[P2P-F] Fwd: Whole System Conversations - and the Voice of the Whole

Wed Sep 28 08:04:36 CEST 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bryan Hugill <bryan.hugill at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 12:48 PM
Subject: Fwd: Whole System Conversations - and the Voice of the Whole
To: Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tom Atlee <cii at igc.org>
Date: 28 September 2011 02:32
Subject: Whole System Conversations - and the Voice of the Whole
To: undisclosed list <cii at igc.org>

http://bit.ly/VoiceOfTheWhole

WHO PARTICIPATES IN "WHOLE SYSTEM" CONVERSATIONS? - PARTSANS, STAKEHOLDERS,
DOMAINS, AND CITIZENS

by Tom Atlee

Consciously convened conversations have many functions.  Many seek simply to
get people talking with each other.  Others try to bring together what they
call "the whole system" to address that system's collective issues or
dreams.

Who is involved in these "whole system" conversations?

A "whole system", in this case, involves all the parties who play - or could
play - roles in some social unit or situation.  The social unit could be a
family or relationship, a group or organization, a community or a whole
society.  A situation might be, on the one hand, an issue, a problem, or a
conflict - or, on the other hand, an inquiry, an opportunity, a shift, or
simply a periodic reflection about what's happening.  We can convene
conversations around any of these things.

So how do we decide who the parties or players are?  How do we "cut the pie"
of the whole system?  And, if we're ambitious, how do we elicit a "voice of
the whole"?

I see four different approaches to defining who "a whole system" includes.
 Each approach has its own rationale and appropriate usages.  They are not
mutually exclusive, but are usually used more or less separately.  Perhaps
being aware of them and building synergies between them would enhance the
power and wisdom of our conversations.  These approaches include:

1.  Adversaries:  The "whole system" here is everyone involved in a
conflict.  The conflict can be anything from a family quarrel to a political
struggle over ideas, values, policies, or resources.  The goal of the
conversation is to resolve or transform the conflict.  To do that, we need
to engage both sides - or all sides, as the case may be.  Powerful
conversation can help adversaries work through their differences, discover
each other as human beings, and find better ways to relate to each other.
 When only a few people are involved in the conflict, we want to include
both or all of them.  When the conflict is between groups, we want to
include a manageable, influential subset of "the whole system" that includes
members from each group.  Often this includes leaders or representatives of
those groups, but sometimes - especially in an archetypal battle like
liberals vs conservatives - we choose archtypal voices from the conflicted
sides whose ability to then find common ground helps contradict widespread
assumptions that they can never work together.

2.  Stakeholders:  The whole system here is a situation or issue itself,
which is generated by interactions among the interested parties and diverse
perspectives involved.  The goal of the conversation is to resolve the issue
or at least see how it could be handled better.  We want to bring people
together who, if they (or their networks or people like them) can agree on a
better path ahead, will co-create a better path forward.  We want people who
are or might be affected, people who have a stake in what happens with it,
and people who have information or power that could make a difference.
 Usually we want to include leaders, representatives, or at least voices
from all the groups or kinds of people involved in the issue.  Our job here
is primarily to help them all hear each other well enough to recognize the
full dynamics that keep their co-created problem alive - dynamics in which
most or all of them are playing significant roles - including their diverse
legitimate interests.  We want to move them from co-creating the problem to
co-creating solutions.

3.  Domains:  Here the whole system is a social grouping that could function
more coherently and effectively.  The goal of the conversation is to enable
greater understanding and collaboration to happen.  We're interested in
creating a new multi-domain activity, stimulating trans-domain
consciousness, or helping an existing organization or activity improve its
internal functionality.  In an organization, we want to include people from
all the organizational domains - all the departments and all the levels of
staff and management.  In a coalition, we want representatives of all the
organizations and groups that are coming together.  In an interdisciplinary,
interfaith or multicultural convocation or convergence, we want the full
spectrum of worldviews - people from all the various fields or faiths or
cultures or perspectives we are trying to connect up.  We want to engage
them in weaving together a well-functioning collaborative whole that helps
them achieve their shared goals.

4.  Citizens:  In this approach the whole system is the community, state,
nation or other generic/geographic/inclusive political entity.  The goal of
the conversation is to enhance democratic responsibility by individual
citizens, public officials, and/or the whole community or society.  That
goal may be focused on solving a public issue or on making sensible
democratic decisions or on generating a community vision.  If our target is
for individual citizens to be more informed or engaged, we can invite
everyone and engage "whoever shows up."  If we actually want to generate
some coherent public knowledge, judgment, policy, or action, we may seek to
convene a microcosm of the community - usually "randomly selected citizens"
often balanced demographically - so that their collective voice can be more
legitimately be called the voice of the people.  In any case, we encourage
participating citizens to view themselves and each other as involved,
co-creative peers.  Our job is to provide them with an information-rich,
communication-enhanced environment to enable a special level of collective
citizenship on behalf of their community.

As noted earlier, these four approaches are not mutually exclusive.  After
all, people in all these conversations tend to be citizens.  And obviously
adversaries are stakeholders in their conflicts just as department heads are
stakeholders in their organizations.  Furthermore, citizen deliberators are
usually informed by expert partisans or stakeholders.  But the four
categories of conversation differ in their FOCUS of who is mostly talking to
whom, what subgroups or self-identities are being invited, and what roles
they are being asked to play.  When we invite participants to play roles in
a particular conversational story, we shape how they see themselves and each
other and how they behave in the conversation.  When they are selected
because they are citizens of their town, for example, they tend to behave
less as a partisans, stakeholders, or holders of official positions and more
as peer citizens - and vice versa.

Each approach has its own appeal and logic.  We like the stakeholder and
domain approaches because they bring separated parts of a system together
face-to-face to talk their way into more effective wholeness.  The
adversaries approach also offers a certain elegance, since the conflict
exists only because certain folks disagree about something - or their
competition is nasty because they can't see each other as fully human.  If
they understood each other's perspectives and needs and work together to
meet those needs, their battle might well evaporate or at least become less
toxic.  The citizenship approach has a compelling democratic mystique:  It
offers a way for We the People to more effectively govern ourselves well
together.  As citizens who share community values and care for the
well-being of our community, individually and collectively, we can generate
community solutions as well as greater civility and social coherence.

WIth all this in mind I would like to suggest that the challenging public
issues of our day - climate change, war, economic instability, health care,
and so on - urgently call for a legitimate, potent, and wise "voice of the
whole" that can influence government policy, stakeholder activity, and mass
public consciousness and behavior in sensible directions.  I think that
consciously integrating these approaches could elicit that voice, so sorely
lacking in today's politics.

Here's a thought experiment.  Imagine a research project that convenes three
parallel, independent, comparable ad hoc councils of randomly selected
citizens (e.g., Citizens Juries) who interview diverse stakeholders about
climate change and then deliberate to produce policy recommendations.  Now
imagine ALSO convening a simultaneous set of comparable and parallel
stakeholder dialogues about climate change.  To top it off, imagine
convening three parallel transpartisan deliberations on climate change -
liberals and conservatives with some libertarians, greens, and others to
spice it up.  What would all these conversations come up with?

Imagine comparing the results of all nine forums.  Imagine what we would
learn from both their differences and similarities, both within each
approach and across the three approaches.  If their recommendations are
significantly similar, wouldn't that be remarkable!  Imagine how it would
change everything we think about the possibilities of politics!

It is reasonable to expect, however, that the different conversations would
produce some different results.  So imagine that we then mix and match the
participants across the three approaches, creating three new parallel groups
each consisting of members from all nine forums.  Now imagine putting these
three new groups through a dynamic choice-creating process (e.g., a Creative
Insight Council) to see if they then come up with similar results.  Again,
analysis of the results and processes would provide fascinating insight into
the powers and dynamics of conversation and how to best use it to address
major public issues.

To my knowledge nothing like this has ever been done.  But think for a
minute:  What if it were truly possible to discover a legitimate, inclusive,
coherent, wise voice of a whole society?  How much do you think it would add
to the quality of our public discourse, our public policies, the behavior of
interest groups, and how members of society think and act about public
issues?

This particular research approach is only one way to explore this.  The most
important thing is the inquiry, itself.  Are we ready to ask the pivotal
question:  How can we best evoke a true voice of the whole?

I suspect that if we took this inquiry seriously, it would change
everything.

________________________________

Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440
http://www.co-intelligence.org  /  http://tom-atlee.posterous.com
Read THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY -  http://www.taoofdemocracy.com and
REFLECTIONS ON EVOLUTIONARY ACTIVISM - http://evolutionaryactivism.com
Please support our work.  Your donations are fully tax-deductible.
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