By Merrelyn Emery.
How can we produce strategic plans that people actually want to implement? How can the process create a sense of belonging and allow members of communities and organizations to take control over their own affairs?
Fred Emery and I tackled these questions while producing Open System Theory.
Open Systems Theory: The framework
Open Systems Theory has two basic concepts:
1. The world consists of systems with permeable boundaries, ie., systems which are open to their environments. This gives us co-evolution, the mutual determination of system and environment.
2. Organizational structures are determined by one of two genotypical design principles, which are intra-system:
- Design principle 1: redundancy of parts where people are treated as replaceable parts and where responsibility for coordination and control is located above where the action is taking place producing hierarchy and inequality
- Design principle 2: redundancy of functions where each person holds more skills and functions than they can use at any time, and responsibility for coordination and control is located with the actors, producing self-managing groups and equality.
Open Systems Theory is operationalized through two basic methods:
- Search Conference to achieve adaptive plans for the relationship of system and environment
- Participative Design Workshop in which people from an organization or section work with the design principles to redesign their existing structure or design one for adaptation.
Search Conference
The Search Conference is an intensive event with significant preparation to produce an adaptive plan which belongs to the people who produced it. It is structured on the genotypical design principle of redundancy of functions so people come together as equals to plan their own future.
For example, a Search Conference held around an issue such as management of feral animals brings together participants who collectively know every aspect of the issue. In this way they create systems which plan for managing feral animals with responsibility for implementing that plan. Redundancy of function also means that while Search Conferences have process managers, their role is strictly to look after the environment within which the participants work and they must stay out of the content.
For community Search Conferences, there is a process called the Community Reference System which ensures the community selects a trusted, unbiased group of participants who collectively know every aspect of how the community functions. Implementation includes diffusion though the community.
For organizational Search Conferences, participants are usually the top management, supplemented, where necessary, by other staff holding perhaps unique skills or knowledge. In addition, organizational Search Conferences are:
- preceded by a carefully designed process in which staff from all levels give their considered views to management, and
- followed by a similarly designed process in which staff develop the plan for their department or project.
In all these ways, the Search Conference creates a sense of belonging.
The Search Conference is the translation of the open system into a method. There are three essential phases where specific issues are explored. These stages and issues are:
- A thorough analysis of the environment, exploring
- Changes in the world around us
- Most desirable and most probable future.
- A thorough analysis of the system, exploring
- Where have we come from, what has made us
- Analysis of the system today
- The most desirable system.
- Integration of environment and system to ensure adaptability, exploring
- Constraints and dealing with them
- Desirable and achievable system (strategic goals)
- Action plans
- Next steps.
Each Search Conference is custom designed and most are more complex than the skeletal design above.
Successful Implementation
As mentioned earlier, a Participative Design Workshop can be focused on designing a new organizational structure or redesigning an existing one. Only the first will be considered here. A Participative Design Workshop for designing a new organizational structure follows the Search Conference to ensure the structures set up for implementation continue to involve participants as equals implementing their own future in an energy-generating process. This Participative Design Workshop involves:
- A briefing on the first design principle of redundancy of parts and its effects
- Participants share their experience of a previous similar implementation process in terms of how it motivated them (or not) to continue
- Participants then compile a matrix of who has the skills and knowledge required to implement the plan, and work out how to acquire any that are missing
- A briefing on the second design principle of redundancy of functions and its effects
- Participants then design an organizational structure for implementation.
An adaptive community grows and diffuses through implementation.
Search Conferences overcome two key reasons why many strategic plans fail:
- Failed plans are usually devised on high and imposed on staff, community or population. Those so imposed upon usually have no motivation to implement a plan not of their making and probably not in their interests. The Search Conference overcomes this by getting the people who have to live with the plan to actually do the planning; only those who can take responsibility for an outcome are participants.
- Failed plans consider only what the system could do in the future, ignoring the very powerful impact from the environment. Consequently, the plans fail when an environmental impact takes the organization by surprise. In a Search Conference this potential impact is the first dimension to be researched and is carried through integration into the final action plans.
Concluding questions
Do the ideas here resonate with your experience of strategic planning? Do you have experience to share with applying Open Systems Theory? If you are new to this theory, can you see ways in which it could be applied in your work?
To find out more:
Emery. F. and Emery, M. (1974). Participative Design: Work and Community Life. In, Merrelyn Emery (Ed.) (1993). Participative Design for Participative Democracy. Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University: Canberra, Australia, pp: 100-122. (Online – open access): https://www.socialsciencethatactuallyworks.com/publications/the-genotypical-design-principles-and-democratizing-organizations/
Emery, M. (1999). Searching: The Theory and Practice of Making Cultural Change. John Benjamins: Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)
Biography: Merrelyn Emery PhD worked with Fred Emery from 1970 to develop Open Systems Theory and to that end, she has worked with many diverse organizations and communities around the world. She currently works as an independent researcher and is based in Canberra, Australia.
I am encouraged by this post and Merrelyn Emery’s succinct overview of OST’s strategic planning method, the Search Conference.
That said, reading an overview is not the same as making time to take a deep dive into the Theory and Practice. There are many resources at https://www.socialsciencethatactuallyworks.com/.
As a practitioner in the US, I have found that most groups and organizations do not want to commit to the time a truly effective Search Conference requires. Anything less than the suggested framework and timeframe is a waste of time and money. This is disappointing but real. Yet, I continue to stay vigilant to opportunities to introduce the methodology. The same with PD Workshops.
These are challenging times. Fred and Merrelyn’s research and her writings on active adaptation and maladaptations is so relevant. I do not know much about i2insights, I encourage you to pursue this line of thought.
Janis Nowlan
Thanks Janis, I wonder now that things are really getting so rocky in the US and so many people have found that everything they have tried has failed, whether in sheer desperation, they may try something that is just a little more demanding of time and energy. So many methods in the US have only a very short shelf life because they are wisps of a consultant’s imagination rather than being based on solid research. They add to the climate of superficiality and laissez-faire rather than providing a way out. But you never know, times can change rapidly and perhaps we have seen a shift in the last few weeks. Hang in there, ME
Sorry it took me a while to reply. I have had the same thought as you . . . that perhaps there is an awakening to the need for more rigor in planning desired futures and actions to realize them. Some relatively new “players” have emerged who seem to understand the need for people in a system to participate in creating its future and who want to be actively involved. Certainly, it is worth some of my time to reach out when I see a crack in the window.
Good on you and good luck. It would be wonderful to see the US once again participating in helping increase the trends towards active adaptation before it is too late, ME
I used a revised concept of “register” from sociolinguistics to describe the strategy of legitimization when founding Yu Qun public opinion research institute in China. The basic practice is the Search Conference.
That is very interesting Yi, thank you, ME
Thank you for publishing such a relevant and insightful paper. I work in strategy and organisational design and had the privilege of attending Merrelyn’s six-day Master Class in Canberra a few years ago. It was a pivotal moment for me – many of my intuitive successes and failures suddenly made sense, and the pieces of the puzzle finally fitted together.
I’ve been a transformation consultant for many years and have used various systems thinking approaches and popular consulting frameworks. This was the first time I experienced a model that combined rigorous theory with practical applicability. What surprised me most was the simplicity and, at the same time, the depth of the design principles – they are elegant yet profoundly impactful.
Since that masterclass, I’ve run several Search Conferences and some Participative Design Workshops, and I can confidently say that Open Systems Theory is the most complete model I’ve encountered for explaining what it takes to create adaptive, human-centred organisations.
Thanks Alidad
I use this 2-stage process in a very synthesized manner in a single day:
History
Trend Analysis
Desirable Future
Strategic Plan
Organizational Redesign
How to Get There:
Strategic Action Plan (PESTLE, SWOTT, SKILLS MATRIX, etc)
Accountability agreement.
I have an issue with “adaptability” for it is reactive. I use pro-active adaptability along with tropophilia.
Thanks for sharing and keep up your great work!
Juan,
Thanks for sharing your approach. Do people come prepared having completed these activities? It’s a lot to do in one day. Are you able to get much depth or do have an approach e.g splitting methods so people can work with more focus?
Keen to chat offline to learn more, if helpful!
Mariana
Thanks JC. The correct term for what happens in a Search Conference is ‘active adaptive’ planning. This is because the people in the system actively create a new future incorporating the early signs of social change they have picked up in their analyses. The problem with a lack of grounding in reality is that the future can come and hit you for six while you are off being imaginative.
The Search Conference is designed as an intensive episode in a much longer process, for very serious purposes. I cannot see how it can accomplish any of its purposes such as an effective long term plan and sustainable community building in a day, ME