“Openness can be described as a willingness to accept, engage with, and internalise the different perspectives, even paradigms, to be encountered when dealing with diverse participants in an interdisciplinary situation. An open frame of mind requires conscious acceptance that notions such as ambiguity, unpredictability, serendipity, and paradox will compete strongly, and legitimately, with knowledge, science, and fact. In essence, it means that while navigating challenges of a complex system, one holds one’s own strong opinions lightly and engages as both facilitator and learner. “

Some of the specific habits of mind that promote patterns of openness include:

• Hold strong opinions loosely and encourage others to do the same. See Be sceptical to your own opinions; Your knowledge are just guesses.
• Embrace Emergence: Be prepared for the intervention of surprise, serendipity, and epiphany.
• Cultivate curiosity — learn to “stay in inquiry” and be curious (vs assuming, judging and jumping to conclusions). (‣)
• Value Diversity: Encounter every person with equal respect, listen for and acknowledge their specific needs, knowledge, and ways of knowing.
• Set direction, but be open to not having specific goals or outcomes in mind (‣)
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• Expect ambiguity or paradox: Accepting these as legitimate can often avoid unnecessary conflict.
• Accept that Consensus is often impossible in a complex situation: adopt an experimental approach rather than forcing agreement to a single approach. (See Commit to the majority decision, Accept people's plurality)
• Accept everyone as co-learners, not experts or competitors. (See Status Management and Positive-sum games to play within an organisation)

Practices of openness:

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• Publish negative results
• Admit your ignorance

Openness is one of the components of The Reality Group culture.

In the 21th century physics, ‣ should be the main object of investigation.

Related:

• Share vulnerability
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