Schwarz suggests that visioning is useful because it can provide guidance to help organizations and communities realize their potential without telling them exactly what to do – avoiding the kind of overly prescriptive advice that stiffles creativity and initative. This evokes some of the discussion that we have had about communities as complex systems that designers can make more resilient and adaptive, rather than trying to optimize them according to a strict set of pre-determined design objectives. This kind of flexibility and whole-system awareness is also present in the “future search” reading, which advises us to “bring the whole system into the room” and enable systems to change in often unpredictable ways.
For your blog post this week, go to either of these two webpages and chose an Orton Foundation “Heart and Soul” visioning project – make sure you choose one that no one else in your blog group has already done (first come, first served!):
http://www.orton.org/projects/past
http://www.orton.org/projects/current
Making reference to specific aspects of the community you choose, describe how this particular project reflects at least three of the background values of the Heart and Soul process, and describe how this community’s project goals reflects an appreciation for communities as complex, emergent, self-willed, potentially resilient systems, making specific reference to at least two ideas from Schwarz and two ideas from Holman.