what an incredible read...
- all life organizes into networks... not boxes or hierarchies
- wherever you look in the natural world ..you find networks not organizational charts...and they are always incredibly messy, dense, tangled, and extraordinarily effective at creating greater sustainability for all who participate in them
- nothing living lives alone. life always and only organizes as systems of interdependency
- last 300 years we've focuses on an unreal machine model.. dense webs of connection have been replaced with predesigned organizational charts that neatly detail who should be connected to who
- and we quickly forget that life knows how to organize itself.. that organization is a naturally occurring phenomenon
- we come to believe that if we don't do the organizing.. nothing will get done
- the realization that individuals need each other is at the heart of every system.
- seemingly divergent self interests develop into a system of interdependency
- many years ago Joel barker popularized the idea of paradigms and world views...
- if something is impossible to achieve with one paradigm or worldview, it can be surprisingly easy to accomplish with a new worldview
- the change: machines... to living beings...; manage org charts... to messy living networks...rhizomes
- a living system forms itself as it recognizes share interests. (pi lab thinking)
- for changes to occur..there must be a change in meaning
- people...like all life, only change when they allow an event or info to disturb them into voluntarily letting go of their present beliefs and developing new interpretation. nothing living changes until it interprets things differently. change occurs when we let go of our certainty
- time to wake up (and she wrote this in 1999) ...that we belong in relationships that require us to pay attention to the dynamics of systems, not isolated individuals, buildings, or events.
- systems are never a result of geography..systems arise because people choose to affiliate
- most schools districts are not systems... they networked artificially by lines and what some one determines
- they're not systems because they don't arise from a core standard of beliefs
- w/o core beliefs... without the why.. people just coinhabit, they coexist.. by defining lines... and politicking for power, and they don't have motivation ...
- it's the real systems we must work with (she refers to charters.. I would question if these are sharing core beliefs enough for motivation and brilliance and quality of life, it's more the parents beliefs... kids not per choice)
- system is defined by shared meaning... not size ..so could be 2 or more
- noticing... has to be a choice
- after ,bouncing around.. changing original form.. causing great chaos.. and confusion..which feels awful... now ready to change
- because it falls apart, the system sees it has capabilities of reorganizing itself
- it is impossible to change others
- the freedom to self-determine is intrinsic to all life.
- it's impossible to impose anything on life.
- nobody can figure out what's best for someone else
- we only support what we create
- to make a system healthier...we simply need to connect it more to itself
- if we have a convo first ( hear each others stories) we discover one another as colleagues
- t shirt:you cant a hate someone who's story you know
- Myron says... start anywhere... follow it everywhere
- has to be meaningful to system.. and they have to be the ones talking and doing about it
- we can't design anything that works if we don't have the whole system involved in it's creation
- that way we harvest invisible intelligence
- we keep hoping we don't need to involve everyone.. if we have a good plan.. people will accept it because of it's merits... but no
- people only support what they create
- greatest challenge...learning to live in this process world. participate as things unfold, expect surprise, and to not know...
- give up role of master creator and move into the dance of life.. there is no alternative.. life insists we put ourselves in motion
- not so much about balance.. but of self-awareness... knowing when you are off balance
