Sustaining conversation in human system [Arne Collen, ISSS 1998 Paper Session, June 20/98]

These notes are a rough transcription, prepared as each individual presenter and/or commentator spoke at the ISSS 1998 conference. Gaps and errors have likely occurred. For more accurate citations, please consult the original presenters. These notes have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute (sabi@systemicbusiness.org).

Arne Collen, Saybrook Institute

Interest in research methods, and how people form inquiry, in collective forms.

• Find people in an institution, want to know something they don't know.
• This is our purpose, how do we know what we don't know: becoming a system of human inquiry.
• What form of inquiry should they use?
• As enough consensus is gained, it becomes a method or methodology.

• Facilitator comes in, and the process may or may not be systemic.

• Conversation is common across all types of collective action.

• Interdependent team approach, dependent on conversation to understand a complex system.
• The research team is an interdependent subsystem of the system of study.
• Conversation provides the methodological foundation.
• Brings system theory into system practice .
• Dialectic.
• Permits reflexive study.
• Invites its portrayal in metaphor.

• Communication.
• Habitual sharing of time and space: creates a space which allows the systemic methodology to take place.

The direction of conversation (in a tree diagram):

• Conversation leads to ...
• discussion, which leads to ...
• dialogue (as metalogue or intercourse)
• debate (which leads to negotiation
• action (which is what we're most interested in)
• which leads to human systems methodology.
• gossip
• Conversation, discussion and dialogue all lead to human inquiry (as does human systems methodology).

• Discuss
• dis = away or apart
• cuss = shaking or examining
• Converse
• con = with
• verse = abode , habitation
• Conversation is then like dissecting a frog in a lab, or preparing the soil for farming.
• Dialogue is like a tennis match; win or loss is not necessary.
• [Boehm has done some work so that dialogue and conversation aren't so far apart].
• Conversation is like the river rafting trip or mountain climb, as people together who need to work together.
• Isn't this relevant to systems methodologies?

• Trying to formulate a way to discuss.

1. Situate ethics
2. Describe and discuss
3. Describe and discuss
4. Conclude

• Just a framework, not to restrict conversations.

• Foushall(?) methodology: want to continue conversations as a facilitator, then can make change.
• Need a skilled facilitator to work through the methodology, then it's asking a lot of the group.
• Some members of the group may have the skills.