Some years ago a friend of mine, Finn Voldtofte, was hosting some meetings that he had decided to call CIPI – collective intelligence practitioners initiative. He wanted it to be a forum for sharing experiences with reaching that place with a group where the group is smarter than its components – where are sort synergetic high energy occurs. The participants were mostly facilitators and process consultants, but the idea of facilitation was expanded a little, which allowed a researcher such as myself to join them. First time I was there, we were sitting four people on floor in front of Finn’s fire place for a very intense and deep conversation.

I don’t remember the course of events precisely, but the CIPI meetings was the bed from which the Moving the Edge convention sprang. On that link you can read more about it, but the site itself is defunct. The CIPI meetings went on after that, but ended haltingly when Finn died in December 06.

Now the CIPI has been reinvigorated by Martin Ehrensvärd and Maja Rottbøll, and I am happily participating again. The new life that has come to the new circle also invites me to think about the experiences and impact of the first round of CIPI, and how it has influenced present and future.

As I said, CIPI was a life-navigating circle to step into. This was because of the strong theme of our work together – Collective Intelligence. Ever since this series of sessions of conversations, where we were able to reach a very strong shared ‘field’ of intelligence, I have had a vision of working more to develop this capacity in myself and others. I has become a deep part of my identity. It was a massive experience to be able to intentionally create a space where you can know more than you usually can, and see more and reach for more than you usually can.

CIPI was created in order to explore the principles and practices that would create a field of collective intelligence. These principles and practices were collected and explored through observing the social energy in the group and how this energy shifted around and which actions triggered which changes. I think we laded on a list of social and personal practices, which is what each participant in the circle should watch in himself while also atending and remembering the readiness of the social practices. In one way the work was never finished, because it cannot be fully described. But I remember a distinct feeling of going in circles back to revisit the same basic principles over and over again. A feeling of “maybe we actually have a good-enough image of what we need”. A feeling that started a impatient build-up in me. “What would we be able to do now with this insight?”

When I talk about collective intelligence I talk about a intentional practice of personally engaged encounters. Not random stuff happening on the internet. Sure a lot of activity on the web and at large social events can be seen and described as manifestations of a form of intelligence that is beyond the individual. Like wikipedia or linux etc. In my view it is confusing the concept of collective intelligence to spread it over such broad subjects, but right now I do not have a better word for the experience than that.

Basically our explorations were done as a group of people sitting down in a circle and exploring what would emerge. The concept of “magic in the middle” guided us to reach into a shared field, and from there explore any concepts and ideas that would emerge.

As a designer I can see the enormous potential for this form of collaboration in working with solutions to future potentials. We could create circles were people could collaborate from their highest possible capacity. Design is inherently about exploring the unknown or the not-yet-known. It is a curious practice. I see the ideas of collective intelligence as hinting at a new way of doing design. As design spreads into new sectors of life and business, I would love to see this kind of processes unfold in innovation team, in organizational development and ideation processes. The simple but challenging process of brain-storming is actually a kind of collective intelligence practice. Without much demand on the inner work of the participants.

Collective intelligence, in the way we worked and still work with it, can be linked to spiritual practices,  is highly applicable in organzations, innovations, ideations and any other kind of creations – processes where the end point is unknown and the participants must lean forward to reach for new insights and this is best done when building energitically onto what we all bring to the circle.

For those who read Danish you can see more on the current facebook group – some of it is in English, actually

The map and the talk centered around the notions design-thinking and design-doing – as positioned between material and context (doing / what you work with), and between logic and aestehtic (thinking / how you perceive the world and discover the New). Without going into detailed depth with the framework or map, I can just show you the finished map after each direction and quadrant is explained:

After the presenation I had an interesting conversation with the audience on, if we see kaos pilots as a type of designers, then what is then their design material. I think that the notion of material is shared throughout the different design disciplines, but I was unclear to me how the kaos pilots would define their particular approach.

There were several suggestions; maybe it is ‘time’, as the KP are process designers, then what they basically manipulate is the time and process that they facilitate others to go through. Another suggestion was that they, by their own example, facilitate people to see their new potentials. Maja argued that Margaret J. Wheatley has made an image of facilitators building bridges for people to walk into new possibilities. Following that image the KP – and other process facilitators’ design material – becomes the dreams or visions they are able to create, tell and ask people to join. Altenatively – following the same metaphor – the facilitators’ design material is themselves. The facilitator must work hard with him or herself in order to navigate tiny detail in the process facilitation.

For me this is a very interesting discussion- Not because I am overly concerned with how kaos pilots define their field of expertise, but because the design field is evolving rapidly into fourth order design (Buchanan) and one way of describing the design field of fourth order is ‘design as facilitation’. As a researcher and as a practitioner I find it immensely important that we explore where competences and expertise is to be founded for such new development. I am especially interested in the mindset of the designer – meaning how we think while designing or – in a more elaborate way; how we position our consciousness while facilitating creative change processes… – Now that’s interesting.

Concerning the issue of whether Kaos Pilots are or should be considered as designers. Michael Donemann argued no. And proposed that the profession of kaos pilots is that of Animateurs – I’m not completely certain what he means, but I made the link as good as possible, and the imagery that the word generates in my head works well. Denouncing the ever-popular and stigmatized concept of ‘designer’ and using/making up a new category might actually be a good idea for the KP’s. However…

But it makes me think whether it actually makes sense to talk about a designer in fourth order of design. Also looking at the on-going debate on design thinking as design-used-by-(non)-designers-in-strategic-business-context, it might actully be stretching the word ‘design’ too far?? If the fourth prder design’s material is himself, then are we actually talking bout a designer anymore, or are we talking about a group coach? A group coach that can draw a littel better than normal??

First Tina’s question, which contains a very good sum-up of the problem I try to address below:
“I notice I am kind of riding on a wave of optimism based only on four or five speeches, mass hypnosis and the general and collective need to believe that he is holding space for a change in human consciousness that has many parents. I think the possibility he has in real political action is limited to green meme. I think he is yellow in terms of personal believes, how else could he have managed to get to this point and appeal to Europeans as well. I think he holds a turquoise vision for the world, and has reached a transparency toward the whole picture. I hope so anyway. Can’t you write us all an essay summing up these matters and apply it to Wilber’s integral model?”

Will try.

I, too, believe in the change that has come with Obama, but when he is looked upon with Spiral Dynamics we see that he is a complicated figure, and not just sitting in the turquoise as one would dream of a world leader to do. If we run through a few of his political and moral stand points we see several memes present.

Barack Obama is pro-choice meaning he is in favor of women’s right to freely choose abortion. This is a standpoint that is one of the cases that is used to explain the levels in Spiral Dynamics (SD) and would place him solidly above blue. The blue meme is historically very strong in the US with the political and religious right dominating the Republican Party on value issues. According to Ken Wilber the Republican political domination we have seen in the last couple of decades – only penetrated by Clinton’s presidency – can be attributed to the pragmatic alliance between wall-street-republicans, who could then decide financial politics and leave value politics to the bible-belt-republicans, who have led the political scene on issues ranging from abortion and gun control, the use of cigars in the oval office to the war on terror.

Basically Obama being above the blue meme with its base in religious absolute values is his key to success, in my opinion. This represents a shift in political focus that IS the change he has been referring to throughout his campaign. And yet he has also nurtured these values by being openly Christian, although not too much – when he denounced his revered Jeremiah, and by supporting other issues that is important to the blue meme (family values and country) voters like the right to bear arms and a strong commitment to secure the holy land (Israel).

Actually the blue meme is very interesting in American politics. Politicians must balance on a knife’s edge when dealing with blue values. The blue vote is important because it decides the swing states on the edges of the bible belt – like North Carolina and Ohio. Hillary Clinton, I think, lost her campaign by being too strong in her support for the blue values. This then backfired on her in the primaries since green and orange voters dislikes the hardcore blue value and are threatened by them – especially on the democratic side (since there is less of a history for the previously mentioned alliance for the Democrats). Obama wisely were much softer in his support. Actually he was inclusive in his tone and vocabulary instead of stressing differences. Hillary Clinton ended up looking like she was flip-flopping between issues – depending on which state she was in.
Barack Obama included and went beyond blue meme.

We are not completely done with Blue. The main reason why Republicans have been able to make a strong alliance between the blue meme religious/family values right and the orange corporate/Wall Street is simply due to the fact that blue and orange are net to each other in the spiral development. They have similar values on some issues and very dissimilar and conflicting on others. So there have gone a very big effort into avoiding potential conflicts over, say, central issues of freedom and responsibility. In corporate settings republicans are all for freedom from most governing principles and legislative control whereas in highly tense issues like gay marriages they are intensely against the freely roaming wills of the individuals – here they are for harsh government and legislation – just as an illustrative examples.

The democrats have a much harder time combining orange with green, which must be their demographic base if they are to win over the blue foundation. The democrats have basically no chance in hell to win the religious right with their inclusive approach to post-modern living and. So again the key player-meme is the orange corporate, business, success, personal expression vMEME(as Beck and Cowan insists on calling the memes). Blue and orange have been around for so long that they can find a working order. Green’s let’s-all-be-equal thinking is the direct expression of opposition towards the dominating orange meme. Orange is very strong in the US since it entails the American Dream – the ability for any individual to make it big – not to be messed with. On a side-comment Barack Obama probably saw some of his toughest stress from Joe-the-Plumber. Joe was a guy who walked up the Obama on the street and asked him whether his financial policy would destroy his ability to run his newly acquired plumbing business. This is a personification of the personal struggle a lot of Americans have with the American Dream. Luckily Obama responded relatively well and Joe later turned out not just to be a fiery Republican, but also something of a idiot, with eg. his comment that an Obama administration would mean the end of the state of Israel.

Ok, back to the main story. So green and orange dislikes each other basically because orange stands for “I will accomplish on my own power and have success over you” and green stands for “together we can overcome the hardness of the world. We are all equal, and you better start behaving equal”.

So the alliance between green and orange is difficult to create and manage. Barack Obama has done so by being the incarnation of a rising and successful leader and entrepreneur while also advocating a greater concern for those who have less than is fair in the American system.
But actually I think Obama’s two best cards in splitting the republican alliance have been the incredibly mismanagement of so many issues by the Bush-administration AND the ongoing financial crisis that has trawled the globe in a few months now. Both of these have been signs to blue-leaning-into-green and skeptical orange voters that something else was needed. Which incidentally again became Obama’s brand promise “Change we need”.

I think that most Europeans, being solidly based in the green meme, have so high hopes for Obama because he represents a change away from a blue meme in George W. Bush that we just couldn’t understand and couldn’t take more of. We now think that Obama is green like us and will be a green president for the entire globe. This is very unlikely. The US will not have a green ruling government for the next few decades. It will have to be fundamentally orange in order to sustain support from the population. Certain policies can be green and even beyond, but not the entire range of government.
Which is totally fine as long as those few cornerstone policies that are put in place from a higher perspective are carried through, and not just pulled back as we saw often with Bill Clinton’s administration.
Barack Obama himself is probably at a yellow or turquoise level himself in certain ways, I hope.

…

OK
A few weeks have passed since I started this piece. Obama has made his inaugural speech and his first few actions as president. And stand back – the man is most certainly turquoise. As it is always the case, turquoise contains and integrates the former layers/memes and this is what I have tried to unravel in this post.
Obama being at turquoise however does not mean that everything he is going to do will seem enlightened or will be something we all agree with. Most of the problems facing him are not easily solved at any of the given levels of thinking. But a turquoise president is far better in any crisis than an aggressive blue. History will not be kind to The second Former Bush. The former administration is an example of how old way of thinking will not just delay progress and growth but will actually do harm to the world.