OS³ – An ‘Organic Operating System’
For The New Millennium
Organization is a deep impulse in the universe. Nature aligns in ‘nested’ systems, from atoms to molecules to cells to organisms to ecosystems. We humans arrange and align ourselves through clans, tribes, communities and countries. We establish economies, political systems, baseball teams and marching bands, all of which manifest a breathtaking diversity while adding meaning to our lives and providing a sense of identity and security.
Increasingly, however, our organizational models are proving inadequate to our times. While they may still work for baseball teams and marching bands, more complex entities like companies, communities and countries find they’re just too unwieldy. The old, hierarchical, ‘command and control’ structures simply can’t adapt fast enough to the dynamic, globalized world in which we now live.
In technological terms, we might say that the ‘error rate’ of our current software has exceeded acceptable standards. In order to overcome the failures and ‘bugs’ created by our old operating system, we need to upgrade to a new operating system.
And, fortunately, one exists.
In fact, it has for more than three billion years. Just as the natural world provides insight and inspiration in the design of products and structures, it also offers more effective and elegant models for organizing our own endeavors.
Inspired by emerging work in Complexity Thinking, John Goekler and Merle Lefkoff have designed an ‘organic’ operating system for creative breakthrough. Based on key understandings of contemporary science, it distills the wisdom of natural systems and applies them to human social systems at all levels, from personal interactions to international peacemaking.
We call this organic operating system OS³. (© Change Factors, 2007) It’s essential elements are Open Space, Open Source and Open Systems. Multiplied together, they offer an opportunity for entering into a greatly expanded ‘Option Space’ from which creative solutions, opportunities and epiphanies emerge.
Open Space is a means of tapping group wisdom and creativity by convening and facilitating the self-organizing potential of people and the brilliance that emerges from their collective intelligence. It is a means of identifying all the stakeholders and ‘getting the whole system in the room’ to identify issues and opportunities. ‘Wisdom Councils’ and design charettes are examples of Open Space processes in human systems. Natural examples, such as flocking and swarming, are also highly effective when adapted to organizations and work groups.
Open Source is a means of assuring that collective knowledge and group wisdom are captured and made available to every member of the organization. It also protects against the loss of knowledge due to the disabling or departure of any individual. Wikipedia and Linux are classic examples of human Open Source models, as DNA exchanges among bacteria are in natural settings. The key factor of Open Source is that it allows everyone in an organization both to add to collective knowledge and to access it.
Open System means recognizing system boundaries (and overlaps), and consciously intervening at a high leverage systemic level rather than a low leverage reactive level. Because every system is nested – meaning that it both contains smaller systems and is contained within larger systems – its behaviors are influenced by those systems. Recognizing that reality and optimizing relationships and communication protocols across system boundaries increases alignment among those systems and lessens friction and unintended consequences.
