Hi John,
There are many opportunities to invite and initiate around this theme of
"participant-facilitator" or "stakeholder-spaceholder". Probably an
overwhelming number of options. What might work? It does seem at least a
few here are interested. At least for now, I'd love to continue here on
the OSList.
This topic really took off with Tony Budak's invitation around
furthering Harrison Owen's attempt to open space for an 8 billion person
conversation. His original invite to 8 billion in January 2019 was
spoken via Zoom to Opening Space for Peace and High Performance in NYC's
International House, an annual open space. His talk and invitation to 8
billion people was published as a video - https://youtu.be/M_6dPhwJqbI.
(In many ways, it was one of Harrison's best talks, I highly recommend it!)
Harrison has helped me understand that space is already open. I'll
paraphrase him poorly I'm sure, but our job with that knowledge is just
to increase our awareness of space already being open. We can always
invite. And to be okay with no one responding. If I still care, I can
still move the work forward, even by myself. Or with a small group. Most
human advances started with individuals and small groups.
Tony's comments about peripheral small groups advancing the conversation
relates in this way to the topic of participant-facilitator. I've have
experienced and deeply resonate with what Tony summarized from the Damon
Centola work. Such insights are especially helpful to those who see
themselves as both spaceholders and stakeholders on this OSList forum.
But what norms and behavior changes are really needed? A big aspect of
Harrison's perspective on this (and I haven't asked permission for any
of my paraphrasing, and I'd be happy to be corrected), is that no one of
us actually really has a clue. If they say they know, they're deceiving
us, themselves, or both.
Although I resonate with the truth of essential human individual
cluelessness, I've also encountered too often how fequently some one
actually has a clue, but no one's listening. At least for quite a while,
at the cost of much human suffering.
I continue to feel this way about OST. Maybe I'm deluding myself, but
I've seen such amazing things happen when people are invited into Open
Space. I can tell so much would be better if more of these invitations
would happen, like ten years ago.
Open Space has been very helpful for me to get closer to those "people
of the clue". I've encountered so many things at OST events that I can
tell would make a key difference. For example Permaculture, Authentic
Agile, Family Constellations, Ecstatic Dance, Peacemaking Circles...
But having a clue is only a seed. There's so much more for that to
mature into something that bears fruit in real people's lives.
Well how does all of this relate to the concept of
participant-facilitator? Making a living doing this space-holding stuff
really demands we let go of what we think our clients need to do. The
client is the stakeholder. It's best we only hold space for them
(facilitate). We most certainly don't get a vote. Yet it's not really
true we have no stake or "skin-in-the-game". If our clients do well, so
do we.
To your original question:
/*As each of us closely watches our system(s) of interest, and
supports emerging changes/adaptations that we consider positive, to what
degree should we introduce our own ideas of where and how the system
should proceed?
*/I've got answers as well as questions about this topic, but I've
already typed too much. I'm curious. What are your thoughts?
Thanks again for opening this topic. And thanks to Harrison Owen and
Tony Budak for building the initial invitations for this topic.
Harold
/*
*/
On 5/7/23 1:30 PM, John Warinner via OSList wrote:
Hi Harold,
Thanks for sharing your perspectives.
Yes, the role of Participant-Facilitator is familiar to me and akin to
what I meant by Stakeholder-Spaceholder. Most of my activity with
OS/dialogue is also spent in that realm.
I am sensitive to your question about the degree of interest of others
in this dialogue.
I suggested to Tony Budak that we may want to utilize his weekly
Learning Cafe platform to provide those interested with a live,
interactive dialogue on this topic.
Please let me know if you are aware of any other options for taking
this conversation off-line out of respect for the OSList members who
are not interested to observe and/or participate.
Thank you,
JohnW
--
Harold Shinsato
[email protected]
https://shinsato.com
_______________________________________________
OSList mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
