[OSList] Re: [OSLIST] What have we learned?

[Thomas Perret via OSList]

Peggy Holman! 💛 ___ All is possible together On 28. Apr 2024, at 21.36, Peggy Holman via OSList <everyone@oslist.org> wrote: Many thanks Anna Caroline for bringing this question back up. I had a hunch when I posted it that it was too soon. I was just taken by the coincidence of the date being the anniversary of when Harrison originally posed the question. Like you, I wasn’t ready to answer the question when I posted it. After sitting with the question for five weeks, I offer my answer to what I have learned below. Apologies for the length. Before I  share my story...Chris, thank you for also reflecting on the question. I love the notion of “conflict barrier!” Thomas, my interpretation of the phrase is that Open Space runs counterintuitive to the generally accepted practices of conflict negotiation. Rather than having an intermediary working separately with the parties in conflict, Open Space invites them to come together around a topic they care about and work things out for themselves. I’ve seen it happen many times. My lesson from Open Space is that when the purpose is something people care about, they stick with working through their differences and discover common ground. Often with a breakthrough everyone likes that has elements of what mattered to everyone involved. Who knew? To my reflections on what I learned… Peggy What I learned from Harrison    I have thought about the gifts of Harrison’s creation - Open Space Technology - and how it shaped my world view and my life. I have also been appreciating what knowing Harrison, the person, has meant to me....   Beginnings When I ran into Open Space in 1994, I was primed for it by research I had done in 1993 for US WEST on “knowledge transfer” and “organizational learning.” I had reached the conclusion that a great way to encourage such things was by encouraging random encounters. Open Space was a practical way to make that happen.   I learned of Open Space from a friend who had experienced it at Antioch University Seattle and sent me an article from Training Magazine called Welcome to Open Space. (I couldn’t find the article online so scanned my tired, hard to read copy. I found out years later that Anne Stadler brought OST to Antioch. So, she was indirectly responsible for my discovering OST.)  The last page of the article had Harrison’s phone number. So I called him. That led to my attending an OST workshop in New York City and doing a 250-person, 2.5-day Open Space with Harrison, which, at Harrison’s suggestion, we documented via video. At 16 minutes, at that time, it was considered short. We never used it at U S WEST but when the Open Space Institute-US was formed, we got the rights and sold it as a source of income for OSI-US. Now it’s free on Vimeo: U S WEST Open Space. It has a lovely interview with Harrison going over the principles and the law.     What I learned I started to write the evolution of my learning from Open Space and discovered a pretty thorough response to Harrison’s invitation to answer that question in 2005. It hasn’t changed. So I will share it and then build on it.  And then talk about what I learned from the man himself.   Lessons from 2005...   From my 2005 response to Harrison’s question, “What you, personally, have learned - about Open Space, yourself in Open Space, about organizations in Open Space:”   Where to begin?  Open Space changed my life.  So many, many lessons.  And after 11 years of working with it, I still feel I am just at the beginning of my learning. Here is a bit of a retrospective of learnings. The miracle of my first Open Space was to see that it somehow enabled the needs of the individual and the collective to be met.  That's when I fell in love with it. I think my very first practical realization was that as a facilitator, I wasn't responsible for other people's experiences.  What a revelation!  I could do my best to create the conditions for the work to be done.  Beyond that, it was up to the people in the room. Over the next several years, I found myself talking about my lessons from Open Space.  Some of them come through your words, Harrison, others through the experience itself: Focus on essence -- the form of OS is so elegantly simple that it is a clear message that what is most important is the core content of whatever the subject is.  I remember very clearly a conversation with Chris Kloth at OSonOS IV in Washington, D.C [1996].  He told me that where other change communities he was a part of spent most of their time focused on questions and arguments about process, the OS community was always asking about essence, purpose, the core meaning of whatever it was we were discussing. Kerry shared recently a comment from a participant: "one day in open space was the equivalent of two years of hearings." I think this is because when all you've got to pay attention to is the essence of what's important, well, it sure makes it easier to let all the nonsense fall by the wayside and focus on getting something done! Simplicity of design -- you gifted me/us with a very profound design question: what is one less thing to do? (and I would add implicit in the question: and have this be whole and complete?)  While I sometimes joke that you came to this by being a master of laziness, I think continually doing less ensures the focus remains on what is most important.  Whether OS or just life, I find this insight of remarkable power.  Anytime a group is struggling, with how to do something, this question cuts through the mess. During my Total Quality days, there was a saying: "remedy first, then deal with the root cause."  My definition of remedies were they always added more steps -- made things more complicated.  When the root cause was handled, 100% of the time, it resulted in less steps -- a simpler process.  And it always required looking at the essence, the purpose as the starting point. Invitation/Inclusion -- you talk about invite whoever cares about the subject and welcome the stranger -- whoever comes.  It is such a huge gift to accept the rightness of whomever and whatever shows up.  It is also at times a deeply courageous act of faith.  Through the years I have seen people healed by the experience of being welcomed, with all of their quirks, of feeling heard.  I have also seen it as a challenging test of people uncomfortable with those who are different.  The rewards for those who usually exclude others and for those who are often excluded are powerful. People discover compassion in themselves.  Outcasts experience something often unfamiliar: support.  I remember years ago at OSonOS in Monterey (1998?), an intense day 2 opening circle where there was this conflicted discussion of "in group" and "outsiders".  Finally, this woman, I don't know her name and I never saw her again, got up and walked, or perhaps she flew, around the circle, inside and out.  Her words were something about belonging coming from within ourselves.  It shifted everything. Generosity of Spirit -- you gave OS away, no trademark, copyright, certification or other hurdles.  You said there is one responsibility -- to give back what you've learned.  I look at the extraordinary community that we've created -- one that shares its stories, its fears, triumphs, insecurities, and questions.  I follow several learning communities.  This one is my home.  It is in part because of the incredible ethic of sharing we gift to each other. Abundance -- there is always enough for what is important.  When I've underestimated the number of break out sessions for an event, I often joke that time and space are infinitely expandable and people figure out where and when to meet.  This is a reminder to me of just how incredibly creative we are as a species when something is important to us.  People find remarkable solutions. These were my first deep lessons from living with Open Space.  I think somewhere about this time, I began to realize that self-organization and spirit -- the two ways I talked about OS -- described the same phenomenon in different language. And then Spirited Work began [the brain child of Anne Stadler].  While I already understood Open Space was waymore than a good meeting method, this quarterly foray into living in Open Space opened a new and deeper journey of understanding.   It was Anne Stadler who helped me understand that the Law of Two Feet is about taking responsibility for what you love.  I now believe this is the essence of Open Space.  It is the power of this one idea -- to take responsibility for what you love -- that creates the remarkable invitation to listen to our internal voice and act on its message.  Now I understand the dynamics behind what I originally loved about OS: when people take responsibility for what they love, they discover that others love the same things.  Thus, the needs of the individual and the collective are met. At Spirited Work, watching Anne Stadler showing up wherever there was dissonance or conflict, I learned to welcome disturbances.  I came to understand that they are indicators that something new wants to emerge.  And it was watching the patterns of behavior at Spirited Work, the complex, unpredictable human behavior as people experimented with living with spirit in the material world that I have come to understand what Open Space governance looks like, what it means to make difficult decisions in Open Space (way beyond consensus), the role of silence in individual and collective learning. I now understand the dynamics of  emergence when consciously embraced. Emergence is spirit in action -- where people discover that what is most personal is also universal.  When this happens, what we in the OS community call Convergence naturally occurs.  People move into coherent individual and collective action.  This has shaped how I see my work today -- to grow the capacity for emergence through caring for ourselves, others and the whole in service to meaningful purpose.  What I see today is that Open Space provides the essential conditions for emergence without the destructive force that comes when the disturbances that signal something wanting to emerge are resisted.  It happens by asking an attractive question that matters (the theme), inviting all who care to take responsibility for what they love, and by putting them in a circle to begin and end each day to reflect together. This pattern enables people to step into what they fear with some glimmer of hope that something useful will happen.  And, miraculously, time and again, it does. Doing the international Practice of Peace conference [in 2003] -- an experience planned in OS mostly by people from the Spirited Work community -- brought new lessons. We took the leap that we would have sufficient participation to fund inviting 10 OS practitioners from conflict areas from around the world. We not only accomplished that but created an experience that many, many participants described as life changing.  [In fact, I am still in touch with many of the people who were there.]. They describe some variant of feeling their own capacity to make a difference.  I got a deeply embodied experience of what Anne Stadler named the Radiant Network -- that innate knowing that we are all connected, that we are held in some mystical way. When my heart is open, I feel the connection.  When not, the connection is still there, it is just hard to believe it exists.  My lesson from PoP is that what is on the other side of emergence is the coherence of the Radiant Network.  The most powerful OS events bring people to where they feel a sense of collective consciousness.  They touch that place of deep, personal meaning that connects them to others and they have at least a glimmer of their connection to the whole. Today, I wonder about how the people I have worked with have been touched by their time in Open Space.  How have they been changed by the experience? What has been the effect when OS is used over and over in a community or organization?  How have people and collectives been changed by the experience?  That's what I hope we learn through the research questions that Larry, Chris and I put out. http://www.openspaceworld.org/network/wiki.cgi?OpenSpaceResearch [Sad to say we never pursued that research.] I believe that we are growing people's capacity to deal with what they fear, what they resist by offering them a path to emergence that runs through powerful, attractive questions.  What are their stories? Harrison, for all that you are and all that you have done, I thank you. Finding you and your work was a turning point in my life.   Lessons since then Perhaps the main lessons are about what it means to live conscious of complexity in human systems.    A marriage of science and spirit I love that Open Space can be explained through the lens of complexity AND the lens of spirit. The first time I did a workshop with Harrison, he told me of his dissertation research while he was a practicing Anglican priest. (Mind you, this story is my memory of the conversation so may be technically inaccurate.) Harrison was reading the text of the bible in the original Aramaic. He said at that time (mid-1950’s?) the common thinking was that seeming contradictions in the Bible were considered wrong. They were about God as immanent and God as transcendent. His dissertation asked a question: what if the contradictions were on purpose? That God was both immanent and transcendent? God was present in embracing the contradictions. That that led Harrison into a study of chaos and order. So his studies of complexity preceded viewing it through science. I loved that both explanations worked.   I took me on a deep dive into the science of complexity. A few of my favorites: Corning, Peter. “The Re-emergence of ‘Emergence’: A Venerable Concept in Search of a Theory.” Complexity 7, no. 6 (2002): 18–30.   Johnson, Steven. Emergence: The Connective Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York: Scribner, 2001.   Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. [Harrison pointed me to this one.] Waldrop, M. Mitchell. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Chaos. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992     Transition from hierarchies to networks   I think the question I am most immersed in these days is how do we support a transition in how humans organize themselves from hierarches to networks?   I believe Thomas Kuhn said in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that how humans organize is influenced by the science of the time. Autocrats were common when “God’s will” was our prevailing explanation for how things worked. The industrial revolution brought us hierarchies. Now that technology enables us to see systems, giving us a “macroscopic” view, networks are becoming visible. They’ve always been there. It’s just we now have technology that helps us work with them. I wrote an article in 2010, Leadership in a Networked World, about the principle aspects of networks – links and hubs – and the implications for human organizing.   Open Space gives us great examples of what happens when networks reign. They liberate human spirit because they put what we care about at the center. They are a form that relies on people belonging by bringing their unique selves. Just as OST is an exquisite mix of the masculine (the directionality of purpose) and feminine (the circle of community), networks are an exquisite mix of “we” – belonging and “me” – attending to what I love.  I think the many conflicts we face are because of this transition from hierarchies to networks. My bias is that the more of us who support the shift towards networks, the greater our chance of dealing with the overwhelming issues we face. Opening space helps people embody this very different way of working by connecting us to our own humanity, to others who see the world differently, and to our wholeness. Our connectedness is most visible when our hearts open. Open Space helps that happen.   It has been my journey with Open Space that has led me to this view.     What I learned from knowing Harrison   I’ve saved my final lessons for reflecting on what knowing Harrison has meant to me. Beyond the knowledge that I’ll always be asking myself what is one less thing to do, three essential lessons come to mind:   Be myself. Harrison was unapologetically himself. He could be blunt, rude even. And alcohol was an issue. In other words, he was hardly perfect.  Still, I always felt his love and respect. His ability to just show up is something I deeply admire. I hope I continue to shed whatever layers are left in me of worrying about what others think. He and Anne Stadler are my standards for what that looks like.   Be generous. Harrison gave away Open Space but did it with the responsibility of giving back what you learned. What a gift! It is a recursive, generative stance, give something away with the responsibility of sharing learning that can reinforce and grow more of it.   My favorite story: The first time we did an OST workshop, I wanted to add in a live Open Space and build the training around it. Harrison said he thought it was a bad idea but if I wanted to try it, we would. I thought that was incredibly generous, that even doubting it was a good thing to do, he was willing to support me. We did. And he told me afterwards that he thought it worked well. Generosity again in acknowledging my idea was a good one.    As I find myself more and more working as a mentor, his willingness to support a younger colleague is something I take to heart and have now lived from the elder’s view.      Love is all there is. I was so struck during my last conversations with Harrison, even knowing his days were numbered, he was joyful. There are tears in my eyes as I write this. Perhaps it is the ultimate lesson. When I be love, everything else happens in that context. There’s a poem someone gave me when my mother died that I often share when someone dies. I carry it in my heart and spread it as best I can. It is how I leave you with this last lesson that Harrison so embodied:  GIVE WHAT'S LEFT OF ME AWAY When I die Remember me with a smile and laughter. If thoughts of me provoke no love, Only sadness and tears, I ask that I be soon forgotten. Give what's left of me away To children and old men who wait to die. And if you must cry, cry for your brother Who walks in grief beside you. And when you need me, Put your arms around anyone, And give them what you need to give me. I want to leave you something. Something better than words or sounds. Look for me in the people I've known or loved, Or helped in some special way. And if you cannot give me away, Let me live in your eyes for awhile, As well as in your mind. You can love me most By letting love live Within the circle of your arms Embracing the frightened ones. Love doesn't die, people do. So when all that's left of me is love, Give me away.             -- Merrit Malloy   On Apr 24, 2024, at 10:51 AM, Thomas Perret via OSList <everyone@oslist.org> wrote: Hi Chris, Reading this I got curious: ”Harrison framing that [system innovation] needs taking everyone who is conflict with each other through a conflict barrier at the same time” Will you help me see the concept of ”conflict barrier”? Kindly wondering, Thomas Perrer ___ All is possible together On 24. Apr 2024, at 20.14, christopher macrae via OSList <everyone@oslist.org> wrote:  Dear Anna & All Thanks for including "I am not a fan of the dominant storyline that Harrison promoted quite loudly that OST is all about  “self-organization” I believe the most loyal way to celebrate a hero is to clarify what each of us learnt from hero that our own being knows no other way of action learning.  My own view is that while self-organisation matters to be trustworthy/ have presence etc, there may be many different ways to self organisation. Actually I had a chat with Harrison and he told me in my case that I needed to attend a masterclass of Meg Wheatley Margaret J. Wheatley – Margaret J. Wheatley I did and I did. Among other Wheatley truths - many pioneers will never be fully thanked or rewarded -  For me -any useful work I ever do is on system innovation - the hardest type of innovation (for me as its the only one i judge myself on; please note yes i have done projects where self-organisation was needed  by most or all of the client too (so i hope I know people who can facilitate that if its part of overall delivery)  SYSTEM INNOVATION . Harrison framing that this needs taking everyone who is conflict with each other through a conflict barrier at the same time is the principle and method that I would never have seen without Harrison Anyhow just my cents worth. And as mathematics is my thing I realise I am an odd ball so to speak Chris AI20s.com Wash DC  chris.mac...@yahoo.co.uk Margaret J. Wheatley – Margaret J. Wheatley On Wednesday, 24 April 2024 at 11:46:40 GMT-4, Anna Caroline Türk via OSList <everyone@oslist.org> wrote: Dear all, Thank you Peggy for your and Harrison’s invitation to keep adding our personal learning - including with Harrison. I heard the invitation and it spoke to me. Finally, I made time to write. I had the privilege to meet OST at age 18 through Michael M Pannwitz in 2000. He facilitated several OST meetings at my school in Berlin. He later helped me facilitate my first OST and today I am a fulfilled consultant and facilitator working the genuine contact way - having facilitated many many OSTs in person and online. I met Harrison several times in Europe: in Berlin for his birthday and a wave rider workshop, in Sardinia for the European OS Learning Exchange, where the fifth principle of OST emerged,  in London for a WOSonOS with Phelim and his team, and in Sevilla where he facilitated an Open Space for 100 imams and 100 rabbis and I was a member of the team. And last time in Washington for the WOSonOS. Unfortunately, he could not attend the WosonOS in 2010 in Berlin, where we had self-published a book celebrating OST, with many of you on the OS List contributing. It was there that I realized that there is more than one origin story to the emergence of OST. The two martinis and the man with the hat is only one version. I was glad to learn many women were involved in creating OST, while Harrison wrote the book about it. Today I am facilitating and teaching OST based on his teachings and enriched by the “Berlin” approach and the Genuine Contact approach. Why some people, including Harrison, love wearing hats always - I don’t know. To me, it turns a bit into a costume (the man with the hat) and it feels less genuine. At the Open Space with the imams and rabbis, all the men had their unique outfits - it was a bit hilarious. When Harrison tried to make a last announcement at the marketplace after the agenda creation - standing in the middle of the room on a chair with his hat on - trying to get everyone’s attention I had another demystification moment. Of course, I like him and I love even more the OST grassroots movement in the world. I was truly truly impressed by the tender, calm, and very welcoming facilitation of Barry Owen at the WOSonOS in Washington - which I partly attribute to the son and father’s deep learning journey together. I am not a fan of the dominant storyline that Harrison promoted quite loudly that OST is all about  “self-organization” - it feels too narrow and cold to me. But I should probably go back to his writings to remember he also said more about the essence of OST. One story, from the online gathering two weeks ago, felt also a bit harsh to me: When Harrison had recommended to the facilitator to walk the circle, look everyone in the eyes and internally say something like “fuck you all” or something along this line. I get the teaching point. And  I trust he has shared other recommendations to OST facilitators that are warmer, focusing on spirit and acknowledging the dimension of holding people’s lives in one’s hands. I look forward to seeing you here there and hopefully in Istanbul and keep learning together. Lots of Love Anna Caroline P.s. Here a wonderful song from Etta James You can leave your hat on Anna Caroline Türk Mentor to Visionary Leaders +49(0)176 24872254 | TruthCircles.com  On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 5:27 PM Peggy Holman via OSList <everyone@oslist.org> wrote: As I’ve been reflecting on Harrison’s passing and what it means to me, I stumbled into the message below that Harrison wrote to the OSlist exactly 19 years ago - March 18, 2005. He asks: What have we learned? Seems like a fitting way to celebrate him...inviting us to answer his question. An excerpt from below: My hope would be to inspire/goad/embarrass/encourage each one of you to reflect of the past 20 years [now 39 years] (or at least that part of the 20 years in which you participated in the OS community) - and offer up your understanding of what you, personally, have learned - about Open Space, yourself in Open Space, about organizations in Open Space. And of course anything else you choose to share. I would hope that we would hear from more than the usual suspects. This is a call to all you Lurkers! ...Not everybody has been heard from! Now would be a good time to break the silence!!! …  Pretend this is a closing circle, and we are passing the Talking Stick. Take a moment, maybe even a LONG moment (days/weeks) to reflect on what you have learned, and then talk as long as you want. And not just the "good stuff" - the pain and disillusionment as well, if that is your story. You have the stick! And please NO COMMENTARY! I suggest that we just let this roll without response - just like a Closing Circle.  So I leave you with the question while I reflect on my own response to it. Love, Peggy _________________________________ Peggy Holman pe...@peggyholman.com Bellevue, WA  98006 206-948-0432 www.peggyholman.com Enjoy the award winning Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity   "An angel told me that the only way to step into the fire and not get burnt, is to become  the fire".   -- Drew Dellinger Begin forwarded message: From: Harrison Owen <hho...@comcast.net> Subject: [OSLIST] What have we learned? Date: March 18, 2005 at 3:39:53 PM PST To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Reply-To: OSLIST <osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu> In 1985 the first Open Space happened in Monterey California. This year (in case you haven't noticed) is 2005. In short OS has been around for 20 years (not counting the 14,000,000,000 years previously). So what have we learned? This is not an idle question. A recent publication of the American journal, JABS - otherwise known as the "Journal of Applied Behavioral Science" offered a "special issue" dealing with Large Group Interventions. All the usual suspects appeared, but somehow Open Space was among the missing. One of the editors, Barbara Bunker, who is definitely an acquaintance, and I would consider a friend - told me that they had advertised for "papers" - including the "OS Network" - and nothing showed up. Frankly, I don't recall seeing anything, but my eyesight is getting pretty cloudy. Anyhow, I feel inspired to ask a question - What have we learned? This is not about making a special edition of JABS. And for sure it is not about "sour grapes" because we were not really present in JABS. It is all about a genuine question - What have we learned???? My hope would be to inspire/goad/embarrass/encourage each one of you to reflect of the past 20 years (or at least that part of the 20 years in which you participated in the OS community) - and offer up your understanding of what you, personally, have learned - about Open Space, yourself in Open Space, about organizations in Open Space. And of course anything else you choose to share. I would hope that we would hear from more than the usual suspects. This is a call to all you Lurkers! Last time I checked there were some 440 folks on OSLIST. Not everybody has been heard from! Now would be a good time to break the silence!!! And although it is doubtless Politically Incorrect - I suggest a rule for our discussion. Pretend this is a closing circle, and we are passing the Talking Stick. Take a moment, maybe even a LONG moment (days/weeks) to reflect on what you have learned, and then talk as long as you want. And not just the "good stuff" - the pain and disillusionment as well, if that is your story. You have the stick! And please NO COMENTARY! I suggest that we just let this roll without response - just like a Closing Circle. In August we will gather for OSONOS in Halifax. That gathering will be a lot of things - but one of the things it WILL be is a celebration of 20 years in Open Space. I can think of no greater birthday present from everybody to everybody than a reasoned, articulate description of what we have learned in the 20 years on the journey. Harrison Ps Assuming we have really learned something and manage to give that learning _expression_, there is no doubt in my mind that a copy of our Collected Works would be fun to read. ho Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland   20845 Phone 301-365-2093 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/> Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist OSList mailing list -- everyone@oslist.org To unsubscribe send an email to everyone-le...@oslist.org See the archives here: https://oslist.org/empathy/list/everyone.oslist.org OSList mailing list -- everyone@oslist.org To unsubscribe send an email to everyone-le...@oslist.org See the archives here: https://oslist.org/empathy/list/everyone.oslist.org OSList mailing list -- everyone@oslist.org To unsubscribe send an email to everyone-le...@oslist.org See the archives here: https://oslist.org/empathy/list/everyone.oslist.org OSList mailing list -- everyone@oslist.org To unsubscribe send an email to everyone-le...@oslist.org See the archives here: https://oslist.org/empathy/list/everyone.oslist.org OSList mailing list -- everyone@oslist.org To unsubscribe send an email to everyone-le...@oslist.org See the archives here: https://oslist.org/empathy/list/everyone.oslist.org

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