[Oe List ...] Salmon: ICA AS A LEARNING ORGANIZATION - Pat Porter Scott REFORMATED.doc
Jeanette Stanfield
jstanfield at ica-associates.ca
Fri Mar 5 14:40:19 CST 2010
Dear Bill,
Thank you very much for this paper. It is very helpful to further our
thinking into the future.
Jeanette
On 3-Mar-10, at 4:15 PM, William Salmon wrote:
> Many requested a copy of this paper by Pat Scott that helps define
> “movementalconsciousness.” If you have any throuble in down-loading
> this, please let me know and I’ll figure out another way. OK? Bill
> Salmon
>
>
>
>
> The ICA as a
> Learning Organization
>
> by Patricia Porter Scott
>
> for Dr. David Beatty
>
> 1995
>
>
>
>
> The Institute of Cultural Affairs
> as a Learning Organization
>
> This paper is a labor of love as well as a class project. It is
> probablybecause it is a labor of love that I have chosen to do it. I
> need to slow my thoughts and understand why there recurred in my
> head during two courses on the learning organization that I had been
> in a learning organization for sixteen years. When I was with the
> ICA we never knew we were a learning organization; we never
> consciously tried to be one, but we were.
>
> The Self-Discovery That Is Worth the Price of Admission
>
> I also need to articulate my vague dis-ease with the fact that I
> find I do not finally "fit" into the DHR focus in the way I feel
> others may. It is not that the program is not satisfying, but I have
> only recently discovered that I come from a different consciousness
> than the one I believe the program is designed to serve. Yet
> doctoral studies is the place where one sorts out ones thoughts and
> stance, so in this regard the program is 110°o successful for me.
>
> It is the discomfort and the cognitive dissonance that is forcing me
> to say what is different in my orientation than the one I find in
> others around the table. This is in no way to judge others, but to
> acknowledge that we define ourselves in comparisons and contrasts to
> others. Nor can I truly presume to know what is in the mind of
> another, but classes and conversations have a focus which defines
> the work of the group.
>
> I have come to see that I am a product of movemental consciousness
> and the program is directed to mainstream establishment
> consciousness. So I will cast myself as a learner who is making
> observations about myself, the DHR learner, and my experience with
> the ICA as a learning organization. They are inextricably linked.
> The process of writing this paper is organic. It will unfold from
> the inside out. I have notes from an interview with an ICA
> colleague, but as I Write I find I have intellectual itches to
> scratch. So this is a stream of consciousness paper. It will be
> refined for the reader, as there is a grade associated with this
> effort; and for the writer, as it is part of an ongoing work.
>
> Meet the ICA
>
> The ICA was the formative experience of my adult life and the
> benchmark against which I measure all other experiences. 'Nothing in
> my experience has equaled it in passion, scope, daring, commitment,
> creativity, spirituality, intellectual rigor, compassion, vision,
> cohesiveness and collegiality.
>
> This paper will not be a critique of the ICA although I have done
> some work on it as a critique is a necessary part of being a
> learner. The critique accounts for the psychological, sociological,
> spiritual, structural and systemic variables that influenced the
> organization's development, and in this case, my development over
> time. In my case it is a subjective evaluation as opposed to a
> formal study done by Tojo Thachankary in his affirmative inquiry
> into the ICA. Thachankary'swork, however, had a profound effect on
> my ability to explore my own experience. The critical thinking I
> have begun has only been possible in the last five years as I was
> more embedded then in my experience than I am now. Thachankary's
> work inspired the distance I needed for my own work. He allowed me
> the see the ICAthrough his eyes which then allowed me to see it anew
> through my own eyes. I believe that the capacity and willingness to
> reflect on experience is a crucial feature of the learning
> organization. I learned and internalized reflection skills while
> with the ICA. Regular reflection was structured into the time design.
>
> Living in Camelot
>
> When I was about fifty years old, following my inner urgings, I
> undertook to take apart my decision to join and later leave Camelot
> as I lovingly refer to theICA. Yes, there was Camelot. And yes, I
> was part of it, and yes, I left it. Most importantly when I left it
> was no longer Camelot for me. I reasoned that both the mission of
> the organization and I had changed dramatically since my joining in
> 1964 and subsequent departure in 1980. But what never changed during
> my years with the ICA and the years since, is that I am and intend
> to remain a product of movemental rather than establishment
> consciousness.
>
> I am sure the memory of Camelot stayed with the Knights and Ladies
> of King Arthur's court long after Camelot had ceased to be; the
> Kennedy years still capture our imagination despite the tarnishing
> of the image of our hero as far too sexually adventurous for our
> stated moral conventions. Yet, we forgive these indiscretions and
> excesses because our spirits were stretched to heights and depths we
> never dreamed were possible.
>
> As a result of my life in Camelot, I never quite fit in with
> establishment organizations as they always seem a bit shallow and
> superficial to me. They are goal driven, hence don’t even allow for
> more than goal execution or, at best, goal over achievement. Goal
> and objective driven organizations proceed as though the goal is all
> there is. And, if there are deep aspects of life, those deep aspects
> belong to another sphere of society such as religion or
> transpersonal psychology. Very few vision driven organizations have
> moved me, because the vision is limited to work with work being
> defined as a contractual arrangement of hours of service in trade
> for dollars. While many people care deeply for what they do, many
> others labor at work
> they care little for, so they can be free for a few hours to do what
> they really love. This arrangement creates further self-estrangement.
>
> A work-focused vision forces people to compartmentalize their lives.
> They derive one set of satisfactions from work and other sets of
> satisfactions from other sources. "So what's wrong with that?" I
> hear you say. "Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?" By
> conventional standards, yes, that is the way it is. But having been
> for sixteen years in a holistic organization, even with its flaws,
> has spoiled me for all less inclusive organizations and made me
> perpetually hungry for the unity of human experience once captured
> so profoundly and elegantly all in one place.
>
> The style of the faculty and the depth of the training programs drew
> me to Camelot. To understand the style of the ICA it is necessary to
> know that the ICAwas the public face of a quite remarkable
> experimental Family Religious Order. It was born in Austin, Texas at
> the University of Texas in the 1950s as the Student Faith and Life
> Community. The community came into being around the notion of
> mission; its mission was to wake up the church people of the time to
> the fact that there was a revolution in progress. There was a
> theological revolution and a cultural revolution breaking old
> paradigms and calling people to live in a new age. By the time Bob
> Dylan started singing "The Times They Are a Changing" the Order had
> been getting that same message around for about ten years.
>
> My husband and I became members of the Order Ecumenical in November,
> 1964. There were 30 people in the community. It would grow to 1500
> before we left in 1980. Alvin Toffler described us quite succinctly
> in Future Shock.
>
> "In Chicago, 250 adults and children already live together in
> 'family-styled monasticism' under the auspices of a new, fast
> growing religious organization, the Ecumenical Institute. Members
> share the same quarters, cook and eat together, worship and tend
> children in common, and pool their incomes. At least 60,000 people
> have taken "El" courses and similar communes have begun to spring up
> inAtlanta, Boston, Los Angeles and other cities. 'A brand new world
> is emerging,' says Professor Joseph W. Mathews, leader of the
> Ecumenical Institute, `but people are still operating in terms of
> the old one. We seek to re-educate people and to give them the tools
> to build a new social context.' "
>
>
>
>
>
> The
> Ecumenical Institute
> The Order Ecumenical
>
>
> Distinguishing Between EI and the Order Ecumenical
>
> The distinction between EI, the Ecumenical Institute, and OE, the
> Order ecumenical, which Toffler fails to make, are important. The
> Ecumenical Institute was the respectable public facade of the Order
> Ecumenical. The Ecumenical Institute was a research and training
> center doing lay theological education. The Order Ecumenical
> embodied the power, genius and commitment that made the Ecumenical
> Institute go. It was the engine on the train, but it pushed the
> whole train from the rear of the cars; yet the people in EI and OE
> were the same. We often spoke of El as paper mache and the Order as
> the "real thing." The Ecumenical Institute was the legal paper work
> and the organizational chart of "this world", the world of laws,
> which allowed the Order to do its work. This dual identity allowed
> members to be social revolutionaries on the one hand and a
> respectable social institution on the other.
> Quantum Leaps and Stability Simultaneously
>
> What was remarkable to me in my first years with the Order was that
> no two years were ever alike. School had been the same, year in and
> year out. Family life had followed familiar patterns and rituals
> year after year, but not so with the Order. But we were growing and
> by definition nothing was sacred for very long; yet there were some
> bedrock things that held us in being for many years. One was daily
> office, a twenty-minute chanted worship service. It had a high
> church feel with the grounding experience of a five minute "witness"
> given by a community member. Prayers were both formal and
> participatory. There was a great deal of existential sensing that
> one learned by leading and participating in this ritual. I watched
> the Daily Office evolve over time to become quite a bit of high
> liturgical drama, including robes and processions and the addition
> of unique musical components of African drums, gongs, click sticks
> and then, actually disappear altogether as the community needed to
> become more overtly secular and less religious.
>
> The lesson about the learning organization is that you can grow and
> change, but there have to be steady markers that give the group an
> identity. Just as in adult development, there are periods of
> stability followed by periods of transition there must be stable
> hand holds in the learning organization by which people "know who
> they are." The handholds themselves may change, but theymust be
> there. These handholds may be invented, if they do not already exist.
>
> Two Mentalities - Mainstream and Movemental Consciousness
>
> It is also important to know that the Order Ecumenical was a
> manifestation of movemental consciousness not establishment
> consciousness. By consciousness I mean mentality. Mentality is a
> predisposition for operational style or simply, “How we do things
> around here.”
>
> Invention Over Imitation
>
> The Order Ecumenical, Ecumenical Institute and Institute of Cultural
> Affairs operated from an entirely different mental model than
> organizations that typically comprise mainstream organizational
> development literature. To distinguish, I will call these the
> "establishment organizations." They are the IBMs, the GEs, and the
> Bell Telephone Companies, the 9 to 5 organizations. Shift work
> notwithstanding, establishment organizations have time perimeters
> which frame the individual commitment to the organization. It is a
> contractual agreement of time and dollars for service and benefit
> exchange between the individual and the organization. The boundaries
> are clear and sharp. I have come to distinguish movemental
> consciousness from mainstream organizational consciousness in the
> following ways. Because I am dealing in essences, there will be a
> caricature sense to the differences I have assigned to each. The
> movemental characteristics are intended to apply to the ICA only and
> not all movemental groups. (See Table Chart on Next Page)
>
>
> MAINSTREAM ORGANIZATION:
> ESTABLISHMENT CONSCIOUSNESS
>
>
> TWO CONSCIOUSNESSES
>
> MOVEMENTAL ORGANIZATION:
> TRANS-ESTABLISHMENT CONSCIOUSNESS
> Traditional Management (Textbook)
>
> PREVAILING ATTITUDE
> Experimental/Inventive
> Salary for Work/Overtime Pay
>
> FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENT
>
> Maintenance Pay/Benefits
> Structured Hierarchy
> ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN
>
> Organic/Dynamic/Flexible/Mutable
> Contribute Products/Services
> MOTIVATION
>
>
> Revolutionary Change/Cause Oriented
> Rewards for Performance
> Pay for Expertise/Performance
> ACCOUNTABILITY
>
>
> Execute the Mission/Performance Assumed/Work matched to ability.
> 9-to-5/Specified Time Limits
> TIME COMMITMENT
>
>
> All time is Assigned Time until theMission is done.
> Shift Work/8-Hour Shifts/
> Vacation/Overtime Pay
> TIME DESIGN
>
>
>
> Week 1 and Week 2
> 13-Week Quarters/
> 5-Weeks Reflection/Discontinuity
> Committees Hierarchy/Managers
> Executives/Democracy
> DECISION MAKING
>
>
>
> Consensus/Collegiums
> Power is at the Center of the Table.
> Departments/Individual Tasks
> Some Teamwork
> WORK GROUPS
>
>
> Teams – almost exclusively
> Contractual
> COMMITMENT
>
> Covenantal
> Work Ethic
> ROOTS
>
> Ontological Deeps
> Job Description/Qualification
> Education/Credentialing
> WORK DEFINITION
>
>
> Assignment – Do whatever it takes to get the job done.
> From Within/Outside Expert
> PROMOTIONS
>
> 15-Minutes of Fame
> Forms/Regulations/Red Tape
> OPERATING PROCEDURES
>
> Low Bureaucracy/Minimal Forms
> Ordinary/Conventional
> In House Shorthand
> LANGUAGE
>
>
> Specialized Jargon – Purposefully different to force question raising.
> Company Picnic/ 25-Year Pen
> Employee of the Month/Gold Watch
> WORK LIFE RITUALS
>
>
>
> Daily Singing/Daily Office
> Meal Conversations/Fasting
> Guinea Pigs in our own Programs.
>
> It is fair to say that many current organizations that began in
> movemental consciousness have become establishment organizations.
> The YMCA, YWCA, the civil rights movement, the Red Cross and
> hospitals are a few examples. The object of a movement is to make
> its principles, perspectives and cause part of the mainstream. In
> doing so it works itself out of a job. The movement is not only out
> of work, but when the aims that the movement were seeking to
> establish have been embraced sufficiently by mainstream society,
> whatever organizational mechanism was needed to bring the new social
> vision into being is no longer required. Thus the organization,
> which really consisted of a network of human relationships bound
> together by common cause, faces a choice.
>
> Bear in mind that the common cause is more important than money,
> security, safety and social position. D. H. Lawrence says it quite
> well in his poem, The Deepest Sensuality.
> The profoundest of all our sensualities is the sense of truth and
> the deepest sensual experience is the sense of justice.
>
> Movemental organizations are given to seeking justice. Therefore it
> is the justice fashioned into the vision of the new world that
> drives the members. So what happens to the organization when its
> vision is realized?
>
> What Happens When the Vision Is Achieved?
>
> The question is, what will happen to the network of relationships?
> First, will the organization, which is usually quite minimal, stay
> in being and become a player at the table of power for the issues it
> represents? Some civil rights groups have chosen this option. So the
> former movemental player becomes part of the establishment and
> represents its cause. Arifat, the revolutionary, is Arifat, the
> diplomat.
> Second, will the members stay together and continue to fight for
> their cause, failing to realize that it has already been won? Some
> women's groups have failed to realize how far women have come and
> appear as though they are stuck somewhere in the 1960s. Gloria
> Steinem, on the other hand, is an excellent example of a social
> revolutionary who has changed with the times. She recognizes the
> advances made in woman's fight for equality, but continues to push
> the edge of change and justice.
>
> The third alternative is to recognize that your mission has been
> fulfilled and choose another revolutionary aim. The March of Dimes
> exercised this option when a cure was found for polio. Jonas Salk's
> vaccine meant the virtual end of polio. The March of Dimes decided
> to turn its attention o researching birth defects. It took on
> another big dream.
>
> A fourth option is to close down and say, "Go ye into all the world
> and do what you need to do. You lend your life for a magnificent
> mission, take it back and see what else needs doing. We did what we
> said we would do." It is this option that I believe the Order
> exercised. Surely this is the best of being a learning organization,
> to know when it is time to quit and have the accompanying courage to
> do so.
>
> In 1988 the Order Ecumenical called itself out of being at a final
> Council in Mexico. Any member or former member who wanted to attend
> the Order Council was invited. If a member wanted to attend, but
> could not afford to pay his or her own way, the group paid. The
> Order paid off its debts and distributed the remaining assets to
> those who were members at the time. A formula was worked out, based
> on the age of the members and the years they had been part of the
> community. Older members were given more money as they literally had
> less life "time" to make money. Younger members received a bit less
> as it was reasoned they had more time to make themselves financially
> viable in the world. By in large the ICA staff was well educated and
> finding work in the world outside was not a great problem. Many ICA
> members had contacts from fund raising days and from lobbying
> efforts in the governments and businesses of the world. In many
> circles the work of the ICA was well respected, so the prospect of
> having an ICA trained staff person on board was not only appealing,
> it was a plum. There was, however, a bigger problem than finding a
> job. The greater problem was figuring out individually what
> direction to take now that the great revolution had been
> accomplished sufficiently for individuals to move on to some other
> adventure.
>
> With the dissolution of the Order, individuals and families began to
> address this issue of "What next?" Some ICA staff chose to maintain
> the offices where they were assigned at the time of the dissolution
> of the Order. So a world-wide network of ICA offices still exists.
> Other people took parts of ICA programs that they were drawn to and
> have continued their operation as their life work. For instance,
> Order children took a rite of passage trip during the summer after
> they finished grade six. While the Order no longer conducts these
> trips, an ICAgroup in Seattle still keeps them alive. Now many grade
> six students, beyond the Order youth, participate in the Rite of
> Passage into teen years. Training, Inc., a 13 week training school
> for office workers, now exists in some US cities. Training, Inc. was
> both a vehicle of financial self-support for Order members and a
> means of service to inner city folks. Its mission was to take
> welfare recipients, equip them with marketable skills and stay with
> them until they got a job. Training, Inc. turned welfare recipients
> into tax payers. The ICA education methodology, Imaginal Education,
> developed from the work of KennethBoulding, was equally as
> instrumental in getting people hired as were their marketable
> skills. They came for the marketable skills. They got marketable
> skills as well as a dramatically improved self-image. They learned
> to handle child care issues rather than call into the office and
> say, "I can't get a baby sitter." The idea was to eliminate any
> notion that the individual was the victim of anything or anyone.
> There were many government sponsored "job training programs" in the
> US, but few with the successful track record of Training, Inc.
> Training, Inc. took seriously that self-image was a more powerful
> shaper of the ability to get and hold a job than were marketable
> skills. If you had the confidence, the skills would come. Few other
> programs took this component into account. The staff goal was to see
> that every person graduated and got a job. Eighty percent was not
> good enough. The goal was 100% graduation and 100% employment. The
> result was that there was about 9S% graduation and employment.
>
> So the ICA has evolved into further satellite organizations as held
> in the following diagram. This is a partial listing. If I could make
> my computer do gray letters, I would have the Order Ecumenical in
> lighter tone to show that though it has dissolved, the memory of it
> is very present. It is a lingering image in the "memory body.
>
>
> Interational Facilitators Association
>
> Training, nc. ICA Heartland
> Rites of Passage, Seattke WarthWise
> ICA International ICA Field
> Offices
> Institute of
> Cultural Affairs
> The Ecumenical Institute
> The Order Ecumenical
>
>
> Preserving the Fruit of the Labors
>
> One question any self-conscious movemental group has to ask is, "How
> do you responsibly take care of all that you produced?" In Chicago
> an all-star cast is completing The Archive Project. A few people
> felt called to organize all the papers that were produced out of the
> thirty years the Order was together. One specific outcome is that
> the papers of Joseph W. Mathews, the founder, will be housed at
> Perkins Theological Seminar in Texas. In addition to Joe's work,
> there are dozens of social and spirit methods that are written down,
> but known only to those members and associates who were present at
> the time of their invention and use.
>
> The method best known to the world is the Card Method which was
> published in Technologies of Participation. But that was only one
> methodology. Others include Imaginal Education, the art of image
> change; spirit conversations; social process analysis methods
> including whistle point and pressure point analysis essential for
> catalyzing social change. Hundreds of people worked on documents
> describing the new social vehicle and new religious mode. While the
> "religious work" of the community was based in Christianity, it had
> a transparent quality to it, so that when you removed the religious
> language, there was spiritual truth that wears no religious "brand"
> name. It is simultaneously profoundly human and spiritually deep.
>
> Joe's work on "the other world in this world" is an ontological
> discovery of the inner human spiritual depths that equals the outer
> space probes that we are doing currently. It is true that the
> farther we go into outer space, the deeper into ourselves we are
> driven. I believe that Joe mapped the inner human terrain as few
> have. His work is in the same league as St. John of the Cross and
> Theresa of Avila.
>
> One is not able to map this territory unless one gets "there." Joe
> got there and tried his best to report the landscape to the rest of
> us. But you have to be "long in the way of the spirit" to get there.
> It is a master's journey. The master can only tell the apprentice of
> its existence. The apprentice has to get there on his or her own. I
> have been lucky because I "stumbled into the other world." I would
> have only known where I was because Joe had said, " 'The other world
> in this world' is the most real world there is." To talk about it
> makes you sound a bit "off" in the head because few people have any
> knowledge of how truly deep the human spiritual experience can be.
>
> Many times, as I watch the world go though its paces, I am persuaded
> that the ICA was only about one thing, creating the new story of our
> time. Forging the new mythology is not a "job to do". It is a "path"
> you take to continuous discovery. Nikos Kazantzakis says in Saviors
> of God, "It is our luck to have fallen on fighting times." It is not
> the fighting times of hot wars to which he refers, but the fighting
> times of new contextual creations that will make sense of people's
> lives and restore meaning to living. Thomas Berry says it for me
> nicely in The Dream of the Earth.
>
> "It's all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we
> do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story,
> the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is
> no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story. Our
> traditional story of the universe sustained us for a long period of
> time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life
> purposes, and energized action. It consecrated suffering and
> integrated knowledge. We invoke in the morning and knew who we were.
> We could answer the questions of our children. We could identify
> crime, punish transgressors. Everything was taken care of because
> the story was there. It did not necessarily make people good, nor
> did it take away the pains and stupidities of life or make for
> unfailing warmth in human association. It did provide a context in
> which life could function in a meaningful manner."
>
> I think the need to draw the distinction between movemental and
> establishment mentality has been an important task for a long time,
> but I have not had sufficient stimulus to focus the need into a do-
> able act. As a member of the ICA my work was done both inside and
> outside the organization. I worked outside the ICA community and
> contributed my salary to the up keep of the whole group. My nights
> and week-ends were free to work inside the Institute. I felt I had
> the best of both worlds as a result. But I saw myself primarily as
> the embodiment of movemental consciousness who was by day a school
> teacher and by night a social revolutionary. One activity fed the
> other. It was a both/andproposition rather than an either/or one.
>
> How very ICA to take ten pages to set the context for what I wanted
> to say. So now we get to the point-by-point reasons that the ICA was
> a learning organization for me.
>
> Shared Vision
>
> Our vision was three fold, contextual re-education, structural
> reformulation and spiritual awakenment. I remember it thirty-one
> years after the fact. I do not recall the vision of my many work
> places. With ICA we rehearsed our vision in thought, word and deed.
> We sang our vision, said it to each other in talks and wrote it in
> our publications. We reported our successes and committed our deep
> spiritual insights to song. If "The Anniversary Waltz" came over the
> radio waves we did not hear "Oh! how we danced on the night we were
> wed". Instead we heard "Given the chance to do life in the deeps."
> We heard the words we had put to the song. We held before ourselves
> what D. H. Lawrence called "the utter depths of mystery."
>
> Mental Models
>
> Our most highly developed mental model was our mental model of how
> to understand other people's mental models. It is called Imaginal
> Education. Image is pre-verbal and carries a lot more information
> about our assumptions and beliefs than our words. We reasoned that
> if you could understand the image another person held of themselves,
> their circumstances and the world you would know quite a lot about
> them without having :to know "all about them." It is the holographic
> principle applied to the individual. Understand the image and you
> largely understand the individual. The whole is in the part. All our
> courses were based on understanding people's images and offering
> more inclusive, freeing images than the ones they usually held. Our
> aim was to have every human being we encountered embrace their
> freedom. Our own mental model was that our given state is freedom
> and we have learned limitations. The work of a life is to restore
> oneself to his or her freedom.
>
> Our values were to require ourselves to be comprehensive, futuric
> and intentional. We insisted on articulating our values and
> operating presuppositions as we changed focus over time. As we began
> to shift from a theological mode to a more secular community mode
> our mental model was held in "All the earth belongs to all the
> people." Our name changed from the Ecumenical Institute to the
> Institute of Cultural Affairs. Systems Thinking
>
> The boldest moves of the ICA were usually systems savvy. In 1976,
> the 200th birthday of the United States, we decided to try to
> recreate the spirit of the Town Meeting that had been the focus of
> community decision making that builtAmerica. We collaborated with
> McDonald's fast food to produce a beautiful colourworkbook. Our
> objective was to hold a town meeting in every county in the US. That
> are 5000 counties in the US; 5000 Town Meetings were held. The
> insurance industry's Million Dollar Round Table asked if they could
> buy the results. We said, "No."
>
> That no reflected a mental model on our part that said, "We do not
> collaborate with other organizations." While we had collaborated
> with McDonald's that was a rare exception. We wanted to refine our
> own methods. Non-collaboration earned us the reputation of being
> loners, seeing ourselves as "too good" and a bit stand-offish. We
> decided to pay the price for non-collaboration so that we could do
> it our way and not be obligated to others. We were outsiders and
> happy to be so.
>
> We would collaborate when it suited our purposes as it did in
> theMaharasthra Human Development Project. The ICA had been
> conducting village development projects for about five years when it
> was decided to try to do a project in Maharasthra State in India
> that would reach a critical mass in which villages would become self-
> renewing. The numbers were calculated. Start with one Human
> Development School in one demonstration village. Invite villagers
> from across Maharasthra to come and learn village development
> strategies and tactics. Send them back to their village to begin a
> village renewal project. One village would initiate five, then five
> would spin off another five until the critical mass of 250,000 was
> reached. Most of the work finally came down to networking between
> the village and its local government. All the goods and services
> that were needed for healthy village development were available, but
> no one was making the connections between the village and the
> available resources from the local governments. The ICA staff simply
> taught people how to network. I don't know that the stated goal was
> ever achieved as it was envisioned, but the sense of systems savvy
> was evident.
> Team Learning
>
> Teams were our strong suit. Everything was done in teams from
> cooking dinner, to child care, to teaching. We had no mental models
> around stages of team development such as forming, storming, forming
> and performing. We just assumed that any group of human beings who
> got together with an impossible dream could and would do it. Tasks
> and maintenance functions in a group were news to me later when I
> studied team development. What I had learned about groups I learned
> in teaching our basic course, Religious Studies I. I learned how to
> deal with people who tried to subvert the sessions. I learned to
> read groups.
>
> "Personality conflict" was not in our vocabulary, nor do I recall
> anyone "rubbing me the wrong way." Because we made decision by
> consensus, we talked things out. We actually called our
> conversations dialogue. When we were in decision making mode, you
> had to participate to shape the consensus so that each of you could
> be inside it. The issues seemed always to be in the center of the
> table so we didn't 'take other members comments "personally." Yes,
> there were times when we did "one up" behaviors, but they had the
> effect of calling you to attention more than destroying or wounding
> you. Most profound and the most missed of all our team activities
> is the singing. Singing lifts the spirit and deals with us at a
> level far beyond the rational. The blends and harmonies, points and
> counterpoints of our singing seemed to capture the meta-message of
> our work together. It did not matter if you were a good singer or
> not. The principle of entrainment carried the less skilled singers.
> Everyone sang. The body tingled with the vibration of the music. The
> soul was stirred with meaning. You could psychologically process
> your own personal and work struggles through the words of the songs.
> It was therapeutic. The mood of the group could be shaped by our
> songs. We wrote our own songs to reflect our new directions and new
> discoveries. How dull and lifeless Roberts Rules of Order, the
> decision making standard of the time, seemed next to this kind of
> power and connectedness.
>
> Jim Troxel's compelling question after the dissolution of the Order,
> was, "If it's not the structures that hold us together, what does?"
> I recall being was one of the first families in 1967 to relocate to
> a house a block away from headquarters. We wondered if our
> corporateness would extend and hold a whole block away. It not only
> stretched a block, but it has survived many transformations. The
> ICA"corporateness" is the bond that remains after the impossible
> deed has been done. The year in and year out team work created
> neurological patterning that we can "fall into" whenever we are
> together. I met ICA friends in Victoria, B.C. last summer. We wanted
> to use each other as a think tank for our respective businesses. We
> had a week-end time design including meditation and exercise
> scheduled within about thirty minutes.
>
> The ICA time design was another mental model and aid to team
> learning. Our yearly time design consisted of four quarters, eight
> weeks of teaching and five weeks for reflection. It sounds generous
> by today'sstandards, but it sustained us. You could tell your own
> life story based on where you were and what you were doing in
> quarter two of 1974.
>
> We also designed our week so that it was more in keeping with the
> way we actually experienced time. We had Week One and Week Two. Week
> One was Monday through Thursday; Week Two was Friday through Sunday.
> Week Oneactually started on Monday experientially despite the fact
> that calendars began the week with Sunday. The Sunday start to the
> week is a religious relic of a by-gone era. Only recently are
> calendar makers publishing diaries that begin the weeks and months
> on Monday. The learning organization creates the mental models that
> it wishes to use rather than assuming the conventions of the time.
> Personal Mastery
>
> Personal mastery was centered in the early days around teaching the
> core curriculum. A faculty of four teachers was assigned to each
> course. There was a fourth, third, second and first teacher. The
> first teacher was a master teacher which meant he or she could
> conduct the whole course. The first teacher was responsible for the
> success of the course. The second teacher was able the do almost the
> entire course and was second in command. The third and fourth
> teachers were in training and were responsible for the practical
> aspects of the course. There was a participant observer role for a
> teacher in training whose job it was to notice everything and ask
> questions. The whole model was an apprenticeship one. It worked
> brilliantly. Slowly you began to see how intricately the courses
> were put together. You began to notice how much you had missed the
> first ten times you had been through a course. You began to force
> yourself to make connections about people's behaviors, then test
> your hypothesis at the faculty meetings. It sharpened your
> observation skills to a fine point. You also practiced learning
> names so that by the end of the first session you knew everyone's
> name and had a tentative profile of them. I still use these skills,
> but I have to decide how much I will invest in any given situation.
> I have to decide if I will go full throttle or just cruise.
>
> Surely the learning organization must promote personal mastery in
> the individual. It must not only promote it, but it must support it.
> The teacher training system of the ICA was the best I have ever been
> part of. You were nurtured, mentored and groomed. If you "messed up"
> the team would figure out how to "clean up after you." There was no
> judgment accept what you assigned yourself. It was a learning
> experience. You were supported in learning. It was expected however,
> that you would learn from your "mistake" and have the grace to make
> a new one rather than repeat the same one again.
>
> Conclusion
>
> As I have reread this through the eyes of specific colleagues I am
> getting mixed reviews. Some of them are mentally saying, "Where we
> in the same Order?" Others are saying, "You are remembering us
> kindly and romantically." Others who are less warmly disposed to the
> ICA experience are saying, "This is the biggest fiction since Gone
> With the Wind!" I understand all these comments my friends are
> making in my mind's eye.
>
> It is not possible to have the highs I have described without
> concomitant lows. If you go the heaven, you also go to hell. That is
> the nature of the beast. So it is with the learning organization; it
> is not so much the highs and lows that count as the overall
> affirmation of the whole adventure. Michael Jordan, of basketball
> fame, says, "It's not so much the disappointments in life that
> count, but what you do with them." The same thing may be said of
> joy, despair and the whole range of human emotion.
>
> On balance I would say the true secret to being a learning
> organization isnot to be a learning organization at all, but to get
> up every morning with an impossible dream and set about doing it.
> You will be honored, humbled and joy filled as others join you in
> the quest, the dream will pull you into the future and being a
> learning organization will be the by-product of your work --- not
> the aim of it. Like the pioneers who settled North America, a good
> attitude may be more important to survival than skills. The skills
> can be acquired if the dream is strong enough. Indeed, if your dream
> is far enough out, you will have to inventthe skills to do the job,
> because no one on will have ever been on the trail you will blaze. I
> say, "Bet your life on the impossible dream. The dream and the life
> are all you really have anyway."
>
>
> Selected Bibliography
> Berry, Thomas. The Dream of the Earth. New York: Sierra Club Books.
> 19S8.
>
> Bohm, David. On Dialogue. Preceedings from a weekend
> seminar,November 6, 1989. Ojai, CA, 1990.
>
> Boulding, Kenneth E. The Image. University of Michigan Press, 1961
> Greenleef, Robert. Servant Leadership. Toronto: Paulist Press, 1977.
> Lawrence, D. H. The Complete Poems. New York: Viking Press. 1964.
> "LENS" The Institute of Cultural Affairs, 1973.
> Leonard, George. 1vlastery. New York: A Plume Book, Penguin Books,
> 1992.
>
> The Participants in the Summer '71 Research Assembly, "Matrices of
> Contradiction," Document B. The Ecumenical Institute,
> Chicago,Illinois, 1971.
>
> The Participants in the Summer '71 Research Assembly, "Toward a
> Practical Vision of The New Social Vehicle." The Ecumenical
> Institute, Chicago, 1971.
>
> The Participants in the Summer '71 Research Assembly, "A Practical
> Vision of The New Social Vehicle." The Ecumenical Institute,
> Chicago. 1972.
>
> Senge, Peter M., The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. New York: A
> Currency Book, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc., 1994.
>
> Senge, Peter M., The Fifth Discipline. The Art & Practice of The
> Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday Currency, 1990.
>
> Spencer, Laura, Winning Through Participation. Dubuque, Iowa:
> Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 1989.
>
> Suresh Srivastva, David Cooperrider, Tojo Thachankary, Xiaoping Tian
> and theICA Appreciative Inquiry Team, "Wonder and Affirmation in
> Discovery and Transformation: A Case Study of the Institute of
> Cultural Affairs, 'The HeroWith a Thousand Faces'." Case Western
> Reserve University Department of Organizational Behaviour,
> Weatherhead School of Management, Cleveland, Ohio, November, 1989.
>
> Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. Toronto: bantam Books. 1970
>
> Tojo Thachankary, "An Appreciative Inquiry into The Institute of
> Cultural Affairs." An unpublished dissertation, Case Western Reserve
> University Department ofOrgOrganizational Behaviour, Weatherhead
> School of Management, Cleveland, Ohio 1992.
>
> Troxel, James P. "The Results of the Appreciative Inquiry Study of
> The Institute of Cultural Affairs." The Institute of Cultural
> Affairs, Chicago IL, May 8, 1992.
>
> Troxel, James P. "Appreciative Inquiry: An Action Research Method
> for Organizational Transformation." Prepared for The School of New
> Learning,DePaul University , Chicago, IL. Revised and edited with
> assistance of the colleagues of Institute of Cultural Affairs, April
> 20, 1992.
> Patricia Porter Scott,-- 1995
>
>
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