Auspicious conversations

(See also auspicious reasoning and other keywords)
This is page continues to be co-created with Sandro Pampallona, Paula Bollini & Felicity Jones
Our current context is the need to reimagine global aid systems
(see our discussion on 11th January 2024)

Levels of discourse

• Conversations could usefully be understood as collective change systems
  • (i.e. rather than local/personal sites of exchange)
  • Instead we could think of them as microcosms of the whole system (see levers for change).
  • If so, everyone can play a part in co-creating the world via auspicious conversations:

Some preliminary ideas

1. Top-down models of power and influence (e.g. oratory / rhetoric / debate) are a legacy of colonialism.
   • They are for managing empires, rather than participating in consensual, synergistic communities.
   • To redress the balance we need more fruitful guidelines for facilitating co-creative conversations
2. Many citizens underestimate their personal ability to influence change.
   • Perhaps they forget that grass-roots movements emerge from informal visions of people like themselves.
   • see holarchy / holacracy
3. It may be important to encourage self-belief and self-worth for the disenfranchised.
   • e.g. challenging popular assumptions about innovation and genius
   • n.b. Buckminster Fuller's trim-tab analogy is a useful antidote to feelings of powerlessness.
4. It may be important to ask for humility from those with more power

Rudimentary guidelines

1. We can improve collective reasoning in a number of ways.
   • e.g. avoiding anything resembling a debating format
   • this configuration is likely to be inauspicious
   • because it is designed to rigidify concepts
   • because it is designed to polarise opinions around these concepts
   • the above processes can eclipse new meanings and unforeseen opportunities.
2. Some guidelines may consist of basic advice
   • "please avoid statements that are unhelpful or unproductive."
   • "where possible, please discuss systems rather than individuals''."
   • "please avoid terminating a conversation prematurely and/or unhelpfully."
   • "Our boss is a fascist" is a conversation stopper (i.e. how to translate into practical measures?)
   • "try to think across the binary divide between theory and practice

Conversation works on many levels

1. Conversational communication works on many levels at once (e.g. tacit knowledge)
2. Some understanding may need to work at a meta level (e.g. see metadesign)
3. In some cases it may be better to imply rules, rather than stating them explicitly
   • e.g. working by example to make conversations more enjoyable, creative and productive.
4. Guidelines would probably need to operate at the emotional level
   • e.g. to be affirmative, empathetic and kind
   • e.g. to foster contagious optimism.
5. Guidelines would probably need to operate at a logical level (e.g. see auspicious reasoning)
   • n.b. logic validates the argument for emotional optimism and affirmative thinking
   • i.e. conversational consensus that dismisses X as impossible is likely to be self-validating.
   • i.e. logically, some miracles may be unthinkable but not impossible.
   • e.g. see the POUT tool
6. Participants might like to license one another to think across logical rules and the boundaries.
7. Creative thinking is natural, although some participants may find it unnerving to converse without an agenda
   • See abductive reasoning
8. Participants might find it helpful to begin by stating that all participants are equal (see holacracy)
   • (although a conversation might start by acknowledging the underlying power asymmetries)
9. Participants might be invited:
   • to use the levelling tool
   • to attempt deep listening
   • to be non-confrontational
   • to start conversations without an agenda
   • to be open to unexpected possibilities
   • to begin meetings with Playfulness (e.g. no-agenda / fun conversations / childsplay).
   • to terminate meetings with clear Action Points to be completed by a specific date
   • to get specific participants to self-nominate for completion and reporting.
   • see Gordon Pask's Conversation Theory
   • If the notion of creative synergy can be valued, it calls for a co-creative approach.
   • Meta-levels of discussion may need to focus on positive encouragement/advocacy rather than sceptical/critical observation
   • We could request that criticisms be converted into answer-seeking questions
   • See the no buts rule.
   • Where criticism is used, perhaps it should only be applied to methods, not to individuals
10. Introduce synergy as a perennial purpose that values human participation and