The Container is Borrowed
This reflection was triggered by Mark’s essay The Geometry of the Vanishing Container.
Owen
As many other participatory methods, Open Space has to be placed not only on the socio historical of its founder, but on what was the status quo of the time. The idea was that people gathering together wanted to explore topics but were constrained by the format of fixed presentations, usually decided by third parties and in advance. What if participants themselves could bring forth the topics relevant to them in the moment? For that, a new structure was needed, one that invited another behaviour and opened other possibilities of conversation.
Open Space and other participatory methods invited and served that purpose, and recognising their root assumptions, offered a then radical way of organising. What I learned about their law and principles were less about ontology and more about giving permission to something different.
I was always puzzled by “The Law of Two Feet” (now called “The Law of Mobility”), which I paraphrase: if you think you are not contributing or learning from this group, feel free to move around, no questions asked. I was discussing this back in 2009 with a colleague from Greece. Why do we need a law to tell us we are free to move around? Our reflection at the time went back to the status quo – apparently we needed a reminder precisely because of being trained to stay put no matter what.
The principle “whatever happens is the only thing that could have” could also be seen that way. In a world where the status quo is bound to teleological encounters and output/performance anxiety, this was an invitation to let go. It ties to the idea of sustaining more divergent conversations, ones that are still rare in organisational life to this day.
The new structure does not automatically redistribute power, although in some cases it might, and as a practitioner you might have encountered high resistance when it’s the case. Such structure can also be used as a one-off experience of connection and creativity, but not a challenge to the system in which it’s embedded. In other cases, at a certain level, it might challenge such systems, not as the trigger, but as an element. Like all participation, it can be manipulated and bounded, but that does not undo its advantages. As we know from the state of our democracies, it is still valid to have them, although they might not solve manipulation or changes in power.
Expanding the influence from the founder’s history to the context of organising at the time does not weaken the influence of the former. It also does not take away the complexity of power relations or the danger of metaphysical sublimation, both explored well by the study.
The work goes back to the impossibility of stepping outside of it. Whether wanting to exert control or allow to ‘emerge’, there are a number of actants that influence what is possible. The consultant is only one of them, participating in a theatre to create a containment for participation truly believing it enables self-organisation, when in fact it might just be sublimating overall anxiety about loss of control into a methodology that looks participatory.
We practitioners know this, because if we stick around, we notice that a scape valve cannot hold anxiety for long, and the conversation tends to go underground, become cynicism or find another outlet to show up.
Shaw
I had the chance to say this some times and repeat – if you are an Open Space (or the Art of Hosting) practitioner, Patricia’s “Changing Conversations in Organisations” is a must read. It challenges the position and the role of the host or consultant exactly on the stance: there is no design change, in fact, no design organisation, so design a participatory process comes into scrutiny.
It also challenges the “innocent circle”, something the participatory process community has been struggling for some time. In another community meeting of participatory participants talking about race, it was obvious that sitting people in a circle did not mean giving them ‘equal voice’.
The sincere step to change a controlling and concentrated structure to more participatory and distributed one is confronted to the nature of conversations. Conversations result of the process of relating that happens without any previous thought design, form, or structure. More, it happens in the process of relating in the local here-and-now and flows with embedded patterns of power, history, etc.
Both the piece and the book explore this stance and critique well. The piece also mentions the writing style using reflective narratives that very much aligns with the proposed stance – a style that can be seen in other publications from the same tradition and coherently invite for practice and further reflection rather than an abstract summative.
For the participatory practitioner, read both. The confrontations are key for a stance where a selection of a theme or a question is unwarranted, regardless if given by a third party or the participants themselves. It is not to say that there is no place where alternative structures can be at service, but it provides nuance and deeper context to a practice that was born to allow alternatives to the still dominant command-and-control. The host and consultant can then show up as one role in relationship, a negotiated role immersed in power relations like everybody else, but not as process designer.
For the work of change, a structure pre-selection might backfire – it presupposes someone who understands and designs in advance, a critical imposition only surpassed by arriving with your favourite framework. In this work it is better to enter the room to witness and join how things unfold in the present, in the here-and-now re-creation of organising together. More like swimming with the tides rather than being a lifeguard, a weather man, or worst, god Poseidon.
Beyond the confrontation
Structures of participation might make sense in some contexts and generate spaces and conversations that allow for new explorations and possibilities. But the work of change does not happen by either content or structure design. Shaw’s stance, staying with the here-and-now and immersed in the local, acknowledges the role of a consultant as one within many, participating in the unfolding re-creation of organising together. Yet, I would not go the unbounded assumption behind Shaw’s relationship:
- There is no cuddling corner in this work. No stepping outside, no whole-systems view, and whether controlled by people, defined by structure, or emerging from the divine, there is no external lookout or importing of natural phenomena as ontology.
- There is no making sense without distinction, separation, a form of closure or containment. Even the local re-enactment of relations presuppose previous selections, some conscious, some unconscious. Making sense of change is to recreate containment despite a certain level of anxiety or the recognition of paradoxes.
If (1) contradicts the idea of designing for emergence and creating an innocent structure, (2) contradicts the idea that we can operate unbounded, somewhat rationally deciding to take risk.
In Shaw’s narrative, for example, her presence (history, projected expertise) in her engagement is the operating container, one without which intervention and future reflection on experience would be impossible. Staying with the conflict is not un-containing it, quite the opposite, it is the textbook of active containment.
In both practices, there is neither guarantee nor tendency that one will allow raggedy exchange rather than performative ones. There is absolutely no evidence of predisposition, being of openness or closeness of any sort, that per se induces “real or unsafe work” to happen. For all we know, raggedy is too risky on all interactions, and definitely avoided in organisational life.
There is also the complexity of consultancy (another great book within Shaw’s tradition): transformative teleology is a hard sell. Although perpetual construction is generally accepted as a given, it does not provide the anxiety reduction effect of a 2×2 matrix or of a ‘proven process’. The middle ground between abstraction and surrender might be exactly what someone like Shaw would take – create experiences with others, reflect and share them, and build the relationships needed to allow the stance she holds. There is no consultancy without commission, and a consultant needs to negotiate the power to make power part of the conversation. It’s not the consultant’s choice, but part of the relationship with other parties (sponsor, other stakeholders, etc).
The piece ends exploring form, in-between, the liminal, both in western and eastern traditions. There is a lot there that is above my pay grade, but I connected to the ‘technology of the will’. From what I’ve got, there is no escape or ‘surviving intact’ in being in this world, there is no cuddling corner to rest, no ultimate stance. If emptiness is form, form is emptiness – so the container is borrowed, it arises and it passes.