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Thematic Synthesis of Conversations in PI Community (PIC)

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Organizing Communities for Collective Presencing at Institutions/Large Systems
Manish Srivastava, July 21, 2009

Presencing Institute Community’s (PIC) last thematic synthesis highlighted the “blind-spots in understanding and facilitating transformational change at institutional or systemic level”. In last 3 months, PIC’s conversations seem to be actively addressing this blind-spot of societal transformation . PIC members are bringing their stories, insights and inquiries to co-create innovative ways for engaging institutions/large systems in collective presencing leading to collective action and common will.

These stories and ideas are emerging from diverse fields of education, governance, forest management, corporate executive teams etc. They emphasize on ‘organizing communities’ of stakeholders within and across the systems by leveraging on transformational social processes of deep dialogue, creative arts and principles of self-organizing.

Through this ongoing exploration PIC Practitioners are opening a new area of action research and inquiry:

1. Enabling processes:

What social processes would help in creating communities that would engage the larger system in seeing and acting from the whole?

PIC practitioners have shared some transformative social change processes and technologies that may facilitate communities for collective presencing. These include:

Engaging whole community in deep dialogue at “level 3 (reframing metal models) and level 4 (regenerating sources)” by developing “authentic connections” (Kamyar, Mar 02, 2009) and tapping and engaging “the hidden collective knowledge of people inside corporations (and large systems) to co-create a sustainable future” (Lippod, June 18, 2009).

Creative arts as an integral medium to reach Presencing. It facilitates community building through cohesive group formation, conversation and dialogue in a non-judgmental setting. Various art forms are discussed including social presencing theatre, photography, painting, body work, dreams etc.

Self Organizing principles and its application in organizations and communities. It explores the role of trust, honoring emergence, chaos, nature’s organizing principles, appropriate framing, letting go etc, to facilitate a self-organized or self-directed community.

2. Enabling infrastructure:

What are the various coordinating mechanisms that would enable community building across various levels of the system?

To engage and shift the whole system we would need coordinating mechanisms at various system levels (macro and mundo) that would enable community building:

Within organizations/institutions. ‘Cross-functional leadership teams’: Theory U based interventions to facilitate strategic leadership team meeting. It helps in generative dialogue and deeper relationship and enables them to see and act from the whole organization and larger system perspective.

Across the institutions/ sectors. ‘Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSP)’: MSPs are most relevant when a complex societal problem is beyond the capability and resources of any single institution, organization or stakeholder. It “summits a multi-stakeholder group (by) getting the whole system in the room (or a microcosm of the system) to address a complex issue that requires a wide variety of views and experience”.

Among citizens, beyond institutional boundaries. ‘Place-based or Online communities’: Place-based community interventions may engage multi-stakeholders from the local community in a collective inquiry dialogue around their local issues/challenges . Another version of place-based community could be local Communities of Practice (CoP) for facilitating collective capacity building . Online communities like PIC, on the other hand, have limitations in facilitating conversations at level 3 or level 4, “yet they provide a terrific and low-cost opportunity to learn” and connect.

Above mentioned ongoing PIC conversations are creating action-learning and knowledge about ‘how’ can we engage large systems in collective presencing. However, there is deeper exploration required for understanding- ‘what’ is the emerging field of change . What are the mental models that need to be re-generated? What are the sources for emerging collective consciousness? What are the new economic models, systemic assumptions, values that would become the building block of ‘collective presencing communities’? What are the regenerative economy prototypes and innovations happening around the world?