& Furthermore

& Furthermore (From MH, N-S, TSL at ESP Summer Seminar 2007)

We take part in daily, civilized cultural rituals which, though they are primarily unconscious, provide stability.
Peter Kruse: “Culture is the sum of the self-evident.” (The “It’s just how we do things around here” phenomenon.)
A first step: Make transparent the hidden rules, irritate them, and replace them. (This is where a neutral, facilitating consultant comes in handy.) (Or a culturally insensitive fictional character, such as Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat.)


Only in instability do systems become innovative and begin to seek new patterns of order.
Do try this at home: 1) Increase tolerance of instability in collaborators, 2) Destabilize patterns and habits through targeted interventions (Break the established rules! Think Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc.!),
3) Create structures and principles to support general, autodynamic pattern change.



An example: . . .
The 9-Dot Puzzle . . . Task: To connect these 9 dots with 4 lines – without
. . . lifting the pencil. You have to literally think “outside the box.”

Some people are more able to do this than others. They have more cognitive flexibility, more imagination, are easier to influence – but they’re not so good with routine, optimizing, quality-control, etc.
Kruse: In any business you need the optimizers but also the crazies.


How to Use Network Intelligence in Steering Instability & Change: Kruse suggests something along the lines of the stock market principle: Autodynamic, circular causality (activity creates potential & potential attracts activity; inactivity decreases potential …) in the “uncontrolled interaction of a network.”
1) Gather data from participants (your experts) using a few “seed questions,” 2) Develop input in a structure which, like the stock market, allows participants to follow the impact of their own activity, as well as the group dynamic, and to respond in real time.
What you want to do is: Start up a process whereby participants can find their own solutions in self-determined development paths.