Understanding and Solving Conflicts in our Organizations

A lot of alternative projects, including the permaculture ones, fail due to internal, social factors, manifesting itself through stron internal conflicts and/or loss of motivation of the members. Some just fall apart, others carry on a long time, with the members knowing (often without admiting it), that the way the project works internally doesn't feel right - and without knowing how to change this.

The main root of this pattern lies in lack of tools and consciousness on how to design organizational structures that really adapt to how social ecosystems work. Often we don't even know how to see the social structures we move in.

To make those structures visible I've developed the "Organizational MSP(E)", which allows us to observe and analyse social ecosystems on three (+1) levels:
- Matter/Members: The specific strengths and weaknesses of the members of an organization
- Structures: the organizational structures (like roles, plans...)
- Process/Dialogue and Decision: how we talk and take decisions
(+ Emergence/Culture: What comes up "spontaneously" due to the interaction of these three elements)

This pattern allows to make the root-causes of organizational problems visible and find strategies to overcome them.

During the workshop we'll explore different dimensions of the pattern based on the participants experience, distill common organizational problems in the permaculture context, and see how this can be applied to specific organizations.