Reply to comment

I was thinking the same thing--it is so much easier for me to make this happen in the classroom--because I am the social engineer in the room. And if I have a student who is not on-board, I work with them until they too embrace and fully participate in the classroom culture.

I think that Paul is a social engineer in his sessions as well---maybe because he knows exactly where he is going---what he will share with us----the material, the nature of his material and his clearly articulated story make it possible to keep the train moving toward a common destination.

Wil tried something really radical to my mind---he wanted us to discover a way to describe inquiry---but he didn't bring his story about what inquiry is to the table--instead, he tried for 100% emergence---with no overarching story on his part to point N, S, E or W.  I don't think that he failed---rather, I think that the kind of emergence that he was allowing space for in the group just needs more time--my guess is that if we had another week or two we would have come together as a group and been more productive the longer we were together.

Wil was also handicapped to a certain extent. When a group forms, an identity emerges--in org design you say that the group has gone from the form to norm stage----add new people, take original members away and the group goes through a storm phase before it can re-norm. I think that our first week of II2009 was that storm phase--perfectly normal, but again something that needs space to shake out.