Hello, I can offer a framework that is serving well in some of our work.
We are in a long-haul culture-shifting effort with a local organization, and the group has now done the repair and relationship skilling needed for them to start thinking about creating together. Which has raised questions like, “Where do we want to go together?” “Who do we want to become?” “What’s worth trying?” Strategic questions! As you say, frameworks help. We’ve drawn from Dave Snowden’s vector theory of change, which—now that I think about it in light of your question—has nice resonance with OST. We’ve certainly been taking an open-space-ish approach with this organization. The idea is that in social complexity we’re working with emergence, so it’s not helpful to invest in trying to implement a pre-imagined destination. We can’t see the other side of this forest until we get there. So we need a way to navigate in our desired *direction,* responding to surprises and what we learn along the way, going at the *pace* of our ability to live into our questions together. That’s the “vector”—direction and velocity. This was seeded over a series of group sessions. - It took almost a year for this group of people to become able to have honest, generative conversations about race in their organizational culture. People talk about “describing the current state of the system” and “noticing recurring patterns.” In some contexts that may be straightforward. For these folks it has been a long and courageous road. Real fear in real bellies. - Small- and whole-group conversations about values and principles: even before we name the direction we’d like to go, can we say how we would recognize whether we’re making progress? What would we look at to notice if we’re traveling in our desired direction? When we allow ourselves to dream, what are the common themes that emerge? - Small- and whole-group conversations about directions. Never mind the destination, what direction do we want to travel together? What are our shared longings? In their case, their questions have to do with racial equity and belonging. So their directions included desired qualities for things like the diversity of their teams, relationships among colleagues, self-care and self-forgiveness, relationship with the communities they serve. - The next step will have parallel tracks: -- A rhythm of experiments shaped by the question, “What’s worth trying now (to move us a little further in a desired direction)?” -- A way to collectively handle specific incidents and scenarios as they arise along the trip -- Building a sub-group’s capacity to host these kinds of conversations and processes themselves -- Building the whole organization’s level of relationship skills So the strategic framework is pretty simple: - a set of vectors or directions, - principles for noticing how you’re traveling, - a set of roles, rituals, rhythms and artifacts for deciding what to try, how to try it, who’s involved, and how you’ll learn from it. Then it’s a (difficult!) matter of holding a long-lived container for managing this portfolio-walk through the woods together. Here is Chris Corrigan’s helpful summary of the approach. My example is of course a bigger deal than one open space session. But as a framework or approach, maybe it’s helpful. Cheers. Thanks for all you do, all of you. Marc - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Marc Rettig Fit Associates LLC www.fitassociates.com marcrettig.me SVA Design for Social Innovation From: Jake Yeager <[email protected]> Reply-To: <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, August 21, 2022 at 8:04 AM To: <[email protected]> Subject: [OSList] Strategy frameworks? Hi beautiful people, Are there any strategy frameworks you like to couple with OST? I've used OST with a group to create OKRs and it worked well. Wondering if there's anything else out there that you like. If I remember correctly some folks here have also mentioned simply theming the sessions during convergence and using the themes as strategic pillars. Could couple with dot voting and/or opening space for action. Thanks! Much love, Jake -- ________________ When the mind is quiet, the sun of your heart will shine once again, and you will be free of problems. - Robert Adams _______________________________________________ OSList mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
_______________________________________________ OSList mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
