What I've been doing

The way that can be described is not the absolute way...

-- Lao Tse

It's been a while since I last posted and so I feel the need to explain my absence from the blogosphere to the world. The basic justification is that I have been immersing myself in my MA in Participation Power and Social Change and, more specifically, the preparation of my Analytical Paper. The Analytical Paper is, essentially, supposed to be a kind of concept paper that can be used to frame the work I will be doing when I return to Seva Mandir. It will combine a contextual analysis, a conceptual framework and an overview of how I plan to go about addressing the questions that I intend to ask.

I won't go into the context just here, but the conceptual framework seems worth sharing. Essentially, I will be locating my action research project at the theoretical intersection of three main domains: complexity, power and learning.
There are plenty of theories related to each of these domains and I have been seeking out the particular ones where they converge. This has led me to a number of texts that have quite significantly contributed to the way that I think about my participation in the universe - and particularly in social life.

So far my learning journey here at IDS seems to have given me a much more solid understanding of the more philosophical dimensions of the work that I am involved in. In particular, I have come to gain a more solid understanding of the idea of 'epistemology' - a word I had often heard, sometimes used but whose definition (and importance) I had never understood so completely. I have also manged to explore the linkages between knowledge and power and understand how participatory action research serves to transform power relations by engaging people in the creation of new knowledge.

I have also had the opportunity to explore Mezirow's work on Transformative Learning:

"the emancipatory process of becoming critically aware of how and why the structure of psycho-cultural assumptions has come to constrain the way we see ourselves and our relationships, reconstituting this structure to permit a more inclusive and discriminating integration of experience and acting upon these new understandings."

Combined with Hayward's (2000) reconceptualisation of power as 'the network of social boundaries to action' and the very important observation that the very idea of negative freedom is absurd (she argues instead for a positive and political form of freedom), all this has amounted to a rather powerful set of concepts that have been making me continuously rethink the nature of and my engagement in the world.

On top of all this, I have been trying to familiarise myself with Ralph Stacey and the idea of complex responsive processes. Stacey has perhaps provided me with the most radical worldview of all. Three papers, all available for free, can be downloaded from his university website:

• The Emergence of Knowledge in Organisations
• Learning as an Activity of Interdependent People
• Affects and Cognition in a Social Theory of Unconscious Processes
  

Together these provide a fairly powerful explanation of the relationship between the individual and the social, consciousness and unconscioussness, meaning, knowledge, learning, identity, power and communication all from within a complexity-based framework. I have been doing plenty of learning by explaining and this has really helped me to internalise some of these new ways of seeing the world. I really don't think I can think about anything the same way again!

In that fuzzy space where complexity theory, power theory and learning theory intersect, I will be conducting my action research; exploring the ways in which I can engage in conversations that bring about positive transformation in human organisations (both Seva Mandir and the communities). I think it's going to be a lot of fun! The essay, however, which will only be 5,000 words, is going to be a bit of a challenge. So much to say, and so little space!

On a somewhat different note, I have been having a lot of really great conversations. Feedback - and the need for it - has been one of the recurring themes, as has the need to explore power relations within our learning group, and my Analytical Paper (of course)... Tomorrow will be the second complexity world cafe in which we will recap the last session, go over the concepts that had not been covered previously and then have some further conversations to explore what some of this might mean for practice... It will be interesting to see what kind of energy is present in the room as it will probably be my last opportunity to participate in one of these sessions for sometime :) I can't help but hope that this process of exploring complexity gets the wind under its wings!

It is now way past my bedtime! Sweet dreams!

conversations, presencing, change and more

A while back I had been talking about social objects - the things that give us a reason to be in a relationship with others - and how they are critical elements in the process of social transformation. Now there's a kind of magic that takes place in that fuzzy area where we interact around that thing. What goes on there? And how does it lead to transformation?

Well, recently, there have been some interesting posts on the subject. First by Chris Corrigan and later by Dave Pollard that present a distillation of how this change takes place. Here's what they look like:

Chris Corrigan's Map:
And this, Dave Pollard's:
And it would seem that all this is based on something called the U-Process, developed by Otto Scharmer and friends. The U-process is a kind of framework for bringing about systemic change in all kinds of organisations and groups through a collective change process and is being applied here and there to try and tackle seemingly intractable problems. It looks something like this:

All of this makes good sense in the context of the process that we have been following in order to help Seva Mandir prepare its 6th Comprehensive plan, the meetings that we hold on a regular basis in Seva Mandir and the workshops that we have been organising with the citizen's of Delwara. For example, during the recent meeting with the women or with the 'harijans' (members of the lowest caste group, victims of great discrimination and exclusion) we have to get from a group of disparate individuals, potentially in conflict with each other, to a collective with a shared identity and a commitment to each other. In order to do this, we must travel from 'I' to 'we'. We need to open up our hearts to each other and contemplate what being together means. This is the bottom of the U. At this stage there is a sense of vibration within the group - of being connected to each other - both through minds and hearts ... and it is elevating. Once we reach this stage, translating the shared energy into concrete plans of action becomes much easier. But the process is not always either easy or smooth... and sometimes we are only partly there...

Two stages jump out as being the real critical points that need to be examined in greater depth. One is the shift into presencing. How does it happen? How long should it be sustained? The other is the taking of personal responsibility after presencing - the co-creating... How deep was the presencing? Did it hit the nail on the head? Did it cause the shift deeply enough to take the members to a whole new level? What would this take? Once we get back in our old system, out of the U-experience, we are back in those old positions, old routines, interacting with the same old people reinacting the same old patterns? Sure, if we can maintain our separateness through our newly formed group we may be able to maintain the energy... But high fall-out can be expected...

And, well, it struck me that this process is a kind of fractal - in the sense that it applies to large groups, small groups and well, why not, I suppose... Individuals? Now what would this look like at the individual level? One thing is clear: whether we are engaging in this kind of a U-process at the organisation or group level, we are dealing first and foremost with individuals.

What goes on in the individual during this process? And is there a way that an individual can experience this same transition from one state to another on their own? Is it necessarily a collective process? Is it only through my being and doing with others that I can bring about transformation in myself? If not, is meditation or reflection what this looks like at the personal level? Do I have to disconnect myself from my daily life in order to get there? Am I already there? Can I do this willingly? Can I presence perpetually? Is it more about a state of being?

And can this be done at the level of a community as a whole? What would be the method? How would we get a multitude of fragmented individuals and groups to gradually 'vibrate in harmony' as it were? What is the deepest collective presencing possible for a whole community and how do we get there?

I don't know what the answers are to any of these questions... but they do look like they matter!

And, I suppose, this is where the work that Seva Mandir really fits in. It can provide not just the U experience but it can also do the groundwork to prepare for entry and do the follow-up work to support what comes after. It not only gets people ready to dive in, it not only helps them to access the source, but it also provides support in enacting whatever comes next. Still though, ultimate responsibility lies in the hands of the people themselves. We give no instructions.

But the real question is how deep we get in the U process. This seems key to everything. If we get to the source, where would it take us? What would it take for us to get there? I think we cannot know the answer until we walk the path... And convincing anyone to embark on something that has no clear destination is not easy - although it seems more and more people are talking about this - facilitators, knowledge management experts, and more. But, wedged in all the entanglements of organisational reality - accountability, reports, targets, and the like - how do we do this (by Tom Atlee, hat tip to Dave Pollard)? The unknown or everything that we know (however bad it may be)? How do we prepare people for this kind of trade-off?

My mission in life, forgive me for this, is to facilitate a conscious evolutionary process. Yes, I read these words today on Tom Atlee's site, but I have known this (in these very words) as long back as 6 years ago. In order to do this I need to understand exactly how we connect to the source in the most effective manner to bring about the individual and collective shifts that are required, to harmonise humanity with the flow of nature and liberate the full potential of human spirit. For this I need to know how to get people, systems and everyone else on-board. How to connect people in this quest in the most effective manner. This is what I need to learn. And this is what I need to get from my studies.

Let's see where this road takes me ;)

the complan: where am i now?

An interesting time to write: I'm really supposed to be converting the last 6 months of dialogue, head-scratching, getting tired and worked up, writing on flip-charts, making presentations and so on into a single document that will: (a) communicate to donors what it is that Seva Mandir is planning to do for the next 3 years; and (b) serve as a reference point for Seva Mandir reminding it of the emerging directions and strategies that it has evolved. This document - the 6th Comprehensive Plan - is due in 6 days. But my mind, as ever in these moments, is filled with a multitude of other thoughts - not entirely off topic but off-topic enough to distract me from writing that document!

I think there are questions I have asked in the past that would be very suitable for picking up at this stage in time. Almost all of these questions relate to the process that we followed; to the changes that have taken place (or not); to my hopes and expectations as compared to what really happened; to what i can learn from the path that has been followed (including what I could have done differently - or would do differently next time); to try to identify patterns in the way decisions were taken and the process evolved (and looking at who had what role in that process, including myself); to think about what the blind-spots have been/are - both my own, of key individuals and in the organisation at large; to think of what I will work on when I return...

I have blogged earlier about some of the positive trends that have emerged as a result of the process, so I won't get into the details of the answers to all these questions now...

However, I do feel the need to express one of the feelings that emerges in response to all these questions. That feeling is that Seva Mandir has some blind spots in terms of the way it operationalises its understanding of complexity, power, organisation and learning - and this needs to be addressed. So long as these blind spots remain unresolved, some very critical problems will persist and continue to serve as a source of much pain and frustration for all those involved.

Writing up the Comprehensive Plan document while I can feel and see all of these things - perhaps all brought into stark relief as a result of the process that we have followed for the last 6 months - and not having the time to properly engage with any of these issues is like a kind of torture! However, it is helping me to cultivate that wisdom of the Tao.

It is also showing me, quite clearly, that the kind of process I undertook here was not able to get to the real depths of the issues and that an altogether different approach would probably be required. Interestingly, I feel that it would not necessarily be one that piggy-backs or is incorporated into a time-bound 'comprehensive plan' type planning process. It may well be that such a process contains within itself anti-learning elements. Therefore, the real change process will be one that systematically builds deeper and deeper learning into everything that the organisation does.

This, it seems to me, is really a quest for profound inter-personal truth and understanding. It is a spiritual quest and it cannot be packaged in a 6 month process. Though perhaps such a process can help us launch ourselves on such a trajectory... And it's just too early to really say whether this has happened yet or not... And so, life in limbo for Andre continues. Now I should really be getting back to writing the comprehensive plan!

vehicles for social objects

The last few posts on social objects have been gradually bringing a bit of clarity on how these social objects fit into the work that Seva Mandir and, I suppose, other organisations like it are involved in. This post is concerned with what, presumably can also be thought of as a social object: the vehicle or container for the social objects and the change that they have the potential to unleash. Although in the past I have tended to talk about containers, they have something too static sounding about them - which is not at all a good symbol of the dynamic process or context within which dialogue and action around social objects takes place!

The container-vehicles appear to have many levels. I will focus on only a few at this stage, and of these few, mainly on one. The few include: the organisation, the programme, the implementation team. The one will be the programme. My questions is basically this: what are the implications for the development and deployment of social objects (our medium for catalysing change) of being situated within a programme.

This line of inquiry emerges from a naggling sense I have that 'programmes' tend to function or be understood and interfaced with within a machine-like framework. By this, I mean to say they are defined by a simple, listed set of linear - almost mechanical - processes - such as making a visit, filling in a monitoring format, making a payment, holding a meeting, giving a training, which have the potential to be disembodied from the deeper engagement that is required to catalyse real change. That is to say, that the engagements see the creation of the social object(s) as ends in their own right rather than as means to a higher end.

For example, a day-care centre for children must be run (as targets have to be fulfilled) and running it is itself a worthwhile achievement (after all, we will be able to achieve our targets, for which we have requested funds and are now accountable), regardless of whether it is being used to the fullest to catalyse social change. Why does this happen? And why do targets continue to rise, year after year even when the desired quality of work on the existing centres has not been achieved? The answers to these questions (which I will not go into right now) are numerous and reflect the complex context within which development work takes place. All the same, it happens, to the detriment, I believe, of the quality of the work. Indeed, there is a kind of shallow engagement that takes place and expansion merely makes it more difficult to go into the kind of depth that is required to really understand what is going on. This feeds into some kind of vicious cycle and so it goes on.

Now, it may be unfair to attribute this 'problem' as an inherrent feature of the nature of 'programmes'. Instead, it might be better to say that this is an observable characteristic of most programmes, their potential for being more evolutionary and dynamic may simply be getting systematically missed because of the way people think, regardless of the existence of programmes or not. This raises the important questions of what the potential of 'programmes' actually is; why programmes are presently functioning within a 'machine' model; how would a programme operating outside the 'machine' model function (what would be its essential characteristics); and what would it take in order to make this kind of a transition within an organisational context.

Somehow, the understanding that can emerge from an inquiry into these issues needs to become institutionalised within the organisation. I suppose that a collaborative action-research-based intervention into the programme itself could be a good way to achieve this.

Some positive feedback on the 6th CP process

Another pleasing outcome of today's 'last' meeting for the 6th CP process has been the positive feedback on the overall process received by the team (which includes me). It was good to hear people voicing many of the points that I had mentioned in an earlier post based on my own observations. I guess it means that something has worked :)

My biggest fear, however, lingers: we have said great things, and committed to great actions... but when it comes to delivering, how will we avoid those old attractors - those negative, self-defeating behaviours and patterns encoded in our relationships and values that lock up our potential...

Having said that, I do seem to have been accorded (publicly) responsibility for helping to ensure that the conversations continue, that people from the organisation keep on coming together to talk about their work and to feed this into the organisation's ongoing evolution...This is great because it's definitely part of what I hope to work on when I come back for my field placement in January! It will be fascinating to help the oragnisation through the difficult process of untangling its great commitments in the form of new and more effective ways of relating to and engaging with the change process!

emerging patterns, outcomes and questions of the 6th CP Process

So, it seems like it's about time to share the progress so far with putting together the Comprehensive Plan (CP). Around 6 months have elapsed since the process started. It started with some initial discussions with the CE leading to me preparing a concept note and a presentation of the same. The framework was approved and the process began.

Now that process of consultations has just about completed and I have started the process of turning it all into a document for internal and external circulation. This blog post contains some of the things that have really struck me as being profound and meaningful in terms of process-outcomes and also strategic direction-setting. It ends with some of the questions that are now with me.

Process-outcomes

• rather than simply looking at our strategies, we were able to inquire into organisational culture (essentially our values, principles and how we relate to each other and our purpose) and structure (who sits where, holds what power, has what function and reports to who) – and many people who would usually not be so directly or openly involved in these discussions had the opportunity to contribute
• participatory process enabled critical perspectives to find voice throughout the process and feed into strategic direction-setting process enabled all parts of the organisation to see what all other parts of the organisation were doing, inquire into this and also give suggestions individual
• relationships amongst certain groups of staff have changed – more people have more of a feeling that they have had some control or influence over the course of events
• topics such as organisational culture and structure were opened to discussion by all members of staff – critical questions have been asked and important directions have emerged
• in many instances programme staff have given honest assessments of their performance and the issues that they are facing many assumptions and differences of opinion were aired in a non-confrontational manner and there have been signs of people from across various levels really changing the way they relate to each other and think about the work they are doing
• created a positive can-do attitude amongst the staff discussions were held on many sticky, frustrating and also confusing topics

Strategic direction-setting

• readying ourselves to double-up our efforts at working with the local governments (Panchayats) and also the other government departments
• pushing for the idea of federating community organisations – including village-level organisations and women's groups - at various levels
• conceptualising new staff induction as a 1 year long process rather than a 3 day workshop
  
• promoting the idea of using monitoring and evaluation as a tool for facilitating dialogue with communities about their local development process (rather than simply a way of reporting to donors)
• deciding to form a livelihood/income generation internal network cell that would bring together staff from different programmatic units (such as natural resource development, women's empowerment, and village institutions) to explore new ways of addressing what is now officially recognised as a cross-cutting issue
• more generally getting integration across programmes onto the agenda – e.g. integrating livestock and agriculture activities to give a more integrated farming systems approach
• deciding to look into the oragnisation's ecological footprint and find ways of minimising it

There are probably plenty more significant outcomes that I could present in a more structured manner after actually writing down the Comprehensive Plan. But these give the general gist of the sorts of new things that have been taking place.

Many of these – perhaps seemingly small – changes are of quite massive significance in the overall scheme of things. What is most exciting for me at the moment is that a whole bunch of decisions were taken by other people that I had dreamed about in the past. I was seeing the people around me saying the things that I had hoped they would say. I even had the experience of people saying exactly the points that I had written in my notebook. In some ways the last few months have felt like a bit of a dream. They have been intense too! I have been angry, overjoyed, frustrated, exhausted and at times almost ecstatic. The best moments have been the ones where it simply felt like everything was coming together for the best. The worst were the ones where I was wrestling with my own ego. Truly fascinating!

But I still have a lot of questions. For example, this morning in an email to the Chief Executive, I asked the following:

• How do we sustain and even deepen whatever positive changes we have seen so far?
• How do we keep open the dialogue and creativity that we have unleashed so far and make it a permanent feature of the organisation?
• How do we avoid falling back into sub-optimal patterns of relations and interactions that mitigate our effectiveness as a catalyst of positive social change?

They all seem to be getting at the same thing. My concern is that there was a kind of tipping point that we could have crossed and that we didn't quite cross it... What does this imply?

Which really leads me onto this:

One thing that people don't seem to write about is whether it is normal to see or feel things happening as part of an organisational change process in a kind of staged manner... for example, we might not have transitioned to being a 'chaordic organisation' or something of that sort but hey! we might nonetheless have moved some way towards appreciating the value of meaningful conversation, of 'getting the whole system in the room', of challenging our present limits and so on. Now for the facilitator (for want of a better word for my role), these may seem like baby steps in comparison to the strides that were dreamt of. Is this normal? Sometimes, there's a feeling that it's a kind of all-or-nothing shift – especially when we're talking about complexity, chaos, self organisation, emergence, open space and so on. But is that even fair? Sometimes it seems as though we need one of those 'paradigm shifts' or some kind of 'turn the whole thing inside out' approaches. There will, of course, be some kind of a gap perceived by the facilitator between 'what could have been' and 'what actually was'. Won't there? Other people – perhaps because they are more experienced and take it for granted – don't seem to talk about this 'gap' so much.

Having said this, a recent mail (today) on the aoh list seems to be getting at just this point.

dealing with tensions in conversation... a start

I now have some questions on the role of conflict, taking stands, - more generally surfacing tensions as a self-appointed change-maker in an unofficial organizational change process. There are a lot of complexities here – especially in terms of how the roles and the situation itself is framed…

For example, the organisation considers itself to be a learning organisation continuously undergoing a kind of gradual learning and change process as a result of learning-by-doing. Another example is my own role as ‘person putting together the 6th Comprehensive Plan’ – a kind of in-house, part-facilitator, part-writer, part-outsider, but not with a totally clear organizational change mandate since we haven’t really been using that term (thanks to Hugh at Gaping Void for the cartoon)… But I do see myself as trying to contribute to organizational change… and in a way, this Comprehensive Plan is all about change...

Anyway, it seems to me that there is a general sense that facilitators should never utter harsh or strong words or express a stance on anything other than the design of the sessions that they facilitate – i.e. the meta-container. But often I have found myself not even really having proper control over these very spaces. Indeed, a lot of the ‘competition’ I face in my work seems to be around control of the container. In these situations, I need to think about how my individual actions, words and body language can be used to influence the container (or the people in it).

This, for example, is what led me to decide to simply keep quiet and out of the way on that day when I got upset about the attitude of a top manager during a staff gathering on strategies for not appreciating the open-space approach and wanting to bring more control into the process (see this earlier blog post)… In a way, I stepped back and the group then had to take ownership for the whole process… Though I was out of the way, at least the people were in charge and trying to figure it out themselves.

Anyway, several days later, and preparing for another event, I remember having a little clash over the idea of open space. I was trying to advocate for an open-space approach but the response from a top manager was negative. They said that they had seen open space in the past and that it hadn’t worked. They also said that they were concerned about the use of time by their staff – a process that doesn’t work out at a retreat for the whole organisation means that the time of some 250 people would be getting wasted – convert that into rupees and it really does seem like a big risk!

But then… it’s also a bit degrading for the staff at some level… don’t we have enough faith in our staff to want to use their time productively? Beyond that, in line with the general spirit of voluntarism and meaningful engagement, my sense is that a lot more value can be obtained from a group of people who are engaging with something pationately (while the rest wander around aimlessly or lounge in the trees) than forcing a group of disinterested people to sit in a circle silently, perhaps staring into space or at their navel, while a few people actually talk. Oh well…

In any case, the funny thing is that at the time I hammered my point, disagreed strongly with the evaluation of open space and cited an example of the villagers in Delwara (with whom we conducted an open space session as part of a visioning process) – which included a very mixed group (Hindus, tribals, muslims, women, men, adults and youth…) and yielded quite wonderful results! If they can do it why can’t we. Anyway, I feel as though I have been pushing this point on a number of occasions, occasionally arguing the case… and recently, I got the feeling that people might just be catching on a little to this idea… though I’m not totally sure about it…

There have also been a whole spate of examples of people using the ‘oh but we already tried that and it didn’t work’ statement – which pretty much ended a particular line of discussion. One was in the context of mobilizing the community to put pressure on the local government (panchayat) to secure better quality services and another was in the context of dissemination of improved agriculture through farmer-to-farmer learning. I have heard countless other applications of the same killer response to certain ideas that may have been tried in the past and they really do kill the mood. Generally, there is a reluctance – and perhaps the absence of the required time and space – to engage with some of these subjects in greater depth; the depth that would be required to get somewhere meaningful.

The first case, I tried to resolve – not by saying anything at the time – but by several days later talking to the person who had effectively ended that conversation and letting them know the impact of what they had said. What was most interesting was that the intended impact of what was said and the actual impact were quite different. Now it seems we are all quite happy about the idea of working with the government.

In the second case, I suppose I was lucky to have some kind of an inkling into the issue. I decided to start talking to the people who had proposed the idea and advocated the idea of us getting involved in a study to really explore the dynamics of farmer-to-farmer learning and the dissemination of farming practices within a community resulting from training a limited cluster… Really understanding these dynamics across several villages could help the organisation design much more effective dissemination strategies (which could involve various roles for local community organisations) that can get more people adopting good practices for a much lower cost… but for that we would have to know how the knowledge spreads! This would also help whoever is advocating the approach to counter the kind of ‘we did that in the past and it didn’t work’ kind of statements…

Indeed, there was a third case just today, in which there was a discussion about whether we should work to create model villages. A number of senior staff didn't like this idea (for various reasons - mostly, as far as I could figure out, to do with assumptions about what this implied). I tried to present an alternative conception of these model villages by suggesting that we view them as opportunities for conducting in-depth action research into what it takes to make really strong communities in these places - particularly in the context of securing real integration of all the organisation's activities, etc. This didn't go down too well. The basic response was that the organisation already has 40 years of experience so we don't really need to go studying these things and, in any case, the whole organisation is like one big action research process. To which I replied quite directly - 'you're wrong' - along with a whole host of other things explaining why (e.g. learning can't be taken for granted, it needs to be systematic, we clearly don't have all the answers, there are many things we are still struggling with, etc.). It's too early to judge where this will take us and the issue has now been flagged for further discussion (where I plan to present a more reasoned/structured version of my take on the issue and each of the 'blocks' will also present their thoughts...) Let's see where this goes.

I also find myself wondering about whether my somewhat unclear role has something to do with my need to take these positions… By this I mean to say the fact that I am part-way a facilitator of change and part-way just another person in the organisation… I’m not an external facilitator with an ‘expert’ reputation. But then reading Dave Pollard’s recent post (amazingly, I came across it in the middle of writing this one – is that synchronicity or what!?) helped me to realize that these are questions that one may have to face even as an external ‘expert’ facilitator.

I suppose that the best way to deal with it is to be open, honest and authentic, acknowledge that one is also learning and trying to make sense of things and do one’s best to accept that different people have different view-points and that one has to work with things the way they are. I also believe that sometimes leaving a little bit of a sour taste (that lingers) might be a good way of getting someone to ponder something a little… a kind of cognitive dissonance that resonates for a bit longer than usual…

innit?

Full Circle? Maybe more of a spiral!

Today, I am reminded of a dream I had when I first joined this organisation. I entered a room, lit by sunlight and decorated with potted plants. In the room there were a series of low tables (of the coffee table kind) with chairs around them. People were sitting around these tables engaged in conversation. The people were from all the different units in the organisation and they were excitedly and passionately sharing their ideas. The air was ripe with inspiration...

An odd dream, I suppose (it's not made up, honestly!)... Clearly a sign that I am obsessive! But today, having completed my first Appreciative Inquiry (at least the first part of it), having discovered World Cafe, Open Space and the Art of Hosting, having come across the work of people like Dave Snowden and Shawn Callahan of Anecdote, and having discovered all this gigantic world of story-telling and meaningful conversations, I feel a little like I am coming home. Is this the reason why I came here (here being this 40 year old organisation in Udaipur, Rajasthan with whom I am presently associated)?

The reason I came here, and stayed on, was simple: I wanted to make a 'sustainable contribution'. The more I worked, the more I learned about people, systems, organisational learning, systems dynamics and complexity theory, the more I came to understand what this 'sustainable change' really meant and what it might take to bring it about.

The more I think about it, the more i realise that the deep change will take place when the patterns of conversation within the organisation change. And changing the patterns of conversation within the organisation is, by and large (not meaning to sound overly naieve), a matter of opening spaces for conversations and asking the right questions to get the right kind of conversations. And the message that I am getting now, after reading and listening to all kinds of things on the subject, is that stories need to be the basis of this conversations.

Of course, the conversations can build on, manipulate, deconstruct, reconstruct and distill the stories in myriad ways - all guided, of course, by matters of purpose (why these stories?) and context... But those stories are the foundation of any learning and change that is going to emerge. They are the raw data for creating meaning collectively. Story, it seems to me, only really has significance, only really comes to life, in an inter-personal setting.

I have been using anecdotes throughout my time here at a personal level to explain or justify things. Not very effectively though! For the most part, I seem to have used them almost accidentally - not as the foundation of a carefully considered way of generating deeper understanding. Now I feel that a whole new universe has opened up before me based on story-telling. It is as though the entire organisation just dissolved into its basic unit: stories.

The story has the potential to connect the women's group leader who isn't getting the support she needs to the chief executive in a way that a target (30 women's group leaders trained) doesn't. It can also connect the health in-charge to the education in-charge through the story of the child in the community school who got ill and none of his friends had basic first-aid knowledge. (By the way, I just made these stories up... to prove a point).

Another realisation, and one that came just now, is that the real pressing need - to complete the learning cycle - is to link the stories of the villagers themselves (the local leaders, the users of the irrigation system, the trained birth assistants, the children in the community schools) to the stories of the field workers and to link the stories of the field workers to the stories of the block staff and the stories of the block staff to the unit staff and the executive committee and beyond.

Now I may be obsessing a little. But for an oral culture, of which Mewar (the region I am living in), I do believe, is a fine example (though it has its writing too), story telling should be a piece of pie as natural as herding goats or collecting berries from the forest! All we need to do now is navigate the donors and their out-dated obsession with de-contextualised numbers that drain time and energy away from meaningful, inspiring, change-inducing conversations based on stories!

This is all, perhaps, a gross simplification of what will probably take a lot of perseverance and (self-)mastery to apply. And I by no means intend to do injustice to story-work. But I feel I have just reached a new level in my understanding of something of great importance.

The excitement of the adventure continues! Or, rather, begins (again, only more so)!

...indeed, the journey's only just begun!

This appreciative inquiry thing is rather interesting. Although I had the sense that I wasn't quite managing to do what I ought to be doing, I think that I somehow managed to pull loose ends together and tie them up with a neat little bow. Thanks are due to the appreciative commons through which various ideas about how to present what had come out were made available. The feedback I have gotten so far on the appreciative inquiry and the presentation I made based on it, has been, for the most-part, very positive. Not only the (verbal) feedback though… People seem to have a little bit more spring in their step - though of course its far too early to tell whether (a) this is just because of my own perception; and (b) it is going to last.

In any case, some reflections. First, although I obsessed about what I was doing, it seemed a little bit too easy. It seemed as though I didn't have to do anything. Now, this is also nonsense - because I was working until midnight for several days during the run-up to the annual camp… But that was also due to other reasons.

Once the data had come in and once we had done our group work of analysing the data and converting it into themes and values with their quotes and stories to back them up, it was just a matter of figuring out the provocative propositions. I feel that I didn't do this properly. Somehow, it seemed to be too much a matter of me just piecing the statements together, one after the other… Yes, I did spend a night in the office with some of my workgroup looking at these statements but the word-smithing was mostly me… and that felt like a problem at the time.

Anyway, the first time it got air-space was at the meeting of the sanchalak mandal (the executive committee) meeting - the day before the camp was due to start. It was generally appreciated but there were some tensions and questions: the expected ones - where is the negative stuff? Why focus just on the positive? But you haven’t told us how we are performing in relation to these values (which I very, very clearly stated was in no way my objective whatsoever)? And all the associated points that back up the idea of dwelling on problems… (and the image - shown above - taken from Yes!andSpace (hat tip) didn't seem to help so much as aggravate the idea that things were one-sided, too positive… it triggered the response: "if we only focus on the positive and future things, we are not learning from history - so we will end up just repeating past mistakes" - which indicates that the whole concept of the appreciative inquiry had not been properly digested by the audience).

I tried an array of methods for explaining the principle and ended up using the kind of analogy that I don't usually feel comfortable using in front of people in high posts (because I worry that they will be degrading). I said: "If I want to know how to get to Delhi from here and you tell me - 'don't go to Ahmedabad, don't go to Kota, don't go to Jaisalmer, don't go to Bhopal' and so on it doesn’t really make it much easier for me. However, if you tell me - 'this is the road to Delhi' then I can set off along it more easily and with greater confidence." Which seemed to work a little - though I didn't ask for feedback to confirm this.

Anyway, I conceded enough on the basis of our discussions to incorporate a question that would give people the space to talk about what Mustafa (on of the structure consultants) called 'the shadow behind the values'… And this was a very interesting part of the whole event for me. Things were happening fast, there were pots and pans banging in the background (so it was necessary to make quite a lot of effort just to hear each other) and we'd just eaten ice-cream (which was very nice indeed). Everyone had just been sitting in the presentation looking and listening (to varying extents). And now we had to talk about performance in relation to the values.

It took almost one hour to get the group to move out of the comfortable silence on the topic of where we were failing to live the values. It took coaxing. It took trust-building, no doubt made more difficult by the presence of Sachin - a representative from PLAN who funds us. To get around this I eventually got the bright idea of getting Sachin to share his own experiences from PLAN. When it came up that they've been having their own challenges (all organisations do y'know!) people got a little bit more open.

After wrestling with conceptual clarity and getting over the fact that it isn't easy to talk about these things - especially as they may be personal, we got into a fairly heated discussion about the values. Some individuals became a little bit too garam and had to get up and cool off. Others sat cold as stones. Various stories came up of ways that leadership had not been sensitive, ways that the organisational system wasn't supporting workers' contribution to change, ways that there wasn't openness (of which the one hour it took to open up was the most striking example)…

The energy was fairly tense. I was doing some fairly active facilitation - though I can't recall many of the specifics - but almost as much energy as went into opening the discussion to the deep dark well of 'what ain't right' went into trying to pull the group back out to the world of 'what we gotta do then'… Eventually we did this and ended up with some suggestions that we then pooled with four other groups who had been talking on the same subject. We were able to compile together from across the various groups into a presentation that pretty much captured everything that need to be captured. This got presented the following morning and seemed to go down relatively well… This is basically what it recommended at the end:

How to take the values forward:

• Start with yourself: be the change that you want to see
• Use the values as a basis for staff performance evaluation
• Create time and space for dialogue on these values amongst staff
• Improve organisational systems so that they support the practice of these values
• Establish a system for grievance redressal involving staff from all levels of the organisation
• Take this conversation forwards

I suppose this means we are at least thinking in the right direction…? Of course, there's a lot more fleshing out to be done... Given the discussion we had the following day (mentioned at the end of my last post), I suppose, means that we are actually doing something about it all? And to think this is only the beginning!

One of my lingering questions though... was the negative patch useful and important? Did it add or subtract from the discussions we had? This is something I will need to ponder on and explore as I continue on my adventures!

And the journey goes on...

Well, today, I'm sitting on the other side of the mountain. The annual camp is over. It was brief. Very brief indeed! And there was less space for dialogue than I might have liked. But the dialogue we did have was, for the most part, pointing in the right direction. In line with the framework that we've been using, there were three main components on the agenda - (1) strategies; (2) structure and (3) culture.

Each of these sessions started with a presentation and was followed by an open discussion (except for the the values one due to time constraints) and a panel.

For strategy, an organisational level perspective was given - highlighting the cross-cutting social issues that Seva Mandir sees itself as struggling with: an absence of trusteeship and too much spectatorship and complicity - issues as relevant internally as externally. It was made clear that Seva Mandir's concern lies with society more than it does with the government: for Seva Mandir, the government is a part of society. It then went on to flesh out the key strategies that Seva Mandir would be pursuing across different program areas to address these.

The structure presentation was made by some consultants and focused on the question of where Seva Mandir wanted to apply more of its 'energy' (a catch all for everything from manpower and resources to capacity, power and attention). While the model (based on ...) was rather confusing because of its ambiguities, abstraction and technical jargon (that people couldn't easily relate to Seva Mandir), it did play the important function of generating dialogue - largely with the intention of seeking clarity.

The culture presentation was based on the appreciative inquiry (AI) that we have been working on over the course of the last few months. This involved an incredibly brief section explaining AI followed by a presentation of 8 core values backed up by quotes from the appreciative conversations we had over the last few months within Seva Mandir and ended with six provocative propositions based out on these core values.

Based on these, the following sub-themes emerged as subjects to be taken forwards in group discussions: (1) how does change take place (and what is our role in this); (2) what are the desired roles and linkages between Seva Mandir, the community, the panchayat and the government; (3) what are the strengths, weaknesses and suggested improvements to the organisation's structure; (4) where do we stand in terms of living up to the organisation's values, what causes us to fail or live up to them, and what can we do to further cultivate our values within the organisation?

Four groups of up to 20 people participated in the discussions on strategy, structure and culture for not quite enough time. However, the basic sense of what mattered emerged in each of the discussions and presentations were prepared on each topic for the following morning. The need for continued, more extended and deeper dialogue on all issues - especially on structure and culture - came up as very important concerns.

The event wrapped up with thought-provoking ideas from Rajni Bakshi that helped to situate Seva Mandir's efforts within the international context - putting a special emphasis on environmental issues, broader economic development issues, consumerism, communication, dialogue and the need to cultivate spaces and individuals who can help to bring about a broader based social change.

All in all it went quite well. There is no doubt in my mind that we could have benefitted from more and longer conversations - possibly in smaller groups and with more of an explicit action focus built in - i.e. a kind of "this is what we're going to do" rather than a "these are things that we could do"... But the sense of a commitment to doing some of these things is present nonetheless.

This revealed itself the following day when a large body of staff gathered at Seva Mandir to celebrate the founder's birthday and do shramdan (cleaning of the office). At the end of this, there was a good discussion amongst members of the Seva Mandir community on such issues as maintaining cleanliness, how to become more environmentally friendly (someone was commissioned to lead this process), ensuring that suitable facilities (from hygienic water coolers to motor-cycles) were available for the staff and also discussing problems associated with delays in the purchasing system that held up getting work done. All-in-all a promising start for round 2 (of what exactly?)...

Now, it would seem, the focus of efforts will be on operationalising the kinds of changes that we have been talking about - helping people change their patterns of behaviour and relationships, develop more empowering organisational systems and ensure regular and open dialogue on values and structure, etc. This is long-term stuff...

In the meanwhile, I will need to get busy with looking at how to put together the organisation's 6th Comprehensive Plan document which means another round of discussions, thinking about targets, indicators and budgets and fleshing out strategies wherever this may be required... Back down to the dirty work!

Teetering toward the big day

Today I read a brilliant harvest of a workshop in which a diverse group of people tackled the question of how they could move towards a 'Person Centred Culture'. As I scanned through the material, I found myself deeply inspired and connected with what came out. I will not try to paraphrase it but you can read the whole article here.

Over here in Seva Mandir we are engaged in the preparation of our 6th Comprehensive Plan. One important part of this is exploring our oragnisational culture. The discovery and dream phases of our Appreciative Inquiry have now pretty much reached completion. A small group of us will sit together next week and try to craft the 'provocative propositions' (statements about what the ideal organisation would be like based on what people have been surfacing). The plan is that when we get to the annual retreat (coming up in about 9 days - horribly close by!) we will present the major findings of our appreciative inquiry along with the provocative propositions.

These provocative propositions will then provide the basis for group discussions. The group discussions will have a set of guiding questions that aim to take the group from understanding what it (the provocative proposition) actually means (from diverse perspectives) to figuring out what concrete steps can be made at individual and organisational levels to make it real. After the group work, people will be able to take a break and reflect, go for a walk or chat with their colleagues... Then dinner and some relaxation.

The following morning the groups will present what they have come up with on each of the identified themes. And then we will see what we have got on our plate :) I am still not completely sure about how this is going to work and I have half a dozen naggling concerns to deal with. Is this all too pre-planned and do we need to build in more space for open topics (a la open space)? How will the little groups be facilitated and what preparation will be required for this? Will there be overall support for the process and what is coming out of it?

I realise that we can't do everything with the limited time we have... So more than anything, this is going to be about securing the optimal usage of our time - having contributions that lead us further in the right direction. And like I've mentioned before, this is my first time... ;)

Grudges and Forgiving

Sometimes, in the course of our interactions with other people we find ourselves not being able to understand each other, being unjust or receiving injustice... and more often than not this leads us to hold grudges. Perhaps there is a fear of appearing weak. Perhaps we feel insecure about something. These little mistakes and misunderstandings, inevitable in the course of our day-to-day interactions - if not dealt with in the appropriate manner, can turn into a grudge.

A grudge is rather like a virus. A virus spreads by infecting more and more cells. In some ways, a grudge is rather like the HIV virus - in the sense that it attacks the immune system - the very life-force that holds the organism (or organisation) together. I say this because grudges undermine the relationships that hold us together. It is through our relationships that we create meaning and achieve great things - none of this is done by individuals alone!

It doesn't take long for this little virus to grow inside us - at times it can become overwhelming - filling us with anger, frustration and negativity. This has direct effects on our behaviour - how do we relate to the person against whom we have a grudge, how do we talk about these people to others, what effect does that have on other people around us? Soon we are getting over-run by this virus!

Now, if I hold a grudge against you and this affects my behaviour towards you... it won't be long before you feel that there is something not-so-nice going on - and this leads to distancing. A little vicious cycle appears. I act unpleasantly with you. You act unpleasantly with me. The words I use and the way I use them suck you into my whirlpool of animosity. I bad-mouth you. I complain about you to my friends. Little undercurrents of mistrust begin to spread and soon the system is attacking itself. Like the HIV virus, this state of infection can remain incubated for a long time before it breaks out into full-blown AIDS.

Now, it may be that there is no cure for AIDS - at least not yet. But the same is not true of problems with our relationships. Relationships need to be nurtured in order to thrive. This is not some fluffy nonsense. This is real science.

And believe it or not, there is a special cure for damaged relationships. That cure is FORGIVING. It is a curious little action that is incredibly powerful - especially when it comes from the heart (superficial forgiving tends not to work). This little article might just help to make the role and importance of forgiving in the workplace a little bit clearer.

All this leads me to wonder: what is the relationship between organsiational change and organisational healing or reconciliation? Can an organisation really embark on a meaningful change journey without addressing its internal fragmentation - the rifts between people who are supposed to be collaborating with each other? Or is this healing process actually a part of the change process itself? Does the need to change bring to attention the need to heal?

It seems that so much of what organisational change is about is bringing people within an organisation together, helping them to understand each other (which may include forgiving when required) and enabling them to co-create a shared purpose that they can all strive for together. Many of the rifts that get created are of deep psychological significance - just what might it take to bridge them? What kind of conversations? What kind of facilitated reflection and interaction? Who would need to be involved?

My mind is already a-bubble with ideas! Please share yours!

The (premature) tribulations of an uninitiated but aspiring mid-wife

Yesterday was the last-but-one meeting of our Appreciative Inquiry work group. The idea was that over the last few months a group of 12 people had been busy running about the organisation having conversations with people about such things as: "... a time when you feel you were really able to contribute to bringing about change...", or "... what you like best about the organisation and why"... and so on. Before the meeting I was, admittedly, a little bit nervous. What would I find? What would people have gathered? How many surveys would have been carried out? How representative would they be? Would the material be really useful? How on earth would we analyse and then present the output of a gigantic stack of interviews?

It is at this point that I humbly acknowledged that there is a great deal about the way I have handled this work over the course of the last few months that I would do very differently if given the chance. Easy to mumble this to myself in retrospect, of course - but that doesn't make it any less present right now. I would have tried to be more organised, sending out letters informing people what was going on instead of relying on word of mouth. I would have printed out lists of names for each of the people in my team to interview and tried to set fortnightly targets to avoid the last minute rush. I might even have explained the entire concept a little differently... But then it's not as though I hadn't thought about all these things... I just didn't do them... and I did have my reasons too...

So, before heading off to my meeting, I prepared what I considered to be a clever little meeting-plan that I thought might just do the trick. After going through the formalities (basically checking that at least 25% of the organisation had been conversed with) I would give a spiel in which I re-explained the purpose of all these conversations from a slightly different vantage point - one that I felt would gear people up to dig through their experiences, accept diversity and complexity and move, pretty rapidly, towards getting us some provocative propositions. After this (and making sure that I didn't drone on for more than 5-10 minutes), people would split into groups and start sharing, verbally, their experiences from the conversations, at four levels:

First, sharing of the stories, experiences or perspectives from the conversations that were most inspiring, most powerful. Second, identifying the various themes that seemed to be surfacing again and again. Third, culling out underlying values and principles that these pinnacles were founded on. Fourth, selecting quotes that communicated some of these complex ideas in very few words. And I got to spend this time sitting in silence. Then a break for lunch. Then the sharing.

The sharing is when things started getting really interesting (for me). The first part proceeded quite smoothly as the first group shared its points. There was a little discussion - mostly for the purpose of clarification - and I was primarily occupied with note-taking (which I did quite thoroughly thank you very much!). The second group then got busy with its sharing. This time, people were a little bit more eager to pipe up and share some of their own views in this context... Perhaps the sitting and listening during the first group's presentation had made them feel itchy?

Up until then, things had proceeded smoothly, there was only minor evidence of tension or emotional strain. Now, however, things got a little different as the discussion started to acquire a direction, tone and life of its own. It appeared that somehow, the discussion had got latched onto a personal issue of one of the group members. It was not long before the platform had started turning into a space for people to vent their frustration. For some reason I only seem to have managed to realise what was happening until it was a little late. The droning of the construction work going on outside was certainly not of much help!

Eventually, I managed to get us out of our ugly little rut by explaining that the issue was not getting neglected since the underlying positive principle had been duly noted by me and that we were running out of time a little and couldn't possible handle dealing with every individual worker's issues during the annual camp since (simple maths: we have 250 staff and three hours)... This led to a little bit of thinking and I got some good support from one of the most senior staff member present who explained that what we were doing could be looked at rather as (a) finding out what's best; and (b) giving suggestions of how what isn't best could become best... rather than simply pretending that everything is ok. It seemed to work. There was a pause.

I then shared a lesson I had once learned - it was about apologising. Apologies have secured me a great deal of internal peace when deep inside I have been furious. I think I have asked for apologies from just about (though not absolutely) everyone that I have entered into some kind of a conflict with. My asking for apologies is as much about me forgiving them as it is about me wanting them to forgive me... somehow asking for apologies entails a kind of general spiritual release on all sides and makes life much more bearable - certainly a great deal easier than having an ego throbbing in my chest, throat and brain and brutally suffocating what little of the divine might exist within me! There was a silence. Then I mentioned that sometimes tears would come to my eyes when I asked for apologies. There was more silence. Someone said what I had been thinking: "that's because you have to deal with your ego." There was some more silence.

I broke the silence. I wondered immediately afterwards if that was a mistake. Silences can be very good. Especially the meaningful ones. They can be better than words, I believe. But I ended it and we moved on with our work. It was getting late in the evening and some people had a long way to travel home and we were really running out of time. So we finished off with some formalities. A core team was formed to assist me in figuring out how we would get all the material that had come out into a meaningful presentation... and then I went home.

At the end of it all, later that evening, I found myself thinking. I imagined the proceedings of the camp,: groups of people sitting in circles and discussing Seva Mandir's burning issues; sharing perspectives; listening to and learning from each other; coming up with ways of creating a new organisational reality based on the emerging visions... It was really like a dream (the one I've been having for the last three years or so) - to early to say come true - but definitely imminent.

But how would I facilitate it? There would be at least 12 groups of as any as 20 people each. There is no way that I could be everywhere at once. What if someone starts ranting or getting upset? What if a cascade of grievances start to emerge? How could I get the genie back into the lamp? And then a whole load of other questions started emerging: what if management doesn't back our findings (this has been a latent, hanging around kind of a fear)? Do we have the right kind of data? Will they be picking holes in our methods? Will they challenge our 'objectivity' or question that we are not a representative sample of the oragnisation? Will they say that we have just been fed nonsense or been conned by simple, self-interested people in the organisation?

And that's the point where I wondered whether I hadn't chewed off more than I can swallow. I set myself up for something really rather big. I can imagine that for some management consultants this seems like a splash in a baby's paddling pool... but to me, this feels very much like the deep end. As I try not to drown in the multiple other commitments that I have - the organisation's annual report - things related to Delwara - I will need to pray for balance, strength and courage. There is a whole new world out there, waiting to be born. I feel like I am the mid-wife, about to conduct my first delivery, with no formal training, with no clear mentor - only concerned family members watching. And it's not just any old baby: it might just be the next messiah!

Now that is food for thought! I need to get myself ready!

Really taking it in...

As I think back to the block level gathering of the 23rd and 24th, I increasingly feel that, for all the imperfections that might have bothered me, the event was rather good. My withdrawal from the centre of the scene gave me a wonderful chance to reflect on the entire process - the dynamics that were at work, who was speaking and who wasn't - a microcosm of the organisation in its 'natural state'!

It made clearer than ever who thinks what, which people share similar perspecitives, what are the latent tensions, and what roles different people have taken on within the organisation - challengers, representatives, mediators, etc. Rather fascinating.

All this brings home the following point: self-organisation was at work during the meeting as people impromptu - i.e. without planning - adopted various roles which both surfaced, heightened, reduced and and resolved tensions as part of a process of creating meaning and order.

This allowed me to focus on the task of harvesting - which will be invaluable as I continue along with the process of supporting the organisation in creating an integral future for itself...

I also have to keep reminding myself that this process - the run up to the annual camp, the annual camp itself and the preparation of the 6th Comprehensive Plan document - is merely a fraction of the journey that Seva Mandir has embarked on. The energy and effort that is required now must not be mistaken for the whole journey... It's just the beginning!

It can be thought of as Journey 2 -(as per this white paper from the folk at Anecdote): the phase where the organisation collectively chalks out the plan of how it is going to get to wherever it wants to go. The first journey is that of planning the process of getting ready. The third journey is the 'actual' journey.

Key lessons that emerge from this paper on Journey 2 that I really want to focus on are the following:

"It is dangerous to take an old paradigm into a new land"

"In our work with clients on the second journey, we help clients work with the narrative material in terms of making sense and meaning of it as the basis for interpretation, envisioning and planning. These stories will help them clarify: (1) What is the whole story? What are we missing? (2) What will we need to be successful in our search? (3) What is likely to challenge us? What will be our response? (4) What is the story that we are telling ourselves about this venture?"

In order to do this, it is necessary to: "(1) gather stories of past successes [that can be drawn on] to aid them in this new journey; (2) create an iterative design for reaching the vision; (3) establish the necessary roles; (4) develop the key skills and resources that will be useful for this journey."

I would add one other point to this list (though I am by no means an expert): (5) enacting the new relationships that will be required to sustain the team over the course of the next (actual) journey. Which leads me to wonder about the extent to which the process going on here has focused enough on creating a coalition of change-makers within the organisation - that is to say, people from across levels who are committed to change... Is this process too decentralised? Is it not decentralised enough? How do we balance a vision where everyone is a champion of change with a reality where only a few people are? As I think about it now, it strikes me as a good topic for a stealth outcome mapping operation... so my next side task will be putting together an OM application for an orgainsational change model!

This blog, as you may have gathered, is for my internal journey.

Taking it all in...

Well, as my efforts at being humble go into overdrive, I've had the chance to think over a whole lot of things. All the same, I've had a whole bunch of 'not-so-humble' issues come to mind since the morning...

What is the change that I expect to see? Will I recognise it when it comes about? What if it doesn't look like what I expected? Is it already happening?

This is probably where I need the most grounding. I am a dreamer. I tend to get carried away with fantastic images of these flexible, light, dynamic and evolving organisations that are continuously shifting shape with highly porous boundaries but gradually organising themselves around a set of core values - such as equality, truth, mutual respect and tolerance, environmental sustainability, inclusiveness... and so on... I can further concretise this in specific contexts - and talk about groups of people who work creatively together, calling forth new realities through their interactions, nurturing linkages and relationships and bringing about an integral development process. But this is all too abstract.

I envision knowledge-holders from various fields, levels and backgrounds, sitting together and co-creating projects based on synergy and integration that help to refine, realise and replicate the values that they hold. Still too abstract? I hope to see units sitting together and talking about how they can work together to achieve common outcomes, involving the community in this process, helping them articulate their own values and visions, and then actually working together to help make these values and visions a reality.

I would not like to see separate units planning independently and expecting people on the next rung down to figure out how to coordinate things themselves.

Perhaps I will get a chance to see the extent to which this happens sooner than I imagine. Will these ideas form part of the discussions that follow the presentations of the 2nd and 3rd of June?

If there are underlying dynamics at work that need to be broken, how do I do it? What are my stealth tactics? Should I be measuring changes in relationships? At what speed do these relationships change? How do I measure this?

There is little doubt in my mind that there are underlying dynamics at work that need to be broken. The whole atmosphere gives off this feeling. There is a constant battle against negativity that has to be fought! This is not how it should be! But what are these dynamics?

To what extent do they emanate from people's own limitations and to what extent do they emerge from oppressive power structures within the organisation? And, perhaps more meaningfully, what is the equation between these two things? I am not completely sure that I can ever understand the totality of these dynamics - there are too many perspectives on this to end up with a really objective picture. And this is what leads me to think in categories like 'quality of relationships' or 'target versus social change'... 'Who talks?' is another big one...

And what are stealth tactics anyway? My understanding of stealth tactics is this: if i apply a model that exists within my mind without explaining to people what the model is (because I know that doing so would freak them out), then I am using stealth tactics. An example would be applying outcome mapping without actually ever using the words 'outcome mapping'. This can also back fire: trying to apply an open-space or spontaneous approach seems to terrify people who are more used to feeling in control of things. Knowing when to do what seems critical - all part of the learning process no doubt!

As for changing relationships... I feel pretty confident that this is the heart of what I am doing over here. A system can only truly be said to have changed when the nature of the relationships that define that system change. Is this too 'out there'? Is it too simplistic? Either way, I am quite convinced of it. What if one person changes their behaviour without being able to influence the behaviour of others in a way that could be said to amount to 'changing the behaviour of the system'? Well, it may seem nice but if it's not effective then it's really rather insignificant, which reminds of something I said somewhere: if a conversation doesn't translate into new action then it might as well not have happened! Rather extreme, but to the point! So obviously, I should be on the look out for these changes. Perhaps I need some categories for measuring them? Things like, did the zone worker argue their point in front of a senior? Did the zone worker question a strategy or activity? Did the zone worker challenge the way a decision was made? Did the zone worker get recognition (or were they considered to be just prattling nonsense?)... Something for me to work on, no doubt!

And so...

And so, all this leads me on to the topic of visions. Where are the visions? As I wrote a little earlier, I am a dreamer. I think - pretty much - in terms of visions. Without a vision, I wouldn't know why I am doing what I am doing. I wouldn't know how to even go about the task of thinking about how to go about the task of realising my vision if I didn't have a vision! I would be immobilised. But people don't seem to dream or imagine things on a very large scale. They don't seem to be hunting for that integral vision where all things are interlinked and working in synergy and people are open-minded and cooperative. There appears to be an inbuilt change negator at work! Why is this and how can it be broken?

Well, there is plenty for me to keep busy with. It's good to have gotten this off my chest for the day :)

My Pet Obsession (the saga continues)

Calling myself a 'change agent', a 'facilitator of change' or a 'catalyst' makes me feel that I'm getting a little bit big for my boots. To be honest, I don't know what I should call myself really.

The last couple of days were spent with about 100 people from Seva Mandir's blocks (geographical units) and programme-units at Kaya (the organisation's rural training centre). Each block was to present its assessment and thinking on what the next three years was asking of them. The idea of having such a session was not actually mine. The organisation had come up with this idea itself, stating that it did not feel confident about the idea of presenting its strategies at the annual camp (now planned for the following month) without discussing them at least once before then.

When this decision was made, I had qualms because it clashed with what I had been proposing. In particular, it seemed like a way of 'fixing' things before the annual camp... such that the camp itself would merely be a kind of 'presentation' of what we had already decided with limited space for the manthan, or churning, that I felt was called for. In particular, I felt that it undermined the idea of using the annual camp as a kind of no-holds-barred, open forum for people to question and dialogue with the 'whole system in the room'...

It was tough letting go of that vision but I soon realised that there was not much hope of it working out - especially as the annual camp had already been postponed to the third quarter of the time-bound process of consultations (which itself had bothered me since I felt this reduced the scope for building whatever emerged from the camp back into the planning process). So, I set about visiting all the blocks, organising mini-workshops, or simply listening to their own dialogues, discoveries and internal churnings. My main and simple tool for engaging with the groups was to ask those difficult questions that force people to confront things that are easier avoided and to weave in anecdotes from all of the conversations that I had been a part of over the last few months. This often sparked discussions that got to, if not close to, the heart of things on a number of occasions.

It is almost entirely impossible for me to really know what my contribution to the outcome has been so far. What kind indicators can be used to gauge this. Perhaps it is naieve or self-aggrandising to even try?

Back at the block gathering, I had mentioned, the blocks were busy presenting their contexts, achievements, challenges, strategies and questions. I kept myself as tiny and out of the way as possible throughout the whole gathering. Indeed, I said but a few words, busying myself instead with the task of documenting all the discussions. Part of my withdrawal was triggered by a little conflict that took place at the end of the first day. The presentations for the day had finished earlier than usual and it had been proposed that we use some of the remaining time to digest some of what was emerging.

I had, without giving it great consideration, assumed that a fairly open and flexible approach could be used to get this done. I hadn't really been troubled by the structure, the format or the question of how we would identify our issues. It just seemed to me that things would flow and we would soon be able to organise ourselves in the best possible way. I was also not sure of how long the participants were eager to stay and thought that I would simply be able to find this out by putting the question out there. This seemed to worry the Chief Executive who thought I was being 'too process-oriented'... I didn't really get the space to articulate myself much more and felt pushed to the side by the CE's concern that things had not been fully planned out. I got the feeling the CE wanted to take the reins and decide on the structure herself. I have had experiences in the past where my facilitating gets disturbed by someone external who is feeling edgy - and I find it hard to keep my cool. This usually doesn't bode well for the facilitation process. My instinctive reaction is to withdraw. I retract into my shell and say to myself... "pass on this." I think, at times, this can be the best thing to do.

Perhaps this is something taoist in me? Perhaps not? At one level I made a good choice. There was energy present, eager to give 'constructive' direction and it was 'the organisation' itself (or at least someone from it) who was taking up the yoke. I left the room to let the CE and my co-facilitator figure things out themselves... which they did...

For some reason, this experience left me bubbling with resentment. I felt disrespected and violated at that moment; unfairly treated even. From this moment on, I remained concerned only with my documentation. I let the process be taken over by the CE and my co-facilitator. All in all, it worked quite well. Given the awkward timing schedule, we got a good amount of fairly constructive matter out of the discussions that ensued. I was still at war with my ego though.

Where is this going? Well, this morning I read an article from Consulting Today: Seniors of Organization Development, I came across several quotes which were rather timely, one of which, (by Kathie Dannemiller) I include below:

The biggest clue that I am inappropriately "taking over" is when I get irritated at my client for not doing the 'right' thing.

If this isn't medicine, then what else is? In the context of my earlier blog postings on the dilemma between 'me and the organisation', this puts things (I feel) in their rightful place.

At the same time, of course, it is unavoidable (for me, now), that these moments of tension will occur. Especially, when I feel that some kind of rich opportunity for meaningful dialogue has the risk of getting bypassed! All the more so when this is my first time doing this kind of work! I would still far prefer to spend a few moments dealing with a messy situation so that we could get some genuine dialogue going rather than simply allowing existing power dynamics and inequalities to get re-enacted. I suppose, at times, one has to make these kind of compromises. Not having something up my sleeve that I could just present at that moment - a kind of "hey! don't worry, it's all under control, this is how we'll do it!" lost me the space that I needed. This is no doubt a lesson for me...

On this note, I end with a little quote from Lao Tse whose words have helped me feel that everything is fine when any 'normal' person would clearly think the opposite:

To give birth and to nourish,
to give birth without taking possession,
to act without obligation,
to lead without dominating---
this is mystical power.

Amen to that! This is, i think, my pet obsession. How to do this? How can I genuinely nurture the organisation itself, address what I perceive to be entrenched power inequities and still try to stop myself from trying to lead the process? Does this even make sense? Ooooooh!

Hearing the Call

Even as I wrote the title of this blog, I found myself confused. Which goes to show just how things are at the moment. Working on a process of organisational change is a rather tricky thing indeed. For whom, exactly, are we changing? What is this change and why are we doing it? These may seem like obvious questions with equally clear answers. However, I assure you that they aren't. And the more I get caught up in the process, the harder it becomes for me to really know what is up and what is down.

Working in an organisation with a particular culture and achieving particular results gives out a particular feel. A feel about what is right, what is working and what isn't. There is another set of feelings, which is personal, deeply internal: what do I feel it should be. In between these two domains there is a kind of space. Focusing on that space makes me feel cross-eyed. Maybe that's because I feel tired. Is this the same space that I had referred to in an earlier blog? The one between the two extremes of the pendulum swing from organisational worldview to andre worldview? Because that was a kind of pleasant space, a state to be achieved, one much desired, where all is open and flowing and just how it should be.

This space, however, is the other extreme. It is incredibly dense, like a kind of thick, multi-demensional knot that clearly demarcates this from that. It is not possible to really comtemplate it. It seems, in a way, like what a paradigm shift would look like if you could see one; a kind of thick wall where almost all the rules, logic and outcomes on one side are distinct from all the rules, logic and outcomes on the other. This wall radiates energy so powerfully that it almost repels any sort of an attempt to cross from one side to the other... mainly by making whoever attempts go cross-eyed or that their brain is going to, quite simply, snap.

I think this is probably a sign that I need to rest :) If I want to hear that call, I had better turn off my system for a little while and let things cool down, let the knots unravel, eat some good food, go for a stroll and then sleep like a dog!

Thanks,

Andre

The Main Shift (part 2)

Something about my last post leaves me feeling like I pretended that I had resolved a dilemma. Back at work today, and this feeling is buzzing about inside me quite intensely!

Upon further reflection, I get the nagging feeling that it is a gross simplification to say that facilitating this organisational change process simply boils down to giving the organisation what it thinks it needs in the way that it wants it. Clearly it is also not simply a matter of me giving the organisation what I think it needs in the way that I want! This is the dilemma. It is neither of these things. Indeed, the place where I need to position myself is the interstice between these two horrible abstractions. I need to float about in a kind of limbo between worlds: my world and the organisation's world. I need to be able to tap into the organisation's great sub-conscious - and also my own. I need to be able to tap into the infinite sea of possible futures. I need to feel the call of our times and understand what this 'call of our times' is calling me to do and what it is calling the organisation to do. I need to influence things without really having any control. Indeed, I may be the only thing that I really have any direct influence over!

This makes me wonder. Am I here to make a three year plan or am I facilitating organisational change? How can I tell? Who do I ask? What might be the signs? Am I just doing a kind of dance routine to fool myself into thinking that I am actually having any influence whatsoever while things just continue on their merry way, flowing past me indifferently? Is this just about me wanting to be powerful? Influential? Notice me! Notice me! Listen to my ideas! I have all the answers! That sounds ludicrous and shameful - and shouldn't be coming from me if I am to be true to my values.

But I'm still puzzling over that dilemma. That little gap that sits between my world and the organisation's world; or better still, between my worldview and the organisation's worldview. Indeed, I would contend that it is that very gap that is my playing field. I must play in the interstice; I must live in limbo. I must learn to feel comfortable there. I must put myself above all kinds of attachments but at the same time be calm and persistent.

I recently read a nice article (thanks to a friend of mine for passing it along) by Adam Kahane. Some snippets that I really have to quote are given below:

"The first thing you have to do is commit yourself to changing the world ...

"The second thing to do ... is to listen to what wants to change in the world...

"The sensing and listening that you have to do have three dimensions:

• You have to be able to see the world, to observe precisely [...] through your own and other people's eyes; to see new possibilities and new scenarios through the eyes of customers, of other players, of competitors, of heritics.
• Second and more difficult, you have to be able to see yourself in the mirror [...]; to see your own role and influence, your own part in the dance; to be reflective; to see your seeing
• And third and most difficult, you have to be able to glimpse the place where looking at the world and looking at yourself are the same [...] to see the underlying oneness."

Nowhere does Kahane make it clear just what this involves, but I think it is a pretty apt representation of what I am trying to do. So I consider myself as having a little authority to comment on what it involves: it's not easy. It's so not easy that it's not funny! Half the time, I feel insignificant. Half the time I enter a power-trip where I feel that I ought to be controlling everything. Neither of these are healthy.

As I swing from one extreme to the next, I cross a small patch of clarity. It might happen during a casual conversation, or while groups are presenting whatever came out of their discussion back to the group. It might even come in the morning after I do some stretches or in the late afternoon as I walk back home as the sun sets behind the temple on the hill beside my house. These are the moments when I feel neither insignificant nor on a power-trip. At these times, I know that there is a bigger process going on and that I have helped to give it shape, energy and perhaps even a little direction. At these moments I feel humble but joyful, at ease... I feel as though what I am doing is helping whatever is supposed to emerge to actually emerge. That is to say, that the dilemmas and paradoxes that lie at the heart of all the work actually find a voice and get set on the table for collective inquiry and dialogue... And out of this, new realities can be born.

I am still struggling to understand where, when and how to push and where, when and how to create the space for things to emerge of their own accord. What are the strategic moments, the tipping points where it makes sense for me to add a little of my own energy to the process and where should I stand back and let things take their course? This question is all the more challenging in a context where I know that I do not know everything! So it is not a simple question of pushing wherever things are not how I would like them to be... because that could very well backfire (as it has in small ways in the past) - for example by creating extra resistance (because every action has an equal and opposite reaction) or missing spontaneous opportunities that may present themselves (for example, by not being patient enough to recognise the new/different avenues that open up when a slightly different direction is chosen). At the same time, how do I make sure (if indeed I should) that we end up on the right course, or that the knowledge I bring finds a proper space in the outcomes of the process?

It seems a little as though I have different hats that I have to wear for different occasions. There is my 'facilitator' hat - which I wear when working with groups. My 'friend' hat, which I wear when I chat casually about 'what's going on'. My 'PME/outcome mapping/learning' hat, which I wear when I feel that people are not going about their process of visioning, strategy-making or whatever in a systematic manner. My 'comunity knowledge gardner' hat, which I wear as I zip about from place to place relating stories from one person, group or programme to others in order to give them a better picture of the totality... And so the list continues. Figuring out when to wear which hat is a bit of a challenge. I tend to do it spontaneously... But what effect is it having? And am I taking on too many roles?

I suppose this is exactly what I am learning through this experience.

The Main Shift

The gradual discovery over the last few years that it's not really about me and my ideas versus rigid unhelpful people in the organisation has been rather seminal for me.

It's not that I don't have all these ideas that I want to put into practice: I obviously do and that's a part of why I'm here. But the way that I understand this entire process, I think, has become a whole lot more evolutionary or organic. I have come to see the organisation as a living community - with its own knowledge, energy, direction, concerns, processes, and so on. In some ways, it is like a dense ecosystem - with different bits fulfilling different roles and functions - each component having reached its own kind of equilibrium in relation to others, for better or worse. This equilibrium is a delicate balance of function, knowledge, power and quality of relationship and the way these properties are distributed across the system.

When I come along with my nice ideas, there is a need to explore the fit between my ideas and the organisation. The introduction of any new idea - or meme - then becomes a subject of inquiry. Taking as a starting point the fact that the people I am interacting with do not see things in the same way as me, it is important first for me to understand how people see things.

My first thought would then be that, by knowing this better, I can ever more carefully position myself and adapt, craft the ideas or whatever it is I want to bring, so that it appears more worthwhile. I think this makes sense up to a point.

My second thought is that, as I begin to know the system better, I would also start to look at things differently and shift my own sense of what really is a priority and why.

This triggers a third thought which tries to reconcile the first two: have I simply fallen into the 'hole' that the people I am trying to work with are in or am I developing a deeper alignment with that system that positions me better to really influence it. The former is the view that many outsiders tend to hold when I talk to them about myself, my work and my relationship with the organisation where I am engaged. To them, I appear to have become lost, failing to really get to grips with the real issues, taking long-winded approaches to solving problems that are actually simple and can be classified neatly with high-power consultants vocabularies or through catch all statements like: "you just need to change the management, you know..". I have never been convinced by such perspectives, though I have had definite quarrels with various leaders and often wondered why I they posed such immense obstacles to ideas that I found so attractive.

Today, however, I find myself standing somewhere else. I have come to understand more clearly the fact that the organisation is like a living system - like a giant forest full of different species all interconnected with each other, interdepending on each other, each with their own particular characteristics, habits, niche and so on. As with a forest, I cannot simply come trudging in and expect to reshape it in any way that I want and have much certainty - if any - that what will emerge or result will be any better than what is already there - particularly if I don't understand the properties of that living system. Even if I do 'understand it', the gap between what I know and what I can do and what the other people know and what they can do still needs to be bridged if any truly systemic change is to be achieved without conducting what is effectively a surgical operation - i.e. cutting chunks out and converting curved lines into straight edges. For some reason, I have a deep seated concern with the idea of overly rectilinear approaches to things. It seems like the antithesis of sustainable, systemic transformation - something which to me must be a kind of organic, slightly chaotic self-organising process - and our entire vision of empowering people/communities to take charge of their own development process by gathering the knowledge, changing the behaviour and developing the relationships required to achieve this.

I suppose the conclusion is that I have come to see myself as a kind of conduit for a whole host of ideas and the organisation as a kind of living system that I must come to understand so deeply that I become able to translate whatever knowledge and ideas are out there into the language and rhythms that are meaningful to the organisation: to give the organisation what it thinks it needs in the way that it wants it! rather than to give the organisation what I think it needs in the way that I want to give it! So simple, yet so amazingly hard to appreciate!