Otto Laske Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM)

Creating Collaborative Intelligence

Otto Laske Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM)

Creating Collaborative Intelligence

DTF

IDM Practica in Dialectical Thinking

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IDM is the institution with the longest record of teaching dialectical thinking in the USA. Founded in 2000, IDM developed a now much refined curriculum for professionals of all kinds, to put to use their developmental resources for breaking the ‘logical thinking habit’, thereby moving toward a holistic and transformational way of encountering the real, social, and cultural worlds. In its newest form, IDM teaching has fully absorbed Critical Realism, with a focus on understanding and boosting human agency. Nothing boosts the latter more than having acquired a practice of dialectical thinking for structuring one’s concerns and the internal conversations needed to deal with them.

In addition to long-term case studies leading to the practice of dialectic in organizations, in 2022 IDM offers short-term, ten session Practica. These Practica are attended by up to 15 participants working together for up to 4 months, to acquire a professional grounding in the practice of dialectical thinking. Applications of this practice are found in areas such as permaculture, city planning, ecological rewilding, architectural design, art making, and others.

For more details, see The 2022 IDM Dialectics Practicum

A Description of IDM’s Program For Acquiring Fluency in Using CDF Tools

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The IDM program that leads to fluency in the use of CDF tools, now 20 years old, has unusual features that set them apart from other professional offerings. Among these features are: (1) professional learning closely linked to personal self-development, (2) comprehensive introduction into developmental and dialectical thinking, (3) exercises set in social contexts that make it easy to transfer them to professional practice, (4) teaching CDF tools in a social-ontology framework that opens participants’ eyes to the social and cultural constraints they encounter in launching life and work projects, (5) unremitting modeling of developmental and dialectical practice in all workshop sessions in which participants enable and coach each other at a high level of awareness of their own internal conversations.

For more details, see the description below:

Description of IDM’s CDF Program

Toward a Critical Realist Management and Consulting Framework Based on CDF

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In this article, Otto Laske emphasizes the lack of a social ontology in present managerial and consultative thinking. Such a discipline helps social and cultural actors understand the antecedent social and cultural structures their concerns and projects are embedded in, as well as strengthen the likelihood that executing their projects will come as close as possible to the intended organizational and social results they are envisioning. Social ontology, deriving from R. Bhaskar’s and M. Archer’s work since 1980, offers managers a sense of place from which to view their meaning- and sense-making stance, not just their perceptions, from an objective place. More than that: it helps them understand “where they are positioned when they open their mouth to speak” and listen to others.

In contrast to empiricist frameworks of individual decision- making (like the Cynefin model), a social-ontology (SO) framework treats decision-making as a response of social actors to antecedent social and cultural structures they are unaware of as determinants of their project designs. Decision-making is seen as derivative of project design which in turn is conceived of as rooted in concerns linked to vested interests associated with roles in a social role matrix that is open to change by role incumbents. Rather than viewing decision-making as a starting point of adaptive functioning, such a framework treats it as the endpoint of a more or less successful journey toward understanding antecedent social and organizational constraints and enablements that human projects inevitably encounter.

Importantly, in an SO framework roles are not assigned or taken but created through a team dialogue based on complex, dialectical thinking practiced by all participants, although at different levels of cognitive development over the life span. It is the goal of real-time dialogue to witness and document that people at different levels of cognitive development conceive of social situations differently, as well as more or less adequately attuned to how they structure decision-making situations in the first place. Decision-making is seen as the origin of intended, as well as unforeseeable unintended, consequences that may run counter to the project design the decisions made sprang from.

Within an SO framework, navigating the vagaries of complex and chaotic situations is a three-phase process:

  • Phase 1: Understand the social and cultural antecedents of situations encountered which provoke project design and invite decision-making according to it.
  • Phase 2: Design and implement projects in response to such antecedents so that decisions made in executing projects are ‘in tune’ with such antecedents.
  • Phase 3: Make sure that the organizational and social structures resulting from project execution are optimally intended rather than unintended, to avoid the reproduction of, rather than achieving a transformation of, the social and cultural antecedents initially encountered.

The author sees the reason for the absence of social ontology thinking in the predominantly empiricist orientation of managers’ and consultants’ thinking for whom ‘perception’, ‘experiences’ and ‘data’ are the loadstars of their methodology  As a result, they are committing the ‘epistemic fallacy’ of reducing social reality to thought, mostly in the form of iron-clad logical models. However, social reality is not a bundle of experiences and actualities as they presume. Its enduring structures are emergent properties that are formed by social actors’ response to antecedent social and cultural structures which co-define their internal conversations about projects. Needed therefore is a re-education of both managers and consultants in the direction of becoming aware of the benefits of thinking twice, namely ontologically, that is, in terms of a pre-existing social reality they are embedded in and are responding to without being aware of it. Ontological awareness is strongly enabled by DTF, the Dialectical Thought Form Framework, that is modeled after R. Bhaskar’s Four Moments of Dialectic.

In sum: the absence from managers’ and consultants’ thinking of both adult development and social ontology (which is centered around human agency, and thus adult development) defines the double burden of their social mandate.

The article below points to a first Social Ontology Practicum that was designed to pave the way toward better informed management and consultancy thinking, and carried out in the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021 at the Interdevelopmental Institute based on DTF.

Toward a Critical Realist Management and Consulting Framework

The Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF) as a Consulting Tool for Solving (Social) Structure/Agency Dilemmas

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In the book and consulting project sketched in this blog, Otto Laske shows how to facilitate societal transformations by elaborating Margaret Archer’s work on “Structure, Agency, and Internal Conversations” (2003). He thereby extends both Bhaskar’s “The Possibility of Naturalism” (1979) and Archer’s work into dialectical practice. To deepen Archer’s logical approach, Laske introduces adult-developmental and cognitive-developmental foundations of the “internal conversations” that, in Archer’s view, mediate Bhaskar’s structure/agency dialectic, introducing three interrelated dialectics:

  1. The ontological dialectic of Moments of the real (being) issuing in generative mechanisms as distinct from actualities and experiences (Bhaskar 1979).
  2. The epistemic dialectic of human thought forms (TFs) operating within individuals’ internal workplace (in contrast to their external workplace), — the mental space in which ‘work’ is done and ‘agency’ is launched (Laske 2008).
  3. The dialectic of generative mechanisms by which human thought forms (TFs) assume and exert causal power as determinants of needs and reasons based on which agents are in unceasing interaction with each other and thus the real world, natural and social (Laske 2021).

Sketch 2 of new Laske book

How to Obtain Otto Laske’s Social Science Writings

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Otto Laske’s contributions to social-science, process consultation, and the teaching of & mentoring in developmental and dialectical thinking and listening extend from 1999 to the present day. While his two books on ‘Measuring Hidden Dimensions’ are presently out of print, they are available in their newest edition under Publications (https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974) as pdf.

In addition, almost all of his articles, keynotes, and teaching materials in English and German, as well as translations into Spanish and Italian, are found on this website under Blogs as downloadable pdfs (https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=4831). Look for the Laske Social Science Archive No. I to VI of 2020, starting with https://interdevelopmentals.org/?p=7185.

Materials in the six archives are organized in the form of thematic collections. Licensing of Laske’s teaching materials is available; so far, it has been adopted in Malaysia.

The prominent topics in Laske’s writings are:

  1. Embedding of CDF, a social-science instrument, in Bhaskar’s basic and dialectical critical realism.
  2. Adult development as comprising a social-emotional, cognitive and psychological dimension as irreducible to each other and intrinsically linked.
  3. Complex, dialectical, thinking as the peak of adult cognitive development, and its relevance in society today.
  4. Pedagogy of dialectical thinking (methodology of learning complex dialog), exercised, taught and certified at the Interdevelopmental Institute, IDM, since 2000.
  5. Theory and practice of evidence-based developmental coaching; its missed chances caused by neglecting adult cognitive development in individuals and teams by all those who boarded the social-emotional triumphalism train in the 1990s.
  6. Team Coaching framed by Laske’s social-emotional team typology (2005) and based on dialectical thought form tools, for unlocking team members’ internal dialog (the basis of external team dialog as well as of team self-organization).
  7. Theory and practice of linking the social-emotional (Kegan), cognitive (Basseches; Bhaskar), and psychological (H. Murray) dimensions of an adult’s profile through case study (interviewing and scoring) following Constructive-Developmental Framework.
  8. German writings (original and translated, including by IDM guests).

Philosophical Orientation of Laske’s Writings

The treatment of these topics in Laske’s writings bears the imprint of both Frankfurt School Critical Theory and R. Bhaskar’s Critical Realism and exemplifies dialectical thinking based on DTF, the Dialectical Thought Form Framework. It is based on the insight that much of social science, including developmental science, is guilty of committing the ‘epistemic fallacy’ by which real world issues are reduced to thought and issues of thinking. This judgement is based on Bhaskar’s basic as well as dialectical realism and specifically applies to purely logical thinking separating subject from object, and neglecting holistic causality of social and developmental issues.

A major point in Laske’s writings is that Mind is complexly stratified and that its social-emotional, cognitive, psychological, and spiritual dimensions cannot be reduced one to the other, nor can they be seen other than intrinsically — not simply externally — related.

On a philosophical level, Laske deals with la condition humaine in the 21st century which in CDF is addressed by way of synthesizing three dimensions of adult development and focusing on effects of their intrinsic relationship. Where these dimensions are not distinguished, their intrinsic relationship naturally cannot be made the topic of research, which leads to the stark impoverishment of the developmental sciences we witness today.

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Availability of Laske’s Writings

Laske’s writings about the Constructive-Developmental Framework (CDF) derive from his 1999 dissertation entitled Transformative effects of coaching on executives’ professional agenda with Robert Kegan (Proquest order # 9930438). Articles and slide sets aside, his writings comprise 3 books: 1 on social-emotional development, and 2 on cognitive development and dialectic. 2 further books are co-written with Jan De Visch, entitled “Dynamic Collaboration” (2018) [Connect & Transform Press] and “Practices of Dynamic Collaboration” (2020) [Springer].

Books published under the imprint of IDM Press (Medford and Gloucester, MA) are presently out of print but can be purchased from this website as pdfs in their newest editions (https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974, Section C). In addition, teaching materials supporting an understanding of these books, are found in Sections B1 (English), and B2 (German and Spanish).

Below, you’ll find some pointers to how to obtain them. Translations of his work exist in German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese. There are two volumes, one social-emotional, the other cognitive.

  • The social-emotional volume exists in 5 languages:
    • English (2005; 2nd edition 2011), Measuring Hidden Dimensions: The Art and Science of Fully Engaging Adults, Amazon; 4th edition (2017) in pdf form)
    • German (1st edition 2010, Humanpotenziale erkennen, wecken, und messen: Amazon; pdf at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974)
    • French (1st edition 2012; A la decouverte du potentiel humain, Amazon; 2nd edition: pdf at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974)
    • Spanish (1st edition 2015; Reconocer, despertar y medir el potencial humano; 2nd edition: pdf  at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974).
    • Japanese, 心の隠された領域の測定成人以降の心の発達理論と測定手法 (2nd edition 2015, pdf, https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974).
  • The cognitive volume, Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems: Foundations of Requisite Organization, is available only in English, in two editions:
    • 1st edition 2008 (Amazon).
    • 2nd edition 2017 (Alan Snow, ed.), comprising 2 parts: Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems and the Dialectical Thought Form Manual (DTFM) which can be purchased separately or together at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974.
  • Dialectical thinking for integral leaders: A Primer (2015; Integral Publishers) is available at Amazon. The book shows why teams composed of members with significantly different levels of cognitive development cannot self-organize, and what to do about it.

Steps Toward Developing a Dialectical Thinking Practice: The Structure of the IDM Dialectics Practicum

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The way we encounter the world is anchored in our ways of attending to it. They not only change the relationship we have to the world we unceasingly construct; they also fundamentally determine the world we encounter. Thinking in language when untutored in dialectical linking puts us under the control of left-hemisphere, logical, thinking, — a mode of being now rampant that constrains the quality of our life and creative work. For this reason, we are in need of re-socializing ourselves through building up in our mind new ways of listening, speaking, writing, ‘thinking’, reading, communicating, coaching, and facilitating.

To further re-socialization in adults, IDM is launching 5-months long practica of dialectical thinking.  The next Practicum starts at the end of November 2020. For details, see https://interdevelopmentals.org/?p=7563 and https://interdevelopmentals.org/?p=7641.

Since nobody can learn news ways of being from books but only through supervised practice, IDM Practica are structured in terms of a sequence of activities carried out by members of small cohorts of 4-6 participants mentored by Otto Laske, originator of the Dialectical Thought Form Framework. Have a look at the structure of the Practicum at the first link below and learn about the correspondence of Practicum Activities and Learning Targets at the second link.

Structure Proposal for Dialectics Practicum

Correspondence of Learning Activities & Targets

For viewing the Jaamzin Special Edition of Otto Laske’s dialectics-based visual artwork, go to https://issuu.com/jaamzin/docs/otto_laske. You can place an order for a copy of the print edition by transferring $35 at smediazin@gmail.com via Paypal (which includes shipping to you from an Amsterdam printer).

For additional information on the structure and flow of the Practicum, go to:

From “Organizational Development” to Self-Development: An Insiders’ View of the IDM Dialectical Thinking Practicum

An Intense Five-Month Practicum in Dialectical Thinking