Friends, I wanted to share something from the OD World Summit that took place in Budapest last week - http://www.odworldsummit.org. I was honored to be asked to do a "master class" on OST and to be part of an opening plenary to bring an OST perspective.
The others speaking were: * Sandra Janoff on Future Search * Diana Whitney on Appreciative Inquiry * Janet Fiero on America Speaks/Twentieth Century Town Hall * John Nkum on the Gestalt approach to Organization Development * Joseph Melnick on Gestalt, the Cape Code model * Sari van Poelje on Transactional Analysis * Bo Gyllenpalm on the World Cafe We were each asked to speak to the question: What are the three most important ways that our practice (e.g., OST/self-organizing) has influenced the field? I tried to send my thoughts to the OS list for comment before the event. For some reason, the message wouldn't go through. So instead, I'll tell you what I chose to say about OST: Open Space Technology made explicit the notion that everything is self-organizing. OST offers a pathway for productively working with the dynamics of self-organization. OST re-defines the role of the facilitator. No longer the expert in the front of the room, but “totally present and completely invisible”. Rather than a facilitator who intervenes, the OST practitioner opens a welcoming space for self-organization to emerge. OST provides a profound invitation to people to work from passion and responsibility. Or, as I usually say it, to take responsibility for what they love. Not just during an OS event, but as a life practice, when we pay attention to passion and responsibility, the good of the individual and the good of the collective are both served. This seems a contradiction. Some have told me that they thought this behavior was selfish. Just the opposite is true. It takes people to a deeper place. When we operate by taking responsibility for what we love, we touch the part of us that connects to a deeper stream from which we all draw. In practice, when we each bring our full-voiced selves, a differentiation occurs from which novel patterns that draw from all facets of a system emerge. In the process, individual passion helps us discover our fit as a greater whole. All in all, ODWS was great fun - about 350 people from 30 countries. back in Seattle, Peggy * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
