Organizing retrospective 20

This is a post in my series on organizing ”between and beyond.” Other posts are here. This is a retrospective of what has happened during the week. The purpose is to reflect on the work itself. Here is my previous retrospective. Here is my next retrospective.

What has happened? What needs to be done?
Finally, I’ve finished my review of Future Sense by Malcolm Parlett.¹ I love the book! It’s based on years of observation and practice. It’s also a deeply personal book. Parlett heard himself promise to write the book and to dedicate it to his partner three weeks before she died, so he had to overcome his deep fears of revealing publicly his personal ideas and beliefs.² Here is my book review, and here is a post on responding to the situation. I will publish a post on interrelating next week.

Finally, I’ve also finished reading Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom.³ I’ve been reading the book since I started this series of posts in July. Ostrom’s book is an example of brilliant scholarly work. What makes her work particularly interesting for me is that she has researched the capabilities and limitations of self-governing common resources. She illustrates a diversity of both successful and unsuccessful cases. The history of the oldest examples exceeds 1,000 years! It’s a great study on self-organization and self-governance. I will review Elinor Ostrom’s book in January.

Two new books arrived this week. The first is If Aristotle Ran General Motors by Tom Morris,⁴ and the second is Pathways to Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander.⁵ I have started reading Zander’s book.

What was good? What can be improved?
I’ve had a productive week. I also appreciate Simon Robinson’s continued feedback and input. Here is his latest comment. I think moving from an intellectual understanding into lived experience is related to moving deeper into generative orders for organizing.

I’m confronted with the same impasse as Malcolm Parlett, that is I also have deep fears of revealing publicly my personal ideas and beliefs. I’ve realized that I need to draw upon the very resources Parlett is writing about. Maybe I’m doing this work because there’s crucial personal learning for me?

Notes:
¹ Malcolm Parlett, Future Sense: Five Explorations of Whole Intelligence for a World That’s Waking Up (Matador, 2015).
² Ibid., pp. 285–286.
³ Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 2015, 1st published 1990).
⁴ Tom Morris, If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business (Henry Holt and Company, 1997).
⁵ Rosamund Stone Zander, Pathways to Possibility: Transforming Our Relationship with Ourselves, Each Other, and the World (Viking, 2016).

Related posts:
Organizing in between and beyond posts