because of my formatting, parts of this were not clear. i'm sending it again.
I have facilitated a few open spaces that i have considered failures. It's
great to write them down and really look at the dynamics involved.
It has happened when i'm working close to the edge of the smallest group and/or
shortest time that we recommend for a good open space. Groups smaller than
about 12 people, or working for three hours, have worked really well many
times, and not so well sometimes.
The dynamic that sometimes happens is that the agenda wall is created and then
someone says "let's not move into small groups, let's stay together." If very
many people agree and they stay in a circle, they begin to explore the posted
topics one by one. Sometimes I have walked away and held space and it worked
well -- the group engages the topics, or focuses on one topic and really digs
into it, and they come away satisfied.
One failure I remember is when I reluctantly agreed to step in and facilitate
like a standard meeting (they were friends, and paying me a lot for a short
meeting) and I calculated in my head that we had about 15 minutes to talk about
each of the topics if they were given equal time. We kind of stumbled from
topic to topic without much depth.
One of my favorite 3 hour open spaces took place at school while classes were
in session. The President of the school was there with the student alliance
officers and other students. They created an agenda wall and before any
sessions took place, a big group of students walked in on a class break. i
invited them to post their items and we generated another 20 topics. Then the
group left, and those who remained began to talk about topics as a whole group.
An hour later another big group of students walked in and posted topics and
left. It became a very fluid, engaging process and we captured a ton of issues
for the student alliance to pursue over time.
In another similar setting (my doctoral program retreat) I decided to emphasize
the point about asking the convenors if you want two sessions to combine. I
guided them into asking each other about combining their sessions such that we
had several sheets of paper taped together into a linear agenda of topics. We
then pursued the topics and it worked well. It felt like too much interference
from me, but there was a flavor of open space.
Another failure I remember was a meeting of about 20 people for a half day in
someone's living room. It was a beautiful day, and the windows were big and
bright, and spaces for breakouts outside were plentiful - but some unseen force
kept everyone together inside. And the theme was broad enough (chaordic design
in organizational life) that we had more topics than people, and they were
widely different topics. So we floundered around, and few people's topics got
any air time. Because I was not (at the time) inviting people to make notes of
their sessions, we did not capture any thinking from the richness that was
available.
It was a failure because i felt that people did not experience the real power
of open space.
thanks for the question Harrison - very important to look at our experiences in
this way.
Jeff
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