Beyond the Rules of Order

"We cannot dismantle one system without having another in its place."

—Mahatma Gandhi (Sharp 1973)

To understand yourself, you need to explore your inner experiences. Likewise, ifmultileveled organizations want to know themselves, they need to explore Open Forumsto understand their various parts. Open Forums in my definition are structured, person-to-personor cyberspace, democratic meetings, in which everyone feels represented.Furthermore, they are facilitated in a deeply democratic manner, which means thedeepest feelings and dreams can also be expressed. In other words, the Open Forum is toa corporation or city as innerwork is to an individual. The analogy between the innerworkof an individual and an organization's Open Forum goes even further. Just as yourpersonal learning depends on how open you are to your various parts, feelings, anddream figures, an organization's self-discovery process depends on openness to thediversity of its individual members, and the diversity of their inner and outer worlds.

Diversity awareness is multileveled: It is a matter of noticing cultures, ages, genders,races, sexual orientations, religions, economic backgrounds, jobs, abilities, andworldviews and dreams. Process-oriented work with organizations is based on awarenessof and bringing forth the richness of our total diversity and complexity.

It is said of Gandhi that "he didn't want to win battles; he wanted to win hearts and minds"(Atlee; Bondurant 1965). The methods of the process-oriented Open Forum aim at doingexactly that. By fostering awareness of the deepest feelings and communication signals ofeveryone in the community, we can create nonviolent yet direct exchanges. The newprocedures presented in the following chapters are adapted to working with organizationsnot as mechanical entities, but as living systems, be they schools, businesses, or cities.

It often seems to me as if the very people we have made responsible for leadership andglobal change are not always the best for the job. Most organizational and world leaders,activists, and politicians have little training in understanding people or helping groups tochange. Yet most of us who are supposed to know most about personal transformation—namely, those in the helping professions—usually avoid organizational tasks and theproblems of social transformation. The lack of conscious leadership is why troubledorganizations turn against their troubles, and conflict with conflict. They assume thatexisting conflict is "wrong."

Process ideas are different. Instead of thinking in terms of the paradigm that condemnswhat's going on in a given conflict situation and implementing programs, methods, andprocedures that implicitly look down on the people involved, process-orientedorganizational work discovers the missing power of transformation in the tension itself andin people's behavior. In the new paradigm, conflict itself is the fastest way to community.Conflict is its own healing.

Democratic methods, rules, and laws alone do not create a sense of community. Rulesand laws may govern mechanical systems, but not people. The new paradigm, which Idescribe in the following chapters, acknowledges that organizations are partiallymechanical beings needing behavior change. However, in the new paradigm,organizations are also living organisms whose lifeblood is composed of feelings, beliefs,and dreams. Ignoring the flow of this "blood", that is, moment-to-moment experiences,disregards emotions and represses what I call "the dreaming background" to the everydaylife of schools, businesses, and cities. Ignoring the dreaming background eventuallydepresses us. When "facts" become more important than feelings and dreams, we getbored, don't vote, won't go to meetings, avoid relationship problems, and becomedisinterested in public life. Disinterested participants erode organizations, precipitatingtheir collapse as if they were empty, paper buildings.

In today's world, "good" ideas don't work without communication awareness. One sidecannot truly win in a battle. In addition, one method alone cannot deal with human issuesfor long. In fact, our organizations are no longer localized in one spot; cyberspacechanged all that! There are no longer simple localities in our second-millennium world. Weare rather a planet of interconnections.

Therefore, creating deep democracy deals with community members not only as separate,local entities but also as sensitive, nonlocal interconnecting spirits of the times, which areconstantly changing. In other words, each of our viewpoints has something global andeternal about it, for even if we are not around, there is always someone else who seemsto fill in for us. In fact, any viewpoint is more like a ghost than a fact. Even when no singleperson represents that viewpoint, it sort of "spooks" us. We have all witnessed at one timeor another how roles such as the "rebel" or the "unconscious leader" hover like spiritsaround groups.

Even in serious situations, process-oriented Open Forums can bring out the spirits in thebackground in a playful manner to reveal the community as a global, dreaming being inthe midst of self-discovery. By taking the group's process as a teacher, everyone becomesa learner and leader, including young children and longtime gang leaders. According toWilliam Ury in his excellent 1999 book, Getting to Peace, "In 10,000 schools in thiscountry, kids as young as six or seven are learning peer mediation." He tells us that in thecities of the United States "gang leaders often become the best mediators, they commandrespect for the transformation they've gone through." The awareness methods of process-orientedOpen Forums work in face-to-face interactions and on the Internet.

Using awareness in groups allows us to discover ourselves, the way we are. Withawareness, we have access not only to our emotions, but also to detachment. Anyonewho uses her awareness to enter the heart of conflict knows from personal experiencethat the emotions that arise are not always predictable. For example, I know from my ownexperience that the feelings involved in tense situations touch me deeply. Sometimespeople scare me; they make me feel sad, or even removed from situations. If I use myawareness, I notice that sometimes my body shakes, as if I were in the presence of ahuge monster, although the person I am facing seems to be acting timidly. Usingawareness connects me to the excitement, the wildness and love in any given moment.Using awareness is a very different...