Organizing reflection 27

This is a post in my series on organizing ”between and beyond.” Other posts are here. The purpose of this post is to reflect on subjects occupying my mind. I make no claim to fully believe what I write. Neither do I pretend that others have not already thought or written about the same subject. More often than not, I take up, combine, and add to already existing thoughts and ideas.

What is on my mind?
Today’s reflection is inspired by Daniel Mezick (@DanielMezick).

Yesterday, David Osborne asked:

Is it possible for an environment can be too safe to support self-organization? Can safety be at such a high level that it inhibits or slows down the self-organizing process?¹

Upon which Daniel Mezick answered:

It seems unlikely that you can have too much of this psychological safety going on if you are looking for teams to self-manage and self-organize.²

Daniel shared, this article by Richard Feloni on the five traits shared by Google’s most successful teams share. First among them is psychological safety. The term was coined by Amy Edmondson in this paper on Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Daniel also shared this TEDx Talk on Building a psychologically safe workplace by Amy Edmondson.

It seems likely that generative organizing requires a psychologically safe workplace.

Notes:
¹ These questions are from David Osborne’s mail 2018-08-21 16:27 UTC to the World wide Open Space Technology email list (OSList).
² This answer is from Daniel Mezick’s mail 2018-08-21 04:49 UTC to the World wide Open Space Technology email list (OSList).

Related posts:
Organizing in between and beyond posts