experiment might have been. The penalties for failure may even increase while the rewards for success, such as improved career prospects, remain the same or even decline. Finally, strategies of organisational redesign based on diffusion from single experiments tend to lose momentum with the result that the organisation reverts to bureaucracy. The course of major innovation in organisations is seldom if ever smooth. As problems, obstacles and conflicts arise, they sap the energy and commitment of the parties involved. If initial commitment is not sustained long enough for problems and conflicts to be worked through, diffusion from the pilot experiments to the wider organisation is unlikely to occur, in which case the early innovations remain isolated and threatened with extinction (Williams 1982: 166).

Williams discusses other difficulties throughout his Chapter Five. In addition to this and increasingly over time, we found a repugnance to the idea of using human beings as guinea pigs. This is only to be expected as the movement towards restoring dignity and full value to the individual intensifies. But pilots allow managers to hedge their bets. A more satisfactory strategy is to run Participative Design Workshops for educational purposes. These are PDWs run in the normal fashion but without guarantees of implementation. The participants then have the opportunity to consider the options without incurring the problems of demonstrations. The Role of Networks. This and the concept of flocking (Chapter 7) have great potential in diffusion. More on this below. The Role of Social Scientists. Most of the special expertise of social scientists in socio-technical design is now no longer needed (Emery and Thorsrud 1975: Appendix). Herbst failed to see the implications of Searching and Participative Design which dramatically change the role of the social scientists (or any person) entering a relationship with the client group. The role played by social scientists in the fifties and sixties also severely limited the effective number of people in the field. Until this role itself became democratised there was little chance of widespread adoption. In 1972 at the Arden House conference on QWL (organizational change) the consensus was that “there is going to be strong demand for the involvement and the use of social scientists completely beyond their capability of satisfying” (Davis and Cherns 1975: 377). Instead, what we saw in Australia from 1969 was diffusion without social science in the traditional research and topdown academic mode (Emery, F. 1977b: 198–200). Our theory must take account of this.

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The Concept of the Empty Space. This meant “those regions within a social space which lie outside that which is prescribed and that which is forbidden by law and regulations” (Herbst 1976: 49). Empty spaces allowed new practices while avoiding obstacles and resistances. This was a very creative and useful concept at the time when institutions were still internally strong and stable. It cannot today accurately represent the creation of larger scale productive spaces caused by new coalitions of people moving flexibly in and out of the institutional context of society. With the growth of unemployment, alternative schools and markets etc., new concepts of system creation are required. The Concept of the Leading Edge. This is a concept which has simply died in the changes since the 1970s. The general hypothesis that work was the most central phenomenon of life in our Western cultures and that changes introduced there would diffuse through transfer of effect to other areas of life, had been supported. Transforming the workplace has certainly played a major role in the more general movements towards active adaptation. However, it is a good question today as to whether there is a leading edge and if one is required. Once ideas are diffused into the field itself, the value of a leading edge becomes doubtful. Schon: Beyond the Stable State Schon made the very valid point that “the development of more nearly adequate theories of the diffusion of innovation must begin by taking account of the existing systems which are already in advance of theories in good currency” (Schon 1971: 109). He proceeds to analyse what he calls the Movement that took place in the US in the late sixties, that which Emery (1977a) refers to as the second visible stage of the more international cultural revolution. The first stage was that of assault on the ‘establishment’ from without. The second stage was assault from within, innumerable campaigns waged by those who believed that they had the right to insist that their institutions should serve them, not vice versa. The process of this second stage was evolution through “new pulses of activity centring around new issues” — “a chain reaction”. “Seen as a system for diffusing innovations, the Movement has had a number of remarkable features” (Schon: 110–111). It had no clearly established centre. This is accurate in organizational terms but does not identify any sources for the resultant diffusion. ‘Purposeful people in environment’ suggests that each individual was a source of diffusion by virtue of previous learning and participation. There was no stable, centrally established message. Schon was writing very close to the events themselves and it was probably difficult to see that there was an implicit concept : the individual is transcendent over these apparatuses for control and coordination (Emery 1977a), ‘Power to the People’.

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The system of the Movement cannot be described as the diffusion of an established message from a centre to a periphery. Schon’s insights here represent a most valuable contribution to our understanding. The movement must be seen as a loosely connected, shifting and evolving whole in which centres come and go and messages emerge, rise and fall. Yet the movement transforms both itself and the institutions with which it comes in contact. The movement is a learning system in which both secondary and primary messages evolve rapidly, along with the organisation of diffusion itself. (Schon 1971: 112, emphasis is added)

Diffusion of the concept of the transcendent individual had by this second stage caused a figure-ground reversal. The figure had become the widespread transformation of the field which was being played out against a background of disintegrating institutions and elitist assumptions. Thus, the shifting changing campaigns and actions were at any stage the centres from which the message was being diffused to the periphery of resistant institutions. In the light of this reversal, we can perhaps begin to grasp more clearly the nature of the actual mechanisms of diffusion. We must question however, his belief that the success of the movement was dependent on television and other technologies. Essentially he replaced communication as a concept by speed of communication. This is unnecessary and destructive, not only of some of the very powerful forms of human communication, but also of his own concept of the movement as a learning system. Undoubtedly, technological ‘connectedness’ played a role in diffusion, e.g., through the pop music culture which replicates the methods of oral cultures with heavy beat, repetition, emotion and mythological quality, but other mechanisms of diffusion were also present. Before turning to these other mechanisms, we should note in passing that while television is the medium par excellence for familiarisation, there is little evidence that it has the power to impel action. On the contrary, it is typically not those who are heavy viewers who take to the streets or who lobby for change in their own organisations. More likely, the power of television in creating a new generation arose from its profound potential to erode the sense of shame by breaking the taboo on staring into the eyes of others. Confidence in breaking this taboo has weakened the power of all social arrangements based on humiliating subordinates, all pecking orders and “…all patterns of socialisation based on shaming and suppressing the positive effects of excitement and joy” (Emery and Emery 1976: 137). The learning from television, if such it can be called, consists of an unconsciously conditioned predisposition to new forms of social structure. Forms which, if created, would encourage the growth of more constructive faceto-face communication. Integral organizational renewal Neither Van Eijnatten (1993) nor De Sitter (1993) specifically mention diffusion

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per se but that it was clearly a concern in the Netherlands is conveyed indirectly. It was a direct reaction to the ‘static’ concepts of classical socio-technical system design and gradually became more participative and user friendly (van Eijnatten 1993: 58–9). It was to have a synergetic effect through social interaction (pp. 60– 1). “The explicit strategy here is to engage in a carefree and prolonged educational programme of self design for all those involved in a renewal project” and thousands of blue and white collar workers and managers have been through the educational program (p. 66). It is clear from both Van Eijnatten’s and De Sitter’s papers that the process is still heavily under the control of and documented by academics.

In conclusion This chapter has explored the complete model of socio-ecological adaptation. Its flexibility shows that it supports a theory of deliberately making cultural change. Using the unique capacities of people and the changing nature of the environment, the model provides guidance in a range of areas, particularly strategic planning and whole systems democratization. Community development through learning to learn is at the heart of the model and through use of the model, organizations take on the characteristics of communities. The model in practice has proven that it has an extraordinary power to motivate diffusion. But there is no currently available theory of diffusion sufficient to explain this phenomenon. Wholistic models, practices and responses demand wholistic theories. The next chapter takes us into deeper levels of what wholistic human ecosystems are all about in terms of learning and diffusion, indeed into a theory of diffusive learning.

Chapter 3 Towards a Heuristic Theory of Diffusive Learning

Chapter 2 lays the foundation for a comprehensive theoretical approach to activeadaptive cultural change. It also shows that there are no theories adequate to explain rapid diffusion or to produce it to the extent required for rapid adaptation. This chapter proposes a new model of diffusion and a theory of learning which produces practices for diffusive learning, that learning which intrinsically motivates people to replicate their experiences for others. Schon and Emery both highlighted methods of participative learning in their discussions of one of the greatest historical episodes of diffusion, the 1960s ‘cultural revolution’. Emery suggested mutual learning which involves the creation of ‘nurturant communities’ (Emery, F. 1977a). Schon’s projection for the future was that the focus of design would shift from organizations to networks, and that “the pattern of social learning shifts from successive ‘sweeps’ of limited innovations from a center throughout a periphery, to the formation of selftransforming networks” (1971: 115). The Australian methods described here have been and are quite successful at producing diffusion, the extent of which is described by Fred Emery (1992). Thirteen years of work by many people resulted in the 1983 National Accord which provided the framework for reform and revitalization of industry, within a new industrial relations policy to facilitate restructuring of awards for payment for skills held. Flow on effects have included rapid union amalgamation and radical proposals for restructuring the educational system. Emery was unduly pessimistic, however, about the actual rate of genuine organizational change. Change is going on behind the scenes in a multitude of places. Industry- wide agreements are facilitating further initiatives. The question is why these methods have achieved not only intellectual acceptance but also adoption of new structures and practices.

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A model of diffusion For this learning to be effective for cultural change it must produce diffusion of active socioecological adaptation. Diffusion literally means ‘wide spreading’. For an operational definition, this is translated into the spreading of ideas about active adaptation in such a way as to maximize the probability of adoption of active adaptive practices. Premises The methods of diffusion must be based on adaptive learning. As we have seen above, there is now much evidence that the dominance of mechanistic, mediated learning over the last epoch has been an aberration, one which is destructive of the human capacity to learn and to know, and, even more generally, destructive in terms of the capacity to understand and enjoy group life. Diffusion is therefore conceptualized as a result of a process of learning which intrinsically furthers understanding of people-in-environment and initiates or develops a similar process of learning for others. The diffusive effects of the new learning will then operate through the enhancement and enlargement of group life such that a cycle of learning and the adoption of learning practices is set in motion. Socioecological adaptation must now be regarded as the most appropriate focus for learning and diffusion if for no other reason than the rapid evolution in the field itself. Active adaptation is said to exist when a system takes as its organizing principle, DP2 (redundancy of function) and works with the environment towards its system principle. In other words, both the internal adaptivity conferred by DP2 and continuing directive correlation between system purposes and environment are required for active adaptation. A system organized around DP2 provides the conditions needed for the individuals within it to attain a higher level of system function than the system itself. Thus a DP2 or democratic organization can mobilize the human potential for ideal seeking rather than merely purposeful behaviour. Such an organization or system therefore takes on the properties of a learning environment (Emery, F. 1977b; Emery, M. 1993: 2). Ideal seeking provides the stable guidelines which are required in order to pursue strategic purposes over long periods of time in a Type IV environment. When Emery (1977a) analysed the sixties cultural revolution he noted that the most central and powerful notion was the rightful transcendance of people over their institutions. The central concept which had guided previous efforts at the introduction of democratization into ‘work places’ has now diffused through the community at large, guiding their efforts towards greater fulfilment of their human potential. We should then replace the concept of work with perhaps that of ‘productive activity’ (e.g. Henderson 1980). But when relevant uncertainty inten-

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sifies and all is (potentially) transformative, a higher order of purpose is required. This higher purpose is productivity activity directed towards active adaptation to continuous change. We should then aim for diffusion in the widest possible sense — into all human systems. If there is to be genuine active adaptation, then all systems will by definition become ‘productive’. The ‘productive orientation’ relates person to person and person to world (Fromm 1963: p.14). When there is a failure or lack of the ‘productive ‘orientation’ as consequence of either DP1 structures or ‘expert’ planning, there are decrements in productivity in the more material sense as well as the personal, leading ultimately to a dissociated society (Emery, M. 1993: 227). The AXB model The diffusion model (Figure 10) follows the theory of communication and influence derived from Heider, Asch and Newcomb, the AXB model (Emery and Emery 1976: Part I). Using D here for diffuser rather than B, the theory posits that when A and D have entered a relationship with respect to an interest X, in this case, active adaptation, the nature of the relationship is a major determinant of whether A chooses to move from X, ideas about X to X1, the adoption of adaptive practices. For A to adopt or be influenced by D’s communication, the relationship must be reciprocal and positive such that A must see D, the diffuser, as a relevant figure, in some way a peer, not remote from the concerns of his/her everyday world. A must hold D in respect (Emery and Oeser 1958: .6–7). The practice of establishing and maintaining such a relationship of mutual learning is called collaboration, working with shared responsibility (Emery, F. 1977b: Epilogue). Diffusion in the Type IV environment in terms of directive correlation When the field itself is dynamic as is Type IV, it is not sufficient to consider only the relationship between D and A and the nature of the processes of influence. It becomes necessary also to take into account the interaction of the DAX system

A

D

A

X1

X Ideas about Adaptation

D

Adoption of Active Adaptation

Figure 10. Diffusion as influential communication

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L21.D + A

L21.DA

E

L22= Type IV

D

L12.E L21.A

E2 D+A Adoption

E4 DA Adapting

A

L12.E + D t0

t1

L12.E t2

t3

t4

time

Figure 11. The model of diffusion in a Type IV environment

and the interactions each of its parts enjoy with the field itself. A theory of diffusion in a turbulent field then is more fully and precisely expressed within the model of directive correlation as in Figure 11. Here we see two systems, D for Diffuser and A for Adopter, operating within a Type IV field (E for Environment). At t1, D and A are directively correlated in that both are pursuing the goal (G) of adaptation in respect of the L22. Because D has already adopted structures and practices for adaptation, D is a resource or an affordance for A’s learning about active adaptation (L21.A). D’s active adaptation is acting on and making change to E (L12.E). The environment itself also affords for both D and A, learning about practices of adaptation together with either explicit or tacit knowing that creation of pockets of placid, clustered (Type II) environment can come from cooperation between individual systems (L21.D + A). A is acting on both E and D (L12.E + D). If a reciprocal positive relation exists between D and A, A’s actions will include taking advantage of the learning that D affords by virtue of having begun the process of adaptive change and that afforded by E in terms of intersystem cooperation. In other words, A will be influenced to begin adoption. A changes the relationship from a positive one to a collaborative one. At t2, therefore, D and A have achieved the subgoal of becoming engaged in mutual learning for adaptation. D and A through mutual learning and cooperative action, are enhancing their relationship and acting jointly on E at t3 (L12.E) while E continues to afford further learning for them (L21.DA) towards a new cooperative learning system at t4. DA then functions as a stable active adaptive system, a pocket of Type II environment within the Type IV field, exerting a powerful influence on other potential adopters within that field. We see a spiralling growth of directively correlated learning between field and larger learning systems.

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In this model, however, we have gone beyond the original formulation of the model in so far as A and B form a new interorganizational system. It should be noted that in the current state of the Type IV environment, there is much awareness of the benefits of such interorganizational cooperation (Howard 1990; Powell 1990; Quinn and Paquette 1990; BIE 1991; Short and Venkatraman 1992; Normann and Ramirez 1993). There is as yet no end in sight to the growth of interdependence between systems, productive or otherwise. If many of our ‘productive’ enterprises are to survive they will have to build links to the communities, customers and the host of auxiliary organizations which supply and receive their products and services. This has been happening with the creation of ‘value adding chains’, ‘productive systems’, etc. The practical implication of this is that change no longer depends simply on a diffuser influencing an adopter. Any two or more independent systems today may choose to enter a relationship based on interest in innovating for adaptation. There is no prior requirement for experience of innovation. Similarly, there is no requirement of a hierarchy in terms of ‘leadership. ‘Leadership’ exists within the field. The series of Development of Human Resources (DHR) workshops organized by the Centre for Continuing Education at Australian National University in the 1970s were designed precisely to expedite this form of developmental alliance. Its model of pairing up different organizations in mirror groups to work together through the design phase at least, works just as well today. The intensification of the dynamism of the Type IV environment has now highlighted this model as a vehicle for intersystemic change based on mutual learning.

A B X

This new theory of diffusion requires a new theory of learning The term theory means a coherent and internally consistent system of propositions which is generative of further concepts and knowledge. These propositions must be amenable to testing. A theory is also supposed “to unify the field” (Angyal 1941a: 10). If we are genuinely concerned about new learnings which result in the getting of adaptation and wisdom, our tools must in the first instance be integrations of theory and practice. If we are serious about improving the ways in which people are empowered to increase the quality of their lives, and this necessarily incorporates the effects of how they care for their planet, we need a concept of learning which goes well beyond what is meant by learning in scholarly treatises about cognition. Academic learning theories are mainly based on mechanistic theories of perception whose direct ancestor is the Euclidean Newtonian universe. They are overwhelmingly theories of fragments; memories, stimulus-response, individual reinforcement or punishment etc., all of which are externally administered accordingly to a logic which excludes any notion of purposeful or creative people.

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As theories of accumulative process, they have proven inadequate to explain the Eureka experience or cognitive restructuring. We need a concept of human learning which is perceptual, action based and which includes within it, the notion of power to motivate and innovate for democratization and active adaptation. The appropriate concept of learning then for a Type IV environment or a culture in transition, must have at least two dimensions. First. the concept must have its basis in our inbuilt structure and function, that which is adaptive in terms of our relationship with our environment and our deeper selves. Second, it must be that form of learning which convinces the learners that they want to learn and do more to improve the human condition. The evolutionary spiral of learning and transformation they set in motion leads towards the ‘Learning Society’. This is not a particularly novel theme (eg, Hutchins 1968, Husen 1974) but as we have seen above, it is far from being effectively understood or applied.

Ecological learning: The epistemology of direct perception and knowing There are many references in the literature to concepts such as ‘double-loop learning’ (Argyris and Shon 1978, 1996) and Flood and Romm (1996) have proposed ‘triple-loop learning’. The questions are “are we doing things right, and are we doing the right things, and is rightness buttressed by mightness and/or mightness buttressed by rightness? (1996: xii). These three questions cover respectively “structuralism”, “intersubjective decision making” and “might-right management”. Triple-loop learning is the “new style of practice” (1996: 52), an emancipatory practice, accompanying the metatheory of diversity management. This more comprehensive schema is a better approximation to ‘learning to learn’ or the emerging learning paradigm. But as we have seen above, this holism is a closed-system approach which has no theoretical answer to the question of how we learn from the environment as it doesn’t contain one. This is the other dimension of ‘learning to learn’. How we learn from the environment obviously involves the perceptual system. Without knowledge of this dimension, we have less than a complete answer to the question of ‘are we doing things right?’ In open-systems theory, this dimension is called ‘ecological learning’. It underlies our practices. Origins of ecological learning There have been many approximations to the core of ecological learning. Dewey, building on the work of Charles Peirce and William James, endeavoured to evolve an epistemology which could guide educational reform for a participative democratic society (Rorty 1991: 6). In his ‘Postulate of Immediate Empiricism’

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(1905) “things are what they are experienced to be” (McDermott 1981: 242). He rejected the sterile ‘intellectualism’ of the ‘idealists’ and also the ‘spectator’ or representationalist theories of knowledge. Dewey ‘naturalized’ epistemology (Margolis 1977: 123) by invoking a “biological-anthropological method” and separating truth from validity. He replaced ‘knowledge’ with “warranted assertibility” as he emphasized that “what we come to believe is contextually warranted by the process of inquiry itself, that it cannot be specified as knowledge independently of that relation” (Margolis 1977: 132). He took a very positive view of science (Olafson 1977:173) and his own theory of inquiry did not renounce scientific method. Indeed he insisted that “there is no sharp dividing line between common sense and science” (Dewey 1938: 71) and he struggled to overcome the major difficulties inherent in reconciling a knowledge abstracted from its concrete base with his bent towards integrating knowing and doing. He contrasted primary or direct experience with secondary or reflective experience whereby “the subject-matter of primary experience sets the problems and furnishes the first data of the reflection which constructs the secondary objects. The objects obtained in reflection explain the primary objects, they enable us to grasp them with understanding, instead of just having sense-contact with them” (Dewey 1958: 4). This sequence shows that he accepted the atomization of the senses and their delivery of fragmented knowledge, in other words, the mechanistic theory of perception. While being an advocate of experience, he did not, therefore, encompass a form of perceptually based knowing which delivers immediate understanding without its secondary, removed reflective phase. In addition, he never doubted that there was “a valuable legacy of knowledge and culture to be transmitted” (Olafson 1977: 184) and he was left with the necessity of instruction. His position on a direct perceptual realism remained, therefore, essentially ambiguous and ambivalent. However, the formative work of the early pragmatists and their successors, has contributed to “a sea change” in recent philosophical thought (Rorty 1990: 5), preparing the ground for theories based on a unitary perceptual system. For example, De Bono (1976, 1979) has long contended that practical creative knowing or thinking is a function of perception. Polanyi evolved an epistemology of ‘tacit’ knowledge which rendered bare the claims of objective science and the paradigm of learning on which such claims were premised. “Knowledge is an activity which would be better described as a process of knowing” (Polanyi 1969: 132) and that “the structure of scientific intuition is the same as that of perception....Intuition is a skill, rooted in our natural sensibility to hidden patterns and developed to effectiveness by a process of learning” (Polanyi as 1969: 118, cf. 1958). Research then becomes simply a more intensely dynamic form. But tacit knowledge as personal knowing is an indwelling and a participation, a logic of perceptual integration. Learning essentially then for Polanyi is the personal experience and training of perception. Thus

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we may have tacit knowledge, the content of which we are unaware but which may be discovered by an act of perceptual integration. Following this line of reasoning (by tacit knowing) Polanyi arrives at the opposition of tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge, that of objective science. But “while tacit knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being tacitly understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge. A wholly explicit knowledge is unthinkable” (Polanyi 1969: 144). These brief summaries do no justice to the richness of these positions but highlight the concern that concepts of learning and knowing must be rooted in the individual perceptual activity which is itself embedded in the flow of the field. None have, however, achieved the clarity of Heider’s formulation or unfolded as profusely as the work of the Gibson School. Drawing originally on the Gestalt School and Heider, this group has developed a coherent conceptual framework and programme. Ecological learning elaborated today Gibson’s work is an ecological and systems appreciation of how we learn and know. As adaptation involves the fit between the dynamics of L11 and L22, so our perceptual theories are crucial for making judgements about its development and determination. On the basis of confirmed nexuses of theory and data we can begin to sketch some fundamental human adaptations and the ways in which they may be practically employed. People do not live, work and learn in laboratories but in normal everyday settings, econiches which have inherent ecological significance, particularly in terms of the learning they afford. Gibson argued on the basis of a lifetime of empirical practical studies that the associationist doctrine of knowing and learning could not be supported. Simply put, “perception is ...not reducible to sensations” (Gibson 1966: 237). “The neural inputs of a perceptual system are already organized and therefore do not have to have an organization imposed upon them” (1966: 267). The environment has an informational structure which is knowable and known to a perceiver without benefit of mediators of any variety. Direct perception or the knowing of invariants for the visual system for example, takes place at the level of surfaces, objects and events; in other words at the level of adaptive meaning rather than at the level of physics. Meaning is given by the invariants extracted during exploration and locomotion (Gibson 1977 in Reed and Jones 1982: 289). As Johnston (1981) argued, Lynch’s (1961) classic study of human orientation in cities demonstrated that the ecological structure of the city appears to be more important than its geometric structure in determining how people find their way around. The Gibsonian school argues for a fundamental realism for survival, in opposition to representationalism which denies direct knowledge. Clearly a word is a represen-

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tation at one level, but its meaning can also be directly understood. Seeing is knowing rather than believing. The crucial distinction does not lie in the possibility of knowing the world through perception. It lies in the constituents of the knowledge, i.e. whether they are facts, beliefs or interpretations (Shaw, Turvey and Mace 1982: 177). Believing invites the assumption of intentional objects with immanent existence or inexistence. Knowing does not. While knowing and perceiving are indeed intentional, the objects they specify are quite real in an ordinary sense, and therefore, commensurate with the physical objects required to define a human environment. (Adapted from Shaw, Turvey and Mace 1982: 180). The practice of Searching validates over and again that perceptions of value trends and shifts for example are very real and objective and based on events which have been perceived and remembered. Turvey and Shaw have formally derived the ‘Postulate of Direct Perception’ the logic of which is as follows: First, what justifies the claim that perception is a valid and reliable source of information for an animal or human about its environment is that perception is necessarily incontrovertible by any other form of knowing the environment (eg inference). Secondly, perception is incontrovertible, because it is necessarily a direct apprehension of that which is true by force of existence. rather than by force of argument. And third, perception may not be contradicted because only propositions may be true or false and perception is not a proposition-making activity. Propositions are assertions regarding states of affairs that either always obtain or never obtain. Perception, by contrast, is not an assertion about states of affairs but is a state of affairs and therefore necessarily obtains. (1979: 214).

The postulate states: “If some state of affairs, S, is (directly) perceived to be some state of affairs, T, then it is necessarily what it is perceived to be, namely T” (1979: 215), i.e., perception is valid. That is the first and primary ground rule for the data collection phases of the Search. As Turvey and Shaw point out, the postulate for indirect or mediated perception renders knowledge about the dangers of the environment so weak and tenuous “that it is difficult to imagine the successful survival of even one generation of animals, much less the continued evolution of their species over countless generations without a break in the chain” (1979: 214). The Postulate of Direct Perception gives us not a ‘naive’ realism, but an essential one. By ‘seeing’, Gibson (1960) meant understanding with the essence of perception being “selective attention to something important” (1969: 262). “To see a thing...means to be in touch with it” (1960: 263). Each perceiver must select that part of the potential information he or she needs. Perceptual learning is the lifelong process of increasing our attention to the meaningful features of our world (Gibson 1960). When a learning planning community pools its perceptual learning around matters which demand shared attention, the result is a picture not only of great richness but of sharp definition.

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The theory was derived from vision but has been generalized (Gibson 1963). Invariants of the energy flux in every form have pattern or structure which convey “information about” the environment (Gibson 1967; Reed and Jones 1982: 376). Extracting invariants over time is the essence of the perceptual process and can be assumed to occur at higher levels, including those called intellectual (Reed and Jones 1982: 378). This view of perception includes the concepts of memory and expectation (Reed and Jones 1982: 395) and is comparable to Sommerhoff’s derivation of ‘transformation expectations’ (1950: 171). Invariants are extracted by processes of scanning or searching. Perceptual systems are exploratory. In the absence of adequate information “the perceptual system hunts. It tries to find meaning, to make sense from what little information it can get.” (Gibson 1966: 303). Gibson alerts us to the fact that vigilance is also an adaptive behaviour. Attentiveness alone is insufficient. As Searching or activeadaptive behaviour becomes a way of life, vigilance in the sense of conscious environmental monitoring replaces regulated attention. Attention is mobilized automatically when an event trips the vigilance system. But events of whatever nature, have a special importance in contextualism. “An event can be defined as a minimal change of some specified type...wrought over an object or object complex within some determinate region of the spacetime continuum” (Shaw and Pittenger 1978: 189) where ‘minimal change’ means “the least transformation of a property of an object...needed to specify unambiguously the exact nature of that change”. To further explain event perception Shaw and McIntyre (1974: 353) derived the principle of perceptual transitions which states that global physical invariants are more attended to than local ones. The perceptual organization of an event proceeds from globally invariant properties to locally invariant properties. There is a ‘modulatory program’ by which the perceptual system becomes attuned to invariant information through experience. The Search follows this process, beginning with L22 or global plus level. Building on this work, Shaw and Pittenger (1978) isolated two fundamental types of event change, structural (what changed) and transformational (what type of change was it). By making this distinction they placed the theory firmly in the ‘process’ camp as there is an obvious hierarchical order implied between the two. While it is important to know what changed, it is of greater significance for adaptation and survival to know the ways in which things change. Only this knowledge can form the basis of prediction and conscious control. The data is elicited in a Search. For example, it is insufficient to know that weather patterns are changing. It is vital that we know if rainfall is increasing or decreasing in a certain area and why. While event perception emphasized the primacy of process, other central Gibsonian concepts accentuated the ecological stance. “Perceptual knowledge is first and foremost an adaptive relation between perceived and perceiver” (Mace 1974: 141). Direct perception of globally invariant physical information is due to

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the evolutionary attunement of the biological systems supporting cognitive processes. By contrast, direct perception of local invariants is due to attunement of the modulatory states of those biological systems by the experience of the organism with its world. According to the principle of cognitive symmetry this attunement arises from the symmetrical rearrangement of states of the biological system with respect to the invariant structure of the events perceived” (Shaw and McIntyre 1974: 347–8). The attunement is accomplished by the ‘education of attention’, or in other words, by learning (Gibson 1966). There is one other concept which serves to unite Gibson’s work with the broad framework discussed above. People are not only parts of the environment but also perceivers of the environment. Hence a given observer perceives other perceivers. And he also perceives what others perceive. In this way each observer is aware of a shared environment, one that is common to all observers, not just his environment... The awareness of a common world...is not entirely due to our verbal agreements with one another... (but) also to the independence of our perception from a fixed point of observation, the ability to pick up invariants over time. (Reed and Jones 1982: 411–2)

Gibson has thus elucidated the third of Asch’s (1952) conditions for effective communication — the emergence of a mutually shared field (Chapter 4). A mutually shared field of objective environmental features can now be defined as a field whose features afford a common set of behaviours and learning to those perceiving it. In practice this means that we can be confident that the values assigned to the environment, as determined by mutually agreed perceptions are objective. People are learning the same things about the environment, its affordances, at the same time. And the greater the collective recognition that they share this directly perceived environment, the greater will be their consciousness of their learning and their confidence in it. Babies are ecological learners Gibson’s conclusions are receiving support from research into newborns. Identification of events as central affordances is important from birth. “Newborns start by looking at the edges of things, exploring” (Friedrich 1983: 54). They prefer the complex to the simple and will choose a patterned surface to a plain one. Preferences are found with other senses as well as vision. Invariances are already in the process of extraction at this stage. Experiments by Meltzoff and Moore have demonstrated the “…infant’s very early capacity for...’intermodal perception’ — to combine the brain’s perception of two activities” (Friedrich 1983: 55). In addition, using infants six to eight months old, Starkey et al. (1983: 181) showed they could extract information about number across two very different kinds of display, or perceptual modes. They in fact had to disregard the modality, visual or auditory, in order to detect invariance. In other words, meaning is

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extracted by a single, organized, perceptual system. People are perceptual systems. Continuing experimentation uncovers more and more of our sensitivities or finely tuned perceptions of our human environment, that environment considered from the standpoint of what it affords people as a particular kind of animal (Loveland 1991: 100). Infants detect temporal synchrony, tempo of action, rhythm, changing distance and affective information uniting visual and acoustic presentations. By age four months, babies can match faces and voices based on gender information (Walker-Andrews et al. 1991). Children find it easier to accurately perceive gender when the faces they see are interacting with others as in conversation (Berry 1991) but before language begins, babies are using the ability to recognise and organise affordances, the environment’s wealth of meaningful resources. As a species they are obviously equipped to start learning about the world and its intrinsically meaningful informational structure. There is evidence that children can directly perceive affordances, or lack of them, for social meaning, that are specified by structural adjustments in one or more aspects of facial gesture, body gesture, posture or gait. These adjustments are the informational bases for perception of social affordances. They are made in response to the mutually recognized coaffordances of a particular target individual with whom the child either intends or does not intend to prolong social interaction. Children can be quick to communicate their intention to interact, or not interact, through gesture and posture, and other children are just as quick in detecting these intentions (van Acker and Valenti 1989: 397–400). Motion is critical to the detection of invariants of social intentions and children as young as three years can detect these (Berry and Springer 1993). We are so finely attuned to our own species and our human environment that not only can we detect purposeful activity through minimal dynamic clues but we can also detect intentions and intentions to deceive (Runeson and Frykholm 1983 in Valenti and Good 1991). “Persons have available to them immediate information about both what others are doing, and more importantly, what others intend to do; they can directly perceive relatively hidden psychological properties of others” (Valenti and Good 1991: 85–9). Emotional and personality qualities are also directly extracted from facial expressions. Babies of four months can also express stable or invariant intentions (1991: 89). Affordances for social knowing and social interaction involve the principle of kinematic specification of dynamics. Generally, kinematic or movement patterns of behaviour specify the dynamics or forces underlying behaviour (1991: 84). This provides a firm informational base for the direct perception of persons in action and persons in interaction: (a) person to person specific kinematic patterns are visually detectable through the extraction of invariant structures in ambient light, and (b) these invariant structures are lawfully related to mechanical and biomechanical factors that constitute specific goal directed acts. When individuals are permitted greater opportunities

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for visual exploration as they are when they are working in close proximity to others over extended periods, the accuracy of perceiving affordances is enhanced (1991: 90). This confirms what some people working with large groups and their dynamics have long observed: that although there may be no conscious appreciation of intentionality, people certainly behave concertedly as if they were aware of intentions and the assumptions underlying those intentions. People hear events as well as sounds and the information they pick up about events is not arbitrary. The sounds we hear convey much more information than is specified by physics or expected by cognitive psychologists. The specification of many features and dimensions of events is sufficient (Gaver 1993: 287). Examples of the importance of this for group behaviour and the design and management of learning are discussed in Chapter 4. Social and communicative affordances embrace not only the significance of events for perceivers themselves, but also the significance of the human environment for other persons or animals. With sufficient skill, any perceiver can know what a human environment affords for others (Loveland 1991: 101). This is part of the set of skills that Search designers and managers must develop. Adopting the systems approach, Haith, through a series of ingenious experiments showed that “Newborns are congenitally equipped to engage in visual activity that maximizes the likelihood that they will find visual information. This ‘seek’ operation is endogenously controlled, that is not dependent on external stimulation for its activation or maintenance” (Haith 1980: 89). This biological preparation is adaptive in that neural activity is essential and the baby is rarely awake. When awake, they move their eyes virtually every half second. Babies keep their eyes on the most informative parts of their visual field (1980: 124). They actively search their environment for meaning. Haiths’s evidence supports the concept of a system with two scanning routines and shows why much looking which is usually called ‘meaningless’ is not such at all. People (not just babies, 1980: 119) must simply attempt to maintain a high rate of cortical firing. By this method of sampling the energy provided by the currently available visual array, we remain alert to and intelligent of significant events and changes in the visual field. From this sample of accumulating data, two points are clear. The first is that virtually from birth, our abilities to immediately understand what is happening in our human environment are acute and extensive. The second is that an imperfect grasp of what human language, gesture, posture and other social and communicative affordances mean, would constitute a pretty severe handicap (Loveland 1991: 105). Perhaps one of our problems is that we have become so lacking in confidence about our social perceptions and skills that as a culture we have become socially handicapped. Our rituals are impoverished. As Knudtson and Suzuki (1992: xvii) note: “native customs are evidence of an astute understanding of the psychology of human interactions.”

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In an over eventful environment such as Type IV where there is too much information, perception must become selective. There are dangers in such environments of committing major errors. There are limits within which the amount of information is adaptive. When there is active purposeful behaviour within an ecosystem, much information is irrelevant. This makes nonsense of claims that all we need is access to more and more information, the belief behind the rush into ‘information technologies’. Inevitably in collecting data about the current L22, there will be automatic selection for system relevance. This is the corollary of the central feature of the Type IV environment: relevant uncertainty. Haith’s work stressed the adaptive role of activity, both at the level of gross movement and at that of cortical firing. Given the centrality of activity to such adaptation, we must assume that the generalization will hold for all levels and areas of activity. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for an active approach. Two distinct epistemologies of knowing and learning Inexorably over the last twenty years, the debate about the future of education and learning has heated up. In attempting to understand this debate, Fred Emery (1980) came to see that the conflict was between two quite distinct sets of epistemological assumptions. The first is a central strand in the development of Western and scientific culture and is the basis of our education system. The second, evident in the theories of De Bono and Polanyi, takes its core understand-

Mechanistic - Teaching abstractions Bits of information impinge as sensations Complex machine for associating, abstracting and making inferences

Contextualist - Ecological learning Structured informational field Unitary perceptual system

Some but inadequate meaningful knowledge

Injections of abstract concepts and theories from the education system

Ecologically adapted and directly perceived meaningful knowledge Theories and actions derived from invariances

Perception of higher orders of invariance Highly sophisticated theories of how the world works ‘Scientific’ ‘Common sense’ Educational Purpose Transmission of abstractions

Figure 12. The two epistemologies

Increasing the acuity of perception

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ings from Heider and Gibson and in its practical application represents the alternative that has long characterized adult/continuing education. The choices are spelt out below. This section also serves as a summary of the above discussion of direct knowing, ecological learning. Figure 12 presents the choice. The flow on the left illustrates the logic derived from the application of mechanistic thinking to the question of how we perceive and learn. At the top we have assumptions about a set of sensory organs which deliver only fragmented and inadequate knowledge. These assumptions about how the perceptual system works led to measures to overcome these inadequacies. The measures involved the transmission of abstract knowledge, knowledge divorced from its immediate concrete base. After years of studying such transmissions, we understand and can create highly sophisticated but abstract theories of how the world works. As the mind was believed at birth to be a tabula rasa and capable of receiving only discrete stimuli, it was necessary to build into the paradigm the concept of logical inference. Only then was it possible to move from the association of stimuli to appreciation of meaning and of relations such as cause and effect. Emery has traced the evolution of this paradigm of learning through the philosophies of Locke, Berkeley and Hume to the pedagogy of Herbart, the empirical psychologists such as Pavlov and Skinner to the present. ‘Paradigm One Learning’ is that which is held to take place through the processes of association, abstraction of generic concepts, repeated observation and/or replication, and memory. Those processes describe the accumulation of knowledge as it was assumed to happen in the Euclidean, Lockean epistemology, derived from the nature of Euclid’s and Newtown’s universe. It takes as axiomatic the need for analytical abstraction and logical inference. Euclid included a fifth postulate which contradicted perceived reality (that parallel lines cannot meet) and in so doing proposed a form of knowledge which could not be known or learnt except by an intellectual process divorced from naive realism. Because the postulate could not be derived or extracted from direct observation, it provided the foundation for an elite, the literate who were to specialize in such abstract knowledge. Simplistically, these are the ‘knows’ and the ‘don’t knows’. As abstract knowledge and theories are accorded value and power in our world, so it is in the interests of the few ‘knows’ to continue to mystify abstract knowledge and increase its value. Education is used as a device to sort people into hierarchical social stratas. Valuing knowledge unable to be derived from perceptual experience had two effects: it devalued the experience of the ordinary person in so far as this led to a belief contrary to geometry and it had to be taught. In this way another element of stratification was introduced and institutionalised. Elites developed within elites. Because the first epistemology begins with erroneous assumptions about the nature and process of perception which lead to erroneous notions of its inadequacy, it was necessary to overcome these supposed defects. When the goal

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became a population with a working knowledge and acceptance of the products of traditional education, it was deemed necessary to give everyone repeated injections of accumulated abstracted knowledge, truth, the ideal of the universities. ‘Good’ students were then equipped to continue through the system until they obtained the tickets (MA, PhD) to begin devising variants on our ideas of how the world works. These ideas are called ‘scientific’. The process may well be described as one of discipline rather than learning as it aims for the static rather than the dynamic, ‘being rather than becoming’. Creativity becomes heresy and cooperation is cheating. It is divide and conquer in the best spirit of DP1 and the Type III environment. To achieve this goal effectively, it was of course necessary to disabuse individuals of any faith in the validity of their own idiosyncratic perceptions. Using the analogy of consulting maps in Russia, Schumacher describes the effects of this process on his personal intellectual growth: It then occurred to me that this was not the first time I had been given a map that failed to show many of the things I could see right in front of my eyes. All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance for the conduct of my life. I remembered that for many years my perplexity was complete; and no interpreter came along to help me. It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of the maps. (Schumacher 1977: 11)

It also required stressing the importance of memorizing established associations and knowledge of the rules of classification and taxonomic hierarchies. Other requirements followed logically; externally imposed discipline and literacy. From these epistemological assumptions and the derivative requirements of a critical, disciplined and literate mind, it is possible to deduce the evolution of most of the characteristics and highly stable features of the Western system of formal education, the teacher-student relation, timetables, standardised curricula, the nature of the reward and punishment systems, etc. For young children, the first epistemology means a long hard road of putting away the childish pursuits of devising their own theories of how things work. Wrong answers built on personal observations and creative thinking are punishable. Every child spends its early years extracting invariances and creating systems of meaningful knowledge. As education reduces the value of this process and its products so the child loses confidence in its perceptions and experience. This paradigm is practised at every level of education and across every division of our culture. The loss of confidence however, is a gradual process. As our methods show, the abilities to directly extract invariants are not lost, they remain tacit. More unfortunately, the bad experiences so many have during their schooling make

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them reluctant to reenter the education system. They have to be convinced that Adult Learning uses different methods which involve them in creative learning with its feet on the ground. They need proof that they produce positive affect based on the dignity and tolerance of individual knowings and their cooperative use towards shared purposes. These methods derive from the right hand side of Figure 11, the paradigm of direct perception leading to ecological learning and the same end point of sophisticated but different theories of how the world works. Bolyai and Lobachevski irrefutably established that a proof of Euclid’s fifth postulate was impossible (Pirsig 1974: 260). Now Emery has shown once again that the scientific basis for our cultural beliefs and educational practices is less than ‘scientific’. The conclusions from Heider and Gibson are that: • The environment is recognised as having an informational structure. • This informational structure of the environment is embodied in the invariances that exist in the relations between energy flows despite fluctuations in the individual flows and regardless of whether they impinge on the sensors of an organism. • The perceptual systems of living species have evolved so as to detect and extract this information from their environments despite a great deal of ‘noise’ at the sensory level. • Our conscious feeling of sensations is all but irrelevant to the role of the senses as discriminating perceptual systems (Emery, F. 1980: 52). The second epistemology starts, therefore, from a unitary perceptual system adapted to its world. It functions to directly extract meaningful knowledge from its ecosystems by perceiving invariances in time and place. What this means is essentially very simple. We were never tabula rasas, blank tablets, onto which the accumulated knowledge of the ages must be poured and left to soak. Rather than weld abstract knowledge into more and more abstract theories, we employ higher and higher levels of invariance to arrive at sophisticated theories of how the world works. These are often derogatively referred to as ‘common sense’ or ‘primitive’. These judgements reflect the devaluing of knowledge extracted from the direct knowing of everyday reality. As the environment contains limitless information any person with an intact perceptual system can access what they need. Access is restricted by habit, lack of confidence and physical or psychological isolation from the informational field. The implications of this paradigm are immense, not only for our educational systems but for our culture generally. Humanity, by its very structure and functional nature, is intimately adapted to its world. The Lockean paradigm of learning and ‘education’ as the necessary and dominant cultural mode was indeed aberrant and misconceived. Our direct learning about our meaningful world is not confined to our perception of the strictly physical environment as we saw above in the data about

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the abilities of young children. Music can be as readily known as can the meaning of social and conversational fields and this leads to the homonomous dimension of learning to learn. But before we turn to the music of conversation and human groups we should note that other confirmation is derived from the discipline of neurophysiology which has shown that meaning and behaviour are not correlated with the mechanical transfer and association of data from one part of the brain to another. Luria (1968, 1972) illustrates the proposition by contrasting studies of a man who couldn’t forget and one who couldn’t remember. The earlier study of the mnemonist showed that his recall was not a function of a series of images such as would be expected by transfer in and out of ‘memory’ but was more easily explained “in terms of factors governing perception and attention” (1968: 62), a unitary perceptual system. The man who couldn’t remember, has as Luria puts it, lost that part of the system which controls the organization of a coherent ‘framework’, the system principle. He was left with nothing but “undeciphered images and unrelated ideas” (1972: 103). This man had lost the capacity to instantaneously grasp “intricate patterns” (1972: 108). “Knowledge is not stored in the memory like goods in a warehouse or books in a library, but is preserved through a succinct system of indentification that creates a framework of ideas” (1972: 116). “The kinds of concepts that represent this (paradigm two) perceptual achievement are structural concepts...not the generic concepts yielded by a process of abstraction and naming; eg, of naming species and genus” (Emery 1980). This distinction becomes more important as we consider isomorphism between the structure of our neurological and perceptual systems and that possible in the social or cultural world. As Emery points out The general and undeniable consequence of the new paradigm is that no firm barriers can be drawn between commonsense and bodies of scientific or scholarly knowledge…. The so called special skill of identifying the universal (the invariances) through logical abstraction and logical inference is a myth. It was of course a convenient myth for preserving social hierarchies. (Emery 1980: 60–61) We are now confronted with the fact that people are equipped to directly achieve information for themselves and they achieve that in conceptual form — the same form of serial concept that stands as the highest achievement of modern science. The central problem for education is no longer which minds can achieve conceptual knowledge and undertake conceptual operations. In the new paradigm the central question is what kinds of environments best enable all minds to exercise their ability to perceive deeper orders of invariance. (Emery 1980: 62)

Emery proceeds from this point to examine the implications for traditional educational practice and concepts such as IQ. For our purpose here it is necessary to draw two points. Firstly, as each and every human is equipped with this ability to directly perceive meaning, the emergence of a practical paradigm which acknowledges and enhances this ability will have the effect of engendering confidence in it.

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Secondly, as this confidence grows not only will individuals grow and become more perceptive, able to think, but the field itself will change as a result. The theories ultimately derived from the epistemologies do not differ in sophistication but they do differ in their relation to their ecological and adaptive base. Common sense or ‘primitive’ can often mean no more than practical or still attached to a perceptual base. It can also mean that the majority of the population can understand it by relating it to their experience. Australian Aboriginal cosmologies are directly related to the health of the land and the species which belong to it. These cosmologies help them understand their lives in a way that the physics of quarks or neutrinos cannot. Such understanding leads to action which changes the whole. The implication of learning which proceeds to intensify meaning through naive realism, is identical to the implication inherent in the concept of innate wisdom. As we move to a deeper, more comprehensive, understanding of a human being, we tend to pass from more tangible particulars to increasingly intangible entities: to entities which are (partly for this reason) more real: more real, that is, in terms of my definition of reality, as likely to show up in a wider range of indefinite future manifestations. (Polanyi 1969: 168)

There will be a speeding up of the dual processes of differentiation and recentring or reconstruction (Lewin 1936) of the individual and cultural cognitive field. When a particular field is seen in sufficient detail it flips and what has been known or understood undergoes rapid reformation. “Things will never look the same again.” Once we begin to trust, and learn from, our immediate experience and observations there is a new wealth of data and detail to any circumstance or puzzle. While we are dependent on abstract knowledge which can only be gained by access to discrete and often restricted sources, differentiation remains a slow process. The process of cognitive restructuring or the rapid formation of new understandings can be expected to spiral upwards until a new cultural level of understanding or conventional ‘wisdoms’ is stabilised, generating a new system principle. This is the process currently in train where Paradigm Two learning is both a symptom and a multiplier effect. Transformation to a new culture-wide appreciation of wisdom and ideal seeking can be expected to accelerate although the transition will certainly not be without its bumps. Our capacity to learn and know as perceiving is, of course, in the most real sense learning by doing. Perception is an act and although it may not always be conscious it cannot connote a passive perceiver. As was shown by Haith’s babies, active is adaptive. Type II and Type III epistemologies Knudtson and Suzuki (1992) have concluded that these two epistemologies distinguish the ancient cultures from our own scientific one and the “narcissistic

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self-preoccupation and ecologically destructive world view” (1992: xxv) that underlies it. In recent years, our ‘Scientific Elders’ have started to achieve some complementarity and overlap (1992: 4). But for the majority of the time humans have existed, the environment was placid clustered (Type II) and the practice of ecological learning was the basis not only for knowing that environment intimately but also for keeping it in a healthy, balanced state. The ancients’ Type II was (and still is) the reality of our hopes for environmental sustainability. The existence of two ‘minds’ — and a long-standing epistemological stance can justifiably be called a ‘mind’ — is not a new idea but Knudtson and Suzuki have documented the ways in which the indigenous peoples of the world used a positive and quite distinct form of knowing or mode of acquiring knowledge to our own Western industrialized from. In both these modes of thought, nature is accessible to scientific enquiry but one is based on perception and imagination, the other at a remove from it (1992: 9, from Lévi-Strauss). This is a clear statement of extraction versus abstraction and we also note the parallel between the two educational paradigms and the design principles. As abstract learning is one step removed from reality, so in the first design principle, responsibility is one step removed from where the real productive behaviour is taking place. DP1 structures became ubiquitous in the Type III environment and it is not surprising that a congruent educational process was adopted. This ‘Scientific Mind’ as Knudtson and Suzuki recognize (1992: 9), is a relative upstart, born in the much shallower soils of the seventeenth century, the birth of Type III and flowering of mechanism. The first educational paradigm of abstraction is Type III learning. Drawing further upon the work of Lévi-Strauss, Knudtson and Suzuki elaborate on the differences between abstraction which proceeds from formal properties and the concrete which proceeds from ‘sensible qualities’ to envelop the whole or totality of experience. (1992: 10–11) Native peoples not only directly extracted meaning from the whole but saw the natural world itself as a directly perceiving, learning system — “a natural world that watches” (1992: 31). Knudtson and Suzuki discuss (1992: 43–46) the commonalities between their reverence for the living whole, the entire cosmos and ecologist Lovelock who “lovingly christened his wondrous lifelike biosphere system Gaia, ‘this total planetary being’, in honour of the earth goddess of Greek myth” (1992: 46). Native knowledge is of practical value and extremely sophisticated (1992: 12). Bushmen for example are extensively curious and study the world intimately. It is astonishingly detailed beyond survival needs and seemingly for its own sake (1992: 93). They create “thoughtful, coherent mental models of aspects of the natural world,...logical, founded on expert observation and solid empirical evidence, capable of being revised to accommodate new findings” (1992: 68). All native knowings rely on “finely tuned insights” about the world and they understand in detail the dynamics of symbiosis (1992: 82) and the ways in which directive correlations are established for adaptation. “The junction between knowl-

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edge and experience is tight, continuous and dynamic, giving rise to ‘truths’ that are likely to be corresponding intelligent, fluid and vibrantly ‘alive’” (1992: 16). For indigenous peoples, perception is universally highly valued. Children are extraordinarily precious because they are “exquisitely alert, sensitive and conscious of their surroundings” (1992: 85). The perception of animals too is valued, what each sees through its eyes constitutes a truth (1992:91) a parallel to our rule that ‘all perceptions are valid’ and also to the ecologists’ rule that each species lives and perceives in a species specific environment. This leads to the respect that all species must have for all other species and also to the freedom of each species (1992: 92) to behave according to the unique relationships between itself and its environment, its directive correlations and adaptations. The myths and legends of, for example, the red kangaroo have been found to be based on a “profound, enduring sensitivity to the real workings of the natural world over great expanses of time” (1992: 135). Their detail has been found to conform to painstakingly assembled scientific data, and taboos on hunting in red kangaroos sacred sites matches precisely the areas marked by science as their best habitats. Perceptual knowings translate directly into cultural practice. “Through ancient nature honouring rituals, the primeval cycles of nature and circular time itself are symbolically renewed and rendered ‘eternally present’ in essence, timeless. Far from being reduced to abstractions, they are personally and collectively experienced as living ecological and spiritual circles of time” (1992: 144). Here we see the conjunction of the contextualist’s past or historical moment in the present and the ideals as timeless realities (Chapter 1). No wonder that scientists today, our modern Western ones that is, “are faced with the devastating possibility that the whole is greater that the sum of its parts” (1992: xxii) and are having to resort to language hitherto considered inappropriate in science (1992: xxiv). This means that ideals and emotions, the intangibles abhorrent to mechanism must be reinstated as valid elements in the overall equations. We return to this when we consider the nature of wisdom. Searching as ecological learning Our methods are built around the second (Type II) epistemology. They embody learning as the education of perception. Throughout, participants use their perceptions and experience as the data on which they build their futures. In data collection, participants collectively contribute changes they have seen. There is no major source other than their perceptions and experience on which to judge the significance of these changes. The ground rule is that ‘all perceptions are valid’. This has multiple effects, not the least of which is that people begin to restore confidence in the value of their perceptions. It also has the effect of preventing those with more formal status from devaluing the perceptions of those with less status.

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Participants respond quickly to this confidence booster, particularly as it confirms that they all live in the same world, that which they are all simultaneously perceiving and knowing (Chapter 4). The speed of work increases and the emotional tone becomes more positive. Throughout both the SC and the PDW, participants continue to work with their perceptions, experience, and judgements. In the PDW for example, those from a mechanistic world view dismiss the matrix for the six psychological requirements as subjective. But they are objective realities (Emery and Phillips 1976), certainly to those who work there. It has become obvious to designers and managers, however, that the longer a group has been in the formal educational system, the harder it is for them to work in such a fashion. The saying is ‘A day for children and the handicapped, two days and two nights for normal adults and a week for academics’. This bears out the statements above that it takes time to convince a person to devalue and disregard their experience. The most badly damaged are those who have invested their lives in the mainstream education system and its priority on knowledge abstracted or divorced from its experiential base. The immediate response of many is to rubbish the possibility of such an endeavour. Others show a range of defences and reluctances. Our methods are but a small step in making visible and restoring confidence in our abilities to directly know our world, our species-specific environment. But with the many other trends in the world today moving towards wholeness and health, they may help to arrest the power and authority of mechanism. At this time when there are clearly two epistemologies in operation, our methods may simply act to restore a better balance between that epistemology removing us from reality and that bringing reality within our grasp so that we may responsibly change it.

Consciousness and learning as primary human adaptations The most central human concern is for meaning and the process of extracting meaning from the totality of the ecosystem is that process we call learning. Clearly the Gibsonian and the open systems theorists are converging towards a more comprehensive theory which may throw a brighter light on consciousness, human learning and adaptation within changing informational environments. We now explore the possibilities of that convergence. From a general ecological perspective as well as our particular concerns here, behaviour remains the important focus for exploring the concept of learning (Johnston 1985: 5). Learning may be defined as the modification or maintenance of the behavioural relationship between an animal and its environment as a result of individual experience (1985: 6). It involves acts, sequences of behaviour that have consequences for the animal (1985: 7), or person, consequences of meaning.

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Learning must be conceived as a process which is integrated with other developmental processes to ensure successful adaptation (1985: 18). It must, therefore, be capable of being integrative of concepts of consolidation and differentiation of meaning and the changing span and scope of goals throughout the life cycle. The hallmark of an ecological approach to learning is ascertaining what has to be learnt. This is the process of ‘task description’ (Johnston 1981) and for the task description here, we need to have observations of people in their species specific environment ( Type IV), their ecosystem or econiches (e.g. their organizations) and be able to analyse what behavioural changes are occurring which indicate that learning is taking place over time (adapted from Miller 1985: 80). Here we concentrate specifically on the econiches within which such learning may occur. When discussing processes involving human cultural evolution, individual learning and system development, we immediately confront the complexities of human adaptation caused by consciousness. Our methods for adaptation and cultural transformation involve bringing to consciousness the dimensions and nature of these changes. At the same time, much of our group life and learning operate at subconscious levels. An adequate model of ecological learning must encompass meaning and adaptation at all these levels. In this section I propose a model within which we can position all these experiences and practices, better understand previous failures and improve our tools. Consciousness is related to language, the self and the objective world, reality, in complex ways. But there are convergences in the literature which allow a firm formulation in terms of directive correlations. Formative work Jaynes (1976) devised a list of what consciousness is not, including that it is not necessary for learning. Both animals and humans obviously learn without consciousness as the case of Orillia (Chapter 4) illustrates. He arrived at consciousness as “the work of lexical metaphor” (1976: 58) but failed to distinguish between spoken and written language. He concluded, therefore, that up until quite recent times, human beings were not conscious. But Luria makes it clear that contact with literacy and the development of the ‘literate mind’ are associated with the development of the ability to abstract, as is necessary to solve syllogisms when direct experience is lacking. Jaynes, following Locke, confused consciousness with the development of generic conceptualization. Asch (1952: 287–8) is more useful when he says: The self is more than one other object in the psychological field. It has the unique property of being both the subject and object of experience; it is for us both the source and end of experience...the realization of ourselves as actors and knowers permits simultaneously an increased detachment from the environment and a deepened cognizance of it.

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Then in 1972 Chein published The Science of Behaviour and the Image of Man, a rigorous and comprehensive system of psychological concepts. He defines behaviour as “any spontaneous directed action” (1972: 77). From this he derives the concept of awareness. Awareness is “minimal behaviour, behaviour conceptually stripped of all components save that which is barely sufficient to maintain some spontaneous directed action with respect to an object” (Chein 1972: 83). Awareness is included in every instance of observed behaviour. Every awareness is inherently a directed act and therefore motivated. And as Shaw et al. (1982) add, awareness is perception. Dreams, hallucinations, etc., are simply different kinds of acts (1982: 162). So too then are all our perceptual behaviours including imagining or conceptualizing our futures. They too are inherently directed or motivated awarenesses and will be subject to the same psychological laws as any other perceptions, particularly so in this context of bringing them under conscious control. Chein then formally derived the relationship between awareness and consciousness: Let us call any awareness which is itself and object of a behaviour of the same object a conscious awareness; it is an awareness accompanied by an awareness of it. By the same token, any behaviour that is itself an object of another behaviour of the same actor is a conscious behaviour; and, if it is a motivating behaviour and if, as motive...it is similarly an object of another behaviour, it is a conscious motive. (1972: 95)

A desirable future for example, becomes conscious when we are aware of ourselves perceiving our desirable future. It functions as conscious motivation when it is a goal of another conscious behaviour such as creating a community. To maximise the success therefore of the Search Conference, it is critical to ensure that each particular element and motivating behaviour is brought to conscious focus. Vygotsky (1962: 91) agrees that consciousness is present when we are aware of the activity of the mind and our awareness. Chein and Vygotsky also conclude that consciousness demands a hierarchical framework which is itself a system (Vygotsky 1962: 92). This is inherent in both the above hierarchy of conscious motives and that of goals, purposes and ideals. Bringing ideals to consciousness in the service of consciously creating a community, motivates purposeful behaviour directed towards those higher level motives. Consciousness is not extensive or continuous (Vygotsky 1962: 91). “Cortical consciousness is really chiefly cortical unconsciousness or a potential” (Caudwell 1949: 192). If a behaviour does not become an object of another behaviour of the same actor we may call it subconscious where ‘sub’ means ‘less than’ (Chein 1972: 96). That is “if I am aware of an object or motivated with respect to it or, more generally, behaving toward it, but am not aware that it is an object of my awareness, motivation or behaviour, then the latter are subconscious. I may be

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fully aware of some aspects of my behavioural activity, but, if I am not aware of the directedness of this activity, then the behaviour is subconscious”. As learning takes place, so previous behaviours which were objects of awareness become components of a higher integration of behaviours or system of directive correlations. They therefore lose their potential as objects of behaviour unless the higher system is disrupted. Subconscious behaviour should be expected to be very common. As a SC proceeds, behaviour becomes increasingly and coherently directed towards the highest level of the system of motives. Therefore, previous behaviours in relation to aspects of the topic become less salient. Peoples’ behaviour changes! They themselves may not be conscious of this at the time but others will. It is not uncommon for people to express surprise that a particular individual or group has not for example, been antagonistic about a specific proposal. Similarly, it is common for surprise to be expressed at the high degree of commonality or agreement of views. This is simply a reflection of higher-order motives being brought to consciousness and replacing lower-order and more fragmented goals. It is a figure-ground reversal, the basis for perceptual reconstruction or Lewin’s original ‘unfreezing-refreezing’ phenomenon. This is, of course, the operationalisation of the AXB model of diffusion in action and in so far as the influential communication is mapped as a response against the appropriate environment, it is adaptation in action. The model of consciousness as adaptive behaviour Any formulation of consciousness in terms of directive correlations must respect and account for its definition as awareness of awareness, within a hierarchical system, and as a potential or noncontinuous behaviour. Sommerhoff, without attempting a formal definition of consciousness, saw it in terms of the total hierarchical system of potential and actual directive correlations. Compared to death, which is the “total breakdown of the integrated directive correlations that inform the living organism...its animation” (1981: 189), unconsciousness is a partial breakdown of this kind affecting merely the actual and potential directive correlations that exist between the current states of the person on the one hand and the current states of the environment on the other. It leaves any other internal directive correlations, the internal regulations, etc., intact (1981: 193). There can also be consciousness without overt physical behaviour, e.g. private fantasies. Here we have the potential directive correlations, not the actual ones. Consciousness for the active behaving person, in the sense of being aware that one is aware, therefore concerns a hierarchy of actual directive correlations nested within a further hierarchy of potential directive correlations. Given that in actual directive correlations the value of Y0 is an actual member of a set of starting conditions and in a potential directive correlation it is

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not, we may conceive of consciousness as a directive correlation within a hierarchy of actual and potential directive correlations which satisfies the focal condition of person as product of environment (Ek)and human systems (Hk) at a given point in time. Thus the first directive correlation within the hierarchy would present Chein’s definition of awareness as minimal spontaneous directed action. Ek here is as usual a normally defined environmental feature or event. In order to satisfy the definition of consciousness as awareness of awareness, the awareness in the original directive correlation must assume environmental status. In other words the actual or potential set of starting conditions must include the behaving or aware self as an actual or potential member. It is not necessary however, for a formulation of our ability to behave consciously, that an actual value be specified. Given our lesson above that subconscious behaviour is common and consciousness only a known potential in any circumstance, it is sufficient to satisfy the definition that the self may potentially assume Y0 in an actual set of starting conditions. The function of the self, such that it may see itself as response to Y0, then defines the original awareness: minimal behaviour as an environmental event. We need only a single diagram, remembering that one may be conscious of purposes and ideals which lie outside a finite or possible time scale, and that we must be able to elaborate such a model in order to account for dreams, thinking, imagination and memory. Consciousness: Awareness of Awareness E3 Awareness: Alert, Human Behaviour E2 Awareness: Alert, Animal Behaviour E1 Yo

GA

GB

>

time

H1 H2 H3 to

tk

Figure 13. Consciousness as adaptive behaviour

GC

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Figure 13 shows a nested hierarchy of directive correlations for both animal and human adaptation. The direct correspondence of E1,k and H1,k specifies animal adaptation in respect of Y0, an actual member of the environmental set and GA, a goal. Level 1 therefore specifies adaptive goal seeking behaviour. For human awareness, (level 2) the directive correlation is given by the condition where Yo is an actual member of the environmental set and the person behaves adaptively such that there is direct correspondence of E2k and H2,k with respect to Yo and GB where GB is a purpose. The ability to be conscious is defined by the condition where the self assumes a potential value of Yo such that its response function as observer is matched by its response function as observed or object. Similarly we may become aware of our awareness in respect to GC, a set of ideals. The correspondence however, remains the same as in the case of purposes. As it would be maladaptive to be continuously conscious so it is maladaptive, if not impossible, to be continuously ideal seeking (Emery, F. 1977b). At level 2, human awareness, we will have for example, a person being productive within a Type IV field, behaving adaptively when s/he is pursuing a purpose in ways appropriate for that Type IV field, e.g. behaving cooperatively with another pursuing the same purpose. While simply behaving productively and cooperatively around the shared purpose, both can become conscious if they can reflect upon themselves as people behaving productively and cooperatively around that purpose. Similarly, we can become conscious of our ideal seeking if we have the conditions and opportunity to do so. (If the econiche or organization within which these people are cooperating is structured on DP1, appropriate for a Type III environment, their cooperation will be seen as negative or maladaptive.) However, it is clear that in terms of the question of consciousness present at any given moment this formulation is not sufficient. For the self to assume a potential value of Yo in an actual set satisfies the requirement that we may be at any given moment conscious. But what about the moment when we are fully aware and conscious? “When I observe myself, there is involved an immediately present I” (Chein 1972: 198). In such a case the self assumes Yo in an actual set so that ‘we devote our behaviour exclusively to it’: it becomes figure on ground. The moment of consciousness is an adaptation when there is correspondence between all of E3, E2, E1, H1, H2, H3. (We must allow the possibility that at times we lapse into goal seeking). At every level of the motivational hierarchy, therefore, we are behaving consciously when we reverse the normal figure-ground of ‘task being performed’ to ‘ourself performing task’ or ‘ourself behaving’ that is when we function equivalently as subject and object. Here we have the essence of diffusion: perceiving our own motivated behaviour as we continue it over infinite time frames. It means that our conscious perception of our progress is itself a motivational behaviour. Ideal seeking is

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inherently attractive. When ideal seeking motivates the behaviour of a community (brought into being through conscious, collective ideal seeking) every moment of consciousness motivates the growth of community towards the approximation of the ideals. However, a further specification is necessary and we return to Johnston and Turvey’s discussion of the role of the back-reference period. An adaptive response to our awareness of awareness, our consciousness must not exceed the back-reference period of the awareness itself, unless of course such consciousness is in its own right the beginning of another awareness (hierarchies within hierarchies). But if the period of consciousness was to seriously outlive the backreference period of the awareness it would amount to perseveration, the inability to respond flexibly to a changing environment. In cases where the self takes on the actual value of Yo and the back-reference period exceeds tk–to, we would expect to see something like stage fright or at the extremes, perhaps unresponsive catatonic schizophrenia. At the organizational level we would see for example, an enterprise fixated on and fiddling with its internal DP1 structure as it loses profitability in the Type IV environment, at a time when others are searching the environment for both new markets and effective methods for changing from the first to the second design principle. Both dimensions are therefore necessary in order to specify adaptation. The first involves becoming an environmental event such that we know ourselves as planners and actors who change the environment (L12 relation).The second involves the constraint that such planning and its implementation is action towards purposes and goals in relation to the current environment. In this way we can learn about and know ourselves, by extending the total set of directive correlations. That is, by being aware of ourselves as an environmental event which affords some meaning to others in the Type IV field, we can respond adaptively not only to our own awareness but also to that of others for whom we are an affordance or resource. But if we in any given environment fail totally to perceive ourselves as a potential value or affordance of that environment over the backreference period, we may also be considered, in terms of learning, to be in a less than conscious and/or adaptive state. We also then fail to diffuse as we do not recognise ourselves as a resource to others. The possibilities inherent in this model, for maladaption as well as adaptive behaviour, defined over the two critical dimensions of correspondence and backreference period, emphasize two points. The first is that our ability to see ourselves acting in the environment means that we cannot escape seeing ourselves as a part of the totality. This not only generates learning, it also explains the belief that our humanness confers responsibility. Consciousness underlies the age-old concept of trusteeship of or responsibility for the physical environment. Those maladaptions which involve such withdrawal of responsibility are also a loss of our unique human characteristic. The second and interrelated point is that

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consciousness imposes the need for a degree of unity in actions, in relations with others, and in thoughts if a person is not to be overwhelmed (Asch 1952: 122). The notion of unity to preserve and communicate the content of consciousness is common but unity may not always prevail, resulting in informational overload (Emery and Emery 1976). Methods for change such as the Search may make it difficult for some people to preserve unity. This imposes serious responsibilities on the managers of these methods. The regulatory function of group life and conversation, as econiche and response function, are essential elements in the process of managing consciousness. These will be shown below to have a biological base. Unity or adaptation which is used in its sense of meaningful order, is established by the set of invariances, both ecologically and culturally determined, which define the common world. As manifestations of a system principle, group life and conversation function as the moderators of consciousness, preserving the set of directive correlations and orienting its orderly growth. This emphasizes the importance of structuring all our organizations or econiches for group life and conversation on DP2. Without such a transformation, we will continue to experience the growth of societal and cultural disorder and maladaptions such as dissociation. Definitions of learning and diffusive learning This explication takes us far beyond the simple model specified for animal adaptation. Now that consciousness is defined as the ability to directly perceive oneself as a potential or actual environmental event, it becomes clear that we, being conscious of many of our doings, learnings and knowings, have a choice of viewing them at any moment as affordance or effectivities. And because the set of directive correlations is infinitely expandable both through the range of possible variables and over past and future, we can better understand the process of learning and individuation. The construction of the individual is seen as a gradual process of differentiation and organization in which the production of meaning is central...the problems of consciousness and of how one can represent to oneself one’s own desires and beliefs can be seen (as)...the problem of differentiation. (Clifford and Frosh 1982: 269).

Clearly, individual human growth and development depend on the ability to differentiate and/or ‘see’ the possible actors and responses within the set of directive correlations. At the same time, consciousness expressed in terms of directive correlations allows us to see ourselves as part of an organized field together with the growth of complexity within the ordered, unified set of directive correlations. The processes and principles of direct realism as medium-term adaptation continue over a life span. Therefore, “learning works because it permits the

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development of effectivities that are supported by affordances in a real environment” (Johnston and Turvey 1980: 166). Our discussion of consciousness shows that for humans, no clear boundary can be drawn between affordances and effectivities except in a specifically pragmatic sense where, for example, we may wish to limit the size of an investigation by defining an X only as an affordance, or effectivity. In the present context, however, and because of the breadth of our specification of Yo as L22, we accept that one of our human effectivities is to create affordances which contribute to the evolution and development of econiches and environments, of extended social field. Thus, learning as adaptation at the ontogenetic level is no more and no less than the simultaneous development of affordances and effectivities towards environments that better support human purposefulness and ideal seeking. Consciousness demands that these ‘goals’ are also effectivities and thus learning is the growth of the total set of actual and potential directive correlations, or contents of consciousness, towards a meaningful order. This definition encompasses maladaption but we can consciously choose to use our learnings to create new econiches which themselves will function adaptively, affording conscious learning to those within them. And we may consciously choose to function as an affordance or resource for conscious learning to others who are searching the field for ways to extend their own set of actual and potential directive correlations. Being both conscious of and motivated to use (by virtue of the motivational hierarchy as above) ourselves as both effectivity and affordance to others, we are motivated to enter into positive, peer relationships with others around shared purposes including that of learning itself. This would appear to cover all the characteristics required of a diffuser or of leadership in a process of diffusion. We can, therefore, define Diffusive Learning as that learning which motivates the learner to recreate the learning environment for others either as actual or potential econiche. These new econiches function first as affordances for new conscious learning and as this learning proceeds, they function as effectivities available to other learners to create new econiches for the learning of others again. Econiches can be viewed, therefore, as affordance and effectivity, and as organizational structure and medium of communication. Effective methods for diffusive learning will approximate these econiches and should continue to be adaptive as long as they establish the correspondence between environment and learner. The econiche functions as affordance for purposefulness and potential ideal seeking, and also functions to create consciousness in the learner As a corollary to this, we can propose that the same set of characteristics which appear necessary and sufficient to define a diffuser may also be applied to the self as conscious object, where the self becomes a conscious lifelong learner. We would expect in fact, that diffusers and lifelong learners would be one and the same people. There will be a spiralling of learning and diffusing as the conscious lifelong learner extends his or her total

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set of directive correlations through the creation of learning econiches which function as affordances for their own learning as well as that of others. Note that we do not imply that econiches or organizations learn. Learning as defined above is reserved for the individual person. A ‘learning econiche’ is used in the same sense as a ‘learning organization’: it is an organization “structured in such a way that its members can learn and continue to learn within it” (Emery, M. 1993: 2). The wholistic nature of ecological learning The response functions which map the starting condition onto what has been defined here as econiche, and which thereby support the phenomenological concept of learning, can be generically defined as communication. There are established adaptive communicative processes, that is, modes which conduce the adaptive learning spiral as defined here, but the very fact that these may be distinguished raises the question of a set of maladaptive interrelations between starting condition, purposefulness and response function within the context of learning. While it seems impossible for humans to avoid learning, it may indeed be possible for a set of directive correlations to give every appearance of a spiralling growth which mimics adaptation towards greater purposefulness, but which is in fact mimicking the form, away from the control of an ecological system principle. A physical analogue may be the malignant tumour which by its lack of differentiation leading to metastasis makes it evident that the guiding principle is not the orderly growth of the host system for symbiosis, but a destructive disregard for the whole in which it is embedded. Such a maladaptive spiral is rendered feasible by the nature of the human affect system. The contextualized formulation of learning here bears little resemblance to mechanistic assumptions that learning and its derivatives are purely cognitive activities. Defined contextually such fragmentation is impossible — “All our experiences are colored by feeling” (Thatcher and John 1977: 113) — and the data below show that learning cannot be divorced from the total human system and that it is tied most closely to the affect or emotional system. Thus, while we use affect ‘system’ in Tomkin’s sense, such usage does not imply a fragmented view. Affects are characterized by their urgency, generality and abstraction and are not tied to any particular function, affordance, or econiche, nor do affects distinguish reality from possibility. They are a free ranging set of effectivities which provide enormous amounts of information about the correlated nature of ourselves and the ecosystem (Tomkins 1963). Tomkins stresses the wholistic role affects play in the human system but their features of generality and abstraction carry the associated cost of ambiguity and permit error. By allowing self validation and self fulfilment, affects both motivate (Tomkins 1963: 6) and deepen our coordination within the ecosystem. But because the source of any affect may be

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incorrectly attributed, they provide the opportunity for maladaptive correlation. An example is provided below. The Orillia conference (Chapter 4) illustrates the maladaptive effect of affect becoming disconnected from the task, the potential learning inherent within the task and from the majority of participants who formed the potential learning, planning community within the econiche that was the conference. One small group interpreted their task as communicating per se, an end rather than as a response to environment and a function towards task. Their behaviour mimicked purposefulness and adaptation but was centred entirely around affect for self validation and self fulfilment. Such maladaptions are powerful and such a disregard for the whole finally destroyed the potential adaptive relation between conference purpose, learning and outcome. It is vital, therefore, that there is an understanding of the nature of the total set of directive correlations. We return to a more detailed exploration of the affect system below. For the moment it is sufficient to sound a note of caution about interpreting ‘learning’. Nothing less than a conscious appreciation of the total set of directive correlations with all elements intact can satisfy the requirement of ecological learning for adaptation and inherent adaptivity. The failure of the Orillia conference was clearly a result of inadequate econiche design and management which emphasizes the need for a more wholistic approach to learning for adaptation and attempts to diffuse it.

Remembering and forgetting: Consciousness and the concept of memory A theory of learning is incomplete without an explanation of two of its foundations, remembering and forgetting. It is a bit difficult attempting to diffuse something you can’t remember. In addition, our methods for active socio-ecological adaptation are often remembered as high spots, events of accentuated clarity of remembering. They are frequently described as ‘unforgettable’. This indicates heightened emotional intensity but before we turn to that aspect, it is necessary to be clear about these foundations of diffusion or the lack of it. Contextualists don’t have memories The concept of memory that accompanies the first mechanistic epistemological theory of fragmented sensory systems and associations has itself been a mechanistic one of maintaining connections and making selections. Above all it involves storage and retrieval: information goes in, is stored and if memory or retrieval is working well, there is assumed to be “a certain invariance of quality of that which is stored at one time and then retrieved at a later time” (Von Foerster 1969: 4). But Von Foerster’s example of being asked what he ate on an aeroplane

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flight, to which he replied in words, demonstrates that the system did not function as a storage and retrieval one. Even if it had, we would not expect that it would have demonstrated that ‘certain invariance of quality’ required for such a definition. In the field of visual perception, Potter and Levy (1969) showed that rapidly presented pictures are processed one by one for precisely the time viewed, and are not held with other items in a short term store. There are many examples. Apart from numerous difficulties with the storage and retrieval model, forgetting as disruption of connections has also turned out to be an incorrect hypothesis. Luria’s (1981) empirical work shows the predominant role of direct perceptual experience, confirming Gibson’s (1966) conclusion that the brain does not have to integrate successive visualizations in immediate memory. He was led to reject the concept of separate fragments, bits, called memory and memory traces (Reed and Jones 1982: 396). As our perceptual systems are structured on DP2, redundancy of function, there is every reason to believe that neurons of the nervous system follow the same rules (Gibson 1966: 262–5, Chapter 5 herein). Gibson saw that a totally new concept of memory was required, one tied appropriately to perceptual system functioning. Memory as a ‘thing’ is such an ingrained concept to the Western mind that it seems almost inconceivable that we could do without it. And yet as we shall see below, memory is not a thing or a warehouse. Neurophysiology indicates memory to be functions and processes (Schwartz 1983; Burback et al. 1983; Lynch and Baudry 1984; Weingartner et al. 1983) and models have been developed where ‘memory’ has been incorporated as part of knowing and comprehending experience (Von Foerster 1969; Franks 1974). There is a certain irony in all this as Bartlett clearly showed the way forward for research into Remembering (1932). This classic appears to have been relegated to the archives of many, but not those of the modern Gibson school (e.g. Hoffman and Nead 1983; Jones 1976). Jones argued convincingly that our perceptual system is ecologically bound to pattern, rhythm and hence to time. It is misleading for psychologists to continue treating time in Newtonian terms as if it were some absolute abstraction that we perceive apart from other dimensions, or as a ‘thing’ that is stored or consumed by activity. It is none of these. Time is one of the defining properties of our world and so of ourselves (1976: 353).

Her emphasis on nested hierarchies of time patterns is a direct precursor to the model below, particularly in terms of expecting, learning and remembering. “Distinctions between expectancy, perception, and memory are subtle, for all are tied to the same psychological mechanism — namely, nested rhythms” (1976: p347). These are directly equivalent to nested hierarchies of directive correlation with specific back reference periods. Invariance is clearly implicated as the key concept with details or subpatterns being subjected to loss or rapid transformation. Methods which focus on invariances will, therefore, be better remembered.

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Others in different fields have also searched for an adequate theory of memory. Sheldrake (1988) explored the possibility that memory is inherent in nature. He proposed that biological life forms inherit a ‘collective memory’ from all previous generations. Life forms grow and develop as they do because the habits of these generations have been transmitted. His analysis led him to the concepts of morphic field and morphic resonance. The morphic field is a very close approximation to the concept of a field of directive correlations. The approximation is sufficiently close that if we were to make some substitutions such as the following, his theory would come extremely close to that elaborated below. For example, a beech seedling as it grows into a tree takes up the characteristic shape, structure and habits of a beech. Its inheritance is not only a matter of chemical genes but also a matter of transmission of habits (1988: 1). Now consider that a beech seedling is growing in an econiche within an ecosystem, neither of which vary greatly from those into which previous generations grew, that is, there are a large number of invariances in the environmental conditions under which all generations developed. The habits then become the directive correlations operating within the field and within the constraints imposed by the beech’s genes. The greater the invariances in the fields of successive generations, the stronger will be the habits or as we shall call them below, the rememberings. Sheldrake also extended his theory to humans such that memories depend on the reconstruction of patterns of connection within fields. What we consciously remember are subjective experiences or perceptions of what happened (events) which are organised by fields, and remembering them depends on self resonance (1988: 201, my emphasis). Goldmeier has also shown that memory cannot be separated in any real sense from knowing. Remembering and forgetting are intimately related to the nature of that to be known and its processing. In The Memory Trace (1982) Goldmeier puts ‘memory’ centrally into ecological adaptation and contextualism. Perception extracts information out of a gigantic range of possibilities and groups it for meaning and meaningful data reduction. “Memory deals with the result of grouping” (1982: 6). Data reduction or changing information is the key to understanding the concept of memory.(1982: 4) Goldmeier begins from the concept of ‘singularity’ (Pragnanz). What is important for perception and therefore memory is that features have a small range of high resolution, singularity, and a broad range of low resolution, non singularity (1982: 44). Singularity is established as self consistency and as norm, a meaning which is reflected in our language and functions to maximize the efficiency of coding, or minimize the complexities of cognitive objects. (1982: 57) Sheldrake also emphasizes the role of similarity as the basis of his concept of morphic resonance (1982:108–9). The more similar the patterns of activity, the more specific and effective will be the resonance (1982: 132).

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As the process of the SC unfolds, it surveys the range of perceptions of environment and system and proceeds to group them in terms of a small core of essential features. These are certainly high resolution and as the commonalities between groups are established, they express the consistency within the community. Probable and desirable worlds and systems display singularity and as these build upon each other, meaning is heightened. Similarly, in Participative Design Workshops, groups emerge from their bureaucratic swamps with similar, simple, elegant designs reflecting the consistency of the significance of the concept of redundancy of functions. It is, therefore, not surprising that these events are ‘memorable’. It is biologically adaptive to perceive and remember the spatial and temporal invariances of objects and to be able to “disregard minor perturbations. . . as long as they preserve the grouping and the singular features” (Goldmeier 1982: 63). Singularity is therefore the property of an invariance. But “the most fundamental characteristic of a singular attribute is, however, sensitivity to change” (1982: 58). Should then a fundamental feature of the ecosystem or directive correlation change in the process of implementing the strategic plan derived from the SC, there will be an immediate sense of unease. Most commonly, there will be a change in the extended field (L22) and because of high resolution of the meaningful groupings extracted, this will demand a reconvention of the community to readjust the plan and preserve the singularity. Goldmeier also explains part of the robustness of the Search as a method, and some cases of failure. While singular features are precisely encoded, easily learned and accurately remembered, near singularity follows the ‘almost at the singularity’ rule: because the coding is in the pattern, a modified instance of the perfect case will be seen as simply that. It is not necessary for the observer to have ever seen the perfect pattern. The history of Searching is replete with cases of less than adequate design and management which still managed to work in the end. These are the cases above where ‘close enough is good enough’. Enough of the perfect Desirable Future is grasped to enable the community to fill in the gaps and proceed as if it had been perfectly delineated. In the third case of non singularity, the encoding is only approximate and is not accurately reproducible. The singularities yield an instability of both perceiving and remembering. This is when Searches really flounder. If the work done, for example, on analyzing and then synthesizing the L22 has been insufficient for a clear pattern to emerge, the community will have no clear perception or memory of it on which to proceed. In these cases, it is necessary to recycle, return to that stage and work until a singularity is achieved. Thus while many Searches are carried by the energy and exuberance released by the exercise of responsible self management for collective futures, the difference between muddling through and failure lies in the singularities achieved at each stage and, particularly, the

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ultimate singularity achieved by the clear pattern of adaptation achieved by the whole. So called ‘Searches’ in which the process of integration and consolidation of group reports through the rationalization of conflict is neglected, are particularly vulnerable to failure. Participants are left with an array of data without meaningful grouping and adequate singularity. Goldmeier establishes that both visual and verbal material undergoes severe data reduction. Because biologically natural perception and speech contain redundancies, recoding for even greater economy may take place. (This does not happen with the psychological tools of nonsense syllables etc. 1982: 87). There is also selective encoding but with spoken language we remember what was meant but not what was said. This emphasises the need for SC managers to be very clear about what they mean, particularly when they define the task. Lack of understanding on their part translates into confusion among the community. Confusion precludes singularity. Our ground rule that all material must be presented both verbally and visually also finds support as an aid to meaning and remembering. Adding words to a picture increases its self consistency and increases its recall although there is in absolute terms more to be remembered (1982: 94). Goldmeier also outlines the concept of “a global constraint that establishes a meaningful whole” (1982:96), in other words, the system principle; that which organizes and gives meaning. It is this ‘inner logic’ directly perceived rather than externally imposed or learnt, which is remembered. “We encode what we perceive and remember what we encode” (1982: 100). This was similarly found in a study of Westerns (Emery, F. 1959a) and confirms that singularity determines recallability. Thus the more clearly a SC establishes the system principle, the adaptive relation between system and environment that provides the overall meaningful whole, the more it will be ‘unforgettable’. For theories of memory, hierarchies can be local and often only temporary, subject to rearrangement as new material such as system or environmental change accrues (Goldmeier 1982: 100). This aids in the process of developing encodings which are selective and parsimonious. “The world is coded in such a way that a maximum of information is represented by a minimum of psychological objects, with a minimum of parts, with the parts represented by their functions within the whole and possessing a minimum of features, and the fewest values of these features” (1982: 102). The most parsimonious and meaningful base of values is the set of ideals. So the more precisely and concisely our futures are encoded into ideals, so again the more memorable the event will become. We can sum this up: Singularity as a feature of invariants is contained within a dynamic hierarchy of directive correlations of environment and system or person, the adaptive interdependence of affordance (meaning) and effectivity. But over time with experience and learning, ‘memory changes’. To explain this, Goldmeier develops the theory of intrinsic stress of a memory ‘trace’ as

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opposed to the ‘fading’ of memory. It is based on the three cases above such that stress arises in the second and third case where there is less than complete inner logic or perfect singularity. The further from singularity, the greater the stress on the memory ‘trace’. (1982: 108) The theory of stress so developed is simply the process of application, or validation (1982: 241) of the laws of singularity as above and these were clearly laws governing perception. In the first case when we perceive perfect singularity, the traces are exceedingly stable and precise, and in recalling them, the memory is correct. In the third case of non singularity, the trace is unstable and subject to forgetting. Intermediate traces progressively change toward singularity and, when they attain singularity, become stable but their information content is decreased. Memories of them are incorrect (1982: 241). Now, substitute the word perception for the word trace. The sense or meaning remains identical. We are talking about the fate of perceptions over time, and our resulting perceptions of them. As we are capable of being aware of our awareness, and, as above, an awareness is a perception, we are capable of perceiving our perceptions. No concept of trace is required, only the laws governing the process of perceiving. Nor do we need hierarchical trace systems which are governed by the same set of laws. Once we evoke the concepts of directive correlation and integrated hierarchies of directive correlation we have effectively rendered the concept of a ‘memory’ unnecessary. Contextualists simply remember and expect The ‘memory trace’ storage, retrieval and forgetting are pseudo problems generated by trying to explain the adaptation of living systems within the categories of the mechanist metaphor. Working within contextualism, we may grasp their lack of substance. There has always been a contextualist stream through the literature as we saw from the reference to Bartlett (1932). All of the higher mental processes are “intimately” related (Brewer 1974b). Everything that is known about psychic development indicates that its very essence lies in the dynamic interfunctional or multifunctional structure of consciousness (Vygotsky 1962: 2). Von Foerster points out that while conceptually we may distinguish perceiving, remembering and inferring, we fail totally when attempting to isolate these functionally or locally (1969: 10). The evidence shows “that perceiving and imagining engage the same neural apparatus, and that memory-sustaining operations (such as rehearsal) and acts of remembering (such as imagining) are carried out within the perceptual system most related to the memory material” (Turvey 1974: 169). We explore the correspondence between the psychological and neurophysiological levels in more detail below. But these conclusions indicate the ubiquitous nature of the second organizational design principle: our perceptual system appears to be organised into multiskilled, multifunctional groups pursuing their goals or invariances.

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Remembering is a kind of knowing that relates person and environment and entails the same issues as perception (Shaw et al. 1982: 224, my emphasis). In addition to detecting invariances, perceptual systems organised in this way can be generative devices which construct perceptual experiences of certain kinds (Turvey 1974: 168). These include dreaming and hallucinating. In an event whose scope is explicitly past, present and future in the present, we would expect then that as invariances are extracted through the event, the perceptual system will generate expectings based on these long-standing invariances. The Most Desirable Future Systems capture the adaptive continuities of past through present to future. Memory is a transformational process, not structural (Shaw and Pittenger 1978) and it is incompatible with the Newtonian moment of time (Turvey 1977). When an historic event is recalled, it exists in the present (Pepper 1942: 242). Memory shares this characteristic with expecting. Past and future are always present as overtones of the present. We may be remembering the past but the memory is present and we’re expecting the future, and the expectation is present. We are dealing with an essentially human process which cannot be handled at any level other than that of consciousness. Modifications produced by past experience are easily observable in most organisms. In contrast, men refer consciously to the past and the future. These become psychological realities in the present, objects of present thought and action. The latter effect of past experience involves carrying the past and future into the present in a way that provides the conditions for a deeper continuity in mental life. (Asch 1952: note 121)

Memory is a system property (Edelman 1992: 238). It is an aspect of the generation of consciousness (Trevarthen 1978: 118), governed by the same ecologically adaptive mechanisms as are other properties. Brains are selective recognition systems where recognition is a kind of adaptive matching (Edelman: 79–81). What is a perception at one point in time will at other points in time and at other levels of the set of directive correlations become a ‘memory’, remembering, or the basis for a creative idea. From Goldmeier’s own work and in order to abide by the good law of parsimony, the static, well preserved ‘memory’ is nothing more than a perception or awareness of an awareness of a well-defined or highly singular invariance. Additionally, major perceptual reconstructions do occur and these affect these ‘static’ qualities he lists; biases, stereotypes, from convictions, etc (1982: 240). Far from being ‘static’, these qualities are subject to continuous change within the dynamic open system and are profoundly influenced by a change in econiche, both by its structure and by the panorama and nature of social relations it contains. This forms the basis for the A X B model of diffusion as above. The conditions necessary for effective, influential communication are set out in Chapter 4.

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A model of remembering and expecting Remembering is a transformational process or property of consciousness and the generation of consciousness cannot be separated in any structural sense from any other of the higher mental processes. In other words ‘memory’ may now be considered as a response or mapping function which both helps keep intact and generates the total hierarchical system of potential and actual directive correlations. Because it is a ‘self-referential’ mapping in that it relates to purposes, remembering can be included under the concept of communicating. Knowing, transposed over differing back-reference periods is a particular case of communicating with ourselves in order to check on our ecological status and intactness. Forgetting is also in the same sense a communicating with ourselves, but serves to bring into consciousness the fact that a particular object, or event, was of an unstable or non-invariant nature at the time, although it now assumes meaning. Certainly, forgetting is not then by definition, a maladaptive process, as by this very function it serves to keep within limits the orderly growth of directive correlations. As with perception, remembering must by definition be a property or process of an ecosystem. As a response function it operates at the moment of contemporaneous experience, the time at which the focal condition is satisfied (adapted from Mace 1974: note 149). The transformative process is always therefore in reference to the current adaptive awareness of consciousness. As there can be little argument that the field of consciousness is rich and elaborate we can also follow Mace’s direction for parsimony. “The more elegantly structured and interrelated we can show environmental information to be, the more parsimonious could be the processing strategies evolved in such an environment” (Mace 1974: 148). We shall employ such parsimony in discussing the relationship between remembering, imagining and expecting. E2

Awareness of Awareness

E1

Awareness

Yo H1 H2 t0

t1

t2

t3

t4

Figure 14. The adaptive acts of remembering and expecting

t5

t6

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Figure 14 describes a series of directive correlational sets over time where awareness and consciousness are specified as levels within the hierarchy, as detailed above. The act of remembering is given by the transformative processes or response functions over the back-reference period t3–t2 whereby the adaptive act established at t1, by a transformative process over the period t1–t0, is substituted for another possible adaptive act at t3. Let us now make a somewhat artificial distinction between perceiving and remembering in order to clarify this statement. Using Turvey and Shaw’s (1979) postulate III, we can state that an act of remembering rather than perceiving can take place when the following conditions apply: If the value of Y0 is an actual member of the set of starting conditions such that we are adaptively aware and/or conscious at t1, we define that act satisfying F (E2, E1, H1, H2,)=0 at t1 as a ‘perception’ of the environment, directly and immediately given. If the value of Y2 as an actual member stands in singular or almost singular relation to Y0 and affords the same or almost the same adaptive act at t3 as was performed at t1, then the act t1 may be substituted for the direct perceptual act which otherwise would have taken place at t3. In such a case, the substitution is called ‘remembering’, or at the level of consciousness is called being aware of ‘remembering’. The distinction is ‘somewhat artificial’ in that the perception of a perception defined over a previous back-reference period is still a perception. However, their common usage demands such a distinction and the model implies that at any given ‘moment’ we must be either ‘perceiving’ or ‘remembering’ (or imagining) and that we can also be aware that we are perceiving or remembering. We specify that the nature of the transformative processes over the back reference periods t1–t0, t3–t2 and t6–t5 are identical; governed by the same set of perceptual laws. The operators and mechanisms underlying them are similarly identical. Remembering is distinguished merely by the fact that it maps a previous directive correlation onto a contemporaneous ecosystem. In other words, if the perception we perceive at tx stands in singular or almost singular relation to an established directive correlation at some previous time, we call such a perception a ‘memory’. In terms of Goldmeier’s theory of singularity, data reduction and intrinsic stress, this formulation works well. Unless the values of Y0 and Y2 in two econiches are absolutely identical, it is impossible for a remembering to remain entirely static over time as each instance of the response function will result in a slightly different adaptation. We all become aware that our memories even of important events change over time. While these in the long term may result, relatively speaking, in a particularly stable invariance, that perception may still be vastly different from its immature form many transformations ago. This explains some of the radically different perceptions of the past presented in the history session of the Search Conference. People who may once have shared a small ecosystem move and change over time as above. The further

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back in the past and the greater the changes since a historic event, the greater the gap in the rememberings. As the Type IV environment continues, if not intensifies, the divergences will continue. In the realm of human affairs which are conceptually many levels divorced from the perceptual invariant of a physical surface, cultural invariants may harden or gradually fragment. The latter will be replaced by the sudden but still immature perception of a new invariant representing the new ‘coming together’ of all the deviations from singularity of the previous transformations over a continuum of slightly differing econiches. In this way we can understand perceptual and conceptual reconstruction. It explains the cultural revolution of the 60s. After two decades of fragmentation of cultural invariants since the bomb went off, there was an international perceptual reconstruction. Searching, remembering and reconstructing Perceptual and conceptual reconstruction characterises the Search and accounts for much of its power as a method for active socio-ecological adaptation. This is not surprising when we review its process, its psychological and its physical nature as an econiche. In order to be precise here we must elaborate Figure 14 to include the SC in its setting. In addition to our ability as individuals to be aware and conscious of ourselves as environmental events, we have the Search Conference as our econiche (Ee) within the extended field (EE). Correspondently, we have a human system (Hs) within the econiche within the field. We also have the human race, HR whose function in the basic system — environment model would be known as L12. In order for there to be a process of active adaptation in this model there must be exactly corresponding response functions across the whole set such that F(EE, Ee, E2, E1, H1, H2, HS, HR) = 0 at t3 and t5 etc. Amongst other things and most importantly for adaptive learning (and diffusive learning), individuals must be able to consciously perceive not only their own behaviour but also the response functions of the human system in relation to the response functions of the Search within the broader level of extended social field. Let us say that the Search is taking place at t3 in Figure 15. In Phase 1, participants compile their rememberings of the historic events and changes of the L22 over the recent period to the present (say t3 — t2). From this survey of rememberings they extract and extrapolate in various ways (from t3–t6 or tn for ideals) the most singular features of the current nature of the L22. At this time they are conscious of the L22 and their responses to rememberings of it. Their collective picture of the extended social field and its singularities become the wallpaper of their econiche. They then (Phase 2) turn to their system’s history (say t3–t0) and extract its singularities, again becoming conscious of these and themselves as the

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EE Ee E2 E1

L21 Search Conference Process Consciousness Awareness

Y0

Desirable Adaptive Future (HS + HR) individual function Human System function Human Race function

t0

t1

t2

H1 H2 HS HR t3

t4

t5

t6

Figure 15. Remembering and expecting as adaptations within a Search Conference

system perceiving or extracting them. The results become a physical feature of their econiche. Then concentrating on their system at t3 they repeat all aspects of the process. In Phase 3, the integration of environment and system to establish the directive correlation or adaptive relation, they must turn to all elements of data and meaningful extractions produced so far. The future of their system at tn involves the planning of an active adaptive strategy of which all are conscious. In this process participants become immersed in the dynamic interplay of rememberings, communal extraction, imaginings, expectings, etc., and of singular perceptions of each of these separately and as they come together, into one whole system principle for the open system in relation to their individual system. As the community works through the phases, their perceptions over each time frame are undergoing change as is their physical econiche, the venue of the Search. At the least, the wall paper increases and moves around as does the furniture. Its psychological characteristics are concomitantly changing as they become bound by ideal seeking and developing trust. In its every aspect the Search is a highly dynamic econiche, exactly that hypothesised to be conducive to perceptual/conceptual reconstructions. The greater the difference in the values of Yo–n over t1–n , the greater the transformation of the rememberings, the current perceptions and the expectings. Those whose system principles or invariants have begun to fragment through relevant uncertainty will have the highest probability of undergoing such reconstruction into a totally new (and hopefully adaptive) appreciation of the open system in which we are embedded.

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When econiches are more static than dynamic, they should yield less transformation but there are dynamic econiches other than the SC which will cause transformation. These will be consciously perceived to be distressful if they do not allow creative work and the elicitation of ideal seeking, that is, if they do not have the appropriate design and management for adaptive communication. People may resort to or create econiches which attempt to isolate them from the dynamism behind the transformations. Clearly these dynamic environments, like their counterparts in the ambient field, are basically unpatterned, unstructured and create problems for human adaptation, precipitating a reduction of consciousness and control in order to preserve some level of coherence and sense of wholeness. Such unstructured events are still with us. So are many approximations to the Search, designed and managed by enthusiastic amateurs which yield the same maladaptive results. Unpatterned and unstructured describes laissez faire, the absence of a design principle, and it is increasingly important that we distinguish it carefully. Deja vue in this context (Emery and Emery 1976: 102) can be viewed as the instance where the current properties of the ecosystem are such that a perception at tx–n is spontaneously mapped onto the directive correlation at tx. That is, the current affordance structure is a perfect instance of invariance. This can happen to people who have been trying in other ways to make change for years. In these cases which almost always appear to invoke consciousness, the mapping function itself perhaps becomes most visible and accessible to conscious conceptual analysis. The people to whom it happens often become energetic diffusers of their learnings of the Search. To return to the majority of cases where singularity is less than maximal we would expect the rules for scanning the ‘perceptual’ field to hold for perceiving perceptions and therefore follow the principle of maximising the cortical firing rate (Haith 1980). This data provides the operating principle necessary to explain the ‘unpredictable’ shifts between perceiving and remembering. When the field does not afford a high firing rate, such as in a traditional talking head conference or school classroom, recourse would be made to the perceiving of perceptions in order to raise the rate. Almost everybody would have had the experience of drifting off into daydreaming and reminiscing during a boring lecture or conversation (awareness level) or deliberately thinking or remembering about the self doing something else (conscious level). The more undifferentiated the field, the greater the recourse to daydreaming or ‘distraction’, time out from consciousness and purposefulness (Emery and Emery 1976: Part II). In terms of a theory of diffusive learning, the higher the singularity of the perceptions of an econiche or process, the more accurate the rememberings will be. Similarly, the greater the numbers of features of econiche and process that are brought to consciousness, the greater will be the ability to consciously diffuse learning of that econiche and process by communication and replication.

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Explaining forgetting We must be prepared to account for failures of diffusive learning, in cases of forgetting, not knowing, or ‘loss of memory’. Two factors are needed here although they are interdependent; as remembering is a property of an ecosystem, so must be forgetting. The first is the degree of singularity, patterning, or lack of it in the ecosystem, and the second is the number of transformations a perception has undergone. As Gibson and Goldmeier have shown, we are part of and adapted to an orderly, structured world, not a random array. An ecosystem with a high degree of randomness is not fully perceived as in the minimal case of familiarity, knowing ‘of’ and is therefore not accessible to accurate mapping over time. The elements of invariance that are present will be accessible to mapping onto a future ecosystem at tx but will be more radically transformed over time such that the perception at tx will be a distortion or inaccurate memory of the original perception. Normal ageing provides an analogy. Highly differentiated, singular perceptions such as we would expect from children after language and consciousness are fully developed, should prove highly resistant to transformative processes as they are ecologically bound to extract basic invariances. As learning proceeds by differentiation and organization, so these perceptions will become integrated into higher orders of invariances. But because in the first instance they were so biologically fundamental, they will be more available to recall than more recent ones. As we grow older and consciousness itself is elaborated, so we move to perceiving the finer features of the ecosystem including its random elements. We may also spend more time and energy consciously attempting to ‘encode’ or map such elements onto the overall structure of directive correlations. This may increase the rate of transposition of perceiving, remembering, thinking, but its result will be a delay in the rate at which random elements are no longer found useful. In other words, to the extent that children are doers and the elderly are thinkers and rememberers, so we can explain the degradation of ‘memory’ over time. As we age, while the original invariances hold, the field approximates an unstructured array because our tendency towards novelty leads us to search for differentiation. In immediate perceptual terms therefore, we have difficulty selecting the awareness most adaptive to our purposes. It will however, maximise the cortical firing rate. Forgetting or not knowing is therefore a function of the number of transformations in relation to the invariance structure of the ecosystem. The rate of forgetting will be maximal when the field contains little information about affordances and remembering is required, and when the field becomes so highly differentiated through rapid transformations of perceiving and remembering that higher order invariances fail to be perceived. Remembering serves to keep intact and generate the total hierarchy of directive correlations but an excess of perceiving and differentiation in the long run will increase the probability of entropy.

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Forgetting and not knowing means failure There are examples of failed attempts at methods for active socio-ecological adaptation and diffusive learning. Some are clearly due to excess perception and transformation without adequate opportunity to extract invariances. An example is the so called ‘Future Search’ (Weisbord and Janoff 1995) held for the purpose of regional development centred on a small town in New Mexico, USA. It failed in that six months later all but one committee was bogged down or not functioning and there was confusion and some bad feeling in the town while the problems were getting worse. The design of this conference followed no logic. There was no orderly progression of components of the open system. Learning about the L22 was merged into an exercise with history of personal selves and the system. There was, therefore, no opportunity to clearly and cleanly extract the invariances of the external field or appreciate its unique significance. The lack of a distinct history session meant that the major changes in this multicultural region were ignored and so these tensions continued without conscious discussion and reconciliation. There was an immature type of action planning (‘shopping lists’) inserted in the middle but these ideas were left hanging and time ran out to return to it at the end. There was a shifting conference population of about 70. At no stage was there any effort to integrate small group reports. There were endless perceptions but no intergroup checking or consideration from which invariances could have been extracted. Not only was it completely impossible for participants to grasp any clear adaptive relation between environment and system, it was also impossible to obtain a clear perception of the core meaning of either environment or system. Any singular perception of goals was, therefore, precluded. At base it was a failure of design and management, as is usually the case, but it is important to see how these failures translate into perceptual dynamics. The participants (there is no evidence that they became a learning, planning community) were left with an undifferentiated array of data, an ecosystem approaching randomness where invariances could at best, be only dimly perceived. There was nothing to be accurately mapped over time and as would be predicted from the theory above, rememberings of it diverged from the time of the conference to the first post conference meeting. As events unfolded from that post conference meeting, it became obvious that the conference had failed also to produce knowings of structure and process and the second design principle underlying them. While strategic goals were finally identified, their action planning and implementation were delegated to a set of committees, which are DP1 structures (Chapter 4). One of these, the ‘river group’ transformed itself into a self managing group, did creative work and made progress. The others functioned as designed with chairs, etc. and floundered with the normally attendant negative affects. Consciousness had not been evoked in

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the sense of ‘here we are working together as a community taking responsibility for our future’ any more than it had been evoked in the sense of ‘here we are extracting the essential features of our region, and consequently, ‘here we are creating a clear conception of our desirable region’. This is an example of Goldmeier’s third case of non singularity. Had there not been a ‘rescue’, we could have confidently predicted that over time, rememberings of this conference would have become even more degraded and finally forgotten. Many failures do not get rescued nor is there a clear analysis of the failure. Failure is usually not seen until some point in implementation where it is commonly interpreted as a failure of caring or energy, motivation, which is certainly involved. But it is involved together with failures of design and management such that clear precise perceptions of the system’s desirable, adaptive future do not eventuate. Similarly, failures may result from an absence, or incomplete conscious perception of a different way of working. Failures of implementation can be transformational degradations, forgettings. This should not be surprising. Our concern is for meaning and if an event does not produce a clear-cut, highly visible meaning, it is not adaptive to remember it. Economy is required of all creatures and none more than of humans with the burden of consciousness. The concepts of imagining and expecting We return now to Figure 15 and examine a companion concept to remembering, that of expecting. Expecting is derivable from imagining and follows the same set of principles or laws governing transformational processes as does perceiving and remembering (Thatcher and John 1977: 260–263). Imagining takes place when Y0 is a member of a potential set. Imagining can have reference to past, present, or future. We can imagine that such and such could have happened, but didn’t, as easily as we can currently imagine ourselves at the beach. We can imagine a desirable world and a desirable future for our system and we are conscious of our imagining when our self takes an actual value of Y0, environment or econiche (EE or Ee) in a potential set. Expecting clearly has a future reference — we expect something will happen or that something would have happened. Because of its future reference it also involves a potential set. Let us assume as above that the Search is taking place at t3 and we are expecting that as a responsible, learning/planning community, we will bring a most desirable system into being at t6. Expecting can be specified as the transformation processes operating over the back-reference period t3–t2 to map the awareness at t5 by the potential Y4 onto the focal condition at t3 to meet the goal of desirable adaptive system at t6. An imagining becomes an expectation when it is future referenced and when by the laws of singularity it becomes an invariant or probability. We do not

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‘expect’ all our future referenced imaginings to happen. Those that have no singularity in relation to the real world we class as fantasies as in fantastic, seemingly impossible or unreal. Those which are close to singularity are called possible and awarded a chance of happening. Those showing singularity or those which are strongly invariant are expected to happen. No additional concept is required to distinguish remembering from expecting. Both are simple, lawful transpositions. Thus, while in the first phase of the Search, the community may only be imagining a desirable future, it will as it carefully works through the process of planning this future, and becoming more trustful, coherent and self confident as a community, move from imagining to deeming possible, to confidently expecting, their desirable future. This desirable future based on the ideals is seen to have a high probability of motivating implementation, not only because of the singularity of expectations but also because the ideals are inherently shared by all. In the process of the Search, the basis for the expectation is that they have already perceived or learned how to do it. As they perceive how all the pieces have come together (t3–t2) so they expect that they will continue to make that happen. They have perceived a set of invariants, or singular meaning. In addition, each of these has become conscious of themselves and the community working through the process of the Search Conference within the structured econiche that is the Search Conference. All of the conditions required for ecologically adaptive and motivated or diffusive learning are present.

The choice model, learning strategies and knowings While learning is defined above as the growth of the total set of directive correlations, it is clear from ordinary usage that methods or strategies of learning are commonly distinguished. So too in everyday language are different forms of knowing. We may distinguish four sorts of knowledge. These are: • Knowledge of — which is related to information and familiarity; • Knowledge about — which comes from instruction; • Understanding — which derives jointly from the first two; • Wisdom — the knowledge derived from experience of the human environment system, the whole open system, i.e., from the experience of the ideals. At the level of learning which is concerned with changes in overall behaviour (Johnston and Turvey 1980: 188) towards purposes, we will use the correspondence between the parameters of the choice model, learning strategies and knowing, to establish another perspective on adaptation. Learning strategies here are the link to environments. Here we will take knowing as the focus of assessment in terms of their contribution to the orderly growth of the total set of

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Table 4. Parameters of choice, learning strategies and knowings Salient Parameters of choice

Learning strategy

Type of knowing

L11 L11, L21 L11, L12, L21 L11, L12, L21, L22

Conditioning Meaningful learning Problem solving Puzzle solving

Knowing of Knowing about Understanding Wisdom

directive correlations in terms of meeting purposes. Knowing and forms of not knowing are useful because they help explain the process of extracting meaning from the ecosystem of which we are a part. The correspondences between learning strategies and knowings are shown in Table 4. Knowings and understanding Knowing of is probably today the most prevalent form. We are positively drowning in great seas of information produced by the ‘technological revolution’. Television constantly spews out information producing seductively and deceptively comfortable feelings of being in touch, or ‘well-informed’. It is however, tied only to the first parameter of the choice model, the probability of choice, which is related to information and familiarity (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 41). A communication which produces a change in the receiver’s probabilities of choice in respect of a goal G is said to inform (1972: 144). Knowing ‘of’ therefore in the model above is a property only of the response function, communicating, defined over the systems arm. Such a communication on its own is clearly incapable of producing an adaptive response as there is no accompanying response function to map Y0 onto the environmental arm which is necessary to establish the focal condition. It is a form of knowing which is ecologically incomplete or a-contextual. Knowing ‘of’ relates to our phenomenal experience as in watching TV but lacks the dimension by which we grasp the affordances of objects and events. In other words it is a form of knowing which can change our perceptions of what we can do without adequate perception or knowledge of the effective behaviours indicated by the environment. If a person is simply knowing ‘of’, the mapping function defined over the environment must be drawn from sources other than the immediately present ecosystem i.e., at the moment, they really don’t know what to do. The information required will have to be ‘remembered’, ‘imagined’ or in some way transposed from a frame outside the immediately given back-reference period. While ‘knowing of’ is a part of learning, it will be subject to a high risk of error and inaccuracy because of the transformational process involved. Because the information available is incomplete, it will not reliably result in the perception of an invariant, and therefore, any resulting actions will have a lower probability

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of appropriateness and effectiveness. When people communicate their knowing ‘of’ for example, after watching ‘how to do it’ TV programs, they show gross inaccuracies (Emery, M. 1986). ‘Knowing about’ is that form of knowledge which not only changes the way a person perceives or feels about the environment but also changes what s/he can do about it. It produces a change in the perceived relative effectiveness of courses of action available. It involves both probability of choice and the probable effectiveness of courses of action. This is not strictly as defined by Ackoff and Emery, who relate knowledge ‘about’ only to probable effectiveness. As we will use these distinctions in our analysis of the values of Y0 and these are the parameters associated with those values (Emery 1977b) the more comprehensive form is appropriate. The critical mode of communication is instruction or the mapping of Y0 onto the environmental arm of the model. A communication which encompasses response functions of both system and environment establishes the conditions for an adaptive response. ‘Knowing about’ defined in this way is, therefore, the minimal adaptive form as it encompasses affordances, the facts of what will actually work in the world (Shaw et al. 1982: 193) as well as merely effectivities. As such, it is above all itself accurately communicable, something essential for diffusion. The distinction between knowledge ‘of’’ (by acquaintance) and ‘about’ (by practical or effective description) is generally and historically conceded to be a critical one and the more so as we develop practical theories of learning. We need to make judgements which function as accurate evaluations of perceptions in relation to meeting purposes. Because ‘knowing of’ is ecologically incomplete and of risky accuracy, ‘knowing about’ is a minimum condition for such judgements. These involve effectivities and probability of choice as individual expressions of meaning and affects (Luria 1981: 145). Thus while both forms of knowing are perceptual and useful, knowing ‘about’ has a higher probability of being veridical and adaptive. There is no necessity implied in either knowing ‘of’’ or ‘about’ for consciousness. Animal perception or behaviour operates in terms of probable effectiveness and is both communicable and communicated, but without spoken language. The team work of human and sheep dog is an example of both shared knowledge ‘about’ and interspecies communication as the result of meaningful affectual learning. On the other hand, there is no obstacle to our becoming conscious of either our knowings ‘of’ or ‘about’, but as we have seen above, the perception which becomes conscious through knowing ‘of’ will be a product of an effectivity and only a remembered or imagined affordance, of doubtful value. One vital function which our methods for adaptive, diffusive learning share is that as econiches for purposeful communication where the establishment of invariances is crucial for the future of the whole system, they rapidly change attitudes and values based solely on ‘knowing of’. When faced with the perceptions of

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those who have ‘knowledge about’, those with only ‘knowledge of’ various parts of the system must learn, if they are to become adaptive and survive as parts of the system and the system as a whole. These methodological econiches are, therefore, intrinsic attitude changers. There is an implied necessity for consciousness however, in the next level of the hierarchy of knowings. When a person is sufficiently well informed to see the range of choices and knows how these choices rank in their ability to aid him/her to achieve a particular purpose, then that person is said to have understanding of a situation. “Understanding is responsiveness to whatever affects efficiency” (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 50) but perhaps more accurately, is the willingness to respond. Understanding as an awareness of the process of extracting and communicating meaning (an awareness) is reflected in both common usage and dictionary definitions as well as formal and technical definitions. As an example, Waldrop (1984: 372) attempts to examine natural language, understanding and artificial intelligence (AI): “Somewhere behind the surface structure of human language there lies an enormous body of shared knowledge about the world, an acute sensitivity to nuance and context, an intuitive insight into human goals and beliefs”, i.e., we know what sort of outcomes we need as people. The problem for AI is that the machines do not ‘understand’ in the same way people do, they cannot extract meaning from language in order to further or create purposes. Understanding involves apprehending the meaning or significance of what is known (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 47), in other words, being aware of an awareness. It is a more comprehensive form of knowing than simply ‘knowing how to’ and is centrally related to the concept of probability of outcome. It isn’t enough to know how DP1 organizations work. You have to understand the genotypical workings of the design principle itself if you are to accomplish the purpose of changing it. Similarly, it is not enough to know of or know about the failures of Type III, optimiser planning. You have to understand the relationship between the planners and the planned for, if both parties are to be committed and motivated to produce an outcome. Understanding has to do with knowing how to solve the problems of a real system (Fowler and Turvey 1982 2: 6). In other words, it represents an awareness of the difference between an adaptive or maladaptive relation between affordance and effectivity. You understand when you can respond to whatever affects the efficiency of actions, potential or chosen, towards achieving a purpose. In other words, you can make an accurate judgement of the adaptiveness of a course of action. More than this, the ability to understand is “The ability to explain the effect of changes in one’s environment on the efficiency of one’s choices” (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 47, emphasis added). The word ‘explain’ raises another aspect of understanding, that of consciousness and its relation to language. Understanding contains a dimension of articulation of concepts. Doing things which work is insufficient for diffusion. It may in

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the short term serve for adaptation, but as the history of green field sites designed for self management DP2 shows, these have a history of reversion to DP1 when future generations of staff have no understanding of why the site came to be that way, or why changes in design principle are maladaptive and should not be made. Apart from the theoretical implications, the practical implications are that green field site designs must include a participative design component whereby the first generation of staff become consciously appreciative of the design principles and the affordances of DP2. This makes explicit the ties of spoken language and consciousness. It also clarifies the notion that understanding is a ‘doing’, a manipulation of perceptions across the total set of directive correlations, involving the perception of purposes. In this sense it approximates Chein’s (1972) discussion of intelligence as a motivational and situational concept. It makes the link between the concepts of purposeful and conscious and thus adds further rationale for Ackoff and Emery’s distinction between active, multifunctional or multigoal seeking systems and purposeful systems (people). If people cannot explain the links, they fail to gain serious attention for their cause. Type III industrial designers, CEO’s and urban planners will have had their maladaptive ‘knowings of’ reinforced. Every cry and violent act of the ‘urban ghetto’ and industrial sabotage is a failure of our diffusion of theory into practice, the failure to diffuse genuine understanding, that is, practice and concepts. Purposes are not given physical entities within environments as affordances are. Their existence depends on our ability to attribute an expected value to Y0.. If people are conscious of alternatives, they can make their understandings known. They can then expect some process whereby the understandings and expectings can become subject to some higher system level of purposes. If they have explained how their expectations of change will improve the probability of outcome for the whole system, then both their expectations and their purposefulness will increase. Being purposeful shares much of the character of expecting but differs in that purposefulness is more directly related to the intensity of the motivating affect system. Understanding, as the first or lowest level of knowing which necessarily invokes the ability to be conscious, is not simply therefore an active state of being. It is in its own right a motivational force towards the expansion of the total set of directive correlations. Understanding itself becomes a purpose and powered by the positive affects of excitement and joy, has the potential to result in the fourth form of knowing, which we call wisdom, being wise, or acting wisely. Wisdom The three forms of knowing above operate at the level of achieving a purpose which has already been chosen. It is only when we are confronted with a choice of

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long-term directions, the choice between purposes themselves which provides the opportunity for ideal seeking, that we need an entirely different form of knowing. The concept of wisdom is ages old, a remnant of oral cultures which we have not lost. There is a remarkable degree of convergence from many sources about the nature of wisdom, between its old meaning and more recent attempts to understand it. This is despite the caution that a wise person would hesitate to describe it. Jordan’s explorations of the phenomenology of learning and Pirsig’s search for Quality, and sanity, both lead to “an undefined primitive, an entity that is perceptually given (Jordan 1968: 146). There is obviously a form of knowing of this reality; an ability to know the unity of the knowledge. Because there is no other reality (Pirsig 1974: 247) what one learns or knows from the exercise of this ability is that which every other person learns or knows (Jordan, 1968). Quality “is the stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live” (Pirsig 1974: 251). Those expressions capture the fourth parameter of the choice model, relative intention; “that which relates the relative value of an outcome to other characteristics of a choice situation” (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 58). In this context it represents our intrinsic adaptive potential as a part of the unfolding of the whole, towards the furtherment of the whole. It involves then all parameters of the choice model in Table 4 above, and need be particularly invoked only when we have lost it, only when we know we are at a cultural and environmental cross roads as we are today. This need probably explains the current revival or renewed interest in the concept of wisdom “recreating for ourselves a sense of place within the biosphere that is steeped in humility and reverence for all other life” (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992: xxiv). “In native societies genuine wisdom is attributed to those with the capacity to feel, to exhibit compassion and generosity towards others, and to develop intimate, insightful and empathetic relationships not just with fellow human beings but, in some sense, with the entire membership of the natural world” (1992: 180). Pirsig’s most painful effort to know Quality opens another window on the interdependence of the collective unconscious and in particular the archetypal feminine, the pursuit of ideals by which we create desirable futures. It necessarily involves a theory of learning which describes our ability to extract naive reality from the invariances of the energy flux in which we are embedded. The environmental force is perceived as coming from within us. We experience this external force as a feeling of harmony and beauty, the ideal pertaining to the environment or field. It is directly perceived as the ordering principle of life. Those who know it also know that it is not subjective (Pirsig 1974: 268–9) but a reality of which we are a part. “The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience” (Pirsig1974: 374). As is documented in the Wisdom of the Elders (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992), the direct perception of reality empowers this sense of relationship or participatory

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unity. From it springs other awarenesses and knowledge and consequentially conceptual knowledge (as above in Figure 15). But because this environmental reality is experienced as the harmony of the ideals, it leads to a qualitatively different variety of knowledge from that derived solely from the objective or scientific realm. Native knowledge is based in reality and its validity rests upon the authority of hard won personal experience, a concrete knowing for survival. But native peoples around the world share ecological truths for survival or a wholistic system of wisdom and ethics which is discernible in “the very structure and organization of the natural world” (1992: 14). And people are seen as a part of this world and its order. They are, therefore, similarly bound by the ties of these ‘ethics’ or ideals. Traditional knowing is a perception of nature or the earth as “inherently holy,...inscribed with meaning regarding the origins and unity of all life” (1992:13). The proper human relationship with nature is a continuous dialogue (1992:15), not to be apart from it or above it. “Native wisdom tends to assign human beings enormous responsibility for sustaining harmonious relations within the whole natural world” (1992: 13). And the feminine in whatever form, reflects the complexity and mystery that characterises the natural world (1992: 35). When we examine the ideals, we see that taken as a set they embody the essence of the feminine principle, that archetype of the eternal feminine self which lies deep within us all but has been neglected (Emery, M. 1982). It appears to encompass our current search for spirituality, and with its emphasis on the oneness of people, the oneness of people and earth and the nurturance of earth, can be seen to be another expression of the ideals. If we pursue the ideals as a set we can regain the balance we have lost, the sense of meaning and order conveyed by the imperative of the archetypes. Archetypes are the structural elements of the Collective Unconscious. They correspond to certain structural elements of the psyche of the species and reveal themselves to us as images in dreams and fantasies. We are beginning to recognise that archetypes are constituents of reality, that reality exists also in the unconscious itself, that consciousness must turn inward if it is to be able to adapt to a complete reality (Neumann 1954: 341). Neumann follows Jung in saying that the archetypes are inherited (1954: xv) but the collective unconscious itself undergoes modifications over time, spontaneously or in reaction to social and political changes (1954: 390). But beyond all culture and beyond all types of environmental texture are those archaic remnants or ‘primordial images’, recurring but fundamental patterns or forms (Jung 1964: 67). They function because of their historical nature, a bridge between our conscious thoughts and the more colourful and emotional world of ‘instinct’ (Jung 1964: 47–8). Archetypes link us through time at the most fundamental level of adaptation to our world, as human animals. And as we cannot escape that adaptation despite any evolution, (Neumann1954: 393) so the archetypes are also the past in the present. They are timeless. But they are so far from our normal everyday life today that they appear only as images and simultaneously as

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emotions, dynamic events in our lives from which consequences must flow (Jung1964: 96). So basic and powerful is our adaptation to our universe that it would be inconceivable that being reminded of it could be inconsequential. As archetypes are revealed to us in dreams and symbols, they are perceptions. As they link us through time to the ultimate, eternal reality, they are perceptions of the highest possible level of invariants that are to be found in the ultimate ecosystem, the unity of all things with ourselves as a part within it. We can illustrate the concept of wisdom as in Figure 16. Here the starting condition is the eternal unity of all things, the wholeness of reality. Wisdom is the name given to the act of perceiving ourself directly perceiving the meaning of the archetypes. It is that response function which corresponds to the collective unconscious such that the focal equation of all levels of awareness and reality is satisfied. We are experiencing wisdom when we are consciously knowing the meaning which inheres in the whole system and provokes and guides action towards maintaining and enhancing the order and stability of the total system itself. While wisdom as a learning process and a form of knowing involves all the previously discussed forms, it is not an aggregate. It is qualitatively different in that it is concerned with conscious choices which arise from direct perception of the unity of the human-world complex, and which are themselves behaviours in the ideal seeking mode. Thus wisdom, while it springs from that pool of archetypal knowledge, serves to expand consciousness and reason and unify them. As we have learnt from the original human cultures and mythologies, such a mode is not only sophisticated but intensely practical, (Pirsig1974: 276; Knudtson and Suzuki: 12) leading us to perform our sacred human duties. It is the essence of wisdom that we ‘know’ that the whole, the totality of these relationships is our choice; that we know we are ideal seeking, not merely a seeker of one or other ideal (Emery, F. 1977b: 80). While ostensibly there is a choice, ultimately there is no other choice. Conscious

Aware

Eternal Unity, Reality

Not Aware Personal Cultural/group (single archetype) Cultural Unconsciousness (archetypes)

Figure 16. Wisdom as consciously perceiving the wholeness of reality

Desirable World All Ideals All Archetypes

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Summary of choice model, knowings and consciousness These four knowings (Table 5) provide a framework within which practical approaches to adaptation may be evaluated in terms of the knowings they induce or produce. The proposition is hierarchical with adaptation increasing as the knowings encompass more of the human potentials. However, in the vast flexibility of human behaviour, there will be a time and place for each. The question then becomes one of whether a particular practice is producing the appropriate knowing at the appropriate time. Methods and practices which make claims for adaptivity today should produce at least some knowings which involve consciousness, purposefulness, and hopefully ideal seeking. Table 5. Knowings in summary Parameters of choice model

Provide focal condition of affordances & effectiveness

Necessity of consciousness

Range in time

Knowing of Knowing about

I I + II

No Yes

No No

Understanding Being Wise

I + II + III I + II + III + IV

Yes Yes

Yes Yes

Goals Goals or Purposes Purposes Ideals (timeless)

There is obviously a major divide between the first and other three forms of knowing. It is significant in that only the first implicates a relative passivity in human terms. Knowing about, understanding and being wise are all characterised by mental and physical activity around a focal condition which is grounded in purposes associated with affordances given and known first hand. In other words, it is doubtful if knowing ‘of’ as a relatively frequent form can be counted as adaptive learning for making socioecological change because it is only minimally related to human capacities and to task. Also, as it is not supported by affordances in a real (i.e. immediately, physically given) environment, the extraction of invariants will be unreliable. A practice or learning environment in which accurate knowing of some part of the real environment or task is replaced with a feeling of familiarity with it, can for our practical purposes be appropriately called a maladaptive econiche. Another major shift occurs between the first two knowings on the one hand and understanding and being wise on the other. To take making change as a task is almost by definition an act of consciousness. Similarly, the divide between understanding and behaving wisely is self evident in an open system where the environment is a component in its own right. Wisdom is that form of knowing

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which captures the ultimate adaptation, and the parlous state of our culture today demands more of it. To that end, we return below to a more comprehensive exploration of wisdom and what is entailed by ‘learning to act wisely’. Until we can also consciously design environments within which people can learn to elicit the ideals, act wisely, we cannot hope to move toward a wholistic desirable world. In the next chapter we begin to address the basic dimensions of designing and managing econiches for learning.

Chapter 4 The Design and Management of the Learning Environment

Conferences are a ubiquitous phenomenon used for many purposes. They often excite high expectations and this is particularly so for the class known as ‘working, learning’ or participative conferences. As a class of conference they are increasingly popular because they hold out the promise of commitment to and collective action towards adaptive goals and change. Unfortunately many of these conferences fail to meet expectations, leaving organizers bewildered as to what went wrong. The trend towards participative conferences appears to have outrun diffusion of what lies behind them. Part of the reason for this is that an experienced participative-conference designer and manager makes it all look easy. Another is that our culture has traditionally neglected organizational structures and their relation to communication and group dynamics. It is little appreciated that the structural design of conferences is no less worthy of attention than is that of organizations as a conference is only a temporary organization. And the concepts underlying them are the same. Learnings from the design of organizations are totally applicable to conferences with the exception of variables relating specifically to longevity. This chapter discusses the critical determinants of participative conferences of which the Search Conference is the most highly developed. Lessons from the development of both participative organizations and the Search Conference centre upon structural design, the role of conference management and the relation of these to conditions for effective communication and group dynamics. While the last chapter developed a theory of diffusive learning, this chapter discusses how to create and maintain the econiche within which such diffusive learning takes place.

The design principles Any organization however temporary, whether it be a group of kids planning their weekend, a large commercial business or an international conference has a

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structure which is the manifestation of a design principle. The design principles are the organizational genotypes. All forms of organizations require a degree of redundancy and this can be accomplished in one of two ways. The parts, the people themselves may be redundant (Design Principle 1 or DP1), or a redundancy of function may be built into the parts (Design Principle 2 or DP2). (Emery, F. 1967; Emery and Emery 1974b). DP2 structures or systems are jointly optimized socio-technical or socio-psychological systems. Design Principle 1: Redundancy of parts, bureaucratic structure The first design principle (DP1) yields a bureaucratic structure with a basic building block as shown in Figure 17. In DP1, responsibility for control and coordination is vested at least one level above those who are doing the work, learning or planning. By fragmenting tasks into the most narrow, often single skills or movements, each person in such a one person/one job unit is easily replaceable with minimal if any training. They are totally replaceable parts as the human and individual qualities of each person are irrelevant. In large organizations this block of people with a supervizor can be extended infinitely, upwards and outwards. Despite their ubiquity, DP1 structures have failed to meet the needs of those who work within them and in particular, they have failed to provide for learning. Jobs are narrow and boring and they actively deskill and demotivate. Variety decreases and errors amplify (Emery, F. 1977b: 93–100). Not only are people not able to set their own goals and challenges, the structure also militates against them getting accurate and timely feedback on performance. Communications are always characteristically distorted (Emery and Emery 1976) leading to the common cry of ‘we have communication problems’. As being able to set one’s own goals and get adequate feedback are the two requisites for learning, it is clear that these organizations cannot be ‘learning organizations’. In treating people as cogs in a machine, DP1 structures deny them opportunities to behave as full human beings with all their potentials for planning, learning and creating. The original meaning of ‘conference’ was the act of conferring, consulting together, comparing opinions, carrying on a discussion or deliberation. Historically, conferring has been the fundamental and dominant form of learning and planning the future and these conferences have been face to face, conducted through conversation. In everyday life, this form of conferring is widespread as small groups ‘get their heads together’ to plan and make something happen. However, while this everyday ‘conferring’ continues in those parts of our lives under our control, it has lost visibility and status compared to what has become known as ‘the conference’. The most common form of conference is pure DP1, a ritualized appearance of ‘experts’ who transmit usually abstracted information, most commonly from prepared texts, to those whose job it is to receive it.

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DP1 Permanent Org. Manager Supervizors . . . . . Operators

.

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DP2 Conference

Permanent Org.

Sponsors, Organizers

Management Group

Conference .

Conference Mgt. Group

. Chair, Speakers . . . . Audience

Self Managing Groups

Participants

Figure 17. The Design Principles in organizations and conferences

As DP1 organizations have communication problems and cannot sustain learning, so DP1 conferences cannot promote learning and conferring. It is just another example of how the world hypothesis of mechanism has come to dominate our cultural practices. Figure 17 shows the translation of the two design principles from permanent organization into conferences. Those in fragmented, deskilled jobs (DP1) become the audience whose only task is to listen and perhaps ask a question. It doesn’t really matter who is in the audience as what is required of them is minimal. They are genuinely redundant. The organizers and speakers hope only for reasonable numbers and if they fall asleep, it doesn’t appreciably affect the outcome. Responsibility for control, coordination and outcome is vested in the sponsors and chairs. It is divorced from the behaviour of the audience in exactly the same way as assembly-line workers have no responsibility for the control, coordination and output of their section of the line. The speakers are the direct analogue to first line supervizors who control the information fed to operators. But supervizors and speakers are also under instructions as to what they should say. The audience is going to get what somebody else thinks it needs. This type of conference is essentially a broadcast, one to many. In theory there is little uncertainty about its process or outcome — the content is well defined and known in advance and the program fixed. Limited feedback is possible but not essential (Davies 1979). Given today’s effective delivery systems, this form of conference could entirely be replaced by electronic means. If the topic of the conference is a highly controversial one and sides are organized before the event, there may be a fiery forum leaving a divided conference. But although this produces more individual learning than does passivity and dependence, as we see below, it is not such as to further learning about the topic. In expert conferences as in DP1 workplaces, psychological satisfaction is low. For years now there has been rising dissatisfaction with conferences of this type which has produced a trend towards more participative conferences. A Search Conference is a totally participative (DP2) conference, on the right hand side of Figure 17.

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Design Principle 2: Redundancy of functions, participative democratic structure In DP2 organizations, as many skills and functions are built into each person as possible and responsibility for coordination and control is located where learning, work and planning is being done. This results in a flatter structure, a nondominant hierarchy of functions, composed of groups with responsibility with their own coordination and control — self managing groups. Such structures are democratic as there is no hierarchical dominance by one person, while large ones will employ a hierarchy of functions. Many years of sociotechnical research has established that democratic group structures are the most appropriate form of organization for learning and development. In contrast to DP1 structures, DP2 produces psychological satisfaction (Emery and Thorsrud, 1969; Emery and Emery, 1974) and conditions for the development of the individual. In particular, they encourage continuous learning as groups are involved in setting goals and giving accurate, timely feedback. In DP1 structures which are competitive, it is not in the interests of either fellow workers or the supervizor to give feedback which could result in that person looking good vis-à-vis the others. When a group accepts responsibility for an outcome, it is in all of its members’ interests to cooperate. If one fails, the group could fail with all this entails for them as a group. It is in a group’s interest to ensure maximum learning for all (Emery, M. 1993). Because DP2 organizations are variety increasing and attenuate error over time (Emery, F. 1976), they are environments for learning ‘learning organizations’. There is no implication in this term that organizations learn. They can’t because they don’t have nervous systems. “A learning organization is one structured in such a way that its members can learn and continue to learn within it. The organizational structure itself is an environment for continuing education” (Emery, M. 1993: 2). It would appear that there are good neurological resons for democratic group function to be the normal and preferred state of affairs for most people. We look at the human brain as a DP2 organization in Chapter 5. DP2 translates directly across to a participative conference which takes responsibility for its content and outcome. The designers and managers, as their names imply, take responsibility only for the design and management of the learning environment and process. Over the duration of the SC, participants assume increasing responsibility for process also. These conferences may have an infinite range of external designs in terms of their content and the SC is distinguished within the generic class of DP2 conferences by its unique profile of content. A note on laissez faire Laissez faire is the term used to describe an absence of design principle, structure,

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of leadership, rules and procedures and should not be confused with DP2. The existence of a condition of laissez faire was discovered in the group climate experiments (Lippit and White 1943). Unfortunately, it is still sometimes confused with DP2 and democracy which is a contributing factor to the negative attitude still held by some towards democratic working and learning. In the anything goes, ‘do your own thing’ condition which is laissez faire, individuals experience many of the same negative affects as they do within DP1 but in addition, they feel lost, without anchorage and direction. As with the application of the design principles, there is an equivalent within conferences. Perhaps the most extreme example is Open Space Technology (Owen 1992; Emery and Purser 1996: 134). However, laissez faire is usually the result of poor design and management, itself a result of inexperienced or untrained managers who have little understanding of the effects of structure and their relation to task. Those who interpret democracy as laissez faire gives the method a bad name because of the resultant failure of the so called Searches they run. One of the most common failures which can result in laissez faire and a great deal of frustration, is to neglect to brief participants on the overall plan, the purpose of the SC and its design. Participants spend their time wandering around in a mass of data and bits and pieces of process trying to work out where its all going and what it is supposed to achieve. There must be an understood design and agreed end point, i.e. a set of action plans to achieve the goals. A second failure involves lack of specific task definition at each stage of the process. Failing to carefully define a task means that participants are really thrown in at the deep end, having themselves to provide the definition as well as performing the task. Groups often never get past the first phase of definition. Frustration is high and rising, learning and product is decreasing and increasingly out of sight in the time available. In the conference area as in the organizational, DP2 is more demanding than DP1. To establish a well functioning democratic conference requires participants to have all information and other relevant material. Small self-managing groups cannot be expected to work without an agreed set of goals and policy guidelines and neither can large democratic conferences. Democracy in the area of conferences is as far from laissez faire as it is in more permanent organizations. While organizations and conferences cannot work in the absence of a design principle, they also do not function well with an alternation of design principles. This alternation is called the mixed mode and is discussed below. The combination of ecological learning and Design Principle 2 Search Conferences have DP2 structures. Democratic conferences, like long-term organizations, provide systematically for the basic psychological needs of their members, and similarly provide the conditions within which all participants may

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behave and grow as full human beings with all their potentials for learning, communicating and planning. Once a conference has accepted responsibility for their own collective control, coordination and outcome, this total set of potentials can be brought into play. Once they are in play, both the content and the process begin to undergo a transformation. The preplanned design, even if followed, can give little indication of how the participants will deal with a certain phase or what their conclusions may be. The SC is an open ended method, not only in its content but also in its ultimate design and process in practice. While the practice of ecological learning leads to greater variety of possibilities and increased clarity, and confidence of perception and judgement, its practice within DP2 structures dramatically raises the probability of an entirely new, creative result. The work of a group has long been known to be more than the sum of its parts and when a group is using direct perception, there is a multiplier effect on creativity. We are dealing centrally with the creation of new knowledge, not the recycling of the old. With DP2 and ecological learning combined, we are getting close to the core of the ‘learning paradigm’ or the hope of the ‘learning society’. This is an alternative to Western DP1 formal education. It revolves around the needs of learners rather than the existing structure of knowledge. Learners are the principal agents of learning and teachers become co-learners. “School children do not have to be treated like proto-adults, and adult learners do not have to be treated like children. The basic aim is cultivation of a desire, and the ability, to learn and go on learning.” (Crombie 1980). Crombie stresses the importance of both individual and group regardless of age. Most innovations that individualize only, such as learning contracts, are not noted by success (Hattie 1992: 9). Rather than the transmission of information and knowledge from the warehouses of the past, group working on direct perceptions has the effect of perceptual reconstruction, the reconstruction of knowing and knowing how to learn, and ultimately creates a society of learners. The SC is designed and managed for this learning. The conditions for creativity With the conjunction of DP2 and ecological learning we have purposeful people within an ecosystem designed for them. DP2 structures act as instruments for purposeful people rather than the people being instrumental to the purposes of their organizations (Ackoff and Emery 1972), and only DP2 structures hold the potential for ideal seeking. As the psychological requirements for productive human activity, the ‘six criteria’ produced by DP2 structures are intrinsically motivating, (Emery and Thorsrud, 1969; Emery and Emery 1974) so too is ideal seeking. In a setting with tasks encompassing shared purposes and goals, this potential two fold increase in intrinsic motivation is sufficient to trigger creative

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behaviour towards these goals based on perceptions. When the task must be done primarily by sharing perceptions, as in Searches or anywhere totally novel problems arise outside the bounds of known knowledge, the potential for human creativity is mobilized in ever increasing spirals. Redundancy of functions refers not only to technical skills but to all of the peculiarly human characteristics of conscious planning and goal setting, measuring and analysing within cycles of decision making. Once the fundamental responsibility for coordination and control, and this means self management through balanced autonomy and homonomy around purposes, is located with the people who are charged with the activities involved in meeting the agreed goals, the basic conditions are in place for an explosion of testable ideas or hypotheses. People within DP2 structures are free and motivated to merge their experiential knowledge from all sources, the external social field, their various task environments, their histories and their abstract learnings into new creative syntheses. We explore the more direct connections of structure and the creative working mode below but first, we look at some additional conditions which are built into the Search as an environment for learning.

Managing the conditions for influential, effective communication The open-systems framework, DP2 and use of ecological learning create a powerful environment for responsible, creative work. Within that environment it is possible to deliberately create the conditions for influential; i.e. effective communication. Solomon Asch (1952) pioneered the parameters of influential or effective communication and his statement of these conditions gives us a detailed set of criteria for judging whether a group is in the Creative Working Mode. Furthermore, it gives us guidelines for detecting conditions that will lead to dynamics which inhibit learning. Briefly, anything that contradicts these conditions will heighten tension and increase the probability of a sudden change from learning to resisting learning. In a learning-planning community the function of management is to promote learning, and learning takes place through conversation. Asch’s contribution also clarifies the need for a particular form of leadership in learning. The paradox that has emerged in the recent past has been called that of ‘Red or expert’, taken from a favourite expression of Mao. It symbolizes the conflict between planning in Type III and Type IV environments. It expresses the growing gap between increasing levels of ‘expert’ or abstract knowledge and the effective implementation of plans based on this form of knowledge. Put another way, increased abstract knowledge may equal decreased usable or relevant knowledge. (Emery, F. 1977b) It is the difference between expertize and expertism. Expertism, or talking down from the authority of hierarchical position or privileged

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knowledge, is probably the best way to inhibit new adaptive processes and learning. It is certainly contrary to using expertise in the art and science of creating environments which decrease social distance. The practical task of designing face-to-face environments for learning, however, demands greater specificity, particularly in relation to the (AXB) model of influential communication in which two people or groups A and B enter into a relationship with respect to some object or behaviour (X) of mutual concern. This model was discussed in Chapter 3 but is taken further here in terms of the basic properties for successful communication and learning which lead to adoption of innovation. These properties are forces which operate at several levels to influence intra- and interpersonal interaction and are by their very nature “universal, tacit and compelling”. (Emery and Emery 1976: 20) The task is to translate these properties into operational realities, which are congruent with the other defining concepts, and then manage them. Within the Search Conference as a learning environment, members work and learn together around system futures. Let us call them F. Within this learning environment they work on all aspects of the system including its broad social environment (L22), its relationships with its environments (L21, L12) and its internal structure and dynamics (L11) in such a way that they jointly contribute to an improvement of the learning environment itself (LE). When the conditions for influential or effective communication are present, the environment becomes not simply one in which task F is performed but one in which participants simultaneously learn about F and how to do it as they do it (AFB → AFLEB). Continuing this learning environment also becomes an object of concern. It is an environment in which the total field of directive correlations is expanding for each of its members. The four conditions Openness Openness is the presence of an objectively ordered field open to the inspection of all. Participants have to know that they are in a situation which is totally open to their investigation and that things are ‘what they appear to be’. We are designing environments where exploration is highly valued and where it is accepted that differences in perception and opinion will exist. Any challenge to the validity of naive realism will lead to loss of self confidence and a decline in mutual support and respect. It will inhibit understanding and potential diffusion. Thus we encourage the view that it is healthy and creative to acknowledge such differences and that mutual learning will follow from the sharing of various direct experiences and perceptions. This is a necessary precondition for the rationalization of conflict and the establishment of common ground discussed below. Good designs have features to maximize such openness. Wherever possible, the planning for an event must itself be participative. The roles, values, expecta-

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tions of designer and manager and the underlying strategy and long term goals, are also open to inspection and clarified before work proper begins. Efforts are consciously made to ensure that any concepts used come across in a variety of media, visual as well as verbal, and in the vernacular, so that the managers come across clearly as people. The message has to be to a large extent, the medium. Such efforts towards openness go a long way to meeting Bok’s (1979) plea for a return to an ethical Social Science. Perhaps the most striking innovation towards openness which is now taken entirely for granted is the use of butchers paper to compile an immediate, accessible and continuous record of work performed. As a legible instantaneous record taken in full view of all present, these pieces of paper provide the ultimate seal and guarantee of openness and absence of manipulation of ends by ourselves, or any other cliques within the total body of a meeting. I am still asked why I continue to use butcher’s paper rather than for example, computerized white boards, but when I explain the difficulties of changing the data on butcher’s paper without it being detected, the point is taken. Basic psychological similarity: We are all human with the same human concerns People’s actual behaviour best conveys their ultimate similarity, humanness. Once behaviours and motives can be seen to be similar or congruous with one’s own, it becomes possible for people to admit that they can learn something from the other. When, however, there is a perception of contempt or condescension on the part of one towards the other, then the probability of effective communication declines rapidly. Any perception of a manager or participant acting as ‘expert’ displaying ‘talking down’ or arrogant behaviour will restrict the effectiveness of the mutual learning taking place. We need to establish that each individual is an action centre in the total environment and that collective learning and planning around agreed purposes attests to a common humanity, and will thereby further those purposes. To this end we must concentrate on a few features. Apart from point one above where we encourage confidence in the validity of the individual perception, the whole process is designed and managed so that the prevailing psychodynamics favour cooperation and creative work and learning. Most people seek confirmation of their basic psychological similarity, and early on in a Search welcome the chance to put together their most desirable future. This task serves several purposes. At the most practical level it serves to outline the direction in which any future action will proceed. By allowing people an opportunity to share with others their basic ideals and hopes it not only makes them visible and real, but it also almost inevitably confirms that there is an underlying level of concern with humanity and the state of the world, and that the usually unspoken presence of human ideals is found in those of all genders, races, statuses and ages. By discussing and deciding upon such matters as a desirable

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future in either global or nearer terms, a modus vivendi for working together is established; a benchmark for the possibility of more creative cooperative work towards purposes. I always have more than one group working on the Most Desirable World as the commonality between the two both validates and increases confidence in the ideals and the fact that humanity shares them. The commonality between these scenarios is always large and can be a hundred per cent. Participants are often amazed at the extent of the overlap. Regardless of the exact words used, the four ideals usually emerge in every scenario. This very primary level of realization of psychological similarity becomes a bulwark against possible conflicts as it is an element of the most common ground. Management must avoid anybody or anything which might possibly interfere with the establishment of this confidence in the power of the ideal-seeking mode or the demonstrated capacity of the group to utilize it towards such adaptive future action. Only then can there be confidence that a return to dysfunctional dynamics will not occur. Or if they do, they can be brought back under the control of the group itself by reference to the commonalities and their implications for the future. Emergence of a mutually shared field: We all live in the same world This process consists essentially of establishing that the environment has features which are commonly perceived, that is, are objective and form a shared context for planning and action. From this context arise ordered intentional interactions such that signals of intention from one are registered and taken into account when considering courses of action by the other. For joint decision making, this context along with the explication of ideals becomes a shared point of reference whereby people establish interlocking directive correlations, the necessary infrastructure for continuing joint purposeful action. It is another element of the most common ground. To this end we have developed simple procedures for mapping the extended social field of directive correlations (L22) such that the final aggregate includes the widest diversity of individual perceptions of movement and change in that field. Without prejudice and fear of contradiction, people register on the butchers paper their observations of change occurring in this field. This list then becomes the fundamental data available for analysis and then synthesis into desirable or probable futures. The data and scenarios remain in full view to function as check point and reality test for any subsequent proposals or plans. Accessible to all and manipulable by none, this snap shot of the L22 serves amongst other purposes that of establishing the validity of the notion that we all live in the same world. To achieve confidence in this, it is necessary that there is one community agreed and owned Most Probable World. In this way — and having also established some of the conventions of participative democratic function and ecological learning in

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the process — the community can more easily begin to question its own hidden assumptions and get on with the task of planning and redesigning the future along more desirable and adaptive lines. Trust: The development of individuals as ‘open systems’ This parameter is a joint function of the preceding three over a period of time. Trust accumulates over time as an individual comes to experience the openness of the world s/he shares with others and the mutual respect and consideration which is accruing from initiating greater depth in communication with the other. As such trust accumulates so do interpersonal relations strengthen and deepen, increasing the probability of mutual learning. For the management of any learning environment the emergence of this trust is an over-arching responsibility, involving the individual’s trust in his or her own perceptions and learning and the confidence of the group as a whole in its ability to assume responsibility for their futures. The criteria for this continuous evaluation is the concept of collaboration as a coherent and internally consistent mode of function. In practice this means people working together as people, as equals rather than in roles, positions or statuses and this equally applies to designers and managers. By making the assumption that people come to experience confidence and trust only in situations where the conditions for effective two way communication are present and where there are no externally imposed restrictions on affective or expressive behaviour, we constantly test Chein’s (1972) thesis that ‘a behaviour is a motive of the behaviours it includes’. Collaboration, thus defined, becomes the motive for spontaneously sharing the self with others. Trust accumulates to the extent that people find an opportunity to exercise care about their own and shared concerns and can put away gradually, without risk, the masks of passivity and dissociation. The resultant release of energy enhances challenge and consciousness and intensifies interpersonal engagement towards association with the task at hand and, therefore, leads to more mutually supportive action. Without the spiral of trust, learning, energy and commitment, the process of implementation would be impossible. The presence of trust is tested towards the end of a SC when participants self select into task forces to work on action plans. Each self selected subgroup is working on behalf of the whole and must be trusted to do so. If trust is not sufficiently developed it is easy to see, as some get edgy or attempt to prevent a particular sub-group from assuming control of a set of action plans on their behalf.

Group dynamics Bion (1952, 1961) discovered (rediscovered) a set of phenomena that operate at the level of the group. When people first come together, they establish a group

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very quickly. But in the early stages and particularly when there is a ‘leader’, the group will be immature and lacking in self confidence. From his observations he postulated a dual system of mental functioning. One part entailed a Workinggroup mode (W) characterized by conscious participation in and cooperation towards task achievement and individual development. It deals rationally in time bound reality using organization and structure. The second indicated a protomental system of Basic Assumptions (bas), assumptions which the group makes about its leadership. Participation in these requires “no training, experience or mental development. It is instantaneous, inevitable and instinctive” (Bion 1952: 235). Rather than conscious cooperation, a ba expresses an individual’s ‘valency’, readiness to enter into combination with the group in making and acting on the bas (Bion 1961: 116). It has become accepted that the bas are inevitable in group life, but this can no longer be accepted. The bas are the consequences of DP1 structure and as such are avoidable. People can hear and learn at a different level from the literal spoken words. This is the level of ‘the music of the group’. This second level is concerned with the meaning of the life of the group when it is making basic assumptions. The ability to hear the music of a group as it sings stories about its nature and purpose represents an essential human skill, without which we would not have a group life. But today while that skill is clearly exercised it mostly remains at a level beneath consciousness. Bion’s dual system of mental functioning is almost identical to that proposed by Angyal (1965). One pattern, orientation or ‘organized process’ pushes towards health. It arises from perceptions of the world as positive and has as its hallmarks the features of confidence, hope, trust, etc. The other pushes towards ‘neurosis’ which arises from perceptions of the world as foreign, threatening and unpredictable. As nobody ever has only positive experiences in the world, there will always be some experience of isolation or helplessness and the two tendencies will operate in each individual to varying degrees. Angyal’s dual function, therefore, springs from individual accumulated experience. However, the orientation towards confidence and health, when it is securely dominant, is a relatively selfconsistent stable system. The neurotic pattern is not. It must use many devices or defence mechanisms to achieve the semblance of consistency (Angyal 1965: 110). Despite different hypothesized aetiologies, the two dual systems come together at the behavioural level with the grouping of the organizing process for health and the task oriented working mode. The organizing process for neurosis shares the assumptions of the bas. In the discussion below, it will become clear that DP1 structures will activate or strengthen and entrench bas and neurotic tendencies, while the DP2 structure will bolster the orientation to health. Because DP1 is inherently maladaptive in terms of meeting human needs and providing for individual growth and development, it is inherently unstable and further contributes to the instability of the individual whose organization is predominantly neurotic.

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Relation to learning Bion distinguished three bas: dependency (baD) where the group assumes it exists in order to be sustained by a leader, (baP) where the group assumes it has met for the purpose of pairing and thirdly, where it assumes it has met for the purpose of fighting or running away, fight/flight (baF). All three he saw as modes which preserve the possibility of the group, maintaining its identity. The basic assumption of ‘pairing’ (baP) is dealt with in more detail below. The basic assumption of dependency (baD) is that there is, somewhere, a great and powerful being (leader) who exists to ensure that no untoward events will follow the irresponsibilities of individuals, to provide security. But in the dependent mode while the group is asking for this leader, cum teacher, cum expert, they show little inclination to learn from the leader. They act as if his/her knowledge of whatever it is that they need to know is good enough. They do not have to learn, it is only a question of letting the words flow and having faith. The basic assumption of fight/flight (baF) is that the leader is inimical to the preservation of the group and must be either killed in battle or ignored. The subject matter or task must be ignored while the concern is with winning or losing. This basic assumption lends itself to health and learning more easily than dependency as there is at least an active orientation, even though the group is not capable of proceeding with the task. The fight aspect of this dynamic is usually easier to recognize than flight when it is predominant. Full scale flight is quite easily separable from dependency however by the different emotional expression in the two. Even in extended periods of flight, people will feel stirred up, with adrenalin flowing as in the prelude for a battle. These periods are usually described as ‘chaotic’. None of this is evident in the dependent group. The third basic assumption Bion called ‘pairing’ as he saw it arising from the group allowing two of its members to indulge in animated conversation towards the purpose of building a sexual relationship, and through the excitement generated by this process, allowing them to assume leadership of the group. We have had cause to query this reasoning as we have seen a phenomenon virtually indistinguishable from the superficial characteristics of baP which only serves the function of interrupting a period in basic assumptional mode. This is the subject of our further discussion below but it is clear that some expressions of pairing are full of learning. All three basic assumptions imply a continuum of learning. Least learning occurs in dependency, more in fight/flight and more again in pairing. Relation to structure The purpose of Bion’s work was rehabilitation, a restorative process of the human ability to function maturely and holistically both as individuals and as group: his

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W or leaderless but purposefully task oriented group. The inhibiting presence of the basic group assumptions which he summarized as the ‘hatred of learning’ (Bion 1961: 86–91) represents the playing out of forces generated by structured configurations. In this he was intimately concerned with the structure and cohesion of the group as the following statement shows. “In D (dependency), the individuals do not have a relationship with each other but only with the D.L”, the leader of baD (Bion 1952: 238). This describes a DP1 structure. As the audience in a DP1 conference has no responsibility for design, content or outcome, so it can assume it “exists in order to be sustained by a leader on whom it depends” (Bion as above: 235). The ‘experts’ know it all and will look after everything so the audience can show an unshakeable indifference to everything that is said (Bion 1961: 83). Energy and learning are low and the baD group “is quite opposed to the idea that they are met for the purpose of doing work” (1961: 84). In addition, the emotional tone of the baD is negative, guilty, apathetic and depressed. In fight/flight (baF) the leader or expert is seen as inimicable to the preservation of the group. The feeling of being stirred up represents energy which can produce learning but the learning primarily concerns winning rather than understanding. (Bion 1961: 160) The baF today is most commonly seen in the Mixed Mode, rather than in SCs, usually in its fight rather than flight form. We will adopt here a convention which distinguishes fight from flight where necessary, using ‘F’ for fight and ‘f’ for flight. SC designers and managers must understand the relation between the design principles and the group assumptions if their work is to produce cohesive learning planning communities. The ‘hatred of learning’ is no more than the playing out of forces generated by DP1 structured configurations. These may be simply visualized as in Figure 18. Here we see the relationship between DP1 and the two most common group assumptions. When coordination and control are strictly preserved by the level above the operator (organization) or participant (conference) level; i.e, the leader or management runs a ‘tight ship’, the group assumption is that of dependency. If the grip of management slackens or cuts across the work of

Formal Tight DP1

Loosened Up DP1

Leader

Dependent Group Assumption of Dependency (baD)

Figure 18. The structure of group assumptions

Leader

Faction A

Faction B

Assumption of Fight/Flight (baF)

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the others, there can be a two way fragmentation of the structure. Fight/flight develops and factions within the group and conflict between factions and/or group and management develop. Group assumptions and structure are two sides of the one coin. The concept of ‘hatred of learning’ can then be seen as a by product of attempting to learn creatively and adaptively in a structure which inhibits cooperative use of our multipurpose system capabilities towards creating shared desirable human futures. Its emotional products are inherently unpleasant and self defeating and initiate cycles whereby motivation to learn to change is reduced, producing dissociation. If the conjunction of forces is appropriate, members of the group may initiate pairing and consolidate the group and its functioning, effectively rendering the formal leadership powerless. They replace this leadership, attempting to institute self management which abandons the group assumptions for the genuine working mode. The sequence here is baD → baF → baP → W with an increasing level of learning being generated. But if the group is embedded in a larger DP1 structure or the process managers become anxious and attempt to stop the baP, there is every chance that it will be forced into further cycles of group assumptions. Given the learning and confidence generated however, it would take a very harsh regime to return the group to dependency. More likely are fluctuations of baF, baP and W. We have seen many examples of groups fighting to retain their self managing status in the face of bureaucratic efforts to destroy it. The latest comes from the USA where Heinz has now decided to support self-management at Topeka dog food after failing to reverse it (Kleiner 1996). The maturity and learning gained from self- management are hard to destroy. When people can simultaneously cooperatively share and creatively learn from previous perceptions; and perceptually learn about human group learning as it happens, it is possible to capitalize on our unique capacity for learning and knowing. Committees Despite years of jokes about committees designing camels, forming a committee is the first thing that springs to the mind of many when things need to be done. When we draw up the structure of a committee (Figure 19), we see immediately that it is a DP1 structure producing exactly the same dynamics and communication problems as in an organization. Time and again, use of committees has killed implementation of SC action plans. This happens because people are unaware that there is an alternative. It is the chair who takes responsibility for the work and outcome of the committee and many committee reports are known by the chair’s name, eg. the Jackson Report. Members are, therefore, absolved of responsibility for control, coordination and outcome and can adopt (baD). The stronger the chair and the more strictly and formally meeting procedures are followed, the greater the

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Committee Chair

Group Goal: Implementation Goal: Implementation

Members (Representatives)

Figure 19. Comparison of committee and group structures for implementation

chance that baD will become entrenched. However, their behaviour as individuals, particularly if it is a ‘representative’ committee, is governed by their responsibilities to their constituents. Each representative uses the committee to gain as much as possible for their constituency and this competitive structure naturally produces (baF). Committees are the preferred, if not essential, mode in which bureaucracies negotiate separate interests and boundaries. They ‘continue war by other means’ as Clausewitz said of politics. “What is of most consequence at the social level is that one does not see facts in their proper context, or that one does not face them or that one violently stresses certain events at the expense of others, operations which produce mis-structuring, or distortion in understanding and feeling” (Asch 1952: 604). By prolonged and sometimes ritualistic baF, committees prolong bureaucratic inertia and produce little by way of change (Table 6). What happens to the parameters of effective communication in committee working? A brief analysis shows that they produce the opposite of Asch’s conditions for effective communication. Members having individual responsibilities to their constituents means inevitably that these form the ‘hidden agendas’

Table 6. Characteristics and consequences of committees Characteristics of Committees Negotiation from positions of different interest. Limited delegated authority, either to committee, or to the individual members. Rigid detailed structuring to contain conflicts of interest. Search for simple structure of its business to facilitate negotiation and resolution. Competition for allies and committee time to strengthen one’s negotiating position.

And Their Consequences Striving for individual advantages. Constant looking over the shoulder to source of delegation. The structure itself becomes a major focus of committee work. Painstaking attempts to re-assert the differences by splitting of hairs and nit picking. (a) Concern with gaining psychological dominance; (b) to ‘fix the race’ beforehand.

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which replace the overt agenda. This disconfirms ‘an objectively ordered field open to all’. Things are not what they appear to be. The baF and its distortions exacerbate murkiness. Astute observers always stress the need to identify ‘the hidden agendas’. One cannot be sure what expressed disagreements really mean, whether the stated explanations correspond to the other’s subjective perception. One cannot even be sure whether subjective disagreements are being hidden. The tendency will be to verbalise and obfuscate, not to clarify. Does committee working confirm ‘the basic psychological similarity’ of the members? That ‘the others are all decent, honest, intelligent people like myself?’ To further one’s own interests, it is necessary to call into question, no matter how subtly, the integrity and contributions of the others. A competitive structure necessarily generates contrasts, exacerbates ‘personality conflicts’, rather than the required basic psychological similarity. In terms of the third condition, ‘the emergence of a mutually shared field’, committees must and do achieve this in order to continue working at all. Each must include the other as a potential action centre but they do this to better understand the hand held by the other while attempting to conceal their own. The mutually shared fields are constantly juggled to preserve asymmetricality. Members, therefore, cannot become more ‘open’, more motivated to act on behalf of others or to accept others’ contributions as equivalent to or substitutes for their own. Members are forced to be suspicious rather than trustful and develop a persona to actively deceive. This will be necessary even with allies, or cliques as coalitions are subject to shift and realignment. The evidence is overwhelming that the method of committee working contradicts three of the assumptions and cannot, therefore, develop the fourth of trust. Failure to achieve any of the four conditions renders committees unsuitable for tasks requiring creative work around shared purposes. Some bureaucrats claim to have made committees work. How? When the chair and members of a committee feel strongly about and are committed to the resolution of a particular problem, furthering a policy or producing a strategic plan, they will go into collusion against their appointers and constituents. Despite their status as representatives and the formal bureaucratic structure, they will further their collective interest by forming a group. They collectively agree to share responsibility for outcome. By agreeing to work as a self managing group, they have beaten the constraints and negative effects of DP1. They haven’t made committees work at all. They have proven that groups work better than committees! The mixed mode Conference organizers must also resist the temptation to alternate the design principles. An alternation is called the ‘Mixed Mode’ and it is a reliable recipe for producing baF in particular. Sponsors today use it to accede to the growing demand

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for participation. This is to be welcomed as a step forward but can also be seen as having insufficient faith and confidence in people’s knowledge, ability and willingness to work fully towards the conference task without ‘experts’. We frequently end up, therefore, with a conference which alternates the design principles, speaker plus discussion groups. Time after time, conferences fail to optimize the outcomes of either principle because they lead immediately to the bas. There is some ability to cope with and tolerate the incompatibilities but there are clearly limits to this. The 1980 Future Directions conference, the first Multisearch, was somewhat of a classic of the Mixed Mode as it had originally been designed from the first principle with commitments made for papers and presentations. When it was radically redesigned, many of these commitments remained. The design had to build around them. They were referred to as ‘ginger’ papers, which term had a more literal meaning than perhaps intended. At regular intervals, the Search process was interrupted by them. Some of these sessions were volcanic displays of baF. This was carried back to the Search groups. “The group rounds on the process manager...We resolve the flare-up by doing what he says. Nobody likes that much. We are...resentful if we get drawn away from our groups...And inevitably the blood flows. The night session (plenary)...is nasty, fraught with hostility, name-calling, tight faces.” (White 1980: 71) This describes baF at both group and conference level, the resentment of interruptions to W. At this multisearch, “Many people felt that despite the ostentatious democracy of proceedings, someone, somewhere, was more in control of the conference than they were.” (Hill 1980: 59) They were under the control of the dynamic! We are aware of the bas but rarely aware of our awareness (conscious) of them. This propensity of the Mixed Mode to produce assumptional behaviour makes it perfect for conscious learning about dynamics. When we examine the design and function of the staff in classic ‘process conferences’ (Higgin and Bridger 1990; Bridger 1990) we find that they are Mixed Mode in the ‘double task model’. Planning is done but in the context of the second task, observing the process. Staff act as managers and teachers. While it is generally safer to add bits of DP2 onto DP1 than the reverse, the 1985 Adult Educators Summer School proved an exception. Participants expected the conference to be a mirror of their values and practices (DP2), and it wasn’t. After an episode of baF, the conference split. One half followed the scheduled workshop activities, the other formed its own large group and won the day at the final plenary. There are other examples where the addition of discussion sessions and workshops has been reasonably successful but it is vital that the DP2 components are meaningful and contribute to the overall conference purpose. Simply asking groups to have a discussion of presented material is neither particularly purposeful or meaningful. Discussion often deteriorates into criticism of the papers rather than development of the ideas (Caldwell and Davies 1981: 8) and can increase rather than reduce frustration.

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The borderline today between a safe and unsafe mixture of principles is very thin. A classic SC example is managers suggesting a framework for collapsing the list of strategic goals. The community immediately rebelled. (Emery and Purser 1996: 263). When people are controlling their own work and learning, it is not surprising that they will resist any attempt at a take over. Our tolerance for being kept in a state of dependency appears to be withering rapidly. The Orillia conference (below) consisted of an international group of social scientists. They managed to get themselves into a great deal of trouble with a consequently expensive waste of time and human resources. It appears difficult for many to accept that such seemingly simple matters as the design principles can have such effects on our behaviour. And it appears even more difficult to accept that the phenomena they generate are not always under conscious control. The asymmetricality of the Design Principles There is one possible confusion here. A major component of the conceptual battle which took place within the Orillia conference concerned the question as to whether the design principles had to be either/or, or whether they could be mixed, i.e. whether they were compatible or incompatible. Herbst (1990) has shown that there is a third alternative, namely that DP1 is incompatible with DP2 but DP2 is compatible with DP1. This seeming paradox is quite simply resolved. In DP1, the source of control and choice of design principle is external. DP1 cannot include DP2. But in DP2, control is located within the group. If they choose for some particular task to organize themselves in DP1, they are still in control of the choice of design principle and, therefore, their own self management. DP2 includes within it the potential for DP1. A Search Conference then is an environment which simultaneously incorporates the AXB model with the best conditions for maximizing its effect, the second design principle which accentuates development of health, and ecological learning. Every aspect of the design and management of this environment coheres towards an environment within which people rise far beyond the norm in terms of learning and creativity. Individually and collectively, they leap and bound towards wisdom. The Search is an environment for developing wisdom. The battle for Orillia We have a fully documented example of a Mixed Mode conference which illustrates the interplay of design, management and dynamics. It proved that a basic group assumption at the large group level can apply to all of its parts (Bion 1961: 112) and it played a major role in solving the baP puzzle. As I listened to the taped record of this conference, I was also increasingly fascinated by the ingenuity with which people pursue their purposes. In the most classical Bionesque sense, it

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was a confrontation between the forces towards creative work and those which wished to inhibit it. Those who made the assumption that the leadership was inimicable to the life of the group were clearly ascendant. I was not alone in this perception. It was clearly put on the final morning. “It’s also a problem of breaking out in this conference, that we break out against the tradition established by the gurus, or it’s a case of breaking out by students against their professors.” The conference as a whole refused to produce a conference report, playing out baf to the end. There was no responsibility taken for a total outcome. The conference was held in the town of Orillia in Canada, hence my title. The purpose of this conference ‘Exploration in Human Futures’ was to set an agenda for action research on work and societal change. The participants were known for their commitment to this field. This conference should have been designed as a SC. That it wasn’t reflects some confusion, perhaps conflicting agendas within the design and management group. The management group wanted a “working, future oriented conference” to create the conditions for mutual learning, most work to be done in small groups and plenary. But they also thought it would be helpful “to have some stimulants or punctuation points ... not to invite people to give an academic paper”, just personal observations. Each would be followed by a member of “the next generation.” They were not traditional respondents “because its not that kind of academic structure”. Regardless of the euphemisms, it contained both design principles. So in the space of three days we were to have eight papers, rest breaks, a boat trip, dinners, and an after dinner address by an elder of the tribe, plus a response, in addition to the work. The design group wanted a ‘working’ conference but just as clearly did not have the courage of its convictions. There was insufficient faith in 30 plus ‘high flyers’ to creatively construct work for themselves with the space provided by the minimal critical specifications without stimulation artificially administered. A ‘moderator’ had been appointed but his role appears not to have been discussed. The formative phase generated a powerful mixture of forces towards both W and the bas, impelling us into a maelstrom of powerful human affects. The first two papers conflicted and the manager intervened in the content. The community recovered briefly but the next plenary showed both W and baF. To capitalize on a synthesis of the work required, the conference split into four groups, two of whom worked. One began in baD, moved to baF and eventually to W. The other went almost immediately into baP. “We started... with a sense of frustration, alienation and powerlessness... abstractions (were distancing)... We spent quite a lot of time... (telling stories about our personal experiences) and ... we started feeling comfortable with ourselves and each other. We were legitimating and making authentic our own experiences and we began to feel some sense of power.” “We were enjoying our discussion and getting something personal out of it but when it came time to present we were in a crisis about ‘what are we going to say?’, ‘what are we going

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to do?’”. They had discovered the T group and used it as a flight from the task. Rather than accept their responsibility as a task force operating to further the task of the whole, they had split themselves off. “If a group wishes to prevent development, the simplest way to do so is to allow itself to be overwhelmed by basic assumption mentality and thus become approximated to the one kind of mental life in which a capacity for development is not required. The main compensation for such a shift appears to be an increase in a pleasurable feeling of vitality” (Bion 1952: 237). Hope is the hallmark of the Pairing (baP) group but it is critical that the leader, either person or idea should be unborn. (Bion 1961: 151) Their leader was absent and being aconceptual meant little risk that an ‘idea’ could arise to threaten their ba. One said “(We are) keeping those ideas in mind”, that is unborn. They were internally a baP group but their effect at the conference level was baf, the perfect vehicle for avoiding development and enhancing baF. They reported first in the next plenary. It was a mime. By rejecting verbal communication understood only in W (Bion 1952: 244), they communicated commitment to the bas. It also prevented anxiety, maintaining the foetal status of their development and leadership by making it difficult for others to adopt a genuine questioning attitude. (Bion 1961: 162) They had already been implicitly criticized for irresponsible behaviour. When faced with further criticism (persecution) they chose schism. baP was dominant (Bion 1952: 236). But at the conference level it brought baf into the service of prolonged and intense baF which was exacerbated by the manager who was under the control of the dynamic. Because the conference itself was split, no coherent opposition to the management could be brought into being. This session simply faded into desultory and fragmented interactions. There was more group work. The baP group reported with a picture and some words. They held firm to schism again promoting baF at the conference level. Appeals for W failed. In the final plenary they presented theatre. Despite suggestions and appeals, baF won. There was to be a non-synthesized report. Rather than the energy and joy which could have suffused the end of this conference, we had the debilitating consequences of dissociation. Orillia showed how design, structure and the role of management produce dynamics. Throughout there were instances where the DP1 structure set up competition and interrupted W. It also illustrated that the inappropriate interpretation of the managerial role promoted the bas. Above all, it demonstrated that even professional action researchers and social scientists underestimate the power of these dimensions to affect our behaviour. The management group chopped and changed the design on the run exacerbating the bas. There were notably few conscious insights into the role of design and management. It was almost impossible to stay out of the bas.

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The record also allows us to see ways in which the bas can relate at the conference and group levels and it illustrates some fundamental properties of these phenomena. They are ‘emotional’ and ‘cognitive’ as they use ‘intellectual’ content to produce additional levels of meaning. The critical difference between W and the bas is that the content of W is literal, expressed to further cooperative, explicit task achievement. Content in a ba has a tacit, assumptional meaning as well as a literal meaning. The assumptional meaning serves to further the ba. This second level of meaning, the ‘music of the group’ varies in distance from the literal content in direct correlation with the strength of the ba. Towards the end when the baP group began to disintegrate under the pressure, their ‘music’ almost merged with the literal content. This dimension of our group life is too often neglected (Shambaugh 1985) yet we can learn to consciously recognize the bas. In terms of the relations of group to group and to plenary, Orillia shows that an intragroup ba can fulfil another ba at the conference level. Bion discussed intergroup relations briefly, observing that when “persecuted”, there may be changes, not from one ba to another but into “aberrant forms”. Extraneous groups may be provoked to invasion (baD), absorbed or invaded (baF) or subjected to separation (baP) (1952: 236). We saw the originally observed form of baP rather than the more recently observed ‘spark to W’ form. The conference dynamics over time are shown in Figure 20. Figure 20 uses the concept of directive correlation to illustrate the dynamic progress of the conference over time. We started with a potential for both W and the bas but the first two papers (P1 and P2) took conflicting positions about reality. As it began, so it continued. The large circle is the dynamic at conference level. Smaller circles are the group’s dynamics. Groups split in their choice of W or bas and brought both back to the next plenary which was predominantly baF although there were many who attempted to recreate W. This was blocked by the behaviour of the manager. When groups reconvened, all except one moved into W. The manager’s valency for the bas, however, produced again a predominance of them in the final plenary and there was no collectively agreed product.

P1 (reality of L22)

W W

W W W

W

Potential W & bas

W&F

baF

Product

baF

bas

Failure P2 (L22 not real)

baP baD -> baF

Figure 20. Orillia conference dynamics over time

baP

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Had the design not mixed its design principles, would it have avoided the battle between W and the bas? The manager believed that all ‘process conferences’ must experience baF. “My own prediction had been that the explosion of frustration would not occur until tomorrow afternoon.” But it was supposed to be a single task, not a double task ‘process’ conference. Design and management do not need to disrupt the “normal affirmations of the self system” (Sutherland 1990: 133) as innumerable Search Conferences show. Clearly part of the skill conference managers need is conscious appreciation of the bas and their relation to design and managerial behaviour. The belief that ‘process conferences’ must experience baF or any bas is a dangerous myth as it leads managers to fulfil their prophecies. It also denies that there are lawful relations between design, management and dynamics thereby denying the need to learn about them. It therefore reduces the chance that future participants will be provided with the conditions they require for the creative work they wish to do. If DP2 conferences are to reliably deliver on their promise, more conceptual and practical knowledge of design, management and dynamics is a must. The basic assumption of ‘pairing’ The third basic assumption which Bion called ‘pairing’ has for many years now presented a dilemma. Bion clearly regarded it as an inhibition on development but he noted that in the pairing group there is a most unusual tolerance for people to get on with their discussions, the relation has bonds that have a libidinous character and the group is cemented with ‘messianic hope’ as if it contained an unborn genius (Bion 1961: 166, 176). He clearly suspected that psychotic anxieties of an oedipal type may be triggered off in the pairing state. One of the characteristic features of pairing was a tendency towards schism. But our culture today is far less anxious about the sexuality of its members and the conditions under which sexual bonding develops and is expressed. And while this phenomenon may contain overtones of sexual interest, it may also express simple innate human bonding as a necessary characteristic of our nature as group or social beings. In the course of researching and developing the SC without a Freudian orientation, we have noted a quite different variety of what Bion originally observed as ‘pairing’. Because the SC is designed to prevent the bas, we almost never see instances of baP in its schismatic form. Because all group work is self managing and the participants are wholly responsible for the content, we do not have a structure such as Bion’s where he attempted to create a leaderless group through his behaviour as leader. In its content work, SCs are genuinely leaderless. The phenomenon we have seen, however, is virtually indistinguishable from the superficial characteristics of baP. But instead of serving the insecure bas, it

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appears to serve as a prelude to the creative working mode, for the group as a whole. Pairing sessions are often remembered as particularly helpful (Sutherland 1990: 137). Two or more participants will come together in an animated or excited sequence, around a new idea or perspective, forming one or more little buzz groups. It can follow a slow or quiet phase in which the group appears to be considering its options or erupt from a particularly creative community phase. The idea itself can become the property of the community, sparking it into further creative work and learning. It can be seen, therefore, as part of the community exercising leadership of the learning process. Because we so often saw baP in this form, we tended to believe for some time that Bion had simply got it wrong and that baP was merely the first phase of the creative working mode (W) and could be used synonymously with it. However, Orillia illustrated the interplay of design, management and dynamics leading to baP, ‘pairing’ in Bion’s original sense. It was schismatic and in no way served the purposes of socio-ecological adaptation. Just the opposite. Its role in the conference was to prevent W and adaptation and the conference failed in its overall purposes. The result of the baP was maladaption. Nothing in Orillia could be further from that form of ‘pairing’ that has been observed in SCs, except its basic assumption. Observations and analyses of both phenomena concur that the original state of affairs is an assumption that ‘pairing’ or ‘subgrouping’ is necessary to secure the life of the whole. It is necessary to add ‘subgrouping’ to ‘pairing’ as in SCs, we have observed that the assumption is not confined to a couple. More than this, the assumption involves the necessity for some additional initiative of or spark for greater excitement, energy and creativity. In this sense it is an assumption that different or additional leadership is required if the group is to survive. The baP group at Orillia made claim to leadership and in their particular task avoidant way, were creative. Their creativity, however, served to further the schism and proved maladaptive. There is a discussion of this baP behaviour in Burgess (1992) which stresses their creativity but neglects to note the context in which it occurred. Burgess rightly claims that their original report, the mime, had considerable impact. He also claims that while some were quite moved by a non verbal report of a verbal process, others appeared threatened by this non traditional mode. The detailed record makes it quite clear that the objections arose not from the threat of their creativity or novelty but from their refusal to work, their irresponsibility towards the task delegated to them by the conference community and accepted by them as their contribution towards the whole. “When people reached the severe constraints on making the visions happen, one group created a vivid graphic showing a breaking out” (p412). His statement reads as if it was another group when in fact it was the same group (P and M) continuing to indulge in basic assumptional behaviour. Burgess’ reporting is inaccurate as it entirely neglects the context within which this behaviour occurred. His paper also shows a deep misunder-

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standing as he refers throughout to the Orillia conference as a SC which it clearly wasn’t. The assumptional behaviour seen in SCs is, by a competent manager, integrated into the behaviour of the whole where it serves the purposes of adaptation. At Orillia, the manager did not attempt any integrative activity. (The original group synthesis was suggested by a participant.) The manager followed a model based on individuals and groups rather than community. baP: One assumption, two forms There are, therefore, two forms springing from the same basic assumption. I call these baP(S) for the genuinely schismatic and maladaptive form and baP(R) for that form which is regenerative of higher levels of creativity and adaptation for the whole. In the (S) form, the leadership, genius or idea remains ‘unborn’ while in the (R) form, this embryo develops and is born as the child of the community. The regenerative form, baP(R), appears to coincide with the realisation of the four universal tacit assumptions that underline human face-to-face interaction for effective communication as above: When these four conditions are realized, the predominant effect will be a fluctuation between joy and excitement, and the group members will be excited and enjoy the emerging genius of their own creativity. Essentially the phenomenon of pairing as a transformative step towards creative group learning involves the sharing of individual perceptions or knowledge towards an end or purpose which itself evolves as a group product. This product enhances the probability of the survival of the group through which development, meaning accrues to the individual contribution. Through the act of sharing knowledge towards newly created and creative common purposes individual contributions also merge into the new knowledge of the group. Group learning enlarges the intellectual and affective domain of the individual consciousness such that deeper perceptions and wisdom are freed to play their role in the creative process. Through such personal enlargement individuals themselves are in the process of creation. What then makes a baP evolve into either its (S) or (R) form? If the system principle of the process of living is a double pattern, with trends towards increased autonomy and homonomy (Angyal 1941a: 289) then the (S) form represents an imbalance of autonomy over homonomy. In fact, its schismatic quality decreases the probability of homonomy as at Orillia. The baP can be seen as a stimulus which may act as a ‘contravention’ (threatens to break up the system) or as an ‘opportunity’, used for the realization of the system principle of the organism. baP(S) then becomes a ‘contravention’ while bap(R) becomes an ‘opportunity’, “to fill a gap in the system or offer the possibility of expression for the basic trends of the organism in some special way” (Angyal 1941a: 281).

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Awareness of the need for additional ideas, creativity, which baP represents should, therefore, result in its use as an opportunity. For a new idea to be treated as an opportunity, there must be a climate of openness to new ideas and a value placed on creativity and development. As discussed above, it is the second design principle and the conditions for effective communication which determine this climate and valuing. Failures of design and management of these can, therefore, produce baP(S). It is DP2 which provides the form of organization in which people can learn and develop, and management of this organizational form through Asch’s conditions leads to spiralling openness and trust. Homonomy increases as individual or group autonomy and expressiveness develops. Where these organizational and management forms are in place, baP will be expressed and interpreted as baP(R), be grasped as an opportunity for better expression of the community’s intent and, therefore, can play its role as a prelude to the stable creative working mode (W). When these conditions are not in place, baP can just as easily be interpreted as baP(S), harden into it and rather than the spiral of trust and openness, lead to the vicious spiral of distance, mistrust and further distance. When this dynamic is in train, there is a single rather than a double pattern of evolution, producing the imbalance of autonomy and homonomy. There cannot be in this situation “a complete realization of the system principle” (Angyal as above: 284). When baP(R) occurs under conditions conducive to learning, its evolution into W lends a new creative thrust and even greater learning. We can, therefore, elaborate the continuum of learning (Figure 21). baD (low)

baF

BaP(S) LEARNING

baP(R) W (high)

Figure 21. Relation between dynamics and learning

We can now differentiate baP(R) from W. There are identifiable differences between baP(R) and W and SC managers need to recognize and understand these. Table 7 summarizes these differences. There is often a brittle, prickly feeling in the baP(R) which can be unmistakable. This arises precisely because of the insecurity of the group as an entity and the fact that baP(R) is a test of its ability to function as a creative unit. If well handled by the manager(s) it can flow smoothly into the W mode. But if the managers themselves are either insecure in their position or not genuinely enamoured of the conference being self managing, their insecurity or unwillingness will be subtly conveyed. The result is likely to be a more intense fluctuation of assumptions.

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Table 7. The difference between pairing baP(R)and the creative working mode (W) Pairing, baP(R) Presenting phenomena Emotional tone some are highly excited parallel monologues brief burst of energy Time frame relatively temporary and unstable Maladaptive (Evangelical) -one or many bright bright ideas, tends towards dogmaticism with priorities -asymmetyrical relations between the initiators and the rest Meaning for the group Coenetic or starting condition Expresses realization of Asch’s conditions 1, 2, 3 and tests 4 (trust) A group ASSUMPTION Testing assumptions of group and managerial status, is group allowed to be creative? Shows immaturity, insecurity of the group

The creative working mode, W

group is excited but controlled group conversation increasing level of sustained energy relatively permanent and stable Active adaptive -many bright ideas, not dogmatic, will negotiate priorities -symmetrical relations within the group

The QUESTION asked is ‘can this group have a group life?

Expresses realization of Asch’s 1, 2, 3 and 4 A working group REALITY Accepts reality of division of labour between manager and participant Shows maturity and confidence of the group as entity Trusts manager with process until ready to self manage, trusts manager with some content in the interests of overall task The implicit MESSAGE is ‘we have a group life’

Best outcome Sharing of perceptions towards a possible group purpose

Sharing of perceptions and work towards an established group purpose

Does not trust manager with process, does not trust manager with content

Implications for management Very sensitive and vulnerable to managerial response Likely to lead to fight/flight or dependency if manager appears negative or to misinterpret. Useful if manager can generalize and stabilize it as a contribution to the group task Can lead to amplification of individual pathologies within the group Used in T group to magnify leader power and status. Easy to manipulate to manager’s hidden purpose if any

What a good manager hopes to achieve as part of their contractual obligation Group will work through differences between participant views and ignore manager if attempts to stop self management. Therefore no chance of fight/ flight unless manager persists Absorbtion/subjugation of individual pathologies to the purpose/task of the group Is inimical to managerial power and status. Difficult to manipulate to manager’s hidden purpose if any

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The last item in Table 7 is a reminder that there are small and large group participative processes which use these dynamics for purposes other than active adaptive learning, planning and responsible self- management. I rarely see the bas in SCs these days. One of the keys to prevention is the introduction and handling of the first session. If the first two hours are designed and managed well, the probability of an outbreak of group anxiety and insecurity is very low. Beginning in W is a consequence of participants knowing that they are responsible for their work and its outcome and that they have the information and other resources to do the job well. In summary, pairing baP(R) can be a creative spark to reignite a SC but it is not a recommended substitute for a quick entry into the creative W mode. Bion’s theory of group behaviour is not only fascinating, it is of direct practical importance. Forget forming, storming and norming — Go straight to performing Stating that an individual’s groupishness, tendency to the bas, is an inherent property of a social animal did not further our understanding of these phenomena (Sutherland 1990: 124). Early work on the Search Conference and the Multisearch (Emery, M. 1992a) confirmed the existence of bas at the large group level. This led to improvements which better prevented their emergence, maximising the time spent in W, and these improvements have shown that the critical variable governing the appearance of W and/or bas is choice of design principle. Search Conference managers need conscious skill in recognizing the bas but more importantly, they need the conceptual and practical knowledge to design learning environments uncontaminated by them. Once the bas develop, it can be difficult to return the group to W. Prevention is much easier than cure. Since Tuckman’s classic paper (1965), there has been widespread belief that every group must go through the stages of ‘forming, storming, norming, performing’. To suggest otherwise in some circles is to commit an act of heresy or ignorance. And yet both theory and twenty five years of practice with Searching show that the sequence of stages held to be necessary for group formation was a product of its time, its history and the circumstances of its genesis. The experiences which formed the basis of Tuckman’s conclusion were all, like Bion’s work, the product of working in DP1 configurations. There was always a ‘leader’ like Dr Bion, someone to facilitate or ‘help’ the group into a mature state of ‘leaderless’ function. The double process model is simple a more complex form incorporated within a mixed mode. It confirms the ‘stages’ theory as it is intrinsically designed to do so. Even those who like Kurt Lewin believed that democracy, responsible selfmanagement, was the key to the future could not remove themselves from the belief that people had to learn how to be responsibly self-managing, had to

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undergo the painful process of learning how to do without a leader. Leadership was then and still is in the USA, a focus of concern. As we have seen above, the bas are a consequence of a DP1 structure with a leader. To prevent them you simply remove the leader and the whole problem by instituting a DP2 structure from the start. Then you get neither the bas nor the stages of group formation. They are both products of the same structure. The ‘stages’ theory is structure specific. There is now solid evidence that the bas and the associated “hatred of learning” are a by-product of attempting to learn in a structure which inhibits cooperative use of all our capacities for coordination and control of our own destinies. As Sutherland (1990: 129) realized, the individual is a system, open to its environment. The ‘stages’ theory came out of work by social scientists in constructed situations, not out of naturalistic settings. Observation of these shows that when groups meet voluntarily and informally around a task of their choosing, they usually begin work on the task immediately and without bas. There appear to be two major determinants for group formation without the bas. The first is that there is a clear purposeful task, not a pseudo task such as ‘have a discussion about what you have heard’ or ‘let us get to know each other a little better’. The second is the choice of design principle as above — it is the primary determinant of a system’s task and learning environment. A pure DP2 event such as a well designed and managed SC which is task oriented and where the participants are totally responsible for the content, goes immediately into W and stays there. “Organization and structure...are the product of cooperation between members of the group and their effect once established in the group is to demand still further cooperation” (Bion 1952: 239). Because they are responsible as a group, it is in everyone’s interest to complete the task creatively and efficiently. Energy is actually generated in W through the positive affects, the ‘joy of learning’. There are still outbreaks of the bas in SCs but they are rare and almost always the result of a mistake in either design or management. Exactly analogous to the ‘leader’ attempting to bring about ‘leaderless group’ function and the double process model are some of the practices in the current big fad towards self managing, high performing teams. For example, because so few really trust other ordinary people to be responsible, or they are unaware of the DP2 alternative, they opt not for self managing groups and a simple elegant democratic system, but for a continuation of DP1 with a cosmetic change of name for the supervisors, usually a variation of trainer, leader or coach. The results are identical to the stages seen in group formation towards ‘leaderless groups’ (Emery, M. 1992b). Telling a group that it is responsible for its own work and at the same time appointing a ‘leader’ who is also responsible for the work of the ‘group’ induces a crisis of responsibility. Who is actually responsible for coordination and control? In a work organization the dysfunctional results are played out day by day and they are nothing more than the dynamics of the bas.

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Summary of design and management of learning In the above sections the relationships between the core concepts of the design principles, group assumptional and affective dynamics and learning within the conditions for influential communication have been spelt out in some detail. Figure 22 summarizes some of these relationships illustrating their highly correlated nature. On the left of Figure 22 we see the conventional ‘talking heads’, DP1 conference where lack of responsibility by the audience results most commonly in the group assumption of dependency, low levels of energy, often negative affect and certainly little learning. On the right we see the pure DP2 case of the SC which is characterized by high energy, positive affect, a great deal of learning and the absence of the group assumptions. These phenomena develop with continuing openness and spiralling trust in the effectiveness of the community’s perceptions and conversation. As this complex of correlated positive affects build up, so does the probability that the group will be prepared and have the resources of learning, energy and trust, to continue with implementation and also diffuse their learning to others. Suffice it to say for the moment that implementation and diffusion are a direct consequence of the preparation, planning and understanding which has gone into the design and management of any given event, the best guarantee of a successful outcome. In the middle is the Mixed Mode. SC designers and managers must know that ‘Mixed’ cannot mean a synthesis. Without this understanding, it is possible to design examples like Orillia, quite unnecessary failures which not only waste resources but also reduce confidence in possibilities for the future. For SC DP1 (Redundancy of Parts)

DP2 (Redundancy of Functions)

Organizers & Sponsors

Participants Responsibility

Speakers

Task Mixed Mode W Audience Receives

baP(R) baP(S) baF

baD Energy Learning

Figure 22. Design, dynamics and learning

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managers who aim to produce learning, action and diffusion, the Mixed Mode like DP1 is something to be avoided. Depending on its individual design and the quality of its management, a Mixed Mode conference elicits a greater or lesser degree of the group assumptions, something less than optimal positive affect and something less than possible energy and learning. However, it is possible for the bas to be converted into creative task oriented work. If at virtually any stage of the Orillia conference, the manager had had the conscious knowledge and practical skill to extricate himself from the bas and put the conference back on its task oriented track, I believe it would have been possible to convert baP(S) into baP(R) and subsequently to W. The assumptions of baF and baP(S) are closely related because they share a structural base as above. There is a much larger gap between baF → baP(S) and the coupling of baP(R) → W. This follows from the definition of baP(R) as the regeneration of interest in pursuing the task in the interests of the whole. The gap between the two couplings of dynamics is a function of the quality of management, its ability to create and constantly recreate the first three conditions for effective communication leading to the condition of trust. We can sum up these correlations very simply (Table 8) Table 8. Correlations of Design Principle, management and (mal)adaptation At the broadest level we have a flow as follows: Choice of Design Principle → Mode of function

→ (mal)adaptation

At the next level of detail we find the most probable outcomes: Design Principle 1 (DP1) → bas Design Principle 2 (DP2) →W

→ maladaption → adaptation

In detail we find that the most probable outcomes are: Design Principle 1 (tight control) → BaD

→ maladaption (eg. dissociation) Design Principle 1 (loose control) → BaF → no change, maladaption Design Principle 2 (DP2) → creative working mode (W) → adaptation Mixed mode (Alternation of design → BaF (predominantly) → adaptation OR principles) maladaption dependent on management skill

Table 8 makes clear that the only reliable path to ecological learning and adaptation is to start from DP2. When conscious knowledge of the group assumptional mode and the conditions for influential communication are integrated with the second epistemology of direct perception and the design principles and practiced within the open systems framework, the major determinants of elicitation of the ideals and a successful Search or other DP2 Conference are in place.

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The question of the adaptivity of the basic assumptions We have in the above analysis followed the ‘doctrine of necessary specificity’, using the grain of description which makes best sense of the phenomena reported in the specific environments which pertained at the time (Turvey and Shaw 1979: 212). Conversation is not simply a vocal activity. Meaning adheres within the group conversation and the human group is quite obviously a species-specific environment which is as objective as is any physical environment. There can be little further doubt that we have extraordinarily acute powers to directly perceive and respond to communicative features of our environments, those provided by both individuals and the learning econiches and media they create. It has also become obvious that a perceptual act in such an econiche as the human group does not necessarily invoke consciousness. “Perception works as an adaptive response because it permits the coordination of action in regard to a real environment” (Johnston and Turvey 1980: 166). People are constantly coordinating their behaviour in relation to the real human environments in which they find themselves. When in situations where one of the affordances of the environment is the assumption that the life of the group is under threat, it is adaptive to act on that assumption. The adaptivity of being a member of a basic assumption group can therefore be seen as another dilemma which can only be resolved by returning to the concept of conscious learning. When the desired product and process is creative work towards a task, the bas are both adaptive in relation to the short term life of the group and maladaptive in relation to the longer term purpose and goal. Active adaptation is, as its name implies, a long way from simply adjusting to the status quo. Only individuals who have expanded their total set of directive correlations, i.e. have learnt to consciously recognize ba behaviour, conceptualize environments in terms of the design principles and the conditions for effective communication, will have the necessary effectivities to respond to the bas in such a way that they may restore the conditions for W. For a designer and a manager, the above set of correlations represents not only theoretical but also practical knowledge. Once the set of conscious learnings is in place, an individual will be able to not only design and manage, but also change econiches, environments such as conferences, so that they provide longterm rather than short-term adaptive behaviour at the group level.

Chapter 5 Completing the Conceptual Circle

The previous chapters have discussed the major dimensions of a theory of effective change. As our concern is for change at all levels, from world hypothesis to socio-ecological to organizational to individual, and as only individuals can learn, it is also necessary to ensure that all pieces of the theory are included and integrated. In this chapter we explore the remaining dimensions of diffusion in such a way that we can clearly see a complete conceptual system. This lays the groundwork for a model to guide spontaneous, diffusing change.

The engine of diffusion: The joy of learning The ways of creating active socio-ecological adaptation discussed here appear to break down some of the barriers to diffusion that were found with previous methodologies.There is a substantial history of successful initiation and continuing high levels of diffusive action, sometimes even cases of what amounts to ‘conversion’ or dramatic perceptual and conceptual reconstruction. This needs to be fully explored and explained. Part of the concept of diffusion involves the motivation to diffuse which is an inherent property of an econiche created to induce ideal seeking. We would expect that when such econiches are designed and managed so that they produce ideal seeking and the singular invariances to carry remembering, diffusion will occur. But there are other cases where for various reasons, design and diffusion were not correlated. There are clearly other factors operating in these participative and collaborative processes. Re-searching the Search Search My various thoughts about the mysteries of diffusion arose firstly from my efforts to understand the relation between the dynamics of the event called Search Search and its consequences. The Search Search 1976 was as the name implies an international SC to explore the SC. Apart from the fact that we know now that that sort of task is inappropriate for a Search, it was a comedy of errors in many ways.

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From the very first moment, it was racked by basic assumptions which culminated in extreme fight/flight and Fred Emery and I leaving. As it was perceived to be a disaster, no diffusion was expected. But it proved highly diffusive (Emery, M. 1982). I am indebted to two of its participants who provided me with significant insights. These were as follows: I wanted to capture and define a feeling that I and presumably the others had — a feeling which I felt to be a critical change point in psychic functioning, at which a person shifted from mechanical thinking and behaviour along established lines, to a condition of free creativity. I feel that a starting point could be the mood of the meeting on Thursday night, where your departure and the emotion of it, shocked people into being human, and there was a strange sense of being at peace and of submerging personal interests in some wider shared purpose...Perhaps the safety device (to avoid manipulation) lies in being able to introspectively recognise the difference between the emotional experience of relating to life, and the mystical experience of direct knowledge. The former is a safe state of mind which is also personally and socially useful. The second is the state which is open to danger, open to people being swept away by the depth, intensity and exhilaration of their mood. Yet somehow I suspect that the most fundamental level of all is the key to the question of from whence do our ideals derive. (emphasis is mine) It seems reasonable to postulate that there is a mode of interaction whereby the whole can be greater than the parts. The evidence for this statement of principle comes from daily life (also see Ivan Denisovitch). This mode of interaction is in the deepest sense pleasurable and when experienced is some mean by love...It has nothing to do with the incipient T-groupism of being consciously frank and open...It seems to come out better in partly affective situations. It seems to happen during pursuit of task. What is it?.

These were all the clues I needed — except one. The group that attended the Search Search which was from so many angles an unmitigated disaster, was singularly active, initiating, organizing and diffusing their privileged knowledge. How does ideal seeking behaviour emerge and diffuse? The key, I believe, lies in the nature of human affects or emotions and particularly that of joy. The search for joy West Churchman (1968: 217) asked for some stories about love: “What must the whole system be like if love is a force or an existence in it?” “What we call love is a manifestation of the homonomous (sharing) trend in the relationships among people, and in a more general sense the whole concept of harmony could be equated with love” (Angyal 1965: 16). Homonomy is an ideal but “no ideal can be pursued single mindedly without sacrifice of the others” (Emery, F. 1977b: 79). Therefore to concentrate exclusively on the search for love would be to exclude the nature of the process of seeking ideals as a set. I discuss below the power of democratic structure to elicit ideal seeking behaviour and the nature of the affects

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produced by self managing groups, but before that we must look at the relationship between affects and ideals. The key to understanding diffusion lies within this relationship. Affects and ideals The three main points that emerge are that affects and ideals are innate and adaptive, both involve time freedom, and ideals derive their expansive characteristics from the positive affects of excitement and joy. Both are innate and adaptive “…the primary motivational system is the affect system” (Tomkins 1963: 6) and “… it is the freedom of the affect system which makes it possible for the human being to implement and progress toward what he regards as an ideal state — one which...entails the maximising of positive affect and the minimising of negative affect (1963: 126). Tomkins claims that the affect system is both innate and adaptive. Emery states that ideal seeking is an adaptive mode of behaviour (Emery, F. 1977b). The ideals of homonomy, nurturance, humanity and beauty appear to be those which are inherently related to the maximisation of positive affect in so far as they concern choosing between purposes to guarantee the appropriate emotions for survival, people and novelty. “For a motivational system to play a biologically adaptive role it must have at least two characteristics: it must urge the animal to become motivated to do what it must do if it and its population are to reproduce itself, and it must urge the animal to do what it can do”. (Tomkins 1963: 122) As it is clear from many sources that people can be ideal seeking, then it follows that there must be a motivation to be so, and on the other hand, if the motivation is toward survival, people and novelty, then the potential for realising this motivation must be similarly innate. “Human beings are so designed that they prefer to repeat rewarding affects and to reduce punishing affects” (Tomkins 1963: 111) and it therefore comes as no surprise that they have evolved ways of making choices that provide for these preferences. Ideal seeking then appears as a way at the highest system level, of operationalizing a fundamental capability. Both theory and experience bear out an aspect of Heider’s contention about the attribution of positive feeling. Ideals are perceived as belonging to the objective not the subjective world. People intuitively know that their perception of ideal seeking as an intrinsically desirable mode will also be similarly perceived by all other humans because its desirability inheres in itself (Heider 1958: 151). The nature of the relation between ideals and affects helps to clarify Emery’s third postulate of ideal seeking which states “Individuals can sustain the ideal seeking state only temporarily” (Emery,F. 1977b: 78). It is not only that constant

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focussing on choice between purposes would lead to informational overload and consequent break down, but that generation of positive affect which this pursuit of ideal entails would necessarily, by the principle of the oscillation of affects, result in its own reduction or cessation. The principle of oscillation says that in effect the affects are dependent on each other to the extent that the cessation of one causes the onset of another. Thus as joy is experienced following the sudden cessation of intense negative affect, so it cannot be generated by a process which does not culminate in a high density level of stimulation (Tomkins 1963: 280). Time freedom The second point concerns the relation of both affects and ideals to the dimension of time in human life. Tomkins, in relation to the affects, stated “all the varieties of freedoms we will examine necessarily assume time freedom” (1963: 126). Fred Emery (1977b: 69) says “Ideals are...endlessly approachable but unattainable in themselves”. They agree, therefore, that ideals and affects are related by the fact that they are the two human systems whose functions specifically mobilise the ability to function outside the constraints of time. Many of the characteristics which appear to pertain to the nature of the ideal seeking mode can be seen to spring from the particular form of flexibility that the internalization of past and future affords. The sense of vision that is captured in moments of intense feelings of wonder and joy always appears to involve a sense of infinitude, timelessness and wholeness. Described for example as Peak Experiences, the Oceanic Experience, they sometimes have dramatic effects on the normal daily mode of life (Maslow 1962). Many have described the nature of these experiences as embodying both cognition and affect, the whole system. They involve possibilities, perceptual reconstruction and transformations which change intentions and expectations. Making mental connections is our most crucial learning tool, the essence of human intelligence: to forge links; to go beyond the given; to see patterns, relationships, context. These shifts in awareness are experienced as awakening, liberating, unifying — transforming (Ferguson 1980: 32). It is useful to look at these experiences in relation to the ideal seeking mode. Deikman (1976) found only two essential practices for such shifts in awareness: a form of ‘contemplative meditation’ and ‘renunciation’. I discuss below the concept of dream work, sleeping on a problem or idea in order for these processes to occur naturally overnight, a substantial reason for exploiting the Zeigarnik effect or the desire to finish business. Students of both peak or alternative experiences and ecological learning note correspondences useful for practices. Both insist that the human perceptual system is structured so that knowledge of the environment or reality is given by direct perception. They also both have a concept of the information structure or affordances of the environment which are directly known by such perception.

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They see the reality or meaning directly extracted as free of the mechanical concepts of time and space and view ‘normal’ cognitive mediation through hierarchies of abstraction as inhibitive of this perceptual or receptive mode. In addition, they see the process as one of learning which can be learnt or improved upon experimentally, and which is fundamentally pragmatic rather than mystic. ‘It just came to me’ is a common experience. Following the insight, additional work needs to be done before the new knowledge is fully ‘realised’, a process of integration in the action mode. Reports of these experiences leave no doubt that they are expressions of a high level integration of affect and expanded consciousness. Personal descriptions of the critical change point in psychic functioning which signals a qualitative change in mode during Searching for example, appears to contain elements of this experience. Changes in perspective on the community and behaviour in relation to it occur. Searching, therefore, by emphasising and practising direct perception within a DP2 structure is a training ground for perceptual and conceptual reconstruction, the education of attention to higher levels of invariants. However, the need to satisfy all three basic affects, for people, survival and novelty, must involve continuing real cognitive and emotional contact with the outside world. External stimulation is essential for health and adaptation and, therefore, to maintain the potential for ideal seeking and growth. Thus a couple of days and nights have been found to be plenty of time to be immersed in intensive work under social island conditions. And taking the results to be implemented back to reality is as important a part of the process as the initial step. Putting in the hard work to carefully develop effective and implementable strategies and action plans is an essential element of a SC. Making change requires a foot in both camps. But initially it is this particular freedom from time constraint that enables the affect and ideal systems to integrate or generate experiences which serve to maintain continuity of direction — in other words, the search for meaning. It is the coming together of the dimensions of innateness and time freedom that appears to justify Emery’s first postulate about the nature of ideals, “Only individuals can be ideal seeking” (Emery,F. 1977b: 78) and it is only within the culture of democratic forms of organisation that time freedom can be regularly obtained. Very simply put, there is nothing inbuilt or innate about a form of social organisation except as we see below, our nervous system is built on DP2. This probably explains why ‘naive’ or ‘primitive’ people when left to themselves, design democratic organizations. But the point remains, organizational design is a decision which is under the control of people. Organizations are created when people come together around shared purposes. It is the nature of the relationships they create which determines the form of organization. And it is people only who have the ability to destroy a form of organization when it is found not to suit their purposes. This is something people cannot do to their biological organization

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without destroying themselves as living physical entities. They may, of course, change their emotional experiences or their hormonal balances by the use of drugs or hypnosis, but this is a change of experience, not an annihilation of the affect or hormonal system as such. Even under the most chronic conditions of abnormality there is still affect, and expression of affect. There are conditions in which the whole affect system seems muted and these conditions are amongst the most chronic because of the concomitant reduction in motivation to return to health. But the basic systems remain, even while directed to ends other than healthy mature function. The second point involves the internalization of time. Given the predominance of our cultural concept of linear monochronic time, democratic organizations with their more flexible, polychronic use of time, find it difficult to retain their characteristic culture in times of rapid turnover of staff unless there is conscious appreciation of the design principle and appropriate inductions of new staff. ‘Organizational learning’ is a myth. Greenfield sites designed from scratch along DP2 tend to go backwards over time unless conscious knowledge of the genotypical concepts of the design principles is given to staff. The organization’s ‘memory’ is only as good as the understanding of its people. Generally, it appears that not only is the ideal seeking mode powered by the affect system but that at the highest level of human-system function, affects and ideals merge into experiences which give rise to and reinforce the more adaptive philosophies of human beings and their place in the universe. Tomkins has maintained that there is a real question as to whether anyone may fully grasp the nature of any object when that object has not been encountered in a variety of affect states (Tomkins 1963: 134). If we wish to focus on our humanity-inenvironment then these prior conditions of ideals and affects must apply. We can say therefore, that ideals can be brought into consciousness and purposefully only through an experience of relatively intense emotion and that wisdom is the learning process that ensues from and is powered by this experience. This certainly fits with observations of others such as Feuer in his search for the swings and shifts in scientific cultures. “It was this revolution in man’s emotions which was the basis for the change in his ideas. Behind the history of ideas lies the history of emotions... Emotions determine the perspective, the framework, for the explanation of the perceived world” (Feuer 1963: 1). But as we have seen above, the concept of wisdom must include time and reality bound data as well as the infinite and timeless. The nature of the conscious ideal seeking mode and its attendant concept of wisdom is intimately concerned with realities outside the self, and if the learning process ensuing from something like a peak experience is going to result in the ability to experience other such totalities, then it must entail learning and becoming aware of all the necessary dimensions of reality. But there is one other dimension of relationship between ideals and affects which we must explore.

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Ideals and positive affects While it looks as if ideal seeking emerges from an emotional experience, there seems to be no evidence that a narrowing and inwards looking experience such as grief or sorrow can directly trigger such an effect. The ideal seeking mode acts to expand the horizons of the individual as it is the positive affects of excitement, and more particularly joy which subserve our personal freedom through self enlargement (Shand 1926: 546). This argument is backed by the fact that the peak or oceanic experiences are characteristically those of wonder, excitement and especially joy. Ideal seeking appears to originate not in any affectual situation, but only in those which are experienced as intensely joyful. This explains some of the continuing high levels of activity experienced after Searches and Participative Design Workshops, and particularly following the Search Search, where such a consequence was exactly the opposite of the dead end predicted by the ‘realists’. Ideal seeking by its nature is an active rather than a passive mode. Ideal seekers are initiators and carriers of the action plans devised to bring into being further approximations to the ideal state. Much of the action following participation in these events has been of the nature of initiation and conduct of searching and redesign projects, in other words, diffusion. Is joy usually at some stage experienced during these events and if so, why? Why was joy experienced at the end of the Search Search? “Achievement motivation which is powered by shame is enormously strengthened by the incremental rewards of joy which are released by the sudden reduction of shame when success attends protracted effort toward the solution of a problem or the attainment of a goal” (Tomkins 1963: 293). At the Search Search, there was a fairly heavily disguised expression of shame in the reluctance of some groups to report and answer questions. If the groups had been confident and proud of their efforts, their reports would have evoked the fight dynamic more typical in a hostile intergroup climate. But there had been too long a period of dependency to permit such a development. The impasse was broken by my explicit aggression and it is, therefore, possible to see that the reduction of shame through open expression of the conflict produced a quite different affectual mode. This motivated the community to achieve independent and effective work. Such an intensity of motivation would have remained and been carried into the post conference period by many of its members. Apart from shame, Tomkins has a series of propositions about affect and dynamics, the fifth of which is as follows: “The reduction of negative affect is a specific activator of the positive affect of joy, the intensity and duration of which is proportional to the duration of the prior negative affect, to the absolute magnitude of intensity, change and the time over which this change is made” (1963: 284). His proposition eight says “the sudden reduction of aggression is the activator of joy”. Similarly hypothesis eleven; “the sudden reduction of intense

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enduring distress produces joy”(1963: 290). Applying these three propositions to the last night of the Search Search enables us to see that inadvertently we had set the scene for an experience of joy, both by our previous long period of frustration with dependency, our final intense aggression, and by our departure. “More generally, when human beings are suddenly confronted with an enemy who collapses in the midst of battle or who flees, there is a joy characteristically evoked”(1963: 292). These postulates establish that the dynamics of the Search Search were those that almost inevitably led to a joyful community. Thus we have as conditions for the experience of joy, a prior negative affect, either or all of shame, aggression or distress. Given the design of our methods and the intensity of the work and learning which they generate it is inevitable that, at some stage, one or all of these negative affects would be experienced, again with some intensity and, often, of quite some duration. This applies particularly to distress. While we have only infrequently witnessed intense demonstration of shame or aggression, the pressure of working intensively with others and the motivation to succeed in a task can carry a group through long days of hard work but there will be a gradual build up of low level distress, even if not consciously articulated. Then the task is accomplished, the group has achieved its goal. There is a sudden reduction of the enduring distress and it produces joy. In putting this interpretation, I depart from Tomkins requirement for a particular slope or gradient. In practice, we have found a gradual accumulation to produce the same affectual state as a sharp change in density of stimulation. Groups vary widely in the degree to which they express their positive feelings at the end of an intensive event such as a SC, but they are usual and may be fairly intense or dramatic. In this way, participative methods and the SC in particular almost inevitably lead to a joyful community whose future energy for action is derived from the effort of the total experience, the closeness which characterises the final stages of the community, and the awareness of support that is generated during the process. The ideals or higher realisms which emerge are illuminated by a liberation of energy (Deikman 1969: 27–38). Joy also varies in proportion to the complexity of the object of the joy. The immediate object of the joy in most cases is the present community itself, composed of a large group of humans with their most complex and communicative human faces. Faces are themselves a focus for generation and communication of the affects (Tomkins 1963: 204). While joy is reported as a feature of individual peak experiences, there appears to be a particularly long lasting quality about the joy which is experienced in community. Each subsequent encounter with a joyful face may regenerate or revitalise the original experience. This may represent the maturation of the personality which has taken place through participation in the Search as personalities do develop through this type of cultural participation (Angyal 1941a: 170).

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Here we see the impossibility of separating ecological learning from individual development. The total set of directive correlations includes those variables pertaining to the self as it is responding to the ever changing set in which it is immersed. When learning is the growth of the total set, then the self or the personality is growing as is the set. Joy experienced as a feature of the ecosystem at a point in time validates the total ecosystem which includes the self as a responding part. The expansive characteristic of joy also has other effects on the nature and role of those who have learnt to be ideal seeking. Joyful experiences can be captured and attempts made to replicate them. When this is done, the ideal seeker can assume a power in personal communication which raises the probability that initiation of activities will be successful. The joy and excitement experienced by the ideal seeker in his/her search is contagious. As “the characteristic of contagion is critical for the social responsiveness of any organism” (Tompkins: 296) so it will also be critical for the work of democratising society as associative organizational forms are characterised by responsiveness. It seems reasonable, therefore, to postulate that if an enthusiastic and meaningful culture is to be brought into being, then there must be the appropriate affective situation created prior to its inception. And that creating the appropriate affects for the necessary learning is something that is carried largely by the personality and presence of the ideal seeker. It is one of the invariances which is remembered and is, therefore, available for replication. The transmission through style and action of energy, excitement and joy, is one of the mechanisms that generates and sustains motivation for learning and action in others. Thus, while ideals serve to expand and enhance the world for those who seek them, they also guide behaviour over the long term, and thereby simplify it. They are the guides required to carry strategic plans through implementation. Ideals thus satisfy the criterion that a human “becomes freer as his wants grow and as his capacities to satisfy them grow” (Tomkins 1963: 111). Autonomy and homonomy grow together. Ideals represent through their action/affect relation the unitary nature of emotion and reason, of human systems. Joy with its feet on the ground We need to be extremely clear about diffusion and its implications for transformative methods. Diffusion is psychologically more effective and long lasting as the experience which drives it is embedded in DP2 structure and a coherent framework of ideas. Diffusion in the context of Searching contains the notion of adoption of concepts in practice rather than merely the weaker concept of remembering as passing on ideas, or feelings disembodied or taken out of ecological context.

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The joy accruing from such learning provides the fundamental mechanism and motivator of diffusion but while joy is a necessary component, it will not result in adoption unless it is accompanied by a system of knowledge, conceptually and experientially understood. To produce experiences which result in joy as a motivating force towards reproduction of learning in community and the joyful experience, requires more than skills in producing a joyful feeling. Joy as the engine is not sufficient for adoption. This sharply differentiates the Search from many Human Relations events where the aim is simply to produce positive affect. There must be a substance to be diffused if joy is not to be a short-lived memory or a ‘forgetting’. When consciousness accompanies the learning about the substance and the emergence of joy, the whole ecosystem will be replicable. All ingredients are necessary if there is to be an expanding or diffusive network whose characteristics induce unifying experiences for others. Summary to this point 1. The ideal seeking mode is the result of concentrated work where the mode itself and the consciousness and emotions it produces are innate capacities and properties of a given ecosystem. 2. The process is motivated and powered by the affect system particularly when it peaks in the state of joyfulness. 3. Such a state and mode of behaviour can be only temporary but its affects and results are remembered, can be replicated and are matured within everyday life. 4. Diffusion through joy is a product of the liberating and expansive nature of the experience itself because energy and joy are contagious. The Search Conference creates and is an econiche for the emergence of ideals and the ideal-seeking mode. It provides a temporary oasis in the normal world of goal and purpose seeking. Within this oasis, there is no 9–5 busy work day, nor a hierarchically dominant structure. Past, present and future, environment and system, are systematically and collectively perceived, analysed and then reintegrated. The perceptual reconstructions which occur during this process are experienced as positive and liberating. They go hand in hand with and further motivate the creation of the more coherent visions organized around the highest common denominator, a collectively desirable future which embodies the ideals. The key characteristics which fuel the diffusive power of the SC are the affects and the ideals and the fact that the action plans to bring the visions about are a bridge back to the everyday world. The last phase of the SC in which the implementation of the desirable future is planned is the reintegration of the oasis, the econiche, and the everyday world which surround it in such a way that everyday world is itself transformed.

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The joyful leader Confirmation of the power of the energy of joy may be found in the synchronicity of behaviour in human interaction. Synchronicity has been found to occur in body movement, language, brain waves, metabolism; probably every human function. “Basically, people in interactions move together in a kind of dance”, but they are not conscious of this. The mechanical view of communication as individual people sending and receiving discrete messages has to be replaced by a concept of bonding as the result of participation within shared organisational forms. “This means humans are tied to each other by hierarchies of rhythms”. At one level in this hierarchy such rhythms are culture specific but more importantly for my thesis here is the role that one person may play in generating the rhythm of the dance (Hall 1976: 60, 64). A striking example of group sync was once captured by one of my students on film as a seminar project. Using an abandoned car as a blind, he photographed children dancing and skipping in a school playground during their lunch hour. At first, they looked like so many kids each doing his own thing. After a while, we noticed that one little girl was moving more than the rest. Careful study revealed that she covered the entire playground. Following procedures laid down for my students, this young man viewed the film over and over at different speeds. Gradually, he perceived that the whole group was moving in synchrony to a definite rhythm. The most active child, the one who moved about most, was the director, the orchestrator of the playground rhythm! (Hall 1976: 66)

Many of our direct perceptions of human and social affordances have been reviewed above. In addition to these, there is a class of affordances which precisely confirms Hall’s observations of and conclusion about the coordination of movements between people and his little girl leader of the dance. “Joint coordinative structures...are simultaneously regulated by the same invariants. The invariants are not in the heads...of the two actors, but in their (common) relation to the environment” (Newtson et al. 1987: 233). Joint action can be described as a single waveform. Phase shifts in interactions have been studied too. “When the perceptual system is detecting rhythmic structure, such as from the sight and sound of someone walking next to them, the coordinative structure, defined over the entire person’s torso and limbs, becomes reconfigured and is entrained to the exogenous structure” (Valenti and Good 1991: 91). This explains the effortless, perceptual control of coordination that may occur unintentionally between people such as was observed by Hall. Valenti and Good mention the legendary marching band conductor and composer Sousa who wrote “The march speaks to a fundamental rhythm in the human organisation and is answered”. Entrained or ‘in phase’ walking occurs much more frequently than expected by chance. In a study of observational learning of complex motor and aesthetic skills, the two qualities that judges found distinguished between learning from kinematic rather than static presentation were movement flow and rhythm (Gray et al.

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1991). As is probably already well appreciated by successful pop groups, rhythm is one of the most visible and easily detected invariants and exerts a powerful effect on behaviour and that particular class of it called learning. The power of the ideal seeker then is displayed as conductor of an exciting new tune or dance, a powerful cultural rhythm. For a culture in transition or turbulence, or for a group of strangers coming together around a commonly valued task, it is critical that people find this power to initiate synchrony and bonding. This is another perspective on the power of ideals to simplify behaviour by providing rhythms which are inherently attractive and do not require conscious reflection or decision making. Other confirmation of the power of joy comes from analysis of learning in oral cultures. As we have seen these cultures were celebratory and joyful. Music and dance co-operate to produce an alienation from reality which drives the whole machine of society. Between the moments when the emotion is generated and raised to a level where it can produce ‘work’, it does not disappear...without the ceremony “phantastically portraying the granaries bursting with grain, the pleasure and delights of harvest, men (sic) would not face the hard labour necessary to bring it into being. (Caudwell 1937: 28, 30)

Havelock’s (1963,1978) analysis of the role of poetry in preliterate Greek culture and Plato’s original implacable opposition to it in the dawn of the literate Greek era shows that the power of the poet (poetess) in the ancient oral cultures derived from her/his ability to evoke rhythm and pleasure in the audience. And the poet(ess) or teller was the educator. Jordan (1981) argued that the chronology of Plato’s writings has been muddled, producing a maturing view congruent with the Euclidean school of mechanism, that he was originally opposed but changed his mind. Such is the power of orthodoxy in world hypotheses. Poetry was a mechanism of power and of personal power. “For a relationship between the poet and the individual memory of any member of the community could be established only by audible and visual presence” (Havelock 1963: 146). He described it as a form of hypnotism. Its power appeared to lie in the initiation of a total experience of a rhythm. The elements of this were the metric of the verse, accompanied by the beat of music and a set of bodily movement (the dance which synchronises). The mousike in the oral cultures were not practised very much for their own sake but were the servants of learning and cultural memory. Havelock confirms that the power of this mode serves the purpose of economy, or in our terms above, the simplification of behavioural choice through the conduct of automatic reflex patterns of behaviour. “The entire nervous system...is geared to the task of memorisation” (Havelock 1963: 151). This system of cultural learning “represented a mobilisation of the resources of the unconscious to assist the conscious”. It was highly sensual and pleasurable — “the Muse, the voice of instruction, was also the voice of pleasure and enjoyment”. This was the secret of the enormous power wielded by the minstrel,

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the power to ‘charm’. The very names of the Muses, for example, the Enjoyable, Desire and The Passionate illustrate the point. “Their voice...acts as a kind of electricity in the atmosphere”, invading sleep as well as wakefulness (1963: 151– 2). But Havelock also makes it clear that it was not simply a one-to-one relation between the teller and each member of the audience. “What is perhaps peculiar to the pleasures of rhythm as distinct from those of the biological functions is that they are pleasures intensified by participation in group activity” (Havelock 1978: 40). Searching shows he was correct. He claimed that these processes in oral culture were not about learning in the sense of our present day literate Western culture, education by teaching. “The oral tradition, though so profoundly interwoven with the life of its society, so intimately in control of its activities, its sense of identity, its patterns of behaviour, carries out all its instruction by indirection. The living memory does not easily hold doctrines unredeemed by entertainment; the pill has to be sweetened” (Havelock 1978: 51), by the joy of learning. The experience of joy as the mechanism of diffusion also helps explain both the difficulty of learning abstract knowledge from written text and the efforts made by the pedagogue to keep ‘learning’ a serious business. “These (abstract) symbols in themselves have no power over us; they are silent and lifeless” (Havelock 1963: 146). The joy and excitement experienced by children in devising forms of personal communication which successfully beat the directive to “get on with your own work” can only reinforce the feeling that this ‘work’ is irrelevant and boring. No wonder that helping each other learn had to be radically redefined as cheating and working as an individual strongly rewarded. It becomes easier to see why for the early Plato (following Jordan) “poetry as an educational discipline poses a moral danger, and also an intellectual one” (Havelock 1963: 6). Havelock confirms the observations made of oral cultures by drawing on the work of Luria (1968). The trigger for Luria’s mnemonist (a person who cannot forget) was the activity or movement of images within a story. Activity or movement appears generally to trigger human response, and activity and energy are amongst the most visible signs of joyful behaviour. In the Type II environment, poetry was indeed meaningful learning and no more indoctrination than is the hidden curriculum of teaching. The medium by which the communication was rendered effective is perfectly clear — it was positive affect. The learning psychologically “is an act of personal commitment, of total engagement and of emotional identification. The term mimesis is chosen by Plato as the one most adequate to describe both re-enactment and also identification, and as one most applicable to the common psychology shared both by artist and by audience” (Havelock 1963: 160). In both examples of Hall’s little girl who conducted the synchronicity of the playground and the poet educators in the oral culture, the metaphor is that of the skilled artist in the act of pursuing the ideal of beauty, the intuitively aesthetic and pleasurable patterning. As we have seen above, it is this ideal of beauty which

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completes the set and makes the critical difference between adaptation and maladaption in a turbulent field. Beauty and joy are indivisible outcomes in a process where the ultimate outcome is a more human and ideal-seeking process. This discussion raises again the age old question of ‘natural leadership’. So much has been written for and against this concept that a review of the literature would constitute a volume in its own right. But Hall’s example of the little girl and our experience with Searching leaves little doubt that there are people who have special powers at particular times. It is best described as a special attunement to a particular set of circumstances. As individuals cannot continually exist in the ideal seeking state radiating joy and excitement, they cannot constantly exercise leadership for synchronicity and bonding. The sort of leadership which puts fire in people’s guts and ultimately effects change is best seen as the product of both personal and environmental circumstance, the property of an ecosystem. In other words, natural leadership is not a personal property but a function: a spontaneous sparking or turning on, a capacity to be joyous which has its origins deep within us and which only awaits the appropriate environment. It can be called a ‘remembering’.

Completing the conceptual circle Most of the conceptual groundwork has been laid. Some of the other interrelations now begin to fall into place. These may aid understanding and mediate the transition to a simple summary process model. If any of these interrelations were to be found to be incompatible with the thrust of the thesis presented here, it would indicate a difficulty in the whole system of thought so far pursued. Ideals and organization Ideal seeking is an innate potential but it will appear only within DP2 structures and the econiches they create. It is only within group life that ideals can fully emerge and be realised. We must, therefore, now look at the nature of structure and the possible relationships that exist between innate or given structures and those which are created by people as the basis of social life. Use of the term ‘structure’ has proved a difficulty because of the peculiarities built into our concept of a Euclidean/Newtonian universe. The prevalence of DP1, bureaucratic structure, has encouraged the popular use of ‘structure’ to mean DP1. Anything other than this has come to be called ‘unstructured’. Thus we have the continuing debate about the relative value of structured and unstructured learning. The former tends to be identified with the traditional classroom modes and the latter with modern forms of person-centred learning. The debate has not been very fruitful. It reflects “an inadequate dichotomy” (Emery, F.

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1978c). Such a use of structure in our culture reflects our very widespread generalisation from the nature of physical and particularly inanimate systems, their geometric, kinematic, mechanical or morphological properties. In these systems structure and function are totally discrete (Emery, F. 1981: l. 10) However, when we describe social structures we are not describing something that is contradictory of function, and nor can we ever hope to do so because “Organisational structure is a functional concept describing the allocation of choice... determination of who is to be responsible for what...determination of which parameters of choice should be influenced by whom (such as staff functions)” (Ackoff and Emery 1972: 222). There is an unstructured (structureless) form of social arrangement in which there is no existing division of labour. This is laissez faire and as above, it has destructive effects (Emery and Emery 1976: 109–114). The pervasiveness of our cultural blinkers about structure positively inhibits new learning and diffusion. The fact that this generalisation has gone so deeply into the culture as to narrow the meaning of a very useful word is just one indication of the educational effort required to reinstate a participative democracy. But there are now literally thousands of documented cases in the socio-technical literature of democratic group working providing greater learning and growth than could be achieved in bureaucratic structures. This experience confirms anthropological observations of group working in ancient cultures. The variety of examples including those of the SC itself, illustrates its utility and flexibility. It would appear that there is good reason for the repeated observation that democratic group structure is the appropriate organizational form for learning and diffusion. There has long been a convergence of thought that the human brain has to be a DP2 organization. Somerhoff argued that the mode of organization in the nervous system cannot be hierarchical. His basic model or ‘lambda system’, is “any network of neurons in which (i) a number of input channels are shared by all excitatory neurons of the network; (ii) the excitatory neurons are subject to some form of recurrent or forward inhibition with lateral spread which favours those that are most receptive to the given pattern of inputs; (iii) some or all of the synapses of the shared input channels can undergo lasting changes as the result of experience” (Somerhoff 1974: 189). This hypothesised structure is identical in form to that of Tomkins (1963: 66) which operates on the use “of the principle of incompletely overlapping assemblies”. Bion (1961: 154) from a different perspective and field of work, has postulated the existence of a “proto-mental system” in which physical and mental activity is undifferentiated. Cauldwell (1937) called it the human genotype. There is more than a simple convergence between Sommerhoff’s and DP2 structures. Both on the neurological and behavioural level it was proposed that the structure be one that is capable of learning. The Sommerhoff concept of shared input corresponds in the social model to that of coordination, and lateral inhibi-

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tion corresponds to control. Sommerhoff’s input sharing excitatory neurons easily translates into individuals who have accepted group responsibility for task, and his lambda modules became self managing groups; in fact he specifically referred to them as groups. Without going into complexities, it is obvious that there are implications for practical theories of human behaviour. Today when there is accumulating evidence that the old mechanics of highly specialised functional control centres or telephone or computer analogues (DP1) are misleading and wrong, there is increasing convergence towards theories of a DP2 brain structure and function (Rosenfield 1988; Bolles 1988), Edelman (1992) in fact uses the metaphor of the self managing group (no supervisor). He shows that the network of the brain is created by cellular movement during development and by the extension and connection of increasing numbers of neurons. “The brain is an example of a self organising system...precise point-topoint wiring (like that in an electronic device) cannot occur. The variation is too great” (1992: 25, my emphasis). “The circuits of the brain look like no others we have seen before”. Not like a computer or telephone exchange, but more like the vast aggregate of interactive events in a jungle. “Brains contain multiple maps interacting without any supervision, yet bring unity and cohesiveness to perceptual scenes” (1992: 69). The brain is a selective system in which diversity exists beforehand and specificity arises as a result of selection ex post facto (1992: 80). Edelman adopts an ecological position with his proposition that recognition is a form of adaptive matching, it is selective. He calls his brain science Neural Darwinism. His specific theory to integrate physiological and psychological processes is called TNGS for theory of neuronal group selection. The three main concepts or tenets are neuronal group selection, reentry and global mapping. In TNGS, the genetic code does not provide a blue print. It imposes a set of constraints. Because of the enormous variation in development, even genetically identical individuals are unlikely to have identical wiring (1992: 83). Thus as we can acknowledge the uniqueness of each person as an open psychological system, so we can acknowledge the uniqueness of each of their nervous systems. The first tenet is that developmental selection leads to the formation of a characteristic neuroanatonomy which is species specific but which possesses enormous variation at its finest levels. A population of variant groups of neurons arising from development and comprising neuronal networks is called a primary repertoire. During development they actively explore a developing brain region using a process of selection and are in topobiological competition. Hence the Darwinism. The second tenet provides another mechanism of selection. During behaviour, synaptic connections are selectively strengthened or weakened, carving out a variety of functioning circuits from the network. This set of circuits is called a secondary repertoire. The third tenet suggests that brain maps interact by a process called reentry, a process of signalling. This process underlies how the

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brain areas that emerge in evolution coordinate with each other to yield new functions. The basis of behaviour is “the selective coordination of the complex pattern of interconnection between neuronal groups by reentry” (1992: 85).

Figure 23. Neuronal groups (Edelman 1992: Figure 9-3)

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The main unit of selection is a closely connected collection of cells called a neuronal group (1992:85). During the formation of the primary repertoire, neighbourhood neurons tend to connect more extensively to each other to form circuits containing varying proportions of excitatory or inhibitory neurons. “This lends a richly cooperative property to the activity of neurons in groups, activity that one would expect to be different in different areas and maps because of difference in their primary repertoires” (1992: 86). “No individual neuron has the properties alone that it shows in a group” (1992: 87). Groups are organised into ‘maps’ and each map independently receives signals from other maps or from the world and the interactions of multiple maps can be coordinated. Events are correlated across maps “without a supervisor” and new selectional properties emerge through successive and recursive reentry across maps in time (1992: 89). I reproduce Edelman’s Figure 9–4 (Figure 24) because it illustrates the extent of the correspondence between DP2 in operation within brain organization and social organization. Edelman proceeds to illustrate a global mapping which is a dynamic structure containing multiple reentrant local maps, both sensory and motor, that are able to interact with non mapped or specialised structures such as the hippocampus, basal ganglia and cerebellum. This insures the creation of a dynamic loop that matches behaviour to the independent sampling of the world.

Figure 24. Correspondence between neuronal maps and cooperating departments (Edelman 1992, Figure 9-4)

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I have dealt with Edelman’s theory in some detail because I want you, the reader, to see how closely Edelman’s TNGS conforms to the organization flowing from DP2. We have unique individual neurons organized into multiskilled self managing groups organized into maps or divisions or departments, organized into an overall structure. Flexible and two way communications take place laterally and between levels. And each level has its own independent communication with the outside world and all operate within a set of constraints springing from both internal and external sources. This set is the equivalent of an organization’s set of strategic goals which change over time to guarantee adaptation and survival. There is a unity and cohesiveness, the reflection of a system principle. The theory also has no difficulty in distinguishing multiskilled, self managing groups with their inherent variability and uniqueness from specialised individuals, groups and structures. In a large complex system, all may be required (Emery and Emery 1974: 107–110). But while there are hierarchical levels and qualitative differences in structures, these are hierarchies of function, not of dominance. Edelman deals with his critics and as he states himself (1992: 97), it is curious that nobody has attempted to criticise the true heart of the theory. Perhaps this is because it is so comprehensively and accurately a description of how a large DP2 system functions. Not that Edelman uses the terminology of the design principles. These appear to be still unknown within his field. In fact Sheldrake in his attempt to search for concepts of organization and adaptation quotes “We have to try to discover the principles of organization. What might such principles of organization be?” (1988: 94) Needless to say, Edelman’s work has received acclaim from ecological psychologists who have long hoped for a systematic theory of neurological organization that can account for ecologically adaptive behaviour. Reed (1989) in reviewing a 1987 essay by Edelman describes the work as a tour de force that finally begins the task outlined by J.J. Gibson (1966). Gibson argued for a system of dynamic regulatory processes in which a given unit takes on different functional roles in different circumstances, the multiskilled, self managing neural group. Reed provides a detailed explication of the convergences of ecological psychological theory and Neural Darwinism including the constant activity of perceptual and neural systems and the concept of resonance which Sheldrake (1988) also uses to great effect. If he has any serious criticisms of Edelman, they are in the area of his faltering “in the face of the unthinking instructionism of modern psychology” (1988: 112). Edelman believes that the problem should lie in the domain of the designed system rather than that of the system designer. And so we see in Edelman’s work the conjunction of theories of ecological adaptation at the behavioural level, the neurophysiological level and at the level of the design principles themselves.

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Now compare Edelman’s account with that of the Desana, a ‘primitive’ people of the eastern Columbian rain forests. They refer to the totality of the human brain as the essence of awareness (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992: 73). It is a living knowing brain that is greater than the sum of its parts. Each part, kae, is itself multifunctional generating a huge array of sensations, forms, traits, etc. which contribute to a person’s outlook and identity. Each plays a vital role within the whole and works in harmony with other kae. This dynamic system of linkages among kae is not seen as “wired” to the tangible, glistening white cords of nerve tissue, which reductionist Western brain biologists picture as fashioned from microscopic neurons engaged in chemical dialogue. The more intuitive and holistic thinking Desana view the brain’s circuitry as far more elusive, consisting of a vast array of fine ethereal threads conducting luminous impulses from one region of the brain to another. This fantastic web, in turn, gives rise to the ultimate source of all human thought and action: the ka’i, or mind”. (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992: 73)

The Desana have developed a series of metaphors to explain the brain which as Knudtson and Suzuki point out, bear a striking resemblance to those developed by our greatest neurologists (74–5). These ancient people long ago arrived at an understanding of the brain as organised on the second design principle. Undoubtedly, many other native peoples have also developed the same understanding. No wonder that most people take to DP2 organizations like ducks to water. Given that they are indivisible systems, it is only to be expected that they should be more comfortable when there is a congruence of structure and function between their neurophysiological and their social or interpersonal organizations. This shows up in indices of mental and physical health. One of the implications is that there is a powerful and innately based motivation towards group structure and organization in social life. In the context of a single small group there is a press towards health: “one of the striking things about a group is that, despite the influence of the basic assumptions, it is the W (work or genuinely democratic) group that triumphs in the long run. Organization and structure are weapons of the work group. They are the product of cooperation between members of the group, and their effect, once established in the group, is to demand still further cooperation from the individuals in the group” (Bion 1961: 135, 170). There is much evidence from anthropology that group structure is the mature form of social and community relations. And as above, within the workforce there is a striking degree of readiness to accept group working. No wonder that the emergence of such a high level mode of function as ideal seeking can take place only within the most mature form of human organization in which responsibility for others and responsibility for self are not dichotomised but fused in the search for a higher level of meaning (Ackoff and Emery 1972). Edelman has made coherent and open to testing many new research paradigms showing that “All wholes (including the brain) transcend their parts by virtue of

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internal coherence, cooperation, openness to input” (Ferguson 1980: 169). There is also the growing convergence of neuropsychology and physics as evidence gathers around open systems. “It is the only part-whole relation that depends on the recapitulation of the structure of the whole in the part” (Asch 1952: 257). “The image of the hologram is that of an information system where every bit contains the program of the whole. It is a key metaphor for our time” (Henderson 1980: 79). Capra and Bohm have brought a higher level of awareness of our place in the universe. There is only one principle to the total cosmic system, ‘the implicate order’ which includes us as a part within the whole. This is open systems thinking. In such a wholistic model there can no longer be a justification for a separation between the human race and an objective physical universe. The latter has ceased to be a feasible conception. Indeed! At every system level we begin to see the relation. Between brain and person, person and group, group and culture, culture and cosmos, the relation is a function of the single system principle. The concepts of system principle and the implicate order make sense of our many observations. If our brains have been battling to cope with a linear logic of abstractions divorced from naive realism, our group life has been eroded by DP1 structure, our culture has denied us opportunities to learn about ourselves in our world, then no wonder that so many of us are suffering the pathology of normalcy. If on the other hand, we can recreate a group life which encourages through cooperation and openness a return to more appropriate behaviours, and supplements them with processes to ensure ideal seeking, then perhaps the ripples will spread in all directions. Organization and affects Having established a possible innate mechanism and motivation for democratic or group structure, it is again to Bion’s particular contribution that we must turn in order to complete the conceptual system. The gap that is left is the relationship between form of organization and the nature of the affects that it encourages or inhibits. “The emotional state associated with each basic assumption excludes the emotional states proper to the other two basic assumptions, but it does not exclude the emotions proper to the sophisticated group.” Bion has shown that anxiety, fear, love and hate all exist in each of the basic assumption groups, but that they differ considerably in each, showing a different “emotional tone”. His reason for this is that there is a certain ‘cement’ in each of the basic assumptions which determines the emotional tone; guilt and depression in the dependent group, anger and hate in the fight/flight group and hope and joy in the ‘pairing’ and creative work group (Bion 1961).

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These dynamics however, arise from the nature of the structural relations that exist in the group. In Bion’s groups the key structural dimension was the relation between the leader and the rest of the group. The basic assumption of dependency which “seems to be that an external object exists whose function it is to provide security for the immature organism” neatly expresses the most fundamental feature of DP1 structure. Responsibility resides in the ‘leader’ or one level removed from the action and actors. “If the desire for security were all that influenced the individual, then the dependent group might suffice, but the individual needs more than security for himself and therefore needs other kinds of groups”; “As the (dependent) culture becomes established, individuals begin to show their discomfort” (Bion 1961: 74, 91). Eventually they move into fight/flight but the structure remains the same. The anger and hate is being directed towards the leader who is still maintaining his psychological distance from the remainder of the group. Bion makes it quite clear that only when this structure changes to that of the ‘work’ group does the genuinely cooperative and positive emotional situation emerge. When the group becomes self managing, the emotional tone changes. And once again — Democracy or laissez faire? As only DP2 structure and culture can provide for and encourage the experience of joy, it is necessary to explore what often appears as a paradox in the concept of the democratic group. The problem lies in the modern meaning of the word ‘control’ and its relation to the freedom of the individual. The implication of the heading is intended. Despite the obviously destructive effects of laissez faire, there are still many within our dissociating cultures who equate it with human freedom and dignity. On first appearances we could be led to believe that the control exercised in democratic structure must be a constraint on the freedom of individuals. In fact, it is in the nature of this form of control that freedom actually lies, and develops as a conscious property of the individual. The key is the interdependence of autonomy and homonomy. The nature of this control is based on the prior condition of shared responsibility. Fingarette (1967) argues that responsibility entails an acceptance of the object offered for responsibility, and that this entails concern for the object. In a group who then accept shared responsibility for outcome, it follows that they must have concern not only for the object or task outcome, but also for the people with whom they are sharing. These people are then of as much concern in the pursuit of successful outcome as is the self and any physical processes involved. Therefore, sharing responsibility for task outcome includes acceptance of concern for the others as people. Only at this level of concern can questions of equality be broached, because awareness of responsibility prevents hierarchical scaling of characteristics, such as skill and experience, from being used to initiate and formalise relationships of personal dominance. Equality that

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arises from shared responsibility for outcome creates the conditions for the experience of positive affect, and in particular, joy. Only when people engage with each other firstly and foremostly as people, can the joy of face-to-face interaction be felt, and the possibility of ideal-seeking emerge. As joy is the carrier and motivator of an expanding objective world, so the opportunities to exercise control are increased. The experience of positive affect allows people to become more truly free, as they enlarge their sphere of control. Thus the democratic form with its foundations in the concept of shared control can give rise to a dimension of human freedom through creativity which the bureaucratic and laissez faire forms cannot. Thus, using open systems, we can understand that learning to take responsibility at one level can initiate the use of the democratic sharing system principle at other levels. Moving down, it will transform neurological patterns. Moving up it may entail a better awareness of caring about and taking responsibility for the wider human condition and the planet. Experience and consciousness Bion’s statement that “Organisation and structure are weapons of the work group” carries another implication. Through the work in the group there has come into being an awareness or conscious knowledge of the existence of structure and its consequences. Similarly, “intellectual activity of a high order is possible in a group together with an awareness (and not an evasion) of the emotions of the basic assumption groups” (Bion 1961: 175). Consciousness of the nature of structure and emotion lowers the probability that one will be captured by DP1 dynamics. Remember that we have defined being conscious as that time when we directly perceive ourself as an actual environmental event in the pertaining set of directive correlations, that is, we directly perceive ourself behaving within that set. Thus, for a group and the members of a group to be conscious of their learning, they must be able to perceive themselves behaving within the DP1 structure and understand their purposeful responses to it. As we have seen above, the basic assumptions and negative affects which arise from the DP1 form elevate the affects above reason and as Tomkins has pointed out, “affect without reason would be blind” (1963: 112. One consequence of this is the recurrence in the literature of the frequency with which ‘personality conflicts’ are said to account for the conflicts and crises endemic in DP1 structures. But of course, when these same people in the same organization undergo redesign to DP2, such alleged personality conflicts are attenuated or disappear entirely. Bion (1961: 160) claims that “the work group...recognises a need both to understand and to develop”. The dependent group may become aware of its own dynamic and yet be unable to deal with it. “The fight flight group shows a total absence of recognition of understanding as a technique”. These dynamics preclude the ability to perceive ourself and the group engaging in those basic assumptional behaviours.

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DP2 structures provide the conditions for the experience of positive affect but can it also provide through processes intrinsic to its structure, the consciencisation of these experiences? Do democratic groups create conceptual knowledge about the relationship of affect and structure? Evidence from Greenfield design sites and from the SC says ‘no’. (Chapter 1 analyses failures of implementation.) Becoming conscious of structure is simple. People will not observe the consequences of structure upon themselves and others if they don’t know that such a concept as structure exists. But they quickly grasp the nature of the design principles and structure when they are introduced in a simple, visual and practically oriented form. They can then apply the concept to their own situation as in the Participative Design Workshop. If our culture were to consciously promote greater health and freedom for its people, it would include amongst its charter of basic human rights the right to learn of and about the nature of organizational structure, responsibility and affects. This learning would necessarily start in childhood where experienced adults would work with them to create and conceptualise their own structures for learning and playing, helping them to capitalise on their potential for both affect and reason, perceptual and conceptual skills. In other words, they would help children mobilise their innate motivations for experiences and consciousness which will lead them in the direction of ideal seeking and freedom. “Of all the principles of ethics that men have been able to devise, none is so fundamental as the ethical postulate that we are morally obliged to meet the demands that coming generations would have imposed upon us were they able to speak to us today” (Churchman 1968: 16). The Participative Design Workshop (Emery and Emery 1974) has been systematically educating for conceptual and experiential understanding of the design principles, and the organizational structures they produce, for 25 years. There is no question of the adequacy of this method for introducing change for adaptation, ideal seeking and experiences of positive affect. It works with teenagers and there is no reason why it cannot be used with younger children. The problem with failures of SC implementation has been fixed by the more adequate conceptualisation of active socio-ecological adaptation and the 2–stage model (Chapter 1). There has been a lack of trained SC and PDW designers and managers. History shows that specific training in both the concepts and effective practice is required. I have designed an intensive course of about 54 hours and this appears adequate to the purpose. Reliable quantitative data has not yet been collected but after many trials in three countries, considerable evidence supports my conclusion of the course’s adequacy to produce competent, careful practitioners. There is also evidence from the training course that participants become highly conscious of their learning and themselves as learners within the planetary,

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social and cultural ecosystem. It appears to produce experiences of joy and energy to motivate continued work and learning. The experiential components of the course produce the same ideal seeking behaviours and results as flow from the events in the ‘real world’ (because the course is a ‘real experience’) and all are debriefed with time for reflection and questioning. It would appear to be a model for diffusive learning towards ‘the getting of wisdom’. We have come more than full circle. The experienced and enlightened people needed for the above task have taken the path towards wisdom through their learnings in and of open systems designed for shared responsibility and ecological adaptation. Both experience and consciousness of and about new learning modes are essential if methods of community learning are to be free of conscious or unconscious manipulation. Once the process is underway as genuine and understood collaboration, its evolution is increasingly under the control of the community itself in its consciously perceived environment, as its members themselves become conscious of the need to act wisely and further diffuse their knowings. In summary Within the affect system there is an innate tendency towards people and novelty. There also appears to be a neurological structural form which approximates the behavioural organization, that which has been shown to be inherently more capable of encouraging acceptance of responsibility, experience of positive affects, more equal and human communications, and an expanded sense of meaning. Given these innate properties, we would expect that there would always be strivings towards ideal seeking as an adaptive mode of human behaviour. But as our culture has been neglectful of these matters, it is necessary to deliberately attempt to fill some of the gaps. Designing circumstances whereby individuals can learn for themselves how to start filling in these gaps, which will lead them closer to their inbuilt preferences, is a start. It would not be a totally effective start if the human capacity for conceptualisation and verbalisation of experience was neglected. There must be opportunities for the consciencisation of environmental, affectual and organizational experience. The final safeguard for non manipulability lies in the nature of the task — non manipulability can be assured only through working towards tasks that people have decided are meaningful to them. They must be action based in appropriate contexts which the group has also consciously understood. This ensures that the learning done will be purposeful and responsible. Given these parameters and safeguards, it should be very difficult for anyone to manipulate such a learning community which has all it needs to be self determining.

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A simple process model of learning to act wisely It remains only to transcribe learning to act wisely into a process. Ideal seeking is itself a mode or process, and a consequence of a type of experience. This experience takes place within an econiche which itself is a communicative medium. A communicative medium in the service of learning or education must by our definition of learning, create the conditions for an orderly expansion of consciousness. Creating a complex exerience has obvious priority. The content of the experience has been shown to be tripartite. Similarly, there are two levels of knowing which must be present for the learning to be consolidated and diffused. The process model can therefore be diagrammed as in Figure 25. The model integrates the components necessary for the creation and intermittent continuance of the ideal seeking mode. Basic components are a set of experiences (inside the circles) of positive affect, democratic organization and the environment, the nature of which are brought to consciousness through a process which involves learning through group puzzling and conceptual knowledge. The experiential dimension presents few complexities. Its practical requirements are simply a self and others to learn about in a DP2 structure, in an environment. The creation of consciousness of these experiences is achieved through the briefings included in the PDW. The closer an individual comes to a perception of the totality of experience as contained in the first stage of this model, the higher will be the probability that such a mode shift will occur. Once it has occurred, the awareness that it has, enhances the satisfaction and joy inherent in this experience. It increases the motivation to continue seeking such experiences: a continuous expansion of universe. This is the “dynamism of life” (Angyal 1965: 5). The process results in an increasing consistency in the translation of ideals into operational purposes and practices towards these ends. This model is a practical tool to guide the deliberate creation of econiches in which individuals can become ideal seeking and wise. It underlies my new training course.

Consciousness & Conceptualization of the experience of

Increased experience AND consciousness of

the experience of Positive Affect

DP2 Organization

Ideal Seeking

Environment (L22)

Figure 25. The process of learning to act wisely

The Getting of Wisdom

Positive Affect

DP2 Organization

Environment (L22)

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Other explanatory powers Does the model have any other explanatory power, apart from being a practical guide to the design of environments for learning? It is a useful framework for discussion of, for example, the role and potential of the sensitivity training movement. Kurt Back (1972: 190, 168) has provided an excellent picture of the reasons that led the T-group methodology to become an international mystical movement. He also documents “how little these deep experiences affect a person’s future actions”. “While sensitivity training is used in hundreds of companies, there are hardly any in which the organization has been changed to conform to the principles implied in the training”. In other words, it has not produced structural change or directed energy towards changing objective conditions. Back does not really come to grips with why the movement did not live up to its hopes. The above model would look for its failure in its lack of totality, both in terms of areas of experience, and the relation of experience and conceptualisation. It was inevitable in a world which was opening up and groping for new insights, that one of the first intuitions would necessarily be about the need to experience a rich emotional life. We could also predict that a methodology which aimed to do just this (expect an intense emotional experience to provide the new purpose or meaning in life) would run out of steam. It would be an experiment which followed the specialist’s part-problem answer. Back explicitly argues that the movement was a direct flow on from the dominant scientific ethic, but that it confounded many of the laws of accepted science. However, it can also be seen that it did not confront the more basic dilemma in social science which is how to engage appropriately with the wholistic and purposeful nature of people. The human-relations movement also ignored the environment and the hard facts of organization, and was still ignoring it years later (Stokes 1981). It also ignored the human ability for conceptualisation. In its efforts to redress the poverty stricken state of emotional life, the movement insisted on two principles which cut across human needs for time binding, a function of consciousness, and mutual acceptance of responsibility towards shared ends. The first of these, the axiom of the ‘here-and-now’, was a denial and rejection of the needs to conceptualise the objective conditions of ‘there-and-then’. It prohibited the extrapolation of learning across to situations outside the immediate. The ‘here-and-now’ effectively negated hopes for the transfer of learning, and almost guaranteed that those who found the initial experience attractive and stimulating would have to return, thus producing dependency. The second axiom was the peculiarly atomistic meaning that was attached to the concept of responsibility: responsibility, if you are a participant, ends with yourself; responsibility, if you are a trainer, ends with the last session. This individualistic concept was of course totally useless to those who were struggling to introduce cooperative and shared forms of activity into their work places and homes. While verbally

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counteracting the bureaucratic rules of supervisory responsibility, it could in practice only strengthen the nature of this control. I am free to attempt to oppress you in any way I choose. You are free to attempt to stop me, if you can. Both axioms conspired towards this end in the more general refusal to accept that there must be conscious acknowledgment of the constraints of structures and environments. Neglect of the fact that for lasting change, conscious conceptualised knowhow must go hand in hand with memories of good experiences, prevented the movement from becoming a force in the ‘how’ of change. This is also the problem with Ferguson’s psycho-technologies and Bohm’s dialogue. They do without doubt produce change in the psyche and the experience of joy, but this is an engine of diffusion. Where and what is the content to be spread and glued into the being of others such that organizations and environments may also be transformed? Diffusion of affect without conceptual and practical substance is empty and ultimately frustrating. It is a partial and therefore, ineffective solution. While our culture has emphasised abstract knowledge to the detriment of confidence in our direct perception and abilities to be adaptive and experience joy, so it is now timely to once again assert that all elements are essential to the achievement of a richer life on earth.

The new Type II culture: Associative, joyful and wise So what is the end point of this cultural change? The end point of learning to act wisely, practising and diffusing active socio-ecological adaptation? Ideally, the new culture would feature the same behaviours as characterise Searching and its related activities and diffusion. People will be associating rather than dissociating, and they will be learning joyfully and collectively rather than silently and individually enduring their hatred of being taught or otherwise ‘informed’. They will also be creatively planning, deciding and implementing ways to further improve the world for all who sail on her, and for the Earth itself rather than making or silently colluding in stupid, short term plans and decisions. There will be a coherent planet wide appreciation of the people — planet system and it will be informed and guided by the ideals. In other words, people will behave as the wholistic intellectual, emotional and purposeful open systems that they are. They will be mobilizing all of their potentials. They will trust their perceptions and experience and within their discrete and diverse cultural and geographical communities, act locally within a planetary framework. This framework will have been established by systematically accumulating commonalities from the community level up through various regional levels to the international level (Emery, M. 1994b). In their personal, group and community lives, they will develop new rituals for celebrating life and death, leaving behind the pale euphemisms for and

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avoidance of these realities. In their productive lives, there will be meaning and personal growth. What is now so inaccurately called ‘technology’ will be transformed into and understood to be a constantly developing useful set of tools which has been evaluated by an open systems technology — the study and meaning of the techne, the tool or instrument. Through this proper use of technology, tools which prove not to contribute to our wiser ways will be dropped, replaced by others developed by the burgeoning creativity released by the new structures and environment. There are already pockets or patches of the new Type II. As wise adaptive ways become more common, pockets of the new Type II spread. The new Type II shares the essential nature of the original and is, therefore, once again genotypically placid and clustered. The intrinsic attractiveness of the new ways is fuelling this spread, leading us to expect that once again they can become the major culture. It will of course look vastly different from the original as it will incorporate the wisest of technical developments and globalization. Welcome to the new world! The theory is internally consistent and the model is complete. All we have to do is make it happen. The next two chapters describe the practice.

PART II

THE PRACTICE

OF

MAKING CULTURAL CHANGE

Introduction Come, and I will learn you something, OR Why don’t you go and learn yourself something.

This form of ‘to learn’ is still used in the vernacular although frowned upon in some circles and described by the S.O.E.D. as “now vulgar”. Besides illustrating the diminution of the concept of learning since the period of Middle English in favour of a fully fledged paradigm of teaching, this older usage captures the essence of this part. Part I discussed the lessons learnt from integrated conceptual development and practice over the years, through the lens of theory. Part II similarly summarises the lessons but through the lens of practice. The practice revolves around the design and management of environments in which new learning can begin and continue. The practitioners are called the ‘designers and managers of the learning environment and process’, managers for short. While this is far from being an entirely satisfactory name and also while in some Eastern philosophies, the teacher is one who ‘learns you’, we cannot simply in our culture today call their function ‘teaching’ without causing confusion. Managers have many and varied responsibilities as they create and manage these environments. Sometimes ‘teaching’ or instruction must be done as in the conceptual briefings in Participative Design Workshops. This is necessary because there is nowhere else that people can acquire this knowledge and they need it in order to be able to design and evolve their own participative democratic structures. Managers need to be highly multiskilled and to be genuine social scientists in the sense that they too are learners, involved in the development of more appropriate search and research methods. But above all else, they must act wisely. The outcome of good management is a self managing learning community. Achievement of this outcome is demanding of maturity, common sense and good judgement. Searching is totally task oriented and genuinely collaborative. To practise it entails many responsibilities. In practice we must distinguish between those basic rules which help bring into being the learning of new rituals for a more active adaptive culture, and those matters of content and substance which in almost infinite variation serve to maintain the individuality of the community. The following practices should be read as our learning about how best to establish rituals for renewal which may result in awareness of more general laws, not the application of laws for a new conformity. By definition then, the content outcome is open ended. But some basic ground rules must be accepted for genuinely collaborative learning to proceed, and once accepted become non negotiable until renegotiated. The experienced manager who knows their theory will have a very clear sense of what is and is not negotiable. Use of this sense is a foremost responsibility.

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Our methods were designed to produce diffusion of democratisation and active adaptation as a continuing process. Crombie (1978) wrote of the dangers of democratic outcomes being externally designed, imposed and/or ‘sold’. There must be congruence between ends and means. Guidelines are provided by the theory and they avoid autocracy and laissez faire. There are many methods devised without guidance of for example, the organizational design principles, but their benefits are shortlived. Only by pursuing processes which to every extent possible convey their messages through their medium, will we encourage others to lose their fear of freedom. Chapter 6 focuses on the Search Conference alone, its major dimensions of theory in practice, external and internal structure and process. This is followed by an essentially chronological account of the practicalities of the process from the beginning of preparation to implementation. This is guidance, not prescription, as there is no recipe. The final design of a Search involves research and judgement. Because so much of the theory in Chapter 4 on managing learning is patently practical, only a further brief note on managing learning is included in this part. Chapter 7 opens with implementation as it is conceived within the 2-stage model. This covers the cases of organizational and the class of ‘community’ Searches which includes industries and issues. It includes a discussion of the choice of method when large systems and numbers must be involved. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a series of Searches and an integration, or a Multisearch? There is also a section on unique designs. I have included this because its inclusion serves to reinforce the message that not everything can or should be forced into a Search. Once the theory is understood, experienced SC managers can produce designs for participative events for virtually any purpose. Many of the lessons in this part can be carried straight over to other formats and purposes such as problem solving workshops and new evolutionary forms of data gathering (Davies 1982). By way of summary, I have included both a section on the comparison of the Search with other forms and a list of don’ts as a quick check list. In this more practical part, it will become clear that effective designs and methods do spring from clarity of conceptual base and that methodological competence is something more than having faith. Part II is offered then as a way of learning yourself. But for those of you who will read only this part, there is a caution. To be effective, you cannot neglect the intellectual dimension of your responsibilities. Learning to mechanically run a group through a Search without conceptually understanding it can be frustrating and destructive. Understanding its theoretical foundations is a part guarantee of its success in meeting purposes and pursuing ideals and certainly contributes to good judgement and ultimately joy. Good luck.

Chapter 6 The Search Conference

Searching is one discrete method amongst an infinite variety of participative events. It is not just a name that one applies to one’s current activities because it is a label in good currency, nor does an activity or intervention become a Search simply because you wish to search. It is neither a technique such as ‘brain storming’ (Sheehan 1969) nor an event designed to improve relationships or communication, or simply gather information. It will do all of these but they occur in the process of building a community which will implement its action plans for its own desirable future. In this chapter and the next, we discuss practice as the translation of the theory. Many people have learnt to design and manage SC’s. There is nothing mystical or magical about the method as Wheatley (1992) proposed. The theory explains it thoroughly and theoretical understanding is critical for good management. The temptation for an inexperienced manager, particularly if the work seems not to be going well, is to throw in something from the past, to dip into their facilitative and OD tool box, without realising that many of these accumulated tools are inimical to the SC and its purpose of helping the community learn to get on with their own work. Many of these tools are based on DP1 and the first educational paradigm. By using these, you mix design principles or educational paradigms and this creates confusion, frustration and evokes a basic group assumption which indicates a refusal to engage in creative learning. We saw this many times at Workplace Australia in 1991 where inexperienced managers pulled ‘games’ out of their tool kits, predominantly to get themselves out of a tight spot. They commonly exacerbated the dynamic. The SC does not use games or exercises. It is totally task oriented and asks only questions appropriate to the current state of the work. This does not mean that it is deadly dull ‘serious’ work. Far from it. It does mean, however, that much previous learning about ‘facilitating’ groups must be unlearnt in order to appropriately manage a Search (Emery and Purser 1996: 210–3). Once managers understand their task, both conceptually and practically, they can successfully implement quite difficult designs in difficult circumstances. Because it is based on a concept, it is very flexible in both design and management. There is no recipe, no formula, no definite number of

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steps. There is a minimum design template which flows from the open system and there is learning concerning the nature of tasks and their introduction that is good practice because it has proven maximally effective to task accomplishment. It is also not a vehicle for teaching the theory.

The design and structure of the search as learning environment A SC is a carefully designed integration of external, internal structure and process which functions to provide a DP2 structure for the practice of ecological learning. Each of the major conceptual frameworks are integrated into an internally consistent practice. External structure or design External structure is essentially the translation of the concept of open system into a design. The minimum classical design for the 2 stage model is seen in Figure 26. This includes the Participative Design Workshop (PDW) modified for design but the details of this second stage are dealt with in the next chapter. Usually, phase 1 of the Search is data collection about the current nature of and changes in the L22, followed by analysis and synthesis of that data into Most Desirable and Most Probable Worlds. Phase 2 consists of a similarly thorough examination of the L11, encompassing again data collection, analysis and synthesis. This consists of a history session, an analysis of the system today and a construction of the Most Desirable System. Phase 3 integrates the learning from Search Conference

L22

L11

Integration of L11 & L22

Participative Design Workshop (for design)

Changes in the world around us Most Desirable and Most Probable Futures Where have we come from, what has made us? Analysis of the System today Most Desirable System Constraints and dealing with them Desirable and Achievable System (Strategic Goals) Action Plans Next Steps Briefing 1 followed by analysis Briefing 2 followed by design Adaptive community grows and diffuses through implementation

Figure 26. The design of the complete (2-stage) model

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phases 1 and 2 firstly into an exploration of constraints and how to neutralize them, secondly into an examination of aspects of both L22 and L11 that can be used or mobilized to help with action plans. The content, therefore, derives from the nature of environment and system. The process is integrated puzzle learning (L21) and active adaptive planning (L12) as discussed in Chapter 2. The learnings from both phases 1 and 2 are literally returned to and scrutinized for the integration process. This may happen more than twice in some cases depending on the progress of the work. It is clear, therefore, that the SC is not a linear method but a recursive one. Common variations The external structure shown in Figure 26 is schematic, a guideline only. Each SC is custom designed, elaborated from the above irreducible minimum. For example, for green field sites and issue Searches where the SC is being used to bring into being a new organization, there is no history or system analysis sessions because there is no system. There maybe, however, examples of previously failed efforts and it may be worth spending some time on these in order to learn from the history of others. Time should be spent making sure that everybody knows why and how the present effort came about. There are occasions when a Most Probable Future of the system needs to be included. Such a task is useful particularly in organizational Searches designed to produce guidelines for structural change, where it is known or suspected that resistance to such change exists. A Most Probable Future, a linear projection from the recent past and present, usually shows that without systemic, structural change, the organization has little or no future. It may show productivity, cash flows, market share or morale declining past the point of no return. Such a participative demonstration can radically reduce resistance. In many organizational, industry and issue Searches, another level of environment may need to be included. This is the Task Environment (Williams, 1982) which lies between the L22 and the L11 (Figure 27). That is, it is a slice selected out of the L22 because of its closer relevance to and impact on the day to day operation Environment (L22) Task environment System (L11)

Figure 27. Relation of task environment to L22 and L11

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of the system. Commonly, this task environment consists of the industry in which the organization or issue is embedded. But it may be the geographical region of a community or organization. For the marketing division of a organization, it may be the total organization. This shows that in complex situations, time is needed to guarantee that there is a shared knowledge of the system in all its various contexts where a system at one level (eg. the total organization within the L22) becomes an environment for the smaller system (the local branch) within it. There are other cases in which there are clearly two or more relevant task environments and this raises serious debates in the design phase about what can best be accomplished in the SC or through other means. It involves judgement and the necessity for trade offs between adequacy of design and the time and human resources required to work through it. For example, a regional university was experiencing changes in its region and also existed in the rapidly changing world of Australian higher education policy. There was long debate about which or both task environments should be included in the design. The higher education task environment was finally chosen. Constraints dictated that only one could be included, government policy was changing more rapidly than the region, presenting a more urgent need for analysis, and there were other opportunities to gather and analyse data about changes in the region. A task environment is handled in the same way as the L22, namely, data about changes is collected and then analysed and resynthesized into whatever form is of greatest value to the purpose of the SC. Most usually, only the Most Probable Future of the task environment needs to be done as this provides the SC community and thus the system, with the essential strategic knowledge of what it actively adapting to. An organization involved in the computer industry will need a well informed and thoughtful view of major directions and changes within that fast moving industry. These may involve information about customer demand for and usage of products and services as these will indicate possibly significant value shifts amongst consumers and, therefore, a search for better received products and services. It will also need an appreciation of new and possible innovations which have the potential for radical redirection which could render the organization’s current product range obsolete. Such a task is obviously demanding of serious consideration and, therefore, time. There will be cases where an organization is a market leader in a particular industry or product line within it. In these cases, the organization may choose to do a Most Desirable task environment as well as a Most Probable because that organization is in a position to direct that industry. Again this work will add significantly to the time required for the Search. There will be occasions when it is necessary to do two levels of Most Desirable System or strategic goals. When a reasonably short time frame has been set, it is sometimes clear that the desirable system cannot be attained in that time. That does not invalidate the strategic goals. It simply means that another step is interpolated

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to translate the long term goals into a set which is realistic for the planning period and which forms a stepping stone to attainment of the longer term set. There have been other cases where a philosophy or mission statement is required. The SC for New Directions for Remedial Education in Victoria incorporated their philosophy statement after their set of strategic goals, the most appropriate place for it. It is very simple and easy to spell out a philosophy or mission statement after all the work deciding on the Most Desirable Future of the System is done. There have also been cases such as the Future of the Canning Peach industry in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area where the action plans were split between short and long term. Growers wanted guarantees that plans requiring action by the management would be implemented. Management promised to immediately fix many small but important long standing problems and thus satisfied, all parties continued to work on long term plans. More complex designs The cardinal rule about design is ‘keep it simple’ but there are cases where more complex structures must be introduced. The Future of Democratization in New Zealand and Australia was called to accelerate democratization and strengthen the cross Tasman network. The Search worked as a community during phase 1 but split into a ‘mirror group’ structure for history and L11 analysis sessions. The function of a ‘mirror group’ is to work with the focal group and ask the questions that a group may not ask of itself, for the very good reason that long standing matters are taken for granted. The histories and experiences of democratization in New Zealand and Australia were separate and different. The Aussies questioned as the Kiwis talked and vice versa. Then the total community self selected into task forces to do the action plans for making it all happen because the goals were common. Variations in sequence A wide variety of designs have been tried over time but the V, the triangle or funnel has been retained through most. It is significant. It says that in a Type IV environment we must examine possibilities (rather than just probabilities) and then gradually narrow into the agreed set of strategic goals. It is only within possibilities that creativity lies and innovative futures and pathways are grasped. Also it is the opposite of the bureaucratic pyramid. Constraints must be left until the SC community is established in the working mode, has decided upon its desirable future and is confident of its identity and strength. Introducing constraints earlier than this can destabilise an immature community, because it all looks too difficult. The sequence of these components is not totally immutable but it cannot deviate from the logic of the open system without destroying its nature as a SC. In some form the design will encompass elements of learning about:

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the extended social field (L22); expression of ideals (most desirable futures); organization or community character distilled from history, present character and perhaps distinctive competence (probability of choice) analysed and desirable continuities agreed, new desirable characteristics created to produce the most desirable system; (L11) what we must take into account in our strategic planning such as constraints drawn from both the L22 and L11, particularly the most probable future and L11 analysis making action plans

Most SC’s begin with an environmental (L22) scan. It is the first act which acknowledges ecological learning as learning to ‘know’, and learning to ‘think’. The data is about a real world and must be analysed and then synthesised into both most desirable and most probable futures at the global level. Without this phase, no conference can validly be called a SC. The time allowed for this phase must be adequate. It is not an exercise and must not be rushed. This phase establishes the nature of the environmental arm of the directive correlation that will be the system’s future. If not done properly, the system is prejudicing its strategic goals. It risks heading in the wrong direction. Surveying the significant historical events and changes is a critical phase for any pre-existing community, network, organization or industry. Gaining a shared appreciation of where they have come from, what has made the system what it is today, and implicitly extracting system character or ‘personality’ is as important a part of the context of people’s planning as is their sharing of perceptions of the L22. The common assumption that most people know their history and share an interpretation of significant turning points is, almost inevitably, found to be false. There may also be quite different interpretations of history. But unless the picture can be put together so that a pattern emerges, a point made by Pirsig (1974: 168), there is little chance that headway can be made in deciding which characteristic features are to be kept and which discarded. Leaving this phase out altogether leaves the group at risk of designing guidelines for the future, which contain so little continuity as to be totally unable to be realised in practice. This of course is one of the reason that standard plans developed by outsiders are never implemented. The people who have to live with them cannot recognize themselves in the plan, it simply isn’t theirs. Character, like ideals, must be brought to consciousness and used. Don’t try and attempt to move straight from the environmental scan, desirable and probable futures (separately) and history, to desirable and achievable futures. Without explicitly acknowledging features to be retained or rejected, the task is too abstract. The result is fight/flight. The community must be able to move between modes, from ideal seeking to reality to ideal seeking etc. It can

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never be overstressed that time spent ensuring that these contextual tasks are adequately done is never wasted, and results in a more efficient pace of work further along as well as the best possible approximation to active adaptation. There have been examples where a manager has reversed the normal order of L22 and history, usually because they felt that history provided an easier, less threatening point of entry. This must be weighed against the disadvantages of not immediately setting the broadest climate of possibilities and not benefiting from the rule that ‘all perceptions are valid’, that rule which confers equality. It must also be weighed against the chance that the history may be conflicted, in which case you prejudice the building of community by risking fight/flight. Or in some indigenous settings, the history may be owned, i.e. only one or more elders may be permitted to tell it. Here you also prejudice community building by starting with a pre-existing status structure (DP1) and dependency. As the design is only a plan, it is impossible beforehand to do other than notionally time the phases. The community may return to earlier phases if it is perceived that they need more work and designs are sometimes changed during the SC. External structure then is flexible within limits. These limits are: • all components such as most desirable and most probable worlds must be included; • but while each discrete component must be present, its final position in the flow of work should add to understanding the future of the system-inenvironment; • any component part may be reworked at any stage to overcome incompleteness or provide a more adaptive emphasis as the perceived need for this develops. This is ‘recycling’ and is a typical feature of working in an oral culture, ‘retracing’ around a spiral with seeming redundancy but providing a condition for insight (McLuhan 1964: 26); • as with other dimensions of the Search Conference, the quality of the external structure is at the mercy of quality of preparation, experience and judgement; • flexibility in the latter stages will be exercised by the search community towards its emerging purposes. Remember that after much intensive, creative work the originally stated purposes of the Search may have changed in emphasis, taken shape in a previously unsuspected form. The dynamics of external structure One of the major purposes of the SC is, of course, to produce self managing learning planning communities and all aspects of preparation, design and management cohere to produce this dimension of outcome. Figure 28 using the example of the Future of Canberra, illustrates the dynamics of external design and the essential character of the SC as it begins at the widest point, that most open to possibility and to ideals (Phase 1), introduces the past (Phase 2) and builds upon

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Phase 1 The Future in Past & Present Cultural Futures

What is happening in the social environment? Where is our culture going?

Now Phase 2 The Past in the Present Where has Canberra come from? What has been its character? Now Canberra's Past Phase 3 The Past and Present in the Future Canberra's future Now

What is the desirable character of Canberra?

Phase 4 Creating the Desirable Future (Action Plans incorporating best of past, present and future) Now

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Phase 5 The Future in Action (Action Creates Diffusion) Now

Increasing participation and creative involvement

Figure 28. The dynamics of external structure (Adapted from Emery, M. 1976)

this to ensure the continuity of the best of the past, the ‘personality’, ‘character’ or probability of choice of the community into the future (Phase 3). In Phase 4, a new community has developed (the SC community) which has accepted the responsibility of securing their most desirable city. Work proceeds rapidly with a facility which renders the managers superfluous. The community has become self managing. This may of course happen much earlier but self management should be established at this stage for success in Phase 5. Internal structure Here we look in more detail at what the development of community implies as foreshadowed in discussion of the parameters of effective communication. How the management actually manages is a critical determinant of the amount and pace of learning. A vision of something different and democratic is necessary but not sufficient. Unless the vision is accompanied by conceptual knowledge of practical moves towards a participative democracy, there are inevitably going to be casualties of all types, the result of lack of concepts, rules and ‘know how’. The absence of these properties leads to the condition of laissez-faire, not democracy.

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While the critical relationship within external structure is that of participants — task, the internal structure revolves around the intra-managerial and management — participant relationship. Where there is more than one manager (and this is desirable) the nature of the intra-managerial relationship must mirror precisely the desired nature of the community. That is, management must share responsibility for the conference as a whole. Management-participant relations must not be allowed to fall into a one to one pattern. Individual managers must not become identified with individual groups of the community. Figure 29 illustrates the divergent models A and C with an intermediate and less than ideal model B. The SC is a large group, not a small group, event. Small groups are used only to put vital detail on outlines, speed up work and validate A

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commonalities. All small group work must be integrated and agreed as community property. Figure 29 illustrates topologically the sequences of figure ground relationship that operate in an effective community building search (C) or a traditional academic (A). The models may be read as sequences in themselves or each may be compared at any point in time to provide an analysis of the effects of different initial and subsequent structures. The traditional academic conference (A) has a particular purpose and ethic derived from DP1, endemic in universities. As above, such conferences are not designed for learning. Teaching (DP1) conferences which attempt to be problem or puzzle solving, yet use a traditional academic format, inevitably result in frustrations and disappointment at consequent inaction. Large international conferences such as World Food, the Women’s Conference in Mexico and the World Environment in Rio are good examples of these disappointments, despite the huge financial and human resources which were poured into their preparation and ‘staging’. In the academic conference the initial conditions at (t0) involve the staff and speakers as figures against the ground of the task of community building. The staff input or action provides the focus, data and direction for subsequent process. Participants relate to or contribute to the task only indirectly if at all. In the SC (pure DP2), there is a division of labour between managers and participants such that the participants are responsible for the content and the outcome and the managers are responsible for the learning environment and process. Therefore, at (t0), the figural properties attach to the task. Managers share responsibility, becoming background. At (t1) in the academic, DP1 structure, the conference may break into groups with their own leaders or ‘facilitators’ and the work of these groups continues to be figural, not only against the background of the averred task of the community but also against the other groups. The conference has failed to come together as a community itself by the final sessions (t2) where the distinction between staff and participants remains as strong as at (t0), but with the added disadvantage that the boundaries between staff as individuals and with special areas and functions have been strengthened. Any end product of such a structure must inevitably be an “and-summative aggregation” rather than an example of “productive thinking” (Wertheimer 1945). Because the task of building a cohesive community was never the figure, it doesn’t eventuate at t3. In distinction to A, Model C at t1 continues with the management concerned with the figural properties of the community and acting as a resource to the community whose working groups have the figural properties. By building in this dual level message through structure, the final sessions (t2) in this model show implicitly and explicitly that learning about building communities is generated through the experience of building communities. Participants and managers as a new community recognise this new entity and the role of the working groups is

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appreciated as an instrumental condition only — internal scaffolding. These dynamics are essential for diffusive learning. Model B represents a transitional or immature form of the SC. While its structure at t1 reverts to the predominance of group work over community generation, such factors as extreme social island conditions, accepting community responsibility for some domestic tasks, and the meaningfulness of the task, may be sufficient to reinstate the community as the dominant and continuing figure. It is obvious from the models that A operates with competition, C with cooperation, as a community. Thus the basic design fault in Model B is built in at t1. When the responsibility for a meaningful task is handed to a large group, its members cope effectively with the task and their own internal dynamics. There are resources hidden in groups that will be fully realised only under conditions of responsible self management. The learning that occurs in self managing task oriented groups is fast and deep. It is simply not necessary, let alone desirable, for managers to be present during small group work. This is one of the most common mistake made by inexperienced or anxious managers. Model B is also quite commonly the result when people attempt to design something like a Search (e.g. Weisbord 1992; Weisbord and Janoff 1995) without understanding the theory. In OD, small groups rather than community have dominated with consequent neglect of rationalization of conflict and integration. It can be seen that internal structure exerts a powerful and pervasive influence. Model A can produce tension and unease in a staff group who have come together with the best intentions of cooperation, and with experience of having worked together before. It can prejudice any serious attempt at building cohesive communities, or producing constructive work during plenary sessions. The role of designers and managers Within the conventional DP1 conference, staff are usually chosen because it is believed that they have greater experience and understanding of the task than participants. They are experts in the content. The role of management in Model C is to fully understand the theoretical framework and concepts underlying the SC and to practice them within an appropriate design. They must also stay within the limits of their role as designers and managers leaving responsibility for content and outcome to those who have to live with the consequence. In a SC, management is ‘hands off’ the content, with very few exceptions. One of the most common few exceptions is where participants have missed a major trend in the L22. In most cases, the easiest and most effective way of handling missing data is to prompt at the data collection stage. Management need intervene only if by the end of the work on the most probable world, this major piece of data is still missing. When participants have missed the significance of a trend and this is clearly distorting their most probable view of the world, managers have a responsibility to raise it, as without its inclusion, their strategic plans

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will be less than adequate. This means that managers must themselves be experts in the L22. This is definitely an area of expertise for aspiring managers. Experienced managers constantly monitor the L22 as a way of life. A member of the organization or a relevant interest group if it is a community, industry or issue Search should not attempt to be a manager. Its just too difficult to maintain the managerial role and any intervention into the content by a manager runs the risk of fight/flight. The one exception to this is when an organization had begun thorough change and appointed an internal change task force whose new responsibilities remove it totally from previous organizational roles and loyalties. Managers must have researched the content and understood it, but must remain emotionally detached from it. The rules for intervening in the system phase are, therefore, different from those at the environment phase above. Only those who belong to the system can be experts in that system while the environment belongs to everyone. Most experienced SC managers have designed and managed on their own. While it is possible, it is always desirable to have more than one manager. Remember that managers must be tuned into the ‘music of the group’, the second level of meaning behind the literal meaning of the words, that tells us whether the group is in the creative working mode or working from a basic group assumption. Managers should be able to alternate the active and listening roles so that if a community reverts to making a basic assumption, they will immediately be able to move into prevention or damage control. The major responsibilities of managers are to: • explain the overall plan and set clear, precisely defined tasks for each phase. • decide which tasks and subtasks are to be small group or community (plenary) work. • manage all plenary sessions towards the integration of work into a community product using the rationalization of conflict model. • manage time and juggle time and tasks. • monitor small group work, intervening only where necessary at the task level, e.g. “how are you going for time?” • deal with outbreaks of Bion’s dynamics if they occur, in such a way as to bring the community back to the creative working mode. • observe the four conditions for effective communication and in particular, practice openness. • be totally task oriented with a light, positive approach. • have faith in other people • get the job done, complete the contract The last three points need elaboration as they are frequently misunderstood by those from the Human Relations school and its methods. The Human Relations approach is not based on open systems and neglects the organizational

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design principles. Therefore, it makes different assumptions about people, their behaviour and the ways in which it changes. Those who have internalized HR assumptions find that within the SC, practices based on those assumptions fall on their face. The first, being ‘totally task oriented’ means that it is no part of a SC manager’s job to make process interpretations. All necessary interventions by a SC manager are themselves task oriented. They do not elevate the status of a manager above that of participants as happens when an OD practitioner or facilitator tells the participants the ‘real’ meaning of what they have been doing. The second point of having ‘faith in other people’ is closely related in that many practitioners of other methods believe it is part of their job to do such things as lay down ground rules for behaviour. Again, this belief and its practice elevates the practitioner above the participants as then they are not given the right to decide their own ground rules for themselves. One of the purposes of the Search is to bring into being a learning-planning community with its own culture. Part of that culture is agreement, implicit or explicit, about acceptable forms of behaviour. Every group of people evolves their own ground rules as they work together. To abrogate their right to do this is to treat them as something less than adult human beings — it is in fact to treat them as irresponsible children. ‘Getting the job done’ makes the point that Searches are not done for fun or for people to simply get to know each other better. They are to get a very serious piece of work accomplished within the time contracted. If a SC community for whatever reason is in danger of not accomplishing the task up to expectations within the time frame, it is the manager’s job to get the community back on track and ensure it does accomplish its task. SC managers must not be scared of taking the situation in hand and redirecting the work. If that means appearing somewhat ‘authoritarian’ or ‘aggressive’ to some of the participants, then so be it. Some participants at the Future of Participative Democracy in the Americas, appeared shocked at the way in which the managers cut through an extended episode of fight/flight in order that the total community succeeded. These participants showed that they had understood the SC to be a Human Relations rather than a task oriented method and had also confused democracy with laissez faire. Yet participants too have made a contract when they enter a SC. They have made a commitment to take responsibility for the plan and its implementation. They are as bound to that responsibility as are the managers. Managers with their process responsibilities and participants with their content responsibilities must jointly find a way to complete the contract.

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Managing the Process: Key features in chronological order All aspects of the SC are subject to careful design and management and nowhere does this apply more strongly that in the preparation, planning and implementation phases in which the SC is embedded. Figure 30 shows that the SC is an intensive episode in a much longer process which may not itself be either simple or linear. It is important to emphasize this as there is always the danger that the SC will again be subject to trivialization. The SC is not merely a discrete event devoid of context and is certainly not something one does at the drop of a hat, without serious preparation. To a large extent, a SC is only as successful as the preparation and planning put into it. Figure 30 mentions specifically the selection of participants in the preparation and the importance of retaining DP2 for maintaining the learning planning community and active adaptation. These are highlighted below.

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The following discussion follows a rough chronological order. When differences in practice exist between the two major classes of SCs, organizational or ‘community’ which includes issue and industry based, each is discussed separately. Preparation and planning I am assuming that some prior invitation and discussion has resulted in an agreement that a Search Conference is the most appropriate method of planning for the presenting circumstances. This agreement will most probably have been forged between one or more clients or collaborators and the person(s) who are to design and manage. If it is an organizational SC, it is important that the proposed managers establish contact with and are sanctioned by the formal authorities. Sanctioning is critical if Searching is to be a valid and concretely useful process. In geographical, issue or industry SCs, many parties may share in the agreement/ sanction stage. Even more complex are ventures such as ‘summit’ meetings between, for example, unions, managements and governments, or purposes including national or international bodies or governments. Preparation for these can

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be immensely time consuming as they may involve individual organizations, their various national and/or regional umbrella affiliations and other parties depending on purpose. Delicate negotiations about sanction, membership and conditions of meeting can be expected. Community development, depending on circumstance, can be similarly complex and sensitive. At other times it may be quick, simple and easy. This may serve as introduction to a basic principle:- from the initial meeting, the potential manager(s) will be seeking to engage the collective client in a participative process of preparation such that every possible avenue is explored for ensuring the Search becomes a solid building block in a continuing process of adaptive innovation. It is an educational process. The customer is not always right. Sometimes the question or task must be revised or even totally reconstructed. The client must understand the reasons for design and management decisions. The time frame decided for the planning must be appropriate. While a manager should not be an expert in the given field and not have a vested interest in the subject matter, they do have to immerse themselves in the circumstances of the system or issue. Without this, the design can be inadequate. The system itself in exploring the SC may itself realise that they require more research data about a particular area before the SC. The date of a SC should be the last decision to be made. It should not be decided until sufficient preparation has been done to ensure confidence in the outcome. Often there are choices between one or a series of Searches or a Multisearch. This search and research phase raises the question of the definition of ‘the system’. The first task is often to identify the system through its existing system principle and to draw its boundary. This can be a major search and/or research task in its own right, particularly for SCs based on an issue where there is no existing system. Once the system and its practical boundaries are clear, those who identified as holding critical pieces of the puzzle may come together to see themselves as a system for the first time. They may have seen themselves as a network or networks but the SC binds them closely around the common purpose. In many cases ‘network’ is used to describe people or organizations which have merely enjoyed some contact through similar or overlapping interests. After the SC, they may continue to work together to implement the adaptive action plans from their own individual organizations or bases. But they have become a genuine system diffusing its purposes. This makes it clear that what is usually called a network is simply an implicit system. Effective networks are systems. They have an identifiable system principle. In other words, networks develop from joint action around a purpose or set of strategic goals. This concept is a feature of the SC in practice and also clarifies the relation between system and network.

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Research There is no formula for deciding how much research, if any, needs to be done, or how it should be conducted. Every system and issue is different. The following discussion can only indicate some possibilities. For organizations who are using the SC as the first stage of a process to change the organizational design principle, there will clearly be a lot of work required in involving employees and unions for simultaneous education and planning. Ideally this will take participative forms. Senior management needs to elicit considered views of the future shape and direction of the organization and get some realistic idea of what conditions and views at the lower rungs of the organization are really like. While senior managers may believe they know this, frequently the dynamics of the DP1 structure militate against them receiving accurate information. There may be a need for specially designed participative events that will not only provide the accurate information but also increase the level of trust in the management through their follow up action. There may also be a need to do similar work with customers, suppliers, distributors etc. It is not infrequent for bad news about a product or service to be hidden away from management or information about cause to be distorted to protect various interests within the organization. Management needs accurate first hand information about all aspects of the business, external and internal before it moves into the SC. And it never hurts to establish face to face relationships with all relevant parties. There may also be a need to conduct quantitative research about international markets, demographics or any other aspect of the business. The possibilities are infinite. It is up to those responsible for the preparation to carefully think and discuss their way through the needs as they unfold. Much of the above can also apply to an industry Search or in some cases, a geographical community Search. The situation for issue Searches can be even more complex and it is not uncommon for there to be a rolling program of research intertwined with the community reference system (below) as more significant pieces of the puzzle are brought to light. Selection of participants Once the system is clearly defined, the most critical element in planning most SC’s is the selection of participants. The first and most basic rule is that only those who can take responsibility for the future of the system can be participants. Remember that the SC is designed on DP2 where responsibility and the work, learning and planning are collocated. Detailed selection needs to be done differently depending on whether the SC is organizational or ‘community’ where the class called ‘community’ includes all SCs except the organizational. For community SCs, it is best to use the community reference system. As the SC participants must engage in active adaptive planning using puzzle and eco-

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logical learning, they are chosen because they carry a piece of the jigsaw puzzle in their heads. If a major piece is missing, the puzzle solution may be inadequate or the implementation difficult. People involved in a system or community know which people have which bits of knowledge. The great advantage of this approach for geographical community, industry and issue searches is that the ‘community’ broadly defined determines the participants. An additional advantage is that in the process of using it, both the SC and its purposes must be explained to prospective participants, thereby providing education and aiding later diffusion. We first used the community reference system in Geelong (1974) and the process is as follows: • First research and draw a rough social map of the system. It should cover all relevant areas, e.g. for the future of a geographical community, small and large businesses, unemployed kids, the voluntary and farm sector, churches, interest groups etc, • Decide the relevant criteria (not just one) against which people are to be judged, eg. expertise in say tourism development, local knowledge of regulatory bodies, intention to stay in the community, covering a range of demographic variables etc. Then add one which is universally applied, namely, known to be actively concerned about the system or purpose of the Search. • Pick a starting point person in each major sector of the map and ask them for two or three names that fit the criteria. This is for help only, no guarantees of invitation are given. • Ask each of the new names to give two or three names that fit the criteria. • After one or two iterations of the process, some of the same names should reappear. Select these from the total list and add to cover the map of the system (jigsaw puzzle). It is not relevant that potential participants be educated, literate or articulate. In this way we operationalise the principle that knowledge of the whole system resides within the system of the Search itself and does not require the presence of experts, external to the system, to inject specialised knowledge. All participants are experts in their own right and function as whole people. It is important to avoid designing SCs based on segmentation. It has been tried with for example, students in one Search, educators in another followed by integration. The results are suboptimal as segmented events miss entirely all the interdependencies and other elements which contribute to mutual learning and community based adaptation. There are some cases which look like organizational SCs but are actually community SCs. State schools are a case in point. Small local hospitals are another. Both of these organizations belong to their communities, cannot be separated from it and must be dealt with as community SCs. Therefore, it is appropriate to include students and members of the community because they all

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hold responsibility for the future of the school. This emphasizes the importance of accurately defining the system and its boundary. This also highlights the fact that SC participants are not there as representatives as they would be on a representative committee. They are not there to argue for and get the best deal for their constituents as happens on a committee. That representative systems do not change actual conditions or provide new futures for the great mass of people has long been documented (Emery and Thorsrud 1969). Participants know how they have been chosen and why. They are briefed that they attend and participate just as themselves. Representation springs from DP1 and has no place in the SC. Our designs aim to be ‘representative’ only in the sense that collectively they cover knowledge of the system and are free of bias, not unrepresentative. Selection of participants is an entirely different matter in organizational SCs. Here the participants are those with the highest operational responsibilities. If the Search outcome is to issue forth with a wide range of innovations, it must have the sanction of the existing powers and it must have the active support of those who control the operational units. For large organizational SC’s, therefore, the membership consists of those who hold responsibility for the health and direction of the corporation, directors and senior management. This most desirably should but may not include the union(s). An organizational SC does not include people such as customers, suppliers, distributors, etc. because they are part of the environment, not the system. This does not preclude participative events with them as part of the preparation for the SC, indeed, such events may be essential. But these people are not responsible for the future of the organization. In small organizations of up to about 40 people, all may be involved. In small to medium sized organizations which are already DP2 or have always functioned as a cohesive unit, selection of participants other than those with responsibility for future direction may involve some modified form of reference system or sortition (Emery, F. 1976a and b), e.g. pulling them out of a hat by functional area. Again this is a matter of collaborative judgement. If, on the other hand, the purpose of the SC is to set up an adaptive relationship between the organization and its distributors, then participation of both parties is required as both must take responsibility for the future of the new relationship. Participation is determined by the definition and boundary of the system which is the focus of the SC, or the puzzle which may become a new system. In some circumstances, it is advisable that the boss be present only at the beginning — to sanction and brief the work of the group, and at the last session — to hear the report. This usually happens where the boss has extraordinary authority or a very dominant personality or a mixture of both, but it is rare. This alternative allows for group cohesion and the expression of more creative work than would otherwise see the light day. Most top managers can see this logic

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when it is explained. If this manager works constructively with the group in the last session after hearing their strategic goals, and plans to implement, there is a higher probability of a better functioning management structure, as a whole. The other critical dimension of preparation and planning is that all participants must understand everything about the purpose and process of the SC long before they walk into it. Ideally, all participants should be as fully involved or prebriefed as possible about all aspects of the Search, preferably in face to face conversation which can lead to design improvements as well as greater understanding of and commitment to the task. Fall-back processes involve group meetings and failing that due to the ‘tyranny of distance’, telephone and written communication. Timing Normally a SC takes two nights and two days, about 24–28 hours working time. Intensive creative work always carries with it the risk of cognitive and emotional overload, to which some individuals are particularly vulnerable. Longer periods increase the risk. But for complex designs, a third day may be required. When the task and community is relatively small and simple, some Searches can be shortened somewhat. A SC is not an everyday event and does not fit normal business hours. Humans are subject to circadian rhythms and also have expectations of different types of activity at varying times of the day. Creative work requires the optimization of all conditions and the best starting time has been found to be late afternoon. It is essential to create a relaxed social atmosphere in which people can become acquainted. Introductions, briefings and expectations can be done before drinks and dinner, preferably an informal buffet style. Work proper starts after dinner and continues to 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. This can be adapted to fit different cultural conventions eg. later meal times, as long as it creates the appropriate atmosphere. It continues through the next day and night with a finishing time around lunch or mid afternoon on the third day. Flexible arrangements also help. Continuous access to tea, coffee, juice, etc is preferable to fixed times. Managers cannot predict exactly when a group needs a break. Buffer times can be built around meals to aid time management so that more time is available for work if it is required. Let us take two examples of the relationship between timing and dynamics. After dinner. When we begin the first phase of the work, learning about the L22, we are asking a group of people who may have only just met, to engage on a task for which they may have no cultural precedents. The creation of an easy, informal atmosphere enlivened by a mixture of the excitement of anticipated novelty and dutch courage, provides support for individuals to make contributions and test the validity and seriousness of the ground rule for the session which is that ‘all

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perceptions are valid’. Those who have attempted to begin this session first thing in the morning in the normal 9:00 a.m. atmosphere of an efficient day at the office often describe the difference in graphic terms. It is important that even if the groups believe they have finished their task in this time, they should be given time to review their work first thing next morning. The idea is to generate and make them aware of the Zeigarnik effect (Marrow 1969: 42–43), that most powerful side effect of the human motivation towards engaging in a meaningful task. Once people have engaged in a task which concerns and involves them, they are loathe to stop until they have a sense of adequate task completion and resolution. There is preferential memory for uncompleted tasks. The Zeigarnik results from a block in task completion and leads to more highly motivated efforts. Incidentally, the process of active adaptation is itself productive of a Zeigarnik effect. As it is by its very nature an infinite process, it cannot in psychological terms be easily turned off which helps explain some of its long term powers. Before bed. The timing of this first phase not only aids the creation of a Zeigarnik but also encourages its effectiveness by use of the following period of ‘dream work’. The efficacy of ‘sleeping on things’ is not an old wives’ tale. Leaving aside the function of sleep as a way of restoring physical bodily functions, there is now convergence amongst researchers that dreaming (REM) sleep is essential as a restorative function in proportion to the introduction of systems of focussed attention, new learning, maintaining an optimistic mood, energy and self confidence (Hartmann 1973). These are the types of mental effort required by methods such as Searching. People often say “I have worked hard all my life but nothing like this”. One of the paradoxes here is that people intensively involved in planning their collective future progressively become more energized and get less sleep. This dilemma of greater need for dream work at the time of its deprivation is one of the factors which accounts for the dangerous overload phenomenon. Hence our advice that if possible the Search should back onto a weekend to allow for compensatory dreaming and sleeping. Venues People cannot be expected to work intensively and creatively in their normal office environments. They require time free of the distractions of phones, messages, families etc. Social islands are desirable and should ideally be such as to provide psychological support to the individual and the Search community as a whole. The participants are brought together under conditions where they can form an isolated although temporary residential community. This helps affirm the importance of the Search in two ways. First, by absolving the community from responsibility to forage for basic material necessities such as meals and beds, it clarifies the status of the work as something over and above the daily grind. There are few people

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who, apart from being on holiday, can escape some domestic responsibilities or interruptions to concentration such as telephone calls. At a deeper level of significance, the opportunity to engage in intensive work carries another message about the ways in which learning may contribute to a more autonomous and homonomous community life. It represents a return to an older wisdom whereby no group decision reached in their night time state of mind was binding unless reaffirmed in the harsh light of day, and vice versa. Accumulating evidence about the subtle effects of biorhythms on emotional states and behaviours lends credence to this age-old convention. There should be sufficient wall space to hang the valuable if temporary paper products. Anybody who has tried to record on a piece of paper wafting in the breeze, suspended from a prickle bush, will appreciate the current usefulness of good solid walls to establish new forms of community learning. Genuinely oral cultures have, of course, no need of such props. All of the above are simply something to aim for. Successful Searches have happened under much less than optimal conditions. But the factor which has been most frequently noted by practitioners as making a special contribution to the development of community is that of being able, without anxiety, to socialise after official closing time at night, preferably then to sleep on site as a member of the community. So much of the consolidatory work of a SC is done after hours, over a beer — or two. In this atmosphere lies some of the diffusive potential. Trevor Williams (1976) has provided an example of the difference that social island conditions can make. An attempt to design a new maximum security prison in Western Australia was continually frustrated by the planning group’s inability to break with established but conflicting ideas about the social function of imprisonment. The difficulty arose from the classical conflict between punitive-custodial and rehabilitative ideologies, and the conventional committee style of decision making merely operated to prevent the group from resolving the dilemma. After eighteen months of trying to produce a design by these means, the participative base was broadened and the enlarged group moved into a remote location where it searched for six days and nights until it had found a way through the contradiction. In doing so, not only did the conference produce a new prison design, but it laid the foundations for working towards improved relations between various conflicting groups. The imagination which participants released to the planning task so inspired the architect assigned to the project that he worked deep into one night to remove a practical constraint on their wishful design.

A subsequent SC placed the design of the prison’s industries within the larger context of emerging trends in work organization, resulting in a substantial break with traditional concepts regarding the content and organization of prison industries and the role of work in prisoners’ lives. Equally, and perhaps more important, a level of trust began to develop during these conferences such that participants felt free to make statements without fear that these would be used

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against them in the political arena of the larger organisation of the Western Australia Department of Corrections (Kidston 1976). Their beliefs were justified and the experience encouraged them to use the search mode again at later times specifically for the purpose of confronting their conflicts directly and in greater depth (Thomas and Williams 1977). However, despite all this, venue is less important than design and management. The essential physical equipment needed for a Search is minimal. Butchers paper, thick felt pens and masking tape are the core items. They are cheap, readily available and do not demand special skills or training. Other more sophisticated equipment may sometimes come in handy but most often it sits gathering dust. Numbers Optimal numbers for a SC are between 20 and 35. Less than 15–20 takes on the character and dynamics of a small group and there is insufficient critical mass of data and perspectives to produce the energy, excitement and sparks for creative thinking that characterise a large group. For numbers above roughly 40, a Multisearch or other alternative is required. (These alternatives are discussed in the next chapter.) The problem with a larger community lies in the relationship between time and small group work. Managers carry around in their heads an equation concerning time for task, number of groups, and group size. When the community must break into small groups to explore aspects of the task in greater detail, there is a limit to group size for good group function. If they are too big, the group will take longer and the quality of work may suffer. But as each group must report back to the community, the greater the number of groups, the longer the time reporting back will take. Then there is the time involved in community discussion leading to report rationalization and integration. The realistic number of reports for a particular task is about three or four. When numbers rise above 35–40, something must be sacrificed. It may be an element of the design or sufficient time to adequately discuss and rationalize group reports. Or it may be people’s free and or sleeping time. None of these options is recommended. If groups have been working in parallel, a useful device is to take one full report and then get the other groups only to add those points of theirs which are different. Building such a cumulative picture also serves the purpose of integration as well as time saving. But if there are conflicts built into the group reports, then all must be reported in full prior to reaching common ground. And of course, the cumulative method cannot be used when groups have been working on different tasks. Starting and finishing times are non-negotiable and once these times have been agreed by the whole community, it is the manager’s role to fit the whole task within them. Thus judgements are continually being made about the timing of sessions in relation to the necessity to do the whole job adequately within agreed

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constraints. Some judgements about duration, numbers and timing are therefore a critical component of the preplanning and preparation stage where good judgement depends in part on the extent of participation in this planning. The intensive event: The Search Conference Here we run through the major stages of the event. The processes described are those that have proven most effective but there will be occasions when other ways and forms will make more sense or fit better with the realities of task, people and circumstance. Introductions, briefings and expectations Apart from the normal formalities of introductions and welcomes, managers must run through the plan and again brief participants about the rationale of design and process, including the internal structure and role of management. This plan on butcher’s paper remains in full view throughout as it serves to anchor time management and the responsibility of both managers and participants to honour the commitment to complete the event in the time contracted. One of the most common omissions is this orientation in terms of plan and timing. The result is participants feeling at sea and with little chance of becoming self managing. A good manager refers to the plan at regular intervals so that the participants are involved in the need to juggle task and time. In the briefing, managers will spell out their expectations of the SC. A reciprocal participants’ expectations session follows with small groups, introducing themselves and recording their expectations of the SC. These are reported and any misconceptions are picked up and clarified by the managers. Theoretically, the prebriefings should have righted any misunderstandings about the SC and what it can accomplish. But another safeguard never goes astray. If misconceptions are not dispensed with at the beginning, they are likely to surface during the process, and usually at the moment which will create most chaos. The group expectations also provide an opportunity to get to know some participants better and both briefing and expectations contribute to an open atmosphere. Emphasizing the use of butchers paper right at the beginning sets the climate for openness and also serves as an introduction to the fact that there are rules and conventions of process. It serves as an initiation into internal structure and self management as accepting responsibility for the outcome. The ground rules which are imposed by management in the early stages of a Search are all task oriented. They are designed to suspend the exercise of rules, rituals and judgements which are unconscious because culture bound. Search rules are designed to provide a breathing space, a sanctuary from ‘normality’ which may allow even the most timid, inarticulate or culturally deviant person to express just something of her/himself and world view, in other words, to move

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outwards the limits of perception and tolerance. We insist that all group and community work should be recorded on the butchers paper and have to continue stressing the importance of this ritual because its effects are not widely understood. For example it has been seriously suggested that we ‘modernise’ the SC by sitting each individual in front of a PC, in the interests of efficiency. Butchers paper has few of the disadvantages of other technologies. Tape recordings must be transcribed, edited or summarised by someone after the event. Individual note taking denies access to the record and risks serious distortions. Blackboards can be wiped clean. Computerised white boards produce pieces of paper which when copied and distributed, individuate the community. With butchers paper there is no need for electricity or sophisticated technology. It confirms the message that there is time and space for everyone to make their contribution to the shared record. By encouraging cooperation towards a collectively owned, open and permanently visible record, it also says that the most important data are the various contributions of all members — each and every one is sharing in building the future. It supports a participatively democratic culture based on spoken language because it is only a backup to a conversation. It turns a room into a community home. New associative rather than dissociative rituals are being established. The first session: Learning about the L22 (Extended Social Field) This is the critical session as this is where all of the major conceptual frameworks come into play, setting the scene for the establishment of an active adaptive strategic relation between system and environment by an active learning-planning community. It has a major role to play in determining internal structure and establishing new cultural conventions. This is particularly so for those assumptions and practices pertaining to the role of personal perception and its interrelationships with cooperative learning, tolerance and celebration of difference. When human beings are given the opportunity to work and live within a structure which encourages cooperation, they cooperate. This session provides data about change in the cultural field and by taking the individuals out of their own narrow worlds, it begins to create a shared world. “Freedom appears, socially, when men...learn the necessities of their own nature and of external reality, and thus share a goal in common. Then the common goal and the nature of reality uniquely determine the only possible action without compulsion” (Caudwell 1949: 114). To achieve a mature community confident in its identity which will subsequently support community learning it is necessary to create a non-threatening situation where members can identify a framework of shared perceptions and ideals, one which is sufficiently broad to encompass any areas of probable disagreement. This process allows individuals to give notice of their presence as individual persons. The importance of the ground rules is thus to show it is

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possible to work without group assumptions and without subjugating individuality to group purpose. There are many ways of bringing about such a group identity but few of these generate diffusive learning. This work is divided into two phases. The first is data collection in community (plenary). A manager draws up a rough open systems diagram and explains without jargon the importance of knowing the world around us (the L22). They then explain the necessity of collecting data about its nature and changes and then analysing and synthesising it into forms that are useful for the planning. The nature and duration of the introduction will vary according to the previous experience and briefing of the participants, but like everything else about the conduct of a Search, it should be simple and clear. It is possible to do a perfectly adequate briefing in about three minutes. For example, it makes sense to people that if their planning is to be effective, they will have to know which way the rest of the world is moving. for example, there is no point in spending millions of dollars developing a product that nobody will buy because it contravenes their value systems. This does not mean that adaptation as practised in the SC is a passive process, quite the contrary. But it means that any one given system needs to know the changing reality against which it is doing its planning. Everyone is invited to contribute the events or changes they have noticed in the last few years in the form of a brainstorm where the basic ground rule is that all perceptions are valid. Participants are invited to contribute anything that they have seen happen that has struck them as novel or significant in the last five to seven years. It is important that managers choose the right words here as for example, use of the word ‘trends’ has already moved a step away from the data and if invited to discuss trends, this opens the door to participants interpolating their own individual interpretations of the data. Managers do no more than record these perceptions and if necessary, prompt with such questions as “What have you seen happen in the world of work, the family, the Southern hemisphere, etc.” if such major areas of data appear to be lacking. When managers simply introduce, explain in everyday language and then record perceptions, they demonstrate their role. A high powered or long theoretical introduction would convey a message entirely incompatible with the required lack of social and status distance between participants and managers. Data collection will continue until it becomes clear that perceptions are exhausted. It is important to state that if a contributor thinks her/his perception has been inaccurately recorded, then s/he must speak up and ask that it be changed to the form in which it was intended. As the data collection slows, the managers will call a halt for a perusal of the lists of perceptions of changes that have happened. If it is clear that a particular area such as geopolitical or economic change has not been adequately covered, the managers will request that this area be given some additional thought. Because of the peculiar nature of their work, SC managers have a responsibility to

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keep up with changes in the L22. They also know that forces arising from the environment can make or break any system plan and must therefore ensure that the final profile is comprehensive and adequate to support the work of future sessions. The brainstorm reinforced by the ground rule brings into play direct perception, ecological learning and gives credence and value to it. An additional value adheres in the process of assuring the less confident and articulate that the SC environment is participatively democratic as it was avowed to be. It, therefore, contributes to openness and begins the process of building trust. If a person has perceived something contrary to an observation already made, that perception too is simply recorded. Thus the final list will mirror reality with all its opposing trends and values. I tell them they can argue as much as they like about these in the small work groups to follow. This is the only way we have found of creating that sort of cultural vacuum whereby people may legitimately begin to express their individual experience and increase their confidence in it. It creates a hiatus, a pause in monochronic time, for reassessment. The time frame of 5 to 7 years for relevant perceptions elicits ‘the embryos of social change’, those emergent systems which may indicate value shifts and develop into major social movements (Chapter 2). As the database grows with participants building on each others’ perceptions, they become aware that they are all living in the same world. The mass of data produced is hung on the walls where it stays for the duration of the SC as a reminder that the L22 is still out there shaping their future and their plans continuously. (In the latter stages of the Search, it is easy for participants to become so immersed in the detail of their own operations that they forget the role of the L22. It is also useful to tell the community, that, as sometimes happens, should anybody see that an important piece of data is missing from their collection after their group work, they may add it on the condition that they inform the community about this. Explain to them that it is important that everybody shares all the information all of the time because we are all involved in the building of this community. A mistake in failing to emphasise the very real importance of this task of learning about the L22 can have serious consequences. Managers who emphasise the session’s properties as a community-building task to the detriment of its central role in long-term adaptive planning may well find the next morning that the feeling is “well, that was good fun last night, now let’s get on with the real work”. Any understanding has flown out the window and management’s suggestions that last night’s work be reviewed before moving on may meet with fight/ flight. Even worse, management’s failure to intervene to make more adequate and accurate an assessment of the L22 can result in misleading scenarios, far short of reality. Conducting the first, and as many sessions as possible, as a total community carries sufficiently the message that the SC is a community building event.

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The second part of the first Phase is analysis and synthesis of the data collected (Group and community). Here the community comes to grips with the meaning of the L22 data: the significance of the changes they have perceived. Ideally, everybody should do both the Most Desirable Future and the Most Probable Future of the world. But a random selection of participants into about four groups, at least two to work on the Most Desirable Future and two to work on the Most Probable Future of the World by the end of the planning time frame, is adequate and serves several purposes. The first is that in the course of the group work, the community really has to analyse the dynamics of the L22 and weigh up the importance and interdependencies of the many changes they have identified. They have to choose between opposing changes and trends. In doing this they are, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, using systems dynamics and analysis as explicated in Emery, F. (1967). The second is that in specifying their Most Desirable World in year X, these participants are, without using the words, expressing their ideals. While these snapshots of the Most Desirable World in year X are not analysed at the time, it is usual to find that each contains all of the four ideals (Chapter 1). It is during this phase that major perceptual reconstruction often occurs (Chapter 3). The Most Probable World in year X, that scenario which will come to pass if we do nothing to change what is happening at the moment, is therefore, the most probable set of interdependent directive correlations given the direction of value movements expressed through system change today. It is a linear projection from the most powerful recent and current values as they express themselves through the events and changes. The Most Desirable World in year X is also constructed from the data but the task permits the participants to assume that people will continue attempting to improve the world. Both tasks and the nature of the products must be specified precisely, e.g. bring back no more than one piece of butchers’ paper on which there are not more than six points describing either the Most Probable or Most Desirable World in year X. While there can be much argument and paper used during the group working phase, the size and shape of the product has an important bearing on the success of the next phase which is to integrate the group reports into two community owned products, a Most Probable World and a Most Desirable World. Should a group bring back an endless list of points on many sheets of paper, it would indicate that little of the difficult work of analysis had been done. It would also make the task of integration logistically difficult. It helps to give a handy hint to the groups not to begin by specifying a set of Aristotelian categories such as ‘political’, ‘social’, ‘economic’, etc. The critical interdependencies shaping the future of the world cut across this Aristotelian framework. The work may bog down or the interdependencies get lost as participants struggle to fit the new world into old and inappropriate categories. It also helps to tell groups that they are to describe these scenarios as if they were taking

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a global snapshot at that point in time. Their points should be expressed in the present tense, this is what exists in year X. It is also critical that these snapshots are concrete and specific. Simply repeating a trend statement such as ‘there is an increasing gap between the haves and havenots’ or saying ‘the education system is improved’ is inadequate for the planning task. The first example indicates that the group has not done sufficient work exploring the implications of increasing the gap long term. The second indicates that the group has done insufficient work sorting out exactly what is going in education, what values are dominating and what the outcome of that is most probably going to be. In the process of reporting and integrating, we operationalise the Rationalization of Conflict (Emery, F. 1966) (Figure 31). Group reports on the Most Desirable World are hung next to each and both verbally reported. Two sets of questions are raised. First there are questions of clarification of the groups and then a question as to whether anybody is not committed to or is not prepared to work towards any item on any of the reports. If there is such a response, it is firstly debated fully in plenary. If there is substantial disagreement, a couple of people from different sides may be detached from the community to see if the point can be negotiated, while the rest gets on with the task of integration. If negotiation fails, the item is put on a Disagreed List. It ceases to be part of the further work of the community. This process is repeated for reports of the Most Probable World. The words change only slightly to reflect the different status of the most probable as a hard data, linear projection, e.g. is there anything that you disagree with will be part of the most probable world. The rationalisation of conflict, therefore, begins at the very beginning of the Search. Most conflicts concern some aspect of the L11 and its function. The first phase of the Search, exploring the L22, contextualises and therefore, recentres the conflict. This is the first dimension of the rationalisation of conflict. The second is to precisely establish common ground and to know exactly where lies the thin red line between agreement and disagreement. Conflicted groups tend to assume a greater area of conflict and less common ground than actually exists. Once the

Two Systems in Conflict Total Consensus

Not towards Two Systems as One

Figure 31. The rationalization of conflict

Rationalization of Conflict

Towards establishment of common ground, the area of which can be enlarged

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common ground and its boundaries are clarified, the community can continue work towards its goals on the basis of the common ground regardless of its size. In this process we are not assuming that there will or should be consensus within the community. To do so is unrealistic, certainly in cases such as Industrial Relations where there are legitimate and institutionalised adversarial positions. It is also silly to expect 30+ people to agree about everything. When group reports come back, the commonality between them is obvious and usually much greater than anybody had anticipated. Participants have validated a common ground. In the case of the Most Desirable World which is based on the human ideals, they have all given presence to the others of their basic psychological similarity. In the most probable, the common ground has been established showing that they do share an objectively ordered environment. Because the total process has been open to all, we have present the three conditions leading to the building of an open, trusting and communicative community (Chapter 4). This community is learning, energetic and joyful where the future energy for action is derived from the positive affects generated during the event. SC communities exhibit the ‘joy of learning’ and as joy is a contagious, expansive affect (Tomkins 1963), it serves as a precondition for active, diffusive implementation (Chapter 5). By using this process of rationalisation through the Disagreed List right from the beginning of the SC, a simple and controlled mechanism is available and practised for all further stages where more intense conflicts, closer to home may be waiting. Another point needs to be made here. In today’s world there is much consternation about ‘verbal aggression’. It should not be surprising that when people are engaged in planning around their most deeply held concerns and purposes, they may be excited over differences. If they were not, there should be concern that either the wrong people were in the room or that dissociation (Emery, F. 1977b) had reached such a point that all such participative planning was useless. There would be little hope of active adaptive planning communities producing the energy and commitment required to see them through implementation. The advent of the dissociated individual has created a taboo on verbal aggression and challenge. Dissociation has led to people speaking “with little regard for the effect the utterance will have on the listener and thus their speech is non-social. The result is utter confusion and a total breakdown in communication” (Farb 1973: 66). When all of the necessary pieces of design and management are in place, there is little to fear from argument or anger as these are respected for what they are in this context, the expression of care and concern for the outcome. As Ong points out (1967: 195), non literate cultures accepted verbal hostility as part of the manifest fabric of life to a degree beyond that conceivable today. But it was hostility within a network of relations and rituals which themselves guaranteed the peace through social and economic interdependence.

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It is the affects that power diffusion and as the SC is designed and managed for effective, influential communication through spoken language, ‘phatic communion’ or ‘social cement’ (Malinowski, in Farb 1973: 24–5) the whole range of affects can be expressed without destroying the bonding of the community around shared purposes. These provide the network of relations and the processes of the Search begin to establish a new set of rituals which support an expressive learning community. Integrating the group reports is a simple process. Assign a number to each of the points on one report and ask the community which points on other reports are identical in substance or could be put together as different parts of the one point. These items are assigned the same number. Items which stand alone are assigned a number after the commonalities are accounted for. In this process, all of the richness is retained and nothing gets lost. One or two people from each group are then asked to prepare the integrated list, usually over a break. The integrated Most Desirable and Most Probable Worlds are then briefly reported by the integrators and finally become the agreed property of the whole community. They are then hung in a prominent place. From that point they act as benchmarks and guides for the direction of future work. They also serve to remind the community of the extent of its common ground. This whole phase then serves many different purposes and levels of meaning. Its success as a creative working mode can be judged by levels of energy and positive affect and its products as above. The gap between desirable and probable, the planning space, acts as a further incentive to work and learning. Phase 1 also puts the stamp on the nature of the managerial — community relation. Once the session is in full swing, there are other obvious pitfalls to be avoided if momentum is to be maintained and the relationship consolidated. Managers should firmly but good-naturedly enforce the first ground rule, writing up contrary opinions as valid data, and allowing questions for clarification only. They must act only as a resource to the community. In all ways they must practice their preaching. The media is the message in this matter. No matter what the declared democratic aims, people tend to read as most valid the second level messages sent by managers, the unspoken intentions rather than the words themselves. Some people when in front of a group always manage to give the impression that they are attempting to shape their audience to some unrevealed end. It is unfortunate, but some people for whatever reason of upbringing or education do not make competent managers of such a process. They are not genuinely of the people (Freire 1972: 147). Managers must transmit messages which by their power to produce emotional dynamics appropriate to the production of a cooperative learning community, enable them to transfer responsibility and management over to the community. A manager who delivers instructions by talking down or behaves in a way which negates the parameters of effective communication, creating distance between

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themselves and participants, may not have the instructions heard anyway and will find increasing difficulty in managing the process. People are highly sensitive to ‘the culture of invasion’ and resist it (Freire 1972). They will, on the other hand, readily cooperate and follow instructions given by somebody who sends out the message that ‘we are all in it together’. Those who can start a group off on a relaxed and democratic tack will quickly experience the rewards of being accepted as a members of a community which trusts and respects the experience they bring to the furtherance of the community’s purposes. Learning about the L11 (System) In the basic classic model, there are usually three distinct steps. The first consists of a history session, ‘Where have we come from?’ ‘What has made us look the way we do today? (community). In anything other than a greenfields site, there needs to be a history session. The answer to the questions above is as important a part of the shared context of the community as is the future they will inhabit. Assumptions that people know what has made them look the way they do are invariably wrong. More than this, there can be different histories or conflicting histories. These are usually conflicting interpretations rather than facts or events. It is important that all versions are aired and that people understand how deeply others were affected by various events and changes. The history session often significantly enriches the growing cohesion within the community and frequently marks a turning point. With the history session, the community begins to explore its ‘probability of choice’ that dimension of their choices which expresses the unique character of their system (Chapter 2). The history session starts at the beginning of the system regardless of whether that was 50,000 years ago or last year. In spelling out the significant events and changes that have brought the system to its current shape, the community is implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, learning about its essential continuities in which are embedded its probability of choice. Strategic plans which are non-participative or externally devised and imposed, miss this dimension. They have a standardised character to them and feel alien to those who have to live with them. If some of these continuities are not extended from past into future, implementation will flounder as the plan does not encapsulate the living ‘personality’ of the system. The process of the history session is very simple. It is a large group (community) conversation through which the community compiles a time line of formative events and changes through the life of the system. There is no small group work in a history session. The manager simply records the conversation as it happens. The conversation leaps backwards and forwards in time as people recreate their past in the future and make meaning of it. We usually ask the oldest and most experienced members of the community to open it up. Their experience of living through so much of the system’s development and their telling of it first

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hand to others who care deeply about its further development makes for compelling and deeply significant learning. The historic event is “the event alive in its present...in its actuality, is when it is going on now, the dynamic dramatic active event” (Pepper 1942: 232). Oral ‘telling’ using “heightened language” exposes the hidden laws embodied in human environment and expresses feeling and judgement (Caudwell 1937). These powers of spoken language relating the past, produce celebration and pleasure in the pursuit of knowledge and as in the old oral cultures, the difference is to feel or know reality rather than to merely see the truth. Telling the event conveys both its total meaning (quality) and the details and relations (texture) which make up that character or quality, its intuited wholeness (Pepper 1942: 238). The ‘teller’ was then as now, the educator and this form of cultural learning represents a mobilisation of the conscious memory. The processes in train here are not, however, those of a one to one relation between the teller and individual member of the audience but are a product of and “intensified by participation in group activity” (Havelock 1963: 40). Younger or newer members of the community ask questions of the elders as they absorb the meanings from the past and make them part of themselves. The means by which the communication is made effective are the positive affects and the learning “is an act of personal commitment, of total engagement and of emotional identification” (160). As the time wanders towards the present, more members become involved in putting the story together and a complex web of interdependencies is woven through different experiences. Search communities vary in the extent to which they make explicit their learning from their history. It is in the culture of some communities to be very articulate about drawing patterns from the history. For others, their learning remains unspoken but a manager can see the nods around the room as a pattern is recognised and implicitly noted. The history session becomes a fully participative community event amplifying the common ground established in Phase 1. The second step involves analysing the present (community). With both future and past contexts in place, the community enters another analytical stage. Here it builds upon the learning from the history session and should by now have sufficient trust in itself to openly acknowledge problems and weaknesses as well as strengths of the current state of the system. The first SC in 1960 used a distinctive competence analysis and this can still be useful. A more comprehensive analysis is provided by strengths/weaknesses. But both of these approaches are still narrow and by selecting these dimensions, miss others. It is more useful to broaden the analysis to capitalise on all of the dimensions of the system touched upon by the history session. Many of these are subtle cultural or other dimensions which lie outside the normal parameters captured by an essentially business or rationalist oriented analysis. An analysis based only on ‘probable efficiency’ or ‘relative value of outcome’ will again lose

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essential character or ‘probability of choice’, the unique, intrinsic factors contributing to homonomy or belongingness. A basic three-way classification of ‘keep’, ‘discard or chuck out’ and ‘create’ cuts across all these dimensions and neutralises forces towards inadequate, ‘rational’ or merely economic models. Its process uses the same rules as the original brainstorming of perceptions of L22 change, reinforcing confidence in their direct perceptions and values, their naive perceptual realism (Chapter 3) and in their openness and DP2 structure (Chapter 4). Items may appear on one, two or each of the three lists. This process, building on the history session, is just another preparatory step in the mutually supporting processes of building a community as it builds its active adaptive future. The ‘keep, chuck, create’ lists can also serve as the basis for a most probable future of the system when this is considered necessary. The most probable is simply a linear extrapolation from the keep and discard data. The third step is agreeing on the Most Desirable System. Dividing the community into small mixed groups which will work in parallel on the future of the system again sets the scene for mutual validation, confidence and trust building. The membership of small groups after the first experience with most desirable and most probable futures is virtually unlimited. There are some provisos though. However the composition of small groups is chosen, no one small group should be allowed to function throughout with constant membership. Two or three such groups will take on figurative properties and a competitive atmosphere will develop. It is important to avoid the formation of in-and-out groups which can regress a SC back to Model B as above. One of the functions of group work is to provide maximum possible opportunities for people to get to know each other through working together. Group membership should constantly change except in the case where groups by the pre-arranged reporting back time, have either not completed the task or have been judged to have inadequately treated it. In some organizational contexts where the board, for example, is a legal entity based on proportional representation, it is useful to preselect groups so as to maximise geographical diversity, and facilitate new clusters of working relationships. If there are conflicts between states for example, you may organise selection to avoid bunching of those state members. There need be nothing deceptive about this, the reasons for the selection and rationale over time can be put just as openly as any other aspect of the overall plan. Most organizations are well aware of their inherent disabilities and hopeful of learning to overcome them; it’s usually one reason they came. Barring these sorts of considerations, the managers can just select by a neutral device such as alphabet or numbers as for Most Desirable and Probable Worlds. Again, task instructions must be precise.

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Group reports on the Desirable System are again hung together and the process discussed above for rationalisation of conflict and integration is repeated. When it is complete, the community has itself a most desirable future. The items which compose this desirable future are the community’s desirable strategic goals. In cases where there are more strategic goals than can be comfortably managed by the community, say more than 10, there is a choice between attempting to integrate some which have strong interrelations and some process of assigning priorities. Assigning priorities can be one of the most important tasks a community faces and yet it is frequently, inadequately handled. The most common approach is a form of individual voting which derives from DP1, inappropriate as method for a DP2 community. Little thought is given to the fact that an aggregate of individual votes will yield an entirely different product from a considered community view. In addition, the individuals who vote are not usually given time to consider the criteria against which items should be considered for priority. Managers who use this form of process usually have little awareness that the phrasing of the question will itself lead to quite different sets of priorities. Such an important task requires much more by way of serious reflection and work. First, the community should go back into their previous groups and decide the three or four most relevant criteria to be used in deciding the priorities. When a set of criteria is agreed in the community, groups reconvene and then use these criteria to assess each strategic goal. Reports are taken in the normal manner followed by community discussion and negotiation of the final set. I have conducted many experiments where groups have used both approaches and then compared the results. They always unanimously choose the second thoughtful, group method, and the different but higher quality product it achieves. This is just one more instance in which managerial understanding of the design principles translates into a far superior process. Integrating environment and system By this time, the community has done all the learning required to establish the directive correlation for active adaptation and has become genuinely open, trustful, and creative. There are two major ways of proceeding, one is longer and more rigorous, the other a short cut. The first is for the community to identify major constraints, break into groups to deal with them and report. The community then reviews its strategic goals in the light of this work and makes a judgement as to whether these goals need to be modified. It is very rare for a community to revise its goals but it has happened. The result in both cases becomes the Most Desirable and Achievable System. The community then self selects around the goals and makes action plans to achieve their goals.

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The second way is for task forces to immediately self select and look at the major constraints applying to their strategic goal and deal with them before going into fully fledged action plans. Its advantage is speed. Its disadvantages are that less consideration is put into dealing with constraints which may apply to all goals and there is no opportunity for the whole community to revise those goals. In both options, data and work from all previous sessions are put to the service of integration and action and the community becomes self-managing. The self selected groups or task forces now act on behalf of the total community and are left to their own devices to work over the last night. It is usual to allow for and give notice of an interim plenary. This is for reports of work in progress so that the community can check directions and ensure that there will be coordination between action plans at the end. At the beginning of the integration phase, I now give a short briefing on the Strategy of the Indirect Approach (Chapter 2). By this stage, I am trusted by the community and such an intervention is not interpreted as an imposition. If it was, my reversion to the Mixed Mode would cause an outbreak of the group assumptions, most probably fight/flight. My introduction mentions our cultural predilection for the Direct Approach which does not enjoy a great track record in a Type IV environment and has led to failures of implementation. This briefing also has the advantage of amplifying the task instructions which are to identify the major constraints and work out what can be done to remove, go around them, etc. Putting the emphasis on positive action neutralises any remaining forces towards negative affect, e.g. there are too many problems, its too hard, etc. This is one reason why constraints are left as close to the end as possible. Concentrating on them before the community has experienced itself as confident and creative would itself be a major constraint to its development. To identify constraints, the community must survey all its previous work, particularly their Most Probable World in year X (environmental constraints) and the ‘Discard’ or ‘Chuck out’ lists (systems constraints). For the action planning, they similarly survey their Most Desirable World and the ‘Keep’ and ‘Create’ lists to identify vectors with which they can be symbiotic, adding power and momentum to their strategies and action plans. I give a few handy hints for action planning such as the first issue to be addressed is ‘who needs to be gotten on side?’ Good action plans generate rather than consume support and resources. All plans must be totally concrete. The most successful sets of action plans are also those which are nested in time. If the strategic time frame is 2004, it is desirable that for example, subgoals for 1997, 1999 and 2002 can be specified. These provide an automatic scheme for monitoring progress over time. Monitoring the field and its changes is an essential part of the Strategy of the Indirect Approach and active adaptation itself. Because constraints have been put in the positive, task forces often find that their work here has provided major leads, if not strategies, for many of the

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positively oriented aspects of their chosen strategic goal. It is rare to strike problems here, particularly after putting constraints under the creative gaze. So much formative work has been done up to the point of agreeing this future that very few surprises can remain. Action plans, therefore, flow naturally from the work done on beating the constraints. This third phase of the Search is just as critical a part of it as the first or the second. An event in which this phase is missing cannot be called a SC. About one third of the total working time of the SC should be budgeted for it. One of the most serious mistakes a manager can make is to run out of time for Phase 3. One way to avoid this is to mark a non negotiable starting time for Phase 3 on the plan and draw the attention of participants to it. This will usually be round late afternoon of the first full day in a 2 day 2 night SC. Final task force reports finish the SC when it is to be followed by a Participative Design Workshop for designing an organization for implementation. When this PDW is not required, there will be a session where the community plans its continued life. This is the ‘next steps’ session and it is here that the community decides what to do with its immediate product, usually some form of report, who should do it by when. Usually some small task force is chosen to do this. The conference has to decide amongst other things what is to be done with the butchers paper. This will be part of its discussion of diffusion or strategy. On a couple of occasions there has been a ritual burning. This has happened when there has been an awareness of the new culture and oral, associative rituals established, and that nobody would forget them or the outcomes they produced. The community will usually decide that a report in some form should be prepared. The questions then raised are by whom, how and by when? The job is sometimes offered to the managers, and in the past has often been accepted by them. Although there may be convincing reasons for some why managers should accept this role, it has been found to be more satisfactory if the community compiles the report. This resolves any remaining doubts about the status or ownership of the report, removing any lingering dependency. It also results in a product which is strictly about the community’s purposes. Managers may wish to write their own report to fulfil their own research interests about process, and in this case should indicate this intention to the community, with all the necessary conditions for preserving a genuinely collaborative relationship. While the hieroglyphics on the butchers paper are full of meaning to the community, they are often incomprehensible to others not present. If it is intended to produce a fairly detailed report for the consumption of others it is necessary to translate the butchers sheets into clear English. Managers may be requested to act as resource to this drafting group, and can certainly help in this way if necessary. Reports have varied from very brief to full, detailed reports of both process and content, depending on the purpose to be served and the audience.

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Based on their action plans, the community will also decide details of future meetings. They should discuss their structural configuration as this, as was shown in Figure 30 above, is perhaps the most significant determinant of successful implementation and is dealt with in the next chapter.

A further note on managing learning Much of the accumulated practical experience for avoiding outbreaks of the group assumptions and maintaining the creative working mode has been integrated into the above discussion. If there is one overriding lesson, it is that prevention is easier than cure. Many variables contribute to a good managerparticipant relationship: confidence, a light touch, clear simple task instructions, observing all rules of SC design and process, working with and keeping the community together as community. Generally, the greater the length of time spent in community functioning, the more effectively the community functions and learns. To establish the Creative Working Mode, a light touch is essential. There is nothing worse than to start with a deadly serious or intensely personal approach. It is a collective task-oriented effort which is demanding of tolerance and good humour, good will, and it is up to the managers to establish this mode. It is similarly critical to establish the working speed of the event. SCs are almost by definition, speeded up versions of what normally passes for every day reality. Speed plus the light touch automatically begin to generate the climate for the sustained but low key excitement that is the hallmark of the Creative Working Mode. In situations where work has gone slowly or become bogged down and where the management appears unable to restore work, speed and positive ‘atmospherics’, pairing is most likely to be seen in its positive (R) form; e.g, attempts to stir the group to creative work. Some people, pairs or subgroups, within a large group will always grasp the potential for going further and will make their own efforts to create the climate for creativity, if management is failing to achieve this. Towards the end of a successful Search, groups may begin to really work in a creative mode which is barely distinguishable from playing. This is a form of working which can worry people who believe that work is serious. There will be jokes and much laughter. This is when scrappy bits of butchers paper turn into ‘works of art’ and stars are born. And it is spontaneous. There are no instructions to be dramatic or ‘creative’ (compare Weisbord 1992). But the potential has been released, the opportunity has been grasped. On no account should management move to inhibit this mode as it is the final ‘playing out’ and testing of their work and learning. It is highly infectious and includes the managers. Their job is virtually completed.

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We have just formed a pop group. We called it ‘A Fadd’. (Australian Foundation for Alcohol and Drug Dependency) Obviously managers must understand the group assumptions and be able to recognise them, and also avoid becoming part of them. Here co-management really comes into its own. While managers are not at all exempt from the normal failings of the species, it would be unusual for both to succumb to the same group assumptions at the same time. This is particularly unlikely if one has been listening to the group music while the other is working actively. When an outbreak of group assumptions does occur, it is usually because of a management failure. The most common failure is that of not listening to the music of the group. The community must be allowed to work at its own pace and in its own style. There is a natural progression, quite unlike the steady linear step by step sequence through a prepared classroom lesson or through the agenda of a formally chaired meeting. Instead, a learning group will be seen to go round in circles and quite happily go off at a tangent. Matters are raised, half dealt with or apparently agreed, and yet returned to later and worked over again. If the management cuts across what the community sees as a particularly important line of development or inappropriately tries to speed up or slow down the work, the community is likely to go into fight/flight either active or passive. If a fight breaks out between two or more sections of the community, management must move fast. This is where the rationalisation of conflict and the Disagreed list come into their own. It may be necessary to go back to previous work and check the level of agreement. One method for dealing with a particularly obstreperous person or group is to calmly write up everything which is said. This immediately cools the proceedings. Managers must understand the differences between spoken and written language and be able to use them. Fight/flight is actually much easier to deal with than dependency. But today, instances of dependency are rare and to encounter one means that the management has seriously moved from DP2 back to DP1, from learning to teaching. One point at which management can fall into this trap is during integration of group reports. Management’s role is to get the community to spell out what goes with what, not tell them. It is also easier to deal with fight rather than flight and one way to break through flight is to start a fight so that the community has to respond. A common precipitating factor of flight is a manager attempting to speed thing up by giving a summary of where the community discussion has got to. These can only be examples of a host of different types of circumstances which can arise. Perhaps the most critical factor of all is the management’s fundamental belief in the people they are working with. If they do not share the assumptions which underlie the method, they will not be competent designers and managers. Their fundamental

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task is to create the environment within the learning community can come into being, lessen the chances of it switching into the antilearning group assumptions and help recreate the learning mode if it inadvertently gets destroyed. While the theory can be learnt by reading books, there is no substitute for a hands on apprenticeship for learning how the theory works in practice. Some particular problems All of the following problems are rare but can cause headaches for inexperienced managers: Reluctance to Search in the first session can be one of the most difficult problems for two reasons. First, there is so little of any obvious dynamic to judge. Second, until the managers can learn a little more of the reason for the reluctance, they may misinterpret and accentuate the difficulty. There are few pockets of severely isolated communities left on the planet so that lack of data is rarely the cause. It may be dependency or perhaps fear, particularly in cases of organizational mergers where the cultures are very different. People may be reluctant in case they look inadequate or they may be waiting for the other party to show themselves. It is best handled with patience and humour. People with big egos can be difficult. They are best dealt with by their peers and usually are, but if necessary, managers may have to respond to requests by the community to intervene. Sometimes there is a request from people who just want to see the SC in action. The presence of observers will of course have been negotiated and cleared with the participants before the Search. Some SCs are, of course, concerned with such sensitive issues that observers simply cannot be allowed. The rules which are normally invoked to cover the role of observers involve firstly, their presence throughout. This reduces the probability of inhibiting dynamics occurring as a reaction to their observation. The second rule is that they should speak only when spoken to in formal working time.

Chapter 7 Successful Implementation, Variations and Unique Designs

The previous chapter dealt with the design and management of the Search Conference component of the 2-stage model. This chapter deals with the process from the time participants finish planning and move to design and implementation. It includes guidelines on more complex designs involving series of Searches and the Multisearch, and also unique designs for unique purposes and circumstances. Once an open systems designer and manager understands the theory and its relationship to practice, they can design DP2 events for virtually any purpose. For summary purposes, I also include some comparisons with other forms of event and some don’ts.

Successful implementation Implementation, producing effective change, is the purpose of the whole thing so that a failure of implementation is real failure. A glossy report without action on the ground is not implementation. As the SC is designed to bring into being confident (non dependent) and active-adaptive learning-planning communities, the effective end point of the role of the designer and manager must be known beforehand. This is an educational aspect of the preparation and planing stage. Participants must know that from the end of the Search, they are on their own. Managers do not in normal circumstances, write up, follow up, monitor or intervene during implementation. During the closing stages, managers usually reconfirm these understandings. SC communities usually applaud these sentiments as they intend to continue in the self managing, creative working mode. The last thing they want is somebody looking over their shoulder like the supervisor of old. Obviously, communities will sometimes contact a manager if they have queries or run into problems but it is mutually understood that this will happen again only in similar circumstances of collaboration. What often happens in fact, is that the designer and manager becomes a real colleague to all members

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of the SC community and future contacts are on this basis. That continues as the affectual basis of trust from which many and various processes of diffusion arise. The dotted lines in Figure 30 above express the fact that even with a single SC, we are not always dealing with a simple linear process. There may be points at which it is realised that additional information needs to be generated or collected and there is always a need to reconvene the original or enlarged SC community to re-assess priorities and adapt strategies. Action plans may require a series of further Searches involving others, which may generate other needs unforseen at the time of the original. All such possibilities are in the nature of active adaptation and the Strategy of the Indirect Approach. No two processes of implementation are the same, but the design principle adopted for this work can make or break it. As reviewed in Chapter 1, it has become clear that failures of implementation have at their root, an inadequate conceptualization of active adaptation which did not provide guidance to systems on how to implement (Chapter 4). Completing that conceptualisation led immediately to the conclusion that these failures were preventable. The practical solution for prevention is the 2-stage model which adds a Participative Design Workshop (PDW) to the end of the Search.. This renders all such failures of implementation unnecessary as within the PDW they learn about the design principles and design an organization for implementation based on DP2. In the PDW, therefore, the community answers the question of ‘How do we organize ourselves to achieve our strategic goals, our desirable system?’ The second stage: Participative Design Workshops (PDWs) Before we look at PDWs to design organizations, let us first look at the original PDW for redesigning (Emery and Emery 1974) so that the differences are clear. The original Participative Design Workshop for redesign The PDW proves that organizational change needs neither to be slow nor extremely painful. Workshops vary depending on circumstances but a section of an organization or a small organization can redesign in a long day or so. (PDWs for design take less than a day, sometimes only a few hours.) The PDW is a workshop with the single purpose of changing the organizational structure from DP1 (bureaucratic) to DP2 (democratic), designing back in the human dimension of work which is summarised by the six requirements of productive activity. These criteria which are the intrinsic motivators were first published in English in 1969 (Emery and Thorsrud 1969) and have been confirmed through many studies since. The six criteria are: 1. Elbow Room, autonomy in decision making 2. Continual Learning for which there must be

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a. ability to set goals b. accurate and timely feedback Variety Mutual Support and Respect Meaningfulness which consists of a. doing something with social value b. seeing the whole product or service A Desirable Future

The first three criteria must be optimal for each individual. The second three exist within the climate of the organization itself. They are things you can never have too much of. The criteria are measured in the first stage of the PDW to analyse the effects of the current structure on its people. A DP2 design maximises them. Those who work in a section of the structure design their own section. For whole system change, a series of PDWs is carefully designed to cover the whole organization as efficiently as possible, ending up with a simple, elegant total DP2 structure. A word of warning here — do not attempt this task without considerable knowledge and experience of what is involved. Changing organizational structures involves changing virtually every system within the organization including pay and classification. Such a change is, therefore, an industrial relations matter and has flow on effects to family and society. The basic design of the PDW for redesign is as follows Phase 1. Analysis Briefing 1 — Design Principle 1 and its effects Groups complete matrix for 6 psychological requirements of productive activity. Groups complete matrix of skills available. Reports and diagnostics. Phase 2. Change Briefing 2 — Design Principle 2 and its effects Groups draw up work flow for information only. Groups draw up organizational structure and redesign it. Reports. Phase 3. Practicalities Briefing 3 — What Is Required to Make the Redesign Work Groups spell out : • a comprehensive set of measurable goals. • training requirements (from skills matrix). • other requirements, eg mechanisms for coordination, changes in technology, etc. • the basis for designing career paths. • how the redesign improves scores on the 6 criteria.

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The first phase is an analysis of what currently exists, phase two makes the change and phase three covers all of the practical design matters which accompany the systemic change and ensure its effectiveness. In Phase 1, the manager does a final briefing on DP1 and its consequences and the participants then analyse the effects of the existing structure in terms of human motivation and current allocation of skills. (DP1 structures deskill over time.) In Phase 2, the manager covers DP2 and its consequences and the DP2 structures appropriate for specialist as well as potentially multiskilled self managing organizations. Participants briefly draw up the workflow through their section of the organization to ensure that everyone knows what happens in the section as a whole and where critical decisions about control and coordination are made. They then draw up the formal legal structure of their section and redesign that structure. When they have the best possible DP2 structure, they move on to phase 3. In Phase 3 they do a first draft of the goals which will control the work of that section or the groups within it, work out their detailed training requirements and anything else required to make the new structure work in practice. These drafts are later negotiated and agreed with whatever designated organizational authorities. They also do a first draft of a new career path based on skills as it would apply to them in their work. A final career path at the organizational level based on payment for skills will be designed by a professional career path designer. Modified Participative Design Workshops to design an organization The 2-stage model has been tested in practice over the last five years and a basic model has emerged for a PDW for organization design rather than redesign. It is more simple than that for redesign but again, it is recommended that you do not attempt this before you thoroughly understand the design principles, their practical consequences and the process of structural design itself. Let us deal with the case of the community SC first. The major differences in workshop design between those for redesign and SC follow up (design) are: • These people may never have worked together before and as there is no existing organization, the 6 criteria must be done on a previous similar experience. Most people will have been involved in some community or voluntary activity which involved trying to get some plan achieved. • Goals have already been set as in the Most Desirable System and action plans have been devised for these • If particular resources such as skills do not reside within the implementing group, they must be brought in. Communities usually will not have the resources to start training up people in specific skills or knowledge. Instead, the community must do some further action planning to acquire the required skills or other resources, either directly or through the process of diffusion.

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The most simple follow-up design: Phase 1. Analysis Briefing 1 — Design Principle 1 Task forces complete the matrix for the 6 criteria using a previous experience similar to the implementation now facing them. (For already existing organizations, the members can of course complete the matrix for their own work.) Reports and diagnostics The community lists the major essential skills required to implement the action plans, then completes the matrix in terms of who holds what skills on the list Phase 2. Change Briefing 2 — Design Principle 2 Design an organizational structure for implementation Reports and negotiation of final design if necessary Phase 3. Practicalities Briefing 3 — What Is Required to Make the Redesign Work What other resources do we need, if any? (from the skills matrix) What else needs to be done? (This may involve more work on action plans or an additional set of action plans.) This workshop has also been used for project design such as large transdisciplinary research projects. It can be used in virtually any such project where an organizational structure will come into being regardless of whether this is consciously conceptualised. The history of project work is littered with examples of grand plans that failed because of maladaptive structuring. The workshop can also be an integral part of unique and more complex designs. The PDW for design can also be used to design greenfield sites. Up until a few years ago we believed that greenfields still required STS. Then organizations which had used PDWs for redesign started experimenting with modified forms for new sites and plants. Engineers and staff from the previous sites experienced with designing structures using PDWs sit down together and design the new site. Even with technologies new or different to the existing site, the process works well. The essential knowledge and skills workers from the old site bring to the design process are those involved in designing and working in DP2 structures. However, once the new site is operational, PDWs for redesign there should put through so that both the conscious, conceptual knowledge of the design principles and 6 criteria, and the knowledge of how to redesign (and design) is built into everybody who works there. This avoids the problem of greenfield sites gradually reverting to DP1 over time.

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Implementation for an existing DP2 organization When an existing DP2 organization Searches, there is no need for the 2-stage model. They will handle any new organizational form required to implement their action plans in exactly the same way they handle any other evolutionary or adaptive development within their organization. There is an exception to this. It covers the cases where the DP2 structure has been designed in by the old sociotechnical analysis and design method, STS, or any of its modern variations. These methods do not include conscious conceptual knowledge of the design principles and not everybody in the organization has been involved in structural design and redesign. Although the structures are DP2, they tend to be static and inflexible as people don’t have the understanding to constantly evolve them to meet external and internal changes. In these cases, the PDW after the SC will redress the situation and may lead to a more comprehensive organizational redesign, one which is genuinely active adaptive. Implementation for DP1 organizations There are two separate cases here. The first is when the organization has embarked on a SC for a purpose unrelated to total organizational change. It may be a Search for a new product range or new markets. The second is when the SC has been deliberately conceived as the first phase of an overall change process whether this is expressed as ‘becoming a best practice organization’, ‘high performing’ or ‘service’ or ‘quality’ oriented. All such terms cannot be realized in the long term unless there is a change in design principle. The form of the PDW follow up will be different in the two cases. Search unrelated to organizational change For existing DP1 organizations in this case, the 2-stage model has several advantages. At least it should produce a cooperative form of organization between those people directly attempting to implement and taking responsibility for the action plans. It will also introduce the senior management to the design principles and their consequences probably for the first time. They will then become aware that they have an alternative to their current structure and again at least, will now understand why many similar ventures in the past didn’t work in the long term. They will also understand why they have so many sometimes unrelated organizational problems such as high error rates, communication problems, personality problems, high wastage, etc. It gives them an opportunity to start asking themselves why they shouldn’t consider changing their total structure to one based on DP2. Such a move would ensure that the results of the SC will not ultimately be wasted by the inertial dynamics of the non adaptive organization structure.

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Search for total organizational change Here we are talking about a Search followed by a carefully planned series of PDWs for redesign rather than simply design for the implementation of action plans. The typical strategic goals coming out of this type of SC include having high morale, safe healthy workforce, high productivity and quality, customer orientation, being flexible etc. All of these will flow from the change of design principle. If there are other strategic goals which do not flow directly from a move from DP1 to DP2, action plans can be done for those. But for the rest, moving immediately into the series of PDWs takes the place of action planning. Implementation of community, industry and issue searches These are the cases where there is no existing organizational structure at all. There may be an industry or association structure in some industries but the composition of participants in an industry SC is almost always wider than those covered by the existing organization or organizations. For geographical community Searches it can sometimes be argued that the local representative government structure covers them. But the community itself usually disputes that view. Issue Searches are the most clear cut case as they are usually called because there is no existing organization to plan and deal with the issue. These Searches are also those that are subject to the highest failure rate of implementation and, therefore, have perhaps the most to gain from the 2-stage model. The additional advantages in these cases are much as for the DP1 organizations. People often meet the design principles for the first time and after having used them can see their efficacy for other applications, including the organizations in which they have their primary affiliation. There has always been a lot of diffusion of the Search from this class of SC because people come wearing many hats. Introducing them to the design principles through the 2-stage model also serves their diffusion. The designs that come out of a PDW following a SC are usually very simple, consisting of self managing groups implementing the action plans plus a coordinating group chosen by some DP2 mechanism as shown in Figure 32. The dotted lines mean that the coordinating, convening group at the top is not a permanent part of the structure but is a selection of the community serving that function periodically. It is a one level structure. The double lines between the self managing groups implementing the action plans indicate that these groups are cooperating and sharing responsibility for the overall set of goals. The whole community is working towards the strategic goals as contained within the Most Desirable System.

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Strategic Goals

Figure 32. Typical organizational design following the Search Conference

From searching to a way of life Organizations who have searched and democratised their structure can metamorphose into a continuously evolving active adaptive system as ecological learning becomes accepted as natural as walking and talking, which it is. Members of such an organization will develop an almost unconscious awareness of the extended field in much the same way as a farmer keeps his/her weather eye open. Storm clouds over the horizon will jerk the brain back into the conscious thinking mode. However, such an organization will also take the precaution of reading the weather forecast. At regular intervals, a few hours to a day or so will be set aside for formal long term planning follow up. The form of this meeting is very simple. What has changed in the L22 since last time? What are its implications for us? What has changed internally (L11)? What do we need to do? Regular intervals vary depending on the nature and purpose of the organization or community, but appear to be more determined overall by the rate of change in the field. We used to consider every nine months an optimal interval but more recently, six monthly periods have seemed more appropriate. As an organization grows into this cultural mode, the form of the searching undergoes transformations. Management, or the future of the organization, is everybody’s business. Rules and conscious rituals have evolved into a more spontaneous and purposeful conversation towards task. Searching has become a way of life.

Variations on a single search Over the years as circumstances have demanded and scientific curiosity has been aroused, the SC has been elaborated in various ways. When a sponsor or organization insists on a cast of thousands, or hundreds at least, the only three options are to convince them that hundreds need to be involved only through the process of implementation and diffusion rather than the original event, or to run a

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Multisearch or a series of Searches. The Multisearch A single Search is limited in numbers. The cementing processes of the new group life (Greco 1950) and the motivating behaviours towards new systems of relationship are in the first instance confined to those who did the Searching. While diffusion is an individual property, a critical mass of cohesion and support is necessary to maintain energy for implementation. Possibilities for support will be enhanced as interlocking Searches are held, bringing together people from previously separate Search areas or concerns. Theoretically there is no reason why this process should be left to chance. In other words, by virtue of designing into the structure a larger foundation of cementing mutual support, the multiplier effect can be markedly increased. This is possible through use of the Multisearch. However, as we shall see below, while this may be the best theoretical answer, it may not be the most practical. Like many good inventions, the first Multisearch was the product of necessity. The voluntary organization Australian Frontier Inc. invited 120 people to the 1980 conference on “Future Directions”. This conference was to identify national challenges and develop strategies for the next 20 years. Originally, it was to be DP1, but those invited were all under 45 years of age and present or future national ‘opinion leaders’. Almost at the last minute it was realised that a conventional conference of these people would not work: “How does one enlist and direct the energies of 120 combustible prima donnas for five days and live to tell the tale?” (Crombie in Henry and Thompson 1980: 25). “It needed a conference process that was stimulating and participative with maximum flexibility for the participants to design and be committed to their own vision of a desirable future” (Henry and Thompson 1980: 21). Only days before the event, a team of SC designers and managers met and hammered out the design. By this stage there were immovable constraints, presentations that could not be cancelled. These were interspersed throughout the process making the overall design an alternation of the design principles, a ‘mixed mode’ (Chapter 4). Figure 33 shows the design of the “Future Directions” conference that led to the concept of the Multisearch. It shows four SC’s working in parallel to the point of scenario selection. Participants had been distributed for maximum heterogeneity within each of the four searches. Each stream had two managers. There was a plenary reporting session on desirable and probable futures for Australia, with brief reports from each stream. We had anticipated trouble from the interruption of the process by the presentations, and the mixed mode again showed its potential to generate the basic group assumptions, particularly fight/flight. Some plenaries witnessed intense verbal interchanges. There were also spontaneous happenings, such as ‘the persons meeting’ about the status and future of women.

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Searching in Parallel - Appointed Groups (N=30) Environmental Scan - Global Desirable and Probable Futures for Australia Strengths and Weaknesses of Australian Culture Scenarios Action Plans

Reports + Turn-around Timeself selection into scenario groups

Scenario Development Final Reports Networks and Diffusion

Figure 33. The multisearch: The Future Directions Model

Each of the searches produced one or more scenarios. These were reported in plenary. There were overlaps, and a final five scenarios were negotiated. Participants then self-selected into one of the five scenario groups. This was called the ‘turn around time’ and happened simply and easily. Sufficient time had been spent searching for values to be clear and self-management was well established. The five new scenario groups then worked intensively to make their scenarios as comprehensive and internally consistent as possible. Action plans were not achieved, but there is evidence that change was influenced through the creation of long lasting networks. Overall, the design worked: “It was a hit! There was intense dialogue across the usual social and political divides...and they went away sensing a curious kind of bonding” (Watson 1991: 95 quoted in Emery, M. 1992). A community was generated, although there were originally no shared purposes or affiliations other than being Australian. There were three follow up conferences with roughly the same design. This prototype opened a whole new set of possibilities while not sacrificing any of the benefits of a carefully designed Search. In terms of community development and diffusion, it promised more cost-effective designs. Searches always have an impact totally out of proportion to the number of participants, but with the Multisearch the multiplier effect could be exponential. But read on. Clearly, such a breakthrough needed replicating for us to be sure that these promises could be reliably delivered and that our understanding of the key

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variables was accurate. We had hypothesised at “Future Directions” that coordination across the Searches would be critical for success and therefore, two members of Australian Frontier convened regular meetings of managers. Because group coordination worked well, each Search reached the deadlines for stages of the process and plenaries. During the period 1980 to 1991 it was critical to test the importance of coordination in Multisearches. Many other Multisearches followed. In most of these, there were problems with managerial coordination, confirming that it was a critical variable. Many more have now been run experimenting with a variety of purposes and designs. Coordination and managerial competence are by far the critical requirements. Nowhere was this more evident than at Workplace Australia (1991) the largest Multisearch ever tried. This conference has been analysed in detail (Emery, M. 1992a) and only the major points are made here. The Multisearch was the first of three components within the overall conference design and consisted of twenty Searches running in parallel. Different forms of evaluation averaged out to a failure of nearly half of the individual Searches. The critical factors in this result were: • Overall conference management was by committee (DP1) which conflicted with DP2 built into the Search component and into the value systems of the individual managers. In addition, the representative management committee was not aware of the importance of overall coordination. • Conference planning was too little and too late. Invitations to experienced managers arrived after other commitments had been made. Some inexperienced and untrained people were brought in at the last minute. • Detailed design work was done only the day before and even then some managers did not attend the design and briefing session. Time was tight and those without genuine SC understanding could not meet the specifications. Multisearches demand even higher levels of expertise in juggling precise tasks and time. • As problems mounted within individual Searches, inexperienced managers dug into their tool kits and pulled out a variety of participative exercises and games, only a small proportion of which furthered the task. Only 11 of the 17 evaluated Searches spent at least 20% of their time on strategies and action plans and this caused widespread criticism amongst participants who wanted to get on with the job. • The two Multisearch plenaries had received almost no attention. The first involved participants in cross Search groups simply sharing pictures of their desirable workplaces. There was no real task and no management. Most groups compared notes on the progress of their SCs and disaffection spread. • The second and potentially most powerful plenary at the end of the SCs more than failed. A design had been done by members of the SC managers’ network but it was ignored by the management committee. They used their

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own design which again was based on DP1 and neglected the complexities and dynamics of attempting to integrate the results of 20 Searches. It resulted in overt fight. The fall back result was an abstraction and satisfied nobody. It was neither exciting nor representative of the work which had been done. The management committee described it as a success in the face of an almost impossible task. But it wasn’t impossible. It was simply not adequately designed. The management committee had decided that each search would send two representatives to a 2-hour session in which they would survey their various visions, issues, and strategies and put them together for a coherent plenary presentation. Each of the representative couples entered with enthusiasm, wanting to see their group product included. Without a detailed structure and process for doing this cooperatively, without losing the richness and depth of the 20 sets of work done, the identity of each individual search was threatened. Fight/flight was inevitable. Conflicts broke out early as the representatives argued for the inclusion of their product. Attempts by the appointed manager to resolve the situation failed. Under pressure to have something to present, the material was abstracted past the point of any concrete realities. It was a lose-lose outcome: a barely recognisable product and unhappy participants. The 20 searches could have been grouped into four sets of five. Each of the sets could have contained four representatives from each search plus two managers. The material from the five Searches in each set could have been integrated through the normal cumulative process whereby redundancy is removed but nothing gets lost. There would then be four integrated reports. The process of cumulative integration would then be repeated for these four, yielding a conference wide product. This process is simple, manageable, and cooperative. It avoids the need for competition between groups to have their products included and hence fight/flight. It accords respect to all the work done on behalf of the whole and produces a community of happy productive people with a unified outcome. Not only was there little coordination between the content and process of individual Searches, there was no real effort to ensure coordination between managers. Meetings were called by the conference organisers at often inappropriate times and not tuned to managers’ concerns. Managers became increasingly frustrated. Increasingly, there was a feeling that there was little to do except just concentrate on one’s own SC. It was an example of how a Multisearch can degenerate into individual SCs simply running in parallel. Apart from the many other mistakes built into Workplace Australia 1, the failure of coordination was writ large and confirms it as the most common failing in Multisearches. It is not just the effort required to coordinate the parallel streams but also that required to coordinate the managers, each of whom has their own individual style. In one Multisearch with three parallel streams, the managers met

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for months beforehand and hammered out all possible details for coordination. Every question was to be asked in exactly the same words at the same time, every move was timed down to the last minute. Even so, one manager and, therefore, his stream was always running late. This of course, causes competition between streams and risks a big bang. The only way to make Multisearches work reliably is to use managers who have proven as a group that they can deliver exactly the same product at exactly the same moment. And this, of course, illustrates another major difficulty with Multis which is that there can be no genuinely creative process in such an event. Groups cannot be allowed to follow their hunches and go off on extremely innovative tangents. The other problem is that Multisearches have great difficulty in creating a community of the whole. A community will be created within each of the streams but sharing meals and some social activity is usually not sufficient to generate a sense of wholeness overall. This means that at the ‘turn around time’ when individual streams must merge to self select into action planning groups, some are reluctant because they have insufficient feel for others coming from different streams to be comfortable in working with them on such an important task. The first three of Asch’s criteria for effective communication have not been established across the whole and subsequently there is insufficient trust. Workplace Australia suffered from lack of care in planning, design and management. Beneath this lay a lack of understanding. Other Multis have similarly suffered. While good designers and managers make running a Search look easy, it should not be forgotten how much actually goes into producing this effect. As the Multisearch can multiply diffusive potential so it multiplies defects. If there are any doubts about the abilities to deliver quality in these matters, a series should replace ideas of a Multisearch. A series of searches A series can meet many purposes and the design of the series itself can take many forms depending on the exact set of needs. It has many advantages over the Multisearch and virtually its only disadvantage is that it cannot produce the magnitude of the contagious feeling of energy and joy that fuels diffusion when a Multisearch works well. It does produce diffusion as do individual Searches so that the diffusion of its success as a far less risky venture should be calculated as a tradeoff against the possibility that a Multisearch may fail dramatically. At the most simple programatic level, a series of Searches will be held to cover the range of interests or areas in a large distributive system. Within a national system of technical education for example the needs of consumers and providers will vary by geographical area and the industrial or agricultural base which supports it. For a national union in the process of restructuring, Searches

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sampling from the size range of branches and across urban, rural and outback, will generate data about the needs and wishes of members to participate in their union, amongst other things. Data from such a series may be fed from one to others as they are held chronologically and/or to another series of Searches up the hierarchy of functions, or may simply serve as a data base for new proposals to be submitted back to the grass roots. The advantages of this programatic approach are that the variables which most centrally affect the working of the system as a whole can be covered, providing widespread participation, and learning of a new mode. This is then available for immediate use in the topic area of the Search, for example, the union branch meeting, or to an extraneous area in which some members are also involved (Davies 1981). Davies (1992) also discusses a series conducted to form policy for aged services. Many series have been held across Australia (Emery, M. 1995). However, up until recently there has been little formal integration of the results of the individual Searches. But there are huge advantages to be gained by finalizing the series with an integration event. As the name implies, a separate event is held at the end of the series to which people bring the strategic goals from their individual Searches. (It is impossible to integrate action plans so that the Search process may need to be interrupted between goals and action plans.) The goals are integrated in exactly the same way as are group reports into community property in an individual Search. The integrated product, which loses none of the richness and diversity contained within the aggregate of the individual Searches, can then be sorted into various levels of responsibility if need be. In a series across a region or state, there will be some goals which can be implemented at the local community level, others which can be implemented only at the state level. Once the division has been agreed, the local people take home the local goals, reconvene their Search community to do action plans for them and then implement. Those with state responsibilities do similarly at their level. At the end of the integration event, decisions need to be made about monitoring of overall progress, plans for reconvention, etc. The following example is a design suggested as an alternative to a Multisearch for the Future of Education in Colorado, USA. The design was as follows: 1. X number of single Searches based on communities or regions. Scatter the law makers, educationalists etc. across the Searches. Each Search works only to the point of Most Desirable Education (strategic goals). 2. Members from each Search (say roughly no more than about forty in total) meet to consolidate strategic goals using cumulative integration plus the rationalization of conflict. The integration falls into three phases. First, put all reports up together, so that everybody has time to look across and get a rough intuitive impression of the degree of commonality. Brief on the process although they should all know about it before they come. Make sure that everybody understands the accumulative

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process so that they won’t think they have to go and fight to get their SCs material included as happened at the first Workplace Australia Conference. Second, group members from three or four SCs together with a manager, systematically work through these reports, preparing an integrated list and using the rationalization of conflict as above. Third, these integrated agreed lists are then taken to a plenary where the process is repeated. The end product will be one integrated, agreed list with a high degree of understanding across the whole. The process including the ‘next steps’ session will take no more than a day. Third, Members then take the integrated agreed list back to the original SC communities. They then do their own action planning at the local level. Special groups such as politicians, educational bureaucrats and others who hold responsibility at the state level do action planning for that level. The process outlined above gives the best of all worlds, state wide and local goals and coordinated action. It also produces a vertically integrated community instead of the normal gap between local and state people. The hiatus between agreeing goals and doing action plans means that the series should be conducted in the shortest possible time. Depending on how many individual Searches and how many managers are available, the whole project could be into implementation in a very short period of time. A series of 14 Searches plus followup PDWs plus one PDW for total forest redesign plus integration event for the Eastern region of the US Forest Service was finished in less than five months. In this case, it was decided that as many people as possible should attend the integration event and thus the design was more complex than that above and took three days. Action planning had already started in some forests and there was also further work done on both the L22 and task environments as well as discussion of structural redesign throughout the region and its implications. This integration event generated equally as much energy and diffusive potential as a Multisearch.

Unique designs Much of the work that needs doing in the world does not fit into the form of either a SC or PDW. Don’t force it to. There are an infinite number of other participative forms which may include components of the SC and/or the PDW. They are totally different designs welded together to meet different purposes. But these are not Searches or PDWs and should not be given those names. One of the great advantages of learning the theory and practice of open systems and active adaptation is that one gains a facility with doing unique designs, designs which follow from the logic of the task and can deliver the desired outcomes. Method determines outcome. The argument about equifinality of social science methods (Weisbord 1992: 15) is false, a case of misplaced analogy. The concept of equifinality, that “the final state may be reached from different initial

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conditions and in different ways” (von Bertalanffy 1950: 89) applies only to living systems. Methods are not living systems. It is patently obvious from both the theory and also from surveying some of the published case studies that for example, the Search Conference and Future Search produce different outcomes (Emery, M. 1994). Why is the SC such a consistently reliable method? Because every aspect of its design and management has been researched and designed to provide the very best possible environment for learning, creativity and successful evolution to active adaptation. Change even one of the basic components and you have a different method and a different result. Doing a unique design involves first deciding the nature of the required outcome and working back to determine what essential pieces of work must be in place in order to achieve that outcome. A simple logical flow of work will ensure that each piece builds on the previous pieces such that no learning is wasted. Contextualizations There are many variations on the theme of changes in the L22 and the implications of these for the system. Data about the L22 is collected in the normal manner. Groups then take a slice of that data and carefully work through it looking at the implications of it for the issue at hand. Sometimes a Most Probable World is done and the implications of that examined. The design may then continue with questions such as ‘what do we do about the problem in the light of these?’ These events are best described as contextualizations. They have been called ‘Mini Searches’ but they are clearly not SCs because the analysis of the L11 and the integration of L22 and L11 are absent. Absent also are the infrastructure of conditions and time required to develop trust, confidence in self management and the creative working mode. There is an irreducible minimum of internally consistent and wholistic components which confers the status of SC. Contexualizations can be extremely useful in throwing new light on problems and issues and may lead to the realization that a full scale strategic plan is required. But these contextualizations are sometimes the compromise that eventuates from being unable to convince the client that they should deviate from their normal bureaucratic 9–5 convention and ethic. The client usually claims administrative difficulties, lack of time or money. They argue that something is better than nothing and that some experience of working together or having a look at the L22 must be useful. That is true, as long as there is no misunderstanding about the nature of the meeting or what it can accomplish relative to a SC. Mixtures of SC and PDW The first example is that of the rescue attempt of the community after the failed Weisbord ‘Future Search’ in New Mexico (Chapter 3). It was during the prepara-

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tion for and execution of the rescue in May 1993 that the inadequacy of the original design and management and its consequences of not knowing and forgetting, really became obvious. The event had left almost no legacy of learning whatsoever. Participants had been left hanging, with no clear picture of the L22 or the L11. They had no clear set of goals and, therefore, no action plans. The experience had not resulted in a sense of community, partly because the process could not produce one and partly also because the participants had been a miscellaneous collection of people from the region, outsider experts and those who just wandered in off the street. When they did their normal thing of setting up committees they simply exacerbated pre-existing conflicts which the original process had ignored. The outsiders had been relegated to an ‘outsider’s group’. Five months elapsed between the event and the rescue. Many of the original participants refused to return. The rescue design began with groups based around original participants attempting to review goals. There was considerable discussion of these as because of the original ambiguities, some ideas had consolidated, some had metamorphosed and some appeared to have been created after the event. This was not entirely successful as it tended to recreate some of the conflicts of the last months. We moved straight onto a plenary session in which the community put up their views of what: • we should keep doing • we should not continue doing • should have happened, need to do now Readers will note that this is a variation on that component of the SC, the ‘keep, discard and create’ lists, used to analyse the system. It is a very simple but useful tool which can be applied not only to an entity but also to a process. During this session, many criticisms were raised about the way the committees were working (or not) and their impact on all their futures. Use of this simple tool meant that these criticisms could be raised impersonally, focusing on the method without blaming individuals. Discussion ranged around the lack of original detailed planning for action and the role of outsiders to the community. There was a strong feeling that outsiders should be strictly ‘resources’ and that their community should be effectively organized to carry the implementation. The design continued as follows: • Presentation of the Design Principles and their importance, relating them to previous discussions of attempts at implementation. • Briefing 1 on DP1 in detail so that committee structure and consequences would be understood. • Groups then completed the matrix for the 6 criteria on the implementation process with reports and diagnostics as usual. • In plenary, the community decided on a list of essential skills required for implementation and then completed the matrix of who in the community held

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such skills. Briefing 2 on DP2 mentioned the multi-skilled self managing model only briefly and concentrated on use of the jury system for governance. This emphasis caused confusion when it came to revisiting action plans and redesigning the committees into self-managing groups within an overall community structure. The full briefing should have been done. • Groups revisited the set of action plans, drew up the existing structure for implementation and attempted to redesign it. This proved difficult and we revisited action plans again, giving the briefing that we normally give in a SC proper. The community brainstormed all of the things that could contribute to the goals, who and how to make them happen. • Groups reconvened to do final design in relation to this better appreciation of action plans and reported. The duration of the workshop was 6:00pm – 9:00pm plus 8:00am – 8:00p.m the following day. The latter part of the event was basically a modified PDW for design as above, but with some further modifications required to overcome the legacy of the original failure. We encountered all the problems accumulated from the original event plus the normal resistance to implicit criticism of their first attempts at implementation through DP1. Some of these problems were overcome and the workshop finished on a positive note with new directions for the future. Arrangements were made for a few people heavily involved in the change process to attend a training course in the next few weeks. In this way the community and region would have their own trusted people taking educational action-oriented roles throughout the long-term implementation. This workshop had to cope with the problems flowing from an experience of failure exacerbated by a failed attempt to recreate and implement. If the community had created groups rather than committees, it is possible that much of the intensified confusion and conflict could have been avoided. One of the ‘committees’ had worked and their experience was discussed. It rapidly became clear that they had worked as a group, not a committee. They had reconstructed their goals and made progress towards them without any of the distress experienced by those who had interpreted ’committee’ literally. This confirms the importance of the design principle as a vital factor in the implementation following the SC and the role the PDW and the 2-stage model plays in creating sustainable active adaptive communities (Diemer and Alvarez 1995). The second example is that of an inter-community follow-up, that executed for three island communities in Torres Strait in 1994. It is a mixture of SC, PDW and interpolation of theory welded together to maximize the probability that these communities could become self sustaining in their developmental processes and also support each other through their development. In the preceding few weeks each community separately had planned its future through a SC. Each sent eight members to the follow up workshop which covered five days (Emery, Konarik •

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and Paton 1994). It was designed to serve the dual purposes of both prevention of problems in implementation and a positive practical approach to inter-island cooperation. It needed to allow maximum space for participants to work together on matters of shared concern. Because this was the second of these follow-up workshops we already were aware that communities in the area were eager to learn as much as possible of the tools for self-management and alternatives to the DP1 work and governance systems which currently existed. We began with only a skeletal design: • Their individual community desirable futures and moves so far toward them. • Changes which had happened since the planning and implications of those. • Joint action planning? • Debriefing the Search Conference — concepts and practice. • Organizing to make sure that the action plans do happen — the PDW • Tying it all together. Communities shared their desirable futures from their SCs which showed high commonality and where appropriate, they discussed implementation of action plans. Two major concerns emerged for all three communities and they began work on a joint action for the most significant of these — educating their people for ‘customary’ (their traditional) law. Their work was comprehensive with far reaching implications for the future of the whole region. We then presented the theory and method of the SC and they practiced with some of that material by re-examining their system of community meetings which presented problems of apathy and distance between council and community. A full day was then spent doing a PDW in which participants redesigned the structures of their community work forces. They returned the next morning with a detailed list of questions some of which were best answered by more practice. We returned to the critical issue of community meetings which they now totally redesigned on DP2. This account omits much of the fine detail but indicates the flexibility inherent in such a workshop. Experienced designers and managers can in collaboration with their participants, design on the run, providing maximum opportunity for learning centred on participants’ needs. Flocking As Crombie (1978) documented, it was in 1974 that we became more conscious that some of our educational activities were assuming a different character- that of ‘flocking’ of those interested in democratization of work, such that on some occasions there might be a dozen or more visitors ‘dropping in’ on our Development of Human Resources workshops. These workshops were an opportunity for organizations to send teams to practice with and learn about the PDW.

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The purposes of those ‘dropping in’ were many and varied but each occasion strengthened the network and improved the quality of subsequent work through mutual learning. Following our realizations about this, we set about deliberately designing flocking as a learning method in its own right (Crombie 1976). The concept of a ‘flocking’ (from the birds) was I believe, first coined at the 1972 QWL Conference reported in Davis and Cherns (1975 II: 382). A ‘flocking’ becomes more useful as the field intensifies and previously identifiable networks lose their clearly defined boundaries. Basically the purpose of a flocking is the creation of interrelationships of networks. In other words, they enlarge the diffusive potential of face to face contact and support through task orientation across ever widening spheres of influence. The flocking concerns itself with the task of identifying emerging trends and themes between networks and within the field, and is an a-institutional analogue to the function of more traditional forms of interorganizational activity. A flocking can succeed in doing what many large traditional conferences aim for but fail to achieve — an overview or synthesis of a field and the diversity of activities and philosophies within it. It need not be as intense as a Search and should include within its structures more free space for various elements to explore their own professional interrelationships. The most common design took the form of expectations followed by some form of data gathering and exploration of changes in the field, perceptions of the current shape and nature of the field and the networks within it. From there, the rest of the event was designed by participants who then proceeded to self manage the process. Each flocking resulted in a series of proposals for further action complete with brief action plans as to how this work should be accomplished. A flocking is, therefore, not a SC but a totally participative and self managing event of professionals pursuing their shared purposes within a supportive system. A similar system is evolving now in the Americas as the field of democratization and its practitioners develops within that hemisphere. The first ‘flocking’ was held in 1994 and it was from this event that the idea arose of the Search for the Future of Participative Democracy in the Americas.

In summary Open-systems methods are inherently flexible. Success is dependent on only the quality of design and management, which again emphasizes the importance of theoretical understanding. One way to delineate the uniqueness of Searching is to compare it with other, more conventional methods. This shows that on the most basic dimensions of the nature of systems and human behaviour, Searching springs from a radically different set of assumptions and concepts. A list of don’ts

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serves to reinforce this conclusion as different theoretical foundations lead to vastly different practices. Comparisons with other forms Delphi Delphi is a method of forecasting based on expert opinion of trends in a given field. It is taken from the practice of consulting the oracle at Delphi. Classically, Delphi was questionnaire based but after it began to lose favour towards the end of the 1970s, group and other participative forms have been developed. These, however, do not change the underlying assumptions or dynamics of the method (Table 9). Delphi works from the stance of the inevitability of DP1, in particular representation. The Search creates a DP2 structure and supports it by building in Asch’s criteria for effective communication. It thus creates an open environment in which honest debate can flourish about creative ideas. Academic conferences These are of course the DP1 conferences discussed in Chapter 4. The characteristics and consequences listed (Table 10) make it easy to understand why many academics have such great difficulty with both the concept and practice of Searching. Their purposes are derived from the belief systems underlying the Type III environment and their practices enshrine the first educational paradigm of mediated learning, or more strictly, information transmission. These beliefs and practices are inimicable to the purposes and processes of the SC and those who have internalised the academic way are often at sea in a pure DP2 event. The basic group emotion that is induced by this setting is dependency with only the occasional switch into fight/flight. It is these occasions that bring relief and delight to the audience even though they may express shock at the assault. In the grip of dependency the learning process is much as it is with viewing TV: passive, non analytical and largely just conveying ‘knowledge of’. In the fight/ flight mode the concern is with appearing to make ‘telling points’, not with mutual understanding. Let us apply the Asch criteria to these structures. Do the academic conference and seminar confront the participants with an open, objectively ordered world? They do not. Both in form and content they emphasise that the world is tied into current paradigms. They further emphasise that these paradigms can be challenged only at great risk. The question and answer format has about it a marked asymmetry. The individual in the audience can hardly even make a dent in the armour of the speaker, if s/he is alone in his thoughts. The individual, as speaker, has practically no way of getting through to the audience if the latter is already ganged up in defence of their shibboleths.

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Table 9. Comparison of Delphi and the Search Conference Delphi

Search

This technique can be usefully applied only when specific possible future outcomes are precisely stated.

By contrast, the Search starts by asking people to get off their hobby horses and suspend judgement about what specific outcomes will occur until something of a shared, overall picture has emerged. Values and broad encompassing social processes are the main fare of Searching as they are the main features of social change.

To make sure that everyone puts the same interpretation on a question, the inevitable tendency is to place greatest weight on very specific and preferably technical matters. The tendency referred to in the section above can properly be described as relative attention to figure or ground. The Delphi technique focuses on figural properties, not the ground. The participants are required to focus upon specific events and make forecasts for those events, regardless of changes in the context

In a Search, the participants are requested to do the opposite, to concentrate on identifying the broader context and its tendencies to change. Only within this defined context does the search proceed to examine figural properties of particular classes of events. It is not unusual to find in this process a restructuring or recentering of what was initially assumed to be an integral class of events.

The Delphi shows its origins in the Type III environment by assuming an end point, while the Search works from the reality of the Type IV with its core feature of relevant uncertainty. The Delphi typically elicits linear projections and misses the discontinuities which occur because of value shifts in the L22, such as happened with Three Mile Island and nuclear power. These value shifts and discontinuities are in contrast, the core of SC environmental analysis. This technique considers each issue in isolation. Special techniques of cross impact analysis then have to be devised to get back to the realities of interdependence

The Search Conference starts by exploring interdependencies and only then looks at what might happen to a specific issue, in that context.

The Delphi is not system based while the Search begins with the concept of an open system in environment. Delphi claims to get over the stifling effects of status in committees by the anonymity of the particular forecasts. However, the deviant individual still confronts the majority forecasts of anonymous experts. Will the people running the exercise think much of his/her claim to expertise and soundness? As the Asch experiments on independence and conformity would predict, the variance in predictions decreases markedly with each repetition. In a face-to-face situation a deviant might be more inclined to hold out if s/he sees that someone s/he respects also shares his/her deviant view. S/he might also hold out if his/her explanation wins even some grudging approval from others.

In a Search the ground rules include that rule which insists that even the most far out improbable suggestions must be looked at. However improbable something may seem it must be given a chance to come into the overall picture if it is a possible happening. Not being anonymous, people can judge for themselves whether the knockers of far out ideas are self opinionated specialists, whether a view is promising but the expounder needs help to develop it, whether the questions they are asking themselves are the wrong questions. They do not, as in Delphi have to assume that everyone’s judgement is as good as everyone else’s. They do not have to assume that someone else’s decision about the set of questions is unchallengeable.

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Table 10. Characteristics and consequences of Academic Conferences The basic characteristics of Academic (DP1) Conferences and their consequences Confrontation of viewpoints to detect whether the existing paradigms are under challenge Prior and rigid structuring of program or presentations, discussions and topics, to lessen surprise attacks on ruling paradigms. Matching of structure (time and alternative presentation) to existing statuses.

Maximise apparent diversity of titles within topics or themes to emphasise the continued fruitfulness of existing paradigms.

Competitive striving for display, forms of peacockism built around ‘knowledge of’. Read from precirculated paper already prepared to publication standard regardless of anticipated discussion Competition for slots and concentration on one new idea if in bottom slots, rambling in the very highest slots. One upmanship in the form of hair splitting: e.g. ‘agree whole heartedly, but...’.

Everything is weighted to preserve separate subjective worlds. The conference or seminar provides simply for their display, not for resolution of differences. Do the conference and seminar affirm the basic psychological similarity of the participants? The best speaker is the one with the most unique international reputation; the one who is above all others. Contrast between the levels of the speaker and the audience is what is sought, not similarity. The lecturer and the paper giver themselves are motivated to display that they are above ordinary mortals in their understanding of the matter they are discussing. Their unwillingness to accept that anything can be learnt from the discussion of the paper is well confirmed by the frequency with which such papers have been submitted for publication before presentation. Is there an emergence of a mutually shared field? On the contrary, the whole exercise is about projecting an individual subjective world. The only response that is left open is to join or not to join. Is there an increase in openness as such as conferences and seminars proceed? No, the usual effect is divisiveness with each clique closing its mind to the others. (Adapted from Fred Emery’s discussion in the original Searching, 1976) What these comparisons make clear is not only the differences between these forms of meeting and planning and the Search, but the difference in conceptualization which marks the assumptions springing from the Type III and Type IV environments. The participative component embodying intrinsic value, probability of choice and relative intention are lacking in techniques such as Delphi and traditional academia. Both examples exclude contextualizing which typifies the Type III, accepting a continued, basically stable field of value based directive

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correlations. These examples also illustrate that General Systems Theory is a Type III approach, born of the world hypothesis of Mechanism. Methods reflect their origins. Some don’ts There are many methods which have borrowed from the SC, or are attempting to do much the same thing. Most do not however have the internal consistency of the SC in the sense that many show a lingering belief in the assumptions of the Human Relations movement or build in an insurance policy via a few experts, or have mechanized the process into a set number of steps. Some neglect the third phase (integration of L22 and L11) in the belief that bringing a vision to consciousness is sufficient to change the world. Some claim to produce the same results as the SC. These don’ts can be used as check list if there is any doubt about the nature of a method. They are not in order of importance. They are all important. • don’t organize a SC without sufficient and substantial thought and preparation. Apart from anything else, you are more likely to contribute to a more dissociated culture through increased cynicism and apathy, if it doesn’t work. • don’t accept that the customer is always right. Searching is an educational method. If the client is asking for a SC because it is fashionable but inappropriate, it is up to you to discuss the situation with the client in such a way that they understand your concern and their alternatives. • don’t rush through the task of defining the system and the purpose of the SC. The decisions made here will affect everything that is done and the final outcome. Remember that a SC is not just a method or a way of cranking out a strategic plan. It is a step in the process of making diffusive cultural change, the sort of cultural change that people will diffuse spontaneously. • don’t assume that you can totally estimate the flow of the process or how long different tasks will take. The SC is a flexible flowing process that is demanding of alert flexible management. • don’t have as participants, people who are not genuinely in and of the system, ie. people who are not responsible for the consequences of the planning. • don’t let numbers rise above the manageable limit. In SCs with 40+ people, something must be sacrificed. Either there is no integration of group work so there is no testing of the limits of agreement. Or steps are omitted leading to results based on less than comprehensive consideration of all dimensions involved. Or, action planning is sacrificed. • don’t use gimmicky things like coloured dots to identify groups. If groups have been deliberately composed for diversity, a national mix or other reasons, this should be explained. To do other is to contradict the condition

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of openness. You also want to avoid groups assuming figural properties as will happen if they take names such as the ‘red group’. don’t keep the same group composition for more than two sessions at most. As we learnt at the first Search Search, in- and out-groups can form quickly, give themselves labels and set up competitive relations within the community. This cuts right across the cooperative community-building process. Groups need to be sequentially designed so that as many people as possible have an experience of working together intensively. The more time that people spend working together around shared purposes, the closer they become and the more attitudes become aligned. While millions ($) are spent attempting to change attitudes in the faint hope that behavioural change may follow, the SC has a good track record of producing behavioural change through working together, accompanied by reduction of prejudice and stereotyping (see ABX model in Chapter 3). don’t put people into ‘stakeholder’ groups. Everyone at a SC is first and only a member of the system. There are no ‘stakeholders’ in a SC. don’t allow it to become a seminar by answering extensive questions about the process during the process. If there is a question which appears to hold this possibility, reassure the questioner that you will discuss it with them over the next break. don’t get anxious about time management and getting the job finished. Trust the participants and their purpose in being there. Your design should contain buffer systems and you should be flexible in the way you frame tasks and their time. If you understand Bion’s basic group assumptions, you should be able to prevent them through your design and management, and if they do pop up, you should be ready to nip them in the bud. The more confident you are about your design and management, the less likely you are to become anxious, inflexible and run the risk of cutting across the work of the community. don’t allow people to make reports from individual notes or decide responses in writing before individually transferring them to butchers’ paper. This contradicts the condition of openness. Secondly, any process which depends on individual writing will disadvantage illiterate people. One of the great advantages of the SC is its universality through spoken language and its ability to use this oral ‘social cement’ to heighten community. In its structure and oral process, it recreates much of the Type II environment’s selfmanaging processes. The papered walls celebrate unity within diversity. In New Zealand where there is particular consciousness of and focus upon such unity within multiplicity, butchers’ paper reports are sometimes photographed rather than typed up so that the richness of the diversity is not lost. don’t mix up different phases of the task. Beginning with ‘the past’ involves both the past of the environment and the past of the system. If they are

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confused, the community has little chance of analysing and learning from either. If there is no clear understanding of either the extended social field or the essential character of the system, a set of adaptive relations between the two cannot be precisely delineated. If an adaptive set of relations cannot be delineated, then strategies and action plans become nonsense. An event in which L22 and L11 are mixed up is certainly not a SC. don’t impose timeframes such as three decades on history. History is composed of events and the historic event is the root metaphor of contextualism. Rather than the decade which comes from Newtonianism and the world hypothesis of mechanism, the historic event is “alive in its present” (Pepper 1942: 232). Its relationship with time is, therefore, not linear or Newtonian.

Imposition of such mechanistic frames cuts across both the genuine history of the system and learning about the L22 based on the ‘embryos of social change’. For communities and cultures which have existed for thousands of years, the last three decades may be quite meaningless as the major formative events took place before this period. For systems born less than thirty years ago, three decades are irrelevant. Similarly, three decades is far too long for an analysis of the ‘embryos of social change’. After thirty years, their mothers (even mother elephants) would long have given up hope. • don’t confuse a most desirable future of either L22 or L11 with an idealized future. SCs do not have ‘visions’. SCs are about hard work to change reality. They mobilize human ideals but within the very contexts within which the participants live. Their most desirable futures are those that make sense commonsense to them, knowing their own reality. • don’t lose track of time so that action plans are attenuated or left out. These are an essential and defining part of a SC. Time management is one of the most skilled managerial tasks as it involves fine judgements about how to juggle ways of doing tasks, priorities of tasks, community discussion and negotiation time, resolving basic assumptional dynamics if such are present (which they shouldn’t be) and time available. • don’t on the other hand, ask people to do a Most Probable Future without a timeframe. The task is by definition impossible and should it be attempted, the outcome will again be nonsense as probabilities change over time. An outcome may have a high probability of realization in ten years but not in five. The setting of the timeframe for the strategic plan is a matter for careful research and discussion in the preparation and planning stage. Many factors may have to be taken into account before a final decision is made, e.g. how fast are changes in the industry happening? What are the lead times for product development? What is the point at which no change will result in extinction (in an environmental SC)? The aim is to set a frame that is realistic in terms of making

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change yet still within an easily conceived and implementable period. As change continues to accelerate, timeframes continue to shorten. People today simply cannot conceive of the thirty year frames which were normal only twenty years ago. On average today, the frame is seven years. • don’t use simulations, game playing techniques, ‘ice breakers’ etc. Simulations and theatre are directly in conflict with the purpose of a Search which is a concentrated exploration of reality. They inhibit the progress of the SC. In addition, they lead to a feeling that the task itself is some sort of a game, which it isn’t. • don’t appoint recorders or reporters for group work. Don’t even mention them. All you need to do is let the community know in the overall briefing that all group work will be reported from the butchers paper. The example is set by the expectations session. • don’t let people who lack theoretical knowledge of and experience with the SC, design and manage one. It is simply not necessary today and we have learnt from bitter experience that having good intentions is insufficient. Those who are experienced with T groups or ‘facilitation’ tend to assume that the SC is a similar event and can destroy its task oriented nature. Or they intervene in the content or make ‘process interpretations’ which cut across the flow of the task. Those who do not understand the design principles or are not comfortable with DP2 can introduce components of the first principle, destroying the rapid build up of trust. • don’t call something a Search Conference when it isn’t. There is an infinite number of participative events and experienced designers and managers constantly use bits and pieces from the SC and other methods to meet special purposes and needs. They do not, however, call these designs SCs. The L22 and ‘task environment’ sessions in particular are often used to contextualize other events but their use alone does not make the event a SC. The Search is a coherent method which has its uses and its limits. It can achieve much but don’t ask it to achieve things it cannot. While it contains much flexibility, don’t push it past its limits. Learn the difference between the SC which is for planning and the PDW which is for organizational design and redesign. Remember the old saying ‘If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well’. And avoid imitations — they don’t do what Searching does. The major Do’s are very simple: get trained, study the theory, serve an apprenticeship with an experienced manager, love life and learning and keep laughing.

Conclusion Towards Association, Wisdom and Joy

Searching contains a paradox. As a method it is both simple and complex. A successful Search is deceptive as smooth flows of complex creative human activity seemingly come from nowhere. In a sense this is accurate. They appear to come from nowhere because they are intrinsic to the econiche which is the Search. A well designed and managed Search looks easy. But it is the attention to detail, to getting it right, that ensures simplicity and the creative flow. The previous chapters have shown what lies behind it. Searching now has such a long track record that the message is inescapable. Change is not only possible, it is also with a bit of learning and care, exciting, joyful and diffusive. And the changes which are being made are not simply at the organizational, community or individual level. Each level is interdependent with the others. The end result of the diffusion of this ‘practical theory’ is cultural change. Good learning and practice make perfect. They also make change. If it is important to make cultural change, it is also important to learn how to do it well. And the more people who learn how to do it well, the more change there will be. Being wholistic is not just desirable however, it is demonstrably the way the world is. From some of the new physics to ecological learning and new studies of the human brain, the message coming through on all fronts indicates whole systems within whole larger systems within environments. The reality of open systems long neglected by disciplinary oriented academics wedded to a mechanical universe has delayed the (re)discovery that whole is healthy. Fragmented people, so damaged by their experiences in our mechanistic, maladaptive world that they have lost their motivation, their sense of responsibility, their ability to feel deeply or spontaneously, or to act purposefully over long periods of time, do not have the energy or the will to initiate the changes in their immediate environments, those which could have long term beneficial effects on larger systems and thus the extended social field. Dissociation as our most widespread and debilitating cultural maladaption highlights the importance of designing econiches in which people can once again become whole. The damage done by dissociation is rarely irreversible. Damaged people can be restored to health, wholism and vitality by changing the environments in which they live and work, but attempting

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to change the people in the hope that they will then change their environments has a long history of failure. The reasons for this follow from the nature of the problem which clearly does not reside within the people. By ignoring context, the attempted solution treats only the symptoms. The treatment contains the same error as the design of the original damaging environment — the assumption that people or in fact problems can be isolated from their context. People do not reside within their skin: they live in the world. And the world changes constantly. In order to pursue a wholistic appreciation of our situation and how to change it, nothing less than a world hypothesis encompassing the constantly changing whole will suffice to guide theory and practice. Contextualism is the only choice. This message will not be greeted with joy in all quarters but the elites have a major problem and that is the power of good ideas whose time have come. There can be little doubt today that there is a cry for, and many dreams of a world with wisdom, people knowing the meaning which inheres in the whole which provokes and guides action towards maintaining the health of the total system. We can once again regain this wisdom from direct perception of and participation in the whole open system, recapturing the substance of ancient wisdom which have been shown to be high level conscious, concrete systems of knowledge about people-in-environment. It is time to wholeheartedly begin to genuinely re-embed all our schools within community and environment and redesign them for both the second Design Principle and ecological learning, the education of perception. There is nothing new or difficult about this. Once having gained wisdom, many may in fact never consider using mechanistic methods when they know that for most problems and questions, there are far more efficacious approaches. The basic unit of people within systems within environment is both powerful and practical. In such simple ways, our potential for ideal seeking can become an expectation. To diffuse our wholistic understanding of people-in-environment we need both experience in and conscious understanding of econiches for ideal seeking. We can become both diffusers and lifelong learners such that we initiate spirals of learning and diffusing. As consciousness, purposefulness and learning are inextricably aspects of the whole person, then adaptation includes the ability to effectively search the environment in order to choose the most appropriate learning strategy to pursue adaptation. When the econiche is appropriate for ideal seeking, then the learning strategy we choose is that of wisdom. But diffusion is itself a wholistic phenomenon and involves use of all human potentials. Restoring people as systems means putting away the old separation of people into cognitive, affective or emotional and connative bits with nervous systems, or into bodies and minds. All previously partitioned bits of an individual human being are implicated as is every facet of the ecosystem or environment in which they are embedded. Diffusion is as much a matter of positive affect as it is of motivation (will) and of cognition. It reaches its peak in the state of joyfulness,

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the joy of learning. And these are matters which also pertain to the nature of the ecosystem itself. Ideal seeking is an emotional phenomenon, a cognitive one and a motivational one. Searching as the econiche designed for ideal seeking elicits complex wholistic behaviour. The system principle which governs this wholistic behaviour is ultimately adaptivity, and thus we come full circle again. If we are to regain an active adaptive relationship with our physical environment, the biosphere, we must bring into being econiches which allow us to be fully human. The diffusive learning is integrated, therefore, with increasing confidence in the individual’s own ability to participate and in conquering the fear which is associated with the negative spiral into a-responsibility and isolation. Dramatic perceptual reconstructions take place and Search Conference managers can all relate instances of individuals suddenly blossoming, becoming ‘stars’ or leaders amongst their people, those who radiate energy and creative ideas and apparently have huge reserves of both. All dimensions conspire towards the spread of small econiches into larger and larger coherent ecosystems, generating further confidence in the probability that there can be a new world. Almost anyone can learn to act wisely. We can pursue ideals through which we intensify our participation in and understanding of the whole. And we can consciously learn to design and manage the econiche for the experience. We can learn about all aspects of the open system and how to translate them into practice. As we learn, our universes expand, increasing our total set of directive correlations, our opportunities for further learning as well as our immediate knowing. Where do you start? Well, the applications are as many and varied as is our world itself. There are a couple of other dimensions which come through the history of the method. The first is to use opportunities as they arise, listening to people’s desires for change and improvement, involving them in explorations of how those desires may be fulfilled and hence avoiding evangelism. The second is to remember that ‘ecosystem’ shares a common root with economy, oikos or ‘household’. “These two households may have more in common than we generally realize-a commonality which we may have to recognize in order to actually practice a politics of willing a common world...There is...potentially, a kind of organic household consisting of both natural and humanly appropriated elements, within which inhabitation is a genuine possibility’’. Inhabitation is broader and deeper than ‘environmentalism’ as there is an intimate relationship between place and culture. Places, by developing practices, create culture (Kemmis 1990: 120, 81). The ‘politics of place’ are powerful and most people despite varying degrees of dissociation, respond to a genuine opportunity to once again engage in the future of their communities and their lives. Developing community (or common unity) develops a sense of responsibility for each other as well as it. It makes sense to start with the common ground, literally and figuratively. Similarly, they will sense and celebrate the vitality of human cooperation and the diversity of

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aspirations, regaining their faith in their ability to govern themselves. Citizens will learn what is required for participation in face-to-face self government and cooperation by practising with experiences of a very specific kind (Kemmis 1990). Community Search Conferences develop spinoffs of many kinds and release creativity in people previously without opportunities. Organizational Searches have spinoffs too, particularly when they include the addition of a Participative Design component. Because that addition provides conscious conceptual knowledge of the organizational design principles, participants see the reason for previously unexplained failures to effect long term change. Ideals, affects, energy, motivation and learning and thus productivity and quality, have been shown to be inextricably interrelated with each other and with structure. Without an understanding of the consequences of the structures which flow from the design principles, major change projects and movements frequently fail as we saw with the 1960s ‘revolution’. It could not make the systemic changes so clearly envisioned and desired. It was inward looking and believed in a theory which said that behaviour was the property of people rather than that of an ecosystem, and it lacked tools for structural, organizational or ecosystem change. This is still the situation in which many organizations find themselves. Ideals and visions on their own are insufficient. The Search Conference generates these but does not leave them hanging. It is embedded in a long reality-bound process of preparation and preplanning and includes a major bridge back to reality in the form of detailed concrete action planning. With the addition of conscious learning about and practice with the design principles, it provides the full set of conditions for long term effective change. What applies to established organizations, applies also to new organizations brought into being through the Search. These organizations created to fill societal holes by dealing with new or inadequately dealt with issues, can start off on the right foot, the adaptive design principle, and thus remain directively correlated with the environment. The theory and method of Searching are one. It is an example of the ‘social engagement of social science’ with its joint responsibilities. Should you experience the theory in practice, you will experience wholism in its immediacy. You will note that people come together in quite different ways from what is generally accepted today as normal. Acting as a community, they will be totally task oriented as they plan and bring into being their more desirable future. You will see them using the many unique capabilities we share as humans in pursuit of their collective task. They will express surprise as they note the commonalities of meaning they have made from their individual perceptions of events in the extended social field. You will see them immersed as their history is relived as a community event. They will become intense and excited as they analyse and argue about their organization or community as it exists today but they will agree on a most desirable future. They will celebrate and be joyful. And they will do it in ways which acknowledge and increase their interdependencies and in so doing,

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will increase their joyful associations around their deepest shared purposes and knowledge of and trust in themselves that they can do it. And they will do it. They will continue to take responsibility for their collective future and their little patch of the world. They will involve and influence others. Another little econiche of new culture will be growing. There are many such little niches around the world and more come into being every day.

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Index

A Abstraction(s) 62-69, 79-81, 124, 141, 157, 222 ABX model 51-53, 123, 235 Adaptation(s)/active adaptation xiv-xxiv, 3-5, 7, 9-11, 13-15, 17-25, 27-42, 50-54, 56, 58, 62, 68-80, 82, 84, 85, 88-91, 93, 95, 99, 101-104, 128-129, 132, 135-137, 141, 150, 155, 160-161, 164, 169-170, 173, 177, 184, 186-187, 190, 194-195, 199, 203-205, 212, 216, 218, 225, 226, 228, 240-1 Adaptivity xvi, 11, 50, 80, 103, 136, 241 Adult learning 39, 65 Affects Negative 93, 109, 144, 159 Positive xiii, xxiii-xxiv, 38, 99, 133, 134, 139, 143, 161, 199, 202 Affect system 79, 80, 99, 139, 142, 146, 161 Affordance(s) 11, 12, 26-27, 34, 52, 59-61, 76-79, 84, 91-92, 97-99, 103, 136, 140, 147 Autonomy xv, 12, 14-15, 19, 43, 111, 129, 130, 145, 158, 212 B Basic assumption(s) 4, 13, 116-136, 156159, 182 C Closed systems xiii, xvii, xviii-xix, 9, 20 Collaboration xxii, 51, 115, 161, 211, 229 Committee(s) 22-23, 93, 119-121, 188, 191, 221-222, 227, 228 Communicating 80, 87, 96, 98, 110 Communication(s) xvi, xxi, 4, 35, 46, 51, 59, 73, 78-79, 86, 91, 96-97, 105-107, 125, 144, 145, 147, 149, 155, 161, 171, 189, 202, 216 conditions for effective 111-115, 119121, 129-130, 134-136, 178-182,

199-200, 223, 231 Community(ies) xiii, xv, 22-23, 31, 33-35, 38-39, 49-50, 53, 72, 76, 83, 84, 90, 114— 115, 123-124, 128-130, 134, 141, 143, 144, 146, 148, 156, 161, 164, 174-187, 189-192, 194-209, 214, 215, 217, 218, 222-229, 235-237, 239-242 development 40-42, 47, 171, 220 learning/planning xxii, xxiii, 4, 57, 80, 93-95, 111, 118, 211-212 self managing 5, 169-170 Complexity 35, 77, 101, 144 Conflict(s) 16, 22, 39, 43-44, 62, 111, 114, 119, 121,143, 159, 191, 192, 222, 227228, 237 rationalization of xxi, 42, 84, 112, 181182, 198-199, 203-204, 208, 224-225 Consciousness 3-4, 8, 13, 32, 42, 59, 70-94, 97-99, 101-104, 115, 116, 129, 136, 141142, 146, 159-163, 176, 234-235, 240 Cooperate xiv, 16, 108, 194, 201 Cooperation xx, 40-41, 52-53, 64, 75, 113, 116, 133, 156-157, 181, 229, 241-242 Creative learning 32, 65, 171 Creative working mode xvi, xxi, 111, 128, 130, 182, 200, 207, 211, 226 Creativity xvii, xviii, xxi, 31, 64, 110, 111, 123, 128-130, 138, 159, 165, 175, 207, 226, 242 Cultural change xiii-xvi, xix, xxiv, 1, 3, 4, 29, 34, 47, 49, 50, 164, 167, 234, 239 Culture(s) xiii-xvi, xxi-xxii, 7, 14-16, 24, 29-30, 33, 35, 42, 45, 54, 55, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 101-2, 104, 105, 127, 141, 142, 145, 151, 157, 158, 160, 161, 164, 165, 169, 183, 193-194, 201, 209, 234, 236, 241, 243 oral 46, 100, 147-149, 177, 191, 199, 202, 206

256

INDEX

D Decision making 33, 38, 39, 54, 111, 114, 148, 191, 212 Design and management xxi, xxii, xxiv, 4, 61, 80, 83, 91, 93, 94, 105-136, 169, 171, 177, 184, 185, 192, 199, 211, 223, 226, 227, 230, 235 Design principles xv-xviii, xx-xxiii, 4, 10, 11, 16, 18, 20-24, 26-28, 31, 35, 50-51, 64, 68, 75-77, 81, 85, 91, 93, 98-99, 105-111, 116, 118-119, 121-125, 127, 130, 132136, 141-142, 145, 150-152, 154-160, 162, 170-172, 177, 180-181, 183-184, 186, 188, 203-204, 208, 211-217, 219, 221-222, 227-229, 231, 237, 240, 242 Diffusion xiv, xxi, xxiii-xxiv, 3-4, 8, 20, 42-47, 49-53, 73, 75, 78, 80, 86, 97-99, 105, 112, 134, 135, 137, 138, 139, 143, 145, 146, 149, 151, 164, 170, 187, 200, 206, 212, 214, 217-220, 223, 239, 240 Directive correlation(s) xv, 3, 6, 7, 9-12, 14, 19, 20, 22, 25-28, 30-32, 50-52, 68-69, 71, 73-88, 90-92, 95-96, 99, 112, 114, 126, 136, 145, 159, 176, 197, 204, 241 Dissociated society 51 Dissociation xiv, xx, 28, 77, 115, 119, 125, 199, 239, 241 Distinctive competence 33, 176, 202 Dynamics xxii, 4, 10, 16, 19, 32, 37, 42, 56, 60-61, 68, 93, 105, 111-112, 114-137, 143-144, 158-159, 177, 181-182, 186, 189, 192, 197, 200, 209, 216, 222, 231, 236 E Econiche xiii, xiv, xxii, xxiv, 26-28, 31-32, 75, 77-80, 82, 86, 89-91, 94-95, 103, 105, 136-137, 146, 162, 239-241, 243 Ecosystem(s) xviii, xxiv, 6, 10-15, 47, 62, 65, 70-71, 79, 82, 83, 87, 88, 91-93, 96, 102, 110, 145, 146, 150, 161, 240, 241, 242 Education 16-17, 53, 59, 62-66, 69-70, 108, 110, 141, 149, 162, 174-175, 186-187, 198, 200, 223-224, 240 Effectivities 12, 26, 27, 77-79, 97, 136 Environment(s) xiv-xv, xviii-xix, xx, xxi, xxiv, 3-4, 6-8, 14-36, 38-43, 45, 47, 56-62, 65-66, 70-71, 73-76, 78, 80, 83-84, 86-91, 93-100, 103-105, 108, 111-115, 123, 132133, 136, 140, 142, 146-147, 150,

161-165, 169, 172, 177, 180, 182, 188, 190, 199, 202, 204-205, 209, 225-226, 237, 239-242 extended social field of directive correlations xiii, xvi-xvii, xxii, 9-13, 114, 194-196 task 173-175 Type I 34 Type II xx-xxi, 9-11, 16, 29, 31, 34, 35, 38, 52, 67-69, 149, 164, 165, 235 Type III xx, 9-10, 22, 35-37, 39, 64, 6768, 75, 98-99, 111, 231, 233-234 Type IV xx, xxiii, 9-11, 13, 22, 25, 27-29, 31-32, 35-36, 39, 43, 50-54, 62, 71, 75-76, 89, 111, 175, 205, 233 Environmental event(s) 74, 76-77, 89, 159 Epistemologies 62, 67, 70 Expecting 4, 81, 86, 87, 94, 95, 99 Extraction 54-60, 68, 90, 103 F Figure-ground 32, 46, 73, 75 Flocking 44, 229, 230 Forgetting(s) 4, 28, 80-94, 146, 227 Future oriented 8, 124 Future(s) xiii-xiv, , xxi-xxiii, 14, 16-17, 21, 23, 32, 34, 37, 40-42, 49, 62, 67, 69, 77, 90, 92-95, 97, 99-100, 106, 112-115, 122, 124, 127, 132, 134, 140, 144, 146, 163, 171, 183, 186-188, 190, 194, 196, 206207, 212-213, 218-219, 221, 224, 226-230, 236, most desirable xviii, 3, 11, 25, 27-29, 35, 72, 83-84, 86, 119, 172-178, 197204, 220, 241-243 most probable 11, 172-174, 197-201, 205, 220 G Genotype(s)/genotypical 142, 151

17, 28, 98, 106,

H Human relations 9, 146, 182, 183, 234 I Ideal(s) xiii, xv, xvi, xviii-xvi, xix, xxiixxiii, 8, 12, 13, 15-17, 25-29, 31-32, 34-41, 50, 64, 67, 69, 72, 74-76, 78, 84, 89-91, 95, 100-104, 110, 113-114, 135, 137-146, 148-150, 156, 157, 159-162,

257

INDEX 164, 170, 176-177, 179, 194, 197, 199, 236, 240-242 Ideal seeking xiii, xix, xxii, xxiii, 12, 13, 15-17, 37, 50, 67, 75, 76, 78, 90, 91, 100, 102, 103, 110, 137, 138-143, 145, 146, 150, 156, 157, 160-162, 176, 240, 241 Imagining 4, 72, 85, 87, 88, 94, 95 Invariance(s) 4, 59, 64-66, 77, 80-83, 86, 88, 91-93, 97, 100, 137, 145 K Knowing 16, 32, 52, 60, 62, 81-82, 86, 87, 92-93, 119, 156, 195, 227, 236, 241 Knowings/knowledge xv-xvii, xxii-xxiv, 4, 9-10, 15, 22, 24, 33-34, 39, 43, 53-58, 63-70, 77, 93, 110-112, 117, 122, 127, 129, 132, 135-136, 138, 140-142, 146, 149, 159-162, 164, 169, 174, 178, 187, 188, 202, 213-216, 231, 237, 240, 242-243 of, 95-97, 103-4 about 95-98, 103-4 L Laissez faire xxiii, 91, 108, 109, 151, 158, 159, 170, 183 Language 40, 60, 61, 69, 82, 92, 95, 147, 195 spoken language 84, 97-99, 194, 200, 202, 235 written language 71, 208 Learner(s) xxii, xxiv, 13, 54, 59, 78, 110, 160, 169, 240 Learning xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, xxi, xxii, xxiii, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15-17, 19-22, 25, 28, 32, 34, 35, 45-47, 137, 140-142, 144-151, 159-164, 169-173, 175-178, 180, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189-191, 194-196, 199-204, 207-209, 211, 212, 218, 224-227, 229-231, 236, 237, 239, 240, 242 hatred of 118-119, 133 diffusive xxiv, 3, 4, 47, 49-104 joy of 137-138, 241 puzzle 27, 31, 37-42, 173, 186, Learning organization/environment xvi, 20, 24, 27, 79, 105-136 Learning system 46, 52, 68 Learning to learn 40, 47, 54, 66 M Maladaption(s) xx-xxi, 13, 22, 33, 76-78, 80, 128, 150, 239

Maladaptive trends 28 Memory(ies) 53, 58, 63, 66, 74, 80-88, 92, 142, 146, 148, 149, 164, 190, 202 Mixed mode 109, 118, 121-123, 132, 134, 135, 205, 219 Motivating behaviour(s) 72, 219 Motivation(s) xxiv, 5, 39, 72, 94, 110, 119, 137, 139, 142-145, 156-157, 160-162, 190, 214, 239-240, 242 Motive(s) xxiv, 72-73, 113, 115 Multisearch 122, 132, 170, 185, 192, 211, 219-225 N Not knowing 92, 93, 96, 227 O Open system(s) xiii, xv-xix xxi, xxiii-xxiv, 3-4, 6-9, 13-24, 27-30, 32-33, 35, 38, 42, 70, 86, 90, 93, 95, 103, 115, 135, 157, 159, 161, 164-165, 172, 175, 182, 195, 211, 225, 239-241 Openness 12, 112, 113, 115, 130, 134, 157, 182, 193, 196, 203, 233, 235 Organizational system 25 Organization(s) xv, xvi, xxii, 5, 16-17, 1920, 22-24, 26-29, 31, 33-35, 37, 41-42, 47, 49-50, 53, 56, 58, 66, 71, 75, 77, 79, 92, 98, 101, 105-110, 116, 118, 119, 130, 133, 141-142, 150-151, 154-157, 159, 161-164, 173, 174, 176, 182, 185-188, 191, 203, 206, 212-219, 229, 242 Overload 77, 140, 189, 190 P Parameters of choice 33, 151 Parameters of decision making 39 Participative democracy xv, xvi, xxiii, 151, 178, 183, 230 Participative democratic society 54 Participative design workshop (PDW) xiv, xxi, xxiii, 20-21, 24, 28-29, 42, 70, 160, 162, 172, 206, 212-217, 225-229, 237 Perception(s) 6, 7, 10-12, 14, 20, 32, 34, 37, 42, 53-102, 110-116, 119, 121, 124, 129,134-136, 139-141, 147, 162, 164, 176-177, 194-196, 203, 230, 240, 242 Perceptual system(s) 4, 54-56, 58, 60, 63, 65, 66, 81, 85-86, 140, 147 Planner(s)/planning xxi, xxii, 7, 11-12, 15, 51, 76, 93-95, 98-99, 105, 106, 108,

258

INDEX

110-115, 122, 134, 175-177, 181-186, 189-191, 193-200, 211, 221, 223, 233, 237, 242 active adaptive 27, 38-42, 90, 132 strategic 24, 28, 31-42, 47 Plan(s) 3, 17, 106, 164, 201, 203-207, 224-230 action xiii, xxi, 21-23, 28, 109, 119, 141, 143, 146, 171, 173, 212, 214-218, 220, 236 strategic xxiii, 83, 121, 145, 234 Psychological requirements 19, 70, 110, 213 Psychological similarity 113, 114, 121, 199, 233 Purposeful xiii, xv, xvii, 3, 6, 11-16, 18-19, 21, 25, 27, 45, 50, 53, 60, 62, 72, 97, 99, 110, 114, 122, 133, 159, 161, 163, 164, 218 Purposefulness xvi, xix, 12, 13, 78-80, 91, 99, 103, 240 Purpose(s) xiii-iv, xvi-xviii, xix, xxiii, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 24-29, 33-34, 36-37, 39, 41, 44, 50-51, 65-66, 72, 74-76, 78, 80, 87, 92, 93, 95, 96-100, 103, 105, 109-111, 113, 114, 116-118, 121-124, 128-129, 132, 136, 138-141, 146, 148, 160, 162, 170-171, 174,, 177, 180, 183-185, 187-189, 192, 195, 197, 199-201, 206, 211-212, 216, 218, 220, 221, 223, 225, 229-231, 234235, 237, 243 R Reconstruction xiv, 4, 16, 38, 67, 73, 82, 89, 90, 110, 137, 140, 141, 197 Relevant uncertainty xv, xx, 10, 12, 32, 35, 36, 50, 62, 90 Rememberings 4, 28, 74, 80-95, 137, 145, 150 Responsibility(ies) xv, xix, xxii, xxiii, 3, 21, 40, 42, 51, 68, 76, 94, 101, 106-108, 110111, 115, 118-121, 124-125, 133-134, 152, 156, 158-161, 163-164, 169-170, 178-183, 186, 188, 190-191, 193, 195, 200, 216-217, 224-225, 239, 241-243 S Search conference (SC)/searching/the search xiii, xiv, xvi, , xxi-xxiii, 3-5, 7, 9, 11-13, 15, 16, 18, 21-25, 27-29, 31-32, 37, 39-42, 44, 57-58, 69-70, 72-73, 76-78, 83-84, 8891, 94-95, 105, 107-112, 115, 118-119,

122-124, 127, 129-134, 138, 141, 143146, 149-151, 156, 160, 164, 169-196, 198-200, 202-203, 206-207, 209, 211212, 214, 216-222, 224-231, 233-237, 239, 241-242 Self management 27, 43, 83, 99, 111, 119, 123, 132, 178, 181, 193, 220, 226, 229 Socio-ecological xxiii-xxiv, 3, 8, 17, 24-29, 40-42, 47, 50, 80, 89, 93, 103, 128, 137, 160, 164 Socio-technical system(s)/STS 18, 20-21, 24, 47, 215-216 Sortition 188 Strategic goals xxii, 12, 31, 93, 123, 155, 174-176, 185, 189, 204, 212, 217, 224 Strategy(ies) 4, 8, 13, 32, 35, 44, 47, 87, 90, 95-96, 113, 141, 212, 219, 221-222, 236, 240 of the Indirect Approach xxi, 31, 39, 205-206 Supervision/supervisor 106, 108, 152, 154, 211 System principle 6 T Task oriented xiii, xvi, 41, 116, 118, 133, 135, 169, 171, 181-183, 193, 207, 237, 242 Trust 67, 90, 115, 116, 121, 130, 133-135, 164, 186, 191, 196, 202, 203, 212, 223, 226, 235, 237, 243 Two stage model xiv, xxi-xxiii, 3, 23-24, 28, 170, 172, 211-217, 228 U Understanding 95-96, 98-104 Union(s) 14, 49, 184, 186, 188, 223, 224 Unique design(s) xxiii, 170, 211, 225-230 V Values xiv, xx, 7-10, 12, 19, 22, 25, 28, 29, 32, 35, 37, 59, 84, 88, 90, 97, 112, 122, 196-198, 203, 220 W Wisdom 15, 95-96, 99-104, 123 World hypothesis(es) xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, 38, 107, 137, 148, 234, 236, 240 Z Zeigarnik effect 140, 190

In the series DIALOGUES ON WORK AND INNOVATION the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 1. NASCHOLD, Frieder and Casten VON OTTER: Public Sector Transformation: Rethinking Markets and Hierarchies in Government. 1996. 2. TOULMIN, Stephen and Björn GUSTAVSEN (eds): Beyond Theory. Changing organizations through participation. 1996. 3. GUSTAVSEN, Björn, Bernd HOFMAIER, Marianne EKMAN PHILIPS and Anders WIKMAN: Concept-Driven Development and the Organization of the Process of Change. An evaluation of the Swedish Working Life Fund. 1996. 4. MERRELYN, Emery: Searching. The theory and practice of making cultural change. 1999. 5. PÅLSHAUGEN, Øyvind, Björn GUSTAVSEN, Dag ØSTERBERG and John SHOTTER: The End of Organization Theory? Language as a tool in action research and organizational development. 1998. 6. GUSTAVSEN, Björn, Tom COLBJØRNSEN and Øyvind PÅLSHAUGEN (eds): Development Coalitions in Working Life. The ‘Enterprise Development 2000’ Program in Norway. 1998. 7. ENNALS, Richard and Björn GUSTAVSEN: Work Organization and Europe as a Development Coalition. 1999. 8. GREENWOOD, Davydd J. (ed.): Action Research. From practice to writing in an international action research development program. 1999. 9. VAN BEINUM, Hans (ed.): Ideas and Practices in Action Research. An institutional journey. n.y.p. 10. KALLIOLA, Satu and Risto NAKARI (eds.): Resources for Renewal. A participatory approach to the modernization of municipal organizations in Finland. 1999. 11. LJUNGBERG VAN BEINUM, Ingrid: Using the Lamp instead of Looking into the Mirror. Women and men in discussion about the relationship between men and women in the work place. 2000. 12. MUNTIGL, Peter, Gilbert WEISS and Ruth WODAK: European Union Discourses and Unemployement. An interdisciplinary approach to employment policymaking and organizational change. n.y.p. 13. GUSTAVSEN, Bjørn, Håkon FINNE and Bo Oscarsson: Creating Connectedness. The role of social research in innovation policy. 2001.