Found a book of gems for a dollar in the box outside the store. This is Chana Bloch, from The Past Keeps Changing (1992)

In the fire I see our own faces
losing their shape.
There’s no way to change
without touching
the space at the center of everything.

What are some other organizational models or images that align with Michael Herman and Chris Corrigan’s four quadrants and four practices? How do they help us to unpack and articulate this quadrinity?

1. Purpose/Intention (individual internal)
Appreciating practice
2. Story (collective internal)
Inviting practice
3. Structure (collective external)
Supporting practice
4. Behavior (individual external)
Making Good practice

Some thoughts below. I am thinking in a broad-brush manner and I’m sure there can be precise critiques of all of these. Also, I’m link-challenged today, so you have to search for references (should be easy) or email me.

First, there’s the four-part Appreciative Inquiry Summit design, a focused retreat to use the power of appreciating “what works” to redesign a whole system:

1. Discover (the best of what is, in each person’s experience)
2. Dream (what could be – together – based on the best of what is)
3. Design (what supports our dream)
4. Destiny (making it happen)

Consultants have used Appreciative Inquiry for the first day, World Cafe for the second day, and then a two-day Open Space with a good convergence process to fulfill the fourth admonition. I also appreciated Michael’s story of using four distinct days of Open Space to engage each of these four elements.

Then there’s the Chaordic design process, which consists of six steps, but they seem to align with the four quadrants:

1. Purpose
2. Principles/Participants
3. Design/Constitution
4. Practices

An Open Space Organization design process, articulated by Birgitt Williams and others, has similarities to the Chaordic process. One possible advantage is that the visceral experience of working with the principles and design of the Open Space meeting can help people to imagine its usefulness as a template for the Open Space organization. The meeting actually kick-starts the organization design process. This could make these decisions easier than with the equivalent factors in the Chaordic process.

1. Purpose/Leadership
2. Shared Vision
3. Community/Design Elements
4. Management practices

Another contribution comes from Bill Veltrop and the International Center for Organization Design, with whose work I became familiar in the early 90’s. As I recall, their four part model looks like this:

1. Life-Giving Forces (from Appreciative Inquiry, based on the best of what is)
2. Context Design
3. Infrastructure Design
4. Capabilities

I know that model-building is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m enjoying looking through these Legos for insights into practice.

At Shavuot (“weeks”), seven weeks after the full moon of Passover, we celebrate the Great Mystery of Sinai. Time to share more widdim from Reb Gershon of the New Mexico desert:

The Ten Puzzling Commandments by Gershon Winkler

How would you feel if one day God finally spoke to you, and had nothing of any real significance or wisdom to impart? What if all God had in mind during that once-in-a-lifetime revelation to you went something like:

“I am God who saved your ass last Monday when you almost had that accident. Don’t draw pictures of me. Don’t mention my name in your trivial conversations, they are boring and I want no part of them. Every Tuesday I would like it if you didn’t eat herring. And don’t give your mom and dad any more hype. Also, don’t go around murdering people. And don’t deceive your friend by sleeping with your friend’s partner, and I don’t mean business partner. And don’t go around holding up convenient stores. And don’t fall asleep during jury duty. And don’t go shopping at Tiffany’s just because your neighbor does.”

Can you imagine? If God were to choose to speak to you, you’d want to hear the deepest of mysteries, answers to all your questions about the meaning of life, about what happens after it’s all over, about why there is suffering and evil in the world, and so on. You wouldn’t want some humdrum revelation about stuff you already know. So what was the big to-do about the Ten Commandments coming down on Mount Sinai? They are really boring, unoriginal, and superfluous. At least in the way we are used to reading them in the English.

So I would like to propose a different version of what occurred at Mount Sinai some 3300 years ago as the festival commemorating that event – Shavu’ot – approaches, a version based more on the actual Hebrew and the oral traditions that enwombed and conceived these beatitudes to begin with…

“Hello. I am God. Your personal God. The one who pulled off all those wild stunts back in Egypt to get you out of the house of bondage. Your God. Personal. I didn’t do this as an act on behalf of the masses. I am not into numbers. I did it for you. Yes, you; why are you turning around to see if I am addressing anyone else?

I am addressing you, the individual. So please don’t treat me like some impersonal deity, reducing me to a particular image or sculpture; to something that is replicable. And when you mention me, don’t mention me as a second thought; what am I, chopped liver? And take some time now and then to step off the dizzying merry-go-round of your life spin and think of me, and of the other creatures with whom you share this planet, this life. And don’t forget your mom and dad who brought you here, and expended so much of their time and energy to raise you.

I know you’re unhappy about the world situation, hunger, genocide, war, invasions, corruption, lies, greed. I know. They all come about when you sever yourself from all that I just implied, from respect for the individual right of each of us to be in this existence, each with our own unique identity and own unique sense of worth.

With that kind of consciousness, you won’t murder each other, or abuse each other sexually, or steal from one another, or accuse one another falsely, or obsess with achieving what others have. You will instead honor your own special place in the world and that of your fellows.

Remember by all this that there is no one like you, never was, and never ever will be again. You are indeed very extraordinary, unfathomable, infinite, unknowable, un-peg-able, un-define-able. And so is that person standing next to you. And so is your pet ox. And so am I. Good-bye for now.”