Every living system is a network. –Fritjof Capra 

Tania just left after 4 days here, what a fantastic visit! We went to church on Sunday (Maureen preached that day J). We also did a juice fast, my first one, that day. Man, that was hard, harder than I thought it would be. But the next day was worth it, I felt great. So Monday I put in a few hours at work, and then had a fun, laidback garden club. We did the temperature comparison lesson with them and there were some very cool parts. All the kids lined up on the south wall and felt the warmth from the sun on it with their cheeks. They got into it, all reacting in different ways. Some kissing the wall, others just being goofy and really, really looking at the person standing next to them. Could see how moments like these could add up and create something magical for kids, and really good for the community of the school—lots of conversations. It was fun.

I totally agree with Fritjof Capra about conversations being the main connector in human social webs. Conversation provides feedback for all the actors in the web, so there are many feedback loops in all directions at once. Wow. But we underestimate the power of talking, even though it binds us together. It really does. Once I have looked you in the eye, and had moments of conversation with you, I have some sort of relationship with you (establishing the link/connection with you). And in addition, I am processing certain info from the conversation, and may feedback some of that either to myself (i.e. negative self-talk) or into my community (i.e. conversation with friend, or letter to the editor, anything I take from that conversation and input somewhere outside of myself). The feedback from that conversation may be positive or negative (I may decide to start, continue, or halt an activity because of you), but our brains do process the conversation as feedback. This is how conversations bind us. Anyway, having a hard time explaning that. Got to look up the Fritjof Capra articles.

Okay, here’s an excerpt from Fritjof Capra:

 LIVING NETWORKSOne of the important early insights of systems thinking was therealization that every living system is a network. This idea appearedfirst in ecology. From the beginning of ecology, ecological communitieshave been seen as consisting of organisms linked together in networkfashion through feeding relations. At first, ecologists formulated theconcepts of food chains and food cycles, and these were soon expandedto the contemporary concept of the food web.The “Web of Life” is, of course, an ancient idea, which has beenused by poets, philosophers, and mystics throughout the ages toconvey their sense of the interwovenness and interdependence of allphenomena. As the network concept became more and moreprominent in ecology, systems thinkers began to use network modelsat all systems levels, viewing organisms as networks of organs and cells,just as ecosystems are understood as networks of individual organisms.This led to the key insight that the network is a pattern that iscommon to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks.Now, although all living systems are networks, we know, of course,that not all networks are living systems. So what are the characteristicsof living networks? One of the most important features of all livingnetworks is that they involve feedback loops. In a living network, thereare many cycles and closed loops, and these loops can becomefeedback loops. A feedback loop is a circular arrangement of causallyconnected elements, in which an initial cause propagates around thelinks of the loop, so that each element has an effect on the next, untilthe last “feeds back” the effect into the first element of the cycle.In an ecosystem feedback loops tend to bring the system back intobalance whenever there is a deviation from the norm, due to changingenvironmental conditions. For example, if an unusually warm summerresults in increased growth of algae in a lake, some species of fishfeeding on these algae may flourish and breed more, so that theirnumbers increase and they begin to deplete the algae. Once their majorsource of food is reduced, the fish will begin to die out. As the fishpopulation drops, the algae will recover and expand again. In this way,the original disturbance generates a fluctuation around a feedback loop,which eventually brings the fish/algae system back into balance.The feedback phenomenon is extremely important for all livingsystems. Because of feedback, living networks can regulate themselvesand can organize themselves. A community, for example, can regulateitself. It can learn from its mistakes, because the mistakes will travel andcome back along these feedback loops. So, the community canorganize itself and can learn. Because of feedback, a community has itsown intelligence, its own learning capacity.So, networks, feedback, and self-organization are closely linkedconcepts. We can say that living systems are networks capable of self organization.NETWORKS OF CONVERSATIONSNow we can ask: what is the nature of the links in a living network?The answer will depend on what kind of living system we are talkingabout. In a cell, the links are chemical processes that interconnect allcell components. In the brain and the nervous system, the links are theanatomical structures of the vast neural network, the billions of axonsand dendrites. In an ecosystem, as I mentioned already, the mostimportant links are the feeding relationships; the many ways in whichplants, animals, and microorganisms feed on one another.What are the links in a human community? Well, there has been alively debate among scientists about how to best describe socialnetworks, and one of the most interesting theories is one by a Germansociologist, Niklas Luhmann, who describes a human communityas a network of conversations. This network involves multiple feedbackloops. The results of conversations give rise to further conversations,which generate self-amplifying loops. Thus an off-hand commentmay be picked up and amplified by the network until it has a majorconsequence. The closure of the network within the boundaries of thecommunity results in a shared system of beliefs, explanations, andvalues—often referred to as the organizational culture—which iscontinually sustained by further conversations.So, a living community is a network of conversations with feedbackloops, and one of the best ways to nurture the community is tofacilitate and sustain conversations. It is interesting that this is nowwidely discussed in business circles. In a recent article, titled “Conversationas a Core Business Process,” Juanita Brown and DavidIsaacs report that they asked hundreds of executives and employeesto describe the quality of conversations that had a powerful impacton them.1They found that the answers they received had a number ofcommon themes. For example:• There was a sense of mutual respect between us.• We took the time to really talk and reflect about what we eachthought was important.• We listened to each other, even if there were differences.• I was accepted and not judged by the others in the conversation.• We explored questions that mattered.• We developed a shared meaning that wasn’t there when webegan;and so on.The authors also mention an interesting study by the Institute forResearch on Learning in Palo Alto about how learning takes place inan organization. The study concludes: “The most powerful organizationallearning and collective knowledge sharing grows throughinformal relationships and personal networks—via working conversationsin communities of practice.” 

So that was Fritjof Capra’s piece called “Creativity and Leadership” on the CEL website.

It got me to thinking about something Sandy said awhile ago. She wondered why all these people got trained to be moderators and weren’t going anywhere with it. Perhaps because they don’t see it as in their self-interest. It made me think that it would be cool to begin doing one-on-ones to develop relationships, through deliberately meaningful conversations, and charting what happens to the capacity of the department to self-organize. That could be really exciting, I think. Use the concept of 1:1s that MCU uses, and apply it to a work setting. It would be neat to start with the extension/CAFNR people on campus and then do the same thing to connect extension agents throughout the state. I’m willing to bet that spontaneous organization (or self-organization) will take place. It would be cool to track this. Trying to think of what things to measure as an indicator of self-organization. First of all, we’d want to train people in the art of the 1:1. This could be done as needed, pretty easy. Regular trainings would be a good idea to keep the project moving outward, which I think is important to help foster self-organization. If the system “comes alive” by demonstrating feedback loops, what would that look like? Deliberative democracy claims to respect the power of “just talk”, so let’s start at the most basic talk, that between two people, but give it some structure to make sure it’s meaningful (kind of like forums are constructed, or framed).

I haven’t read much in deliberative democracy stuff about using the principles of “deliberateness” to a one on one “everyday” conversation. Maybe tracking when self-amplifying loops develop (an isolated comments sparks a torrent of conversation about a specific topic) would be one place to begin the evaluation of the project. And thinking about the training, it will be important to teach people how to draw out what a person’s SI is. Often one of the most important outcomes is clarification for the person being interviewed. Many of us re-discover “what makes us tick”, or what we’re passionate about through meaningful conversations. 1:1s can be life-changing, I know. I discovered so much about myself at leadership training. I learned about the negative feedback loop of self-talk in myself and where it came from. I learned to see the internalized message “Don’t rock the boat” kept me from branching out into new ways of acting that were in my self-interest. Being able to shut down the effect created by the thought “Don’t rock the boat”, I was able to take risks that were exciting and that could have an impact on my community. 1:1s have to probe people’s memories and get at the “why” for their opinions and feelings. And they also should help people articulate what gets them excited, where they would be willing to put their time. So when I go back to them and ask them to be a part of a deliberative democracy experiment, I’ll know both which job to offer them and how to frame the offer so that they understand it in terms of their self-interest.

Perhaps another way to make it a research project would be to begin with Sandy and I doing 1:1s with a set group of people (extension, rural sociology, whatever). We could use forms similar to what MCU gave us for 1:1s (except we would decide what info we are trying to glean through these) to compile the data. Based on the information in the 1:1s, we could suggest pairings for further 1:1s between people in the chosen system. (We would have to train these people how to do 1:1s beforehand.) We could encourage people to do as many 1:1s as they’d like, trying to create a culture of conversation. We’d collect data sheets from these as well, kind of a repository of information about various forms of “capital” that might be latent in individuals as well as the system. Sandy and I could act as “connecting agents” as well as data collectors/evaluators throughout an evolving project that we evaluate based on how the design evolves. The design and the evaluation will be fluid.