Into the Silence

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 2 – Into the Silence
Chapter 5 – The Generative Moment

“...’Adam said that the volume needs to be turned up in order for him to hear. Maybe he’s not so different from the rest of us – we all must spend our lives learning to ‘hear the silence.’ The Indian teacher Krishnamurti said that this is why real communication is so rare: “Real communication can take place only where there is silence.” But there is also something more in this silence that goes beyond opening the heart and seeing “from inside”’” (79).

This above story exemplifies the difference between spiritual and non-spiritual communication. Spiritual communication is about listening. Non-spiritual communication is about talking; which reinforces the informationist notion that ‘more is better.’ We design all sorts of technological tools that help us do more talking… but do we have anything that is aimed at helping us be better listeners?

In the previous section, the authors mentioned an experience of radical change at a steelworks that began with learning the skills of dialogue. Researchers from the MIT Dialogue Project taught these skills to both management and union teams, who had previously been locked in fierce arguments that were seemingly irresolvable; “Then the teams began to meet together – and after only a few meetings, the combined group began to discover the ability to have ‘real talk’ about difficult issues. Eventually, tangible consequences became evident in the plant: dramatic declines in accidents and absenteeism, as well as improvements in productivity. The backlog of grievances fell from 485 to zero. Union and management were starting to work together to address systemic issues that had been neglected for decades” (34). I saw this at Corus too. The union leaders talked about the importance of respect, honesty, openness… and this all enabled them to listen to each other better and actually solve problems. I have a feeling that this insight will be the source of at least one mini-solution that I come up with in the course of the PhD.

This section has also given me an idea for a focus group. One of the authors tells the story of when he was involved in seeing the end of apartheid in South Africa. Leaders created two stories to share with the people as inspiration: one of the ‘low road’ and one of the ‘high road’. It allowed people to see the importance of taking the high road, making the more difficult decisions that would lead to a better future. This kind of storytelling might be useful in my writeup for justifying the need for radical change with regards to our technological engagements. Also, the author explained that further steps were taken to involve people in thinking about and creating an alternative future. They brought people together, and they came up with 4 possible scenarios: 1) The Ostrich, characterized by putting one’s head in the sand; 2) Lame Duck, where government was crippled and made no progress; 3) Icarus, where radical changes were made too quickly and came crashing down; and 4) Flamingo: “The scenario called “Flamingo” was one that no one particularly liked initially because flamingos take off very slowly. But they also take off together. As the group thought through these different stories, they came to the conviction that the only viable way forward was “Flamingo”’” (74-5). I wonder if it might be worthwhile holding a focus group and having participants imagine future scenarios and see what conclusions they reach about how we must proceed.