Hello friends and colleagues, I am having a huge struggle and hope that we can get some dialogue going here that will help me out. The topic is "modified open space". Within me, I have clarity that we either "Open Space" or we do not. For me there is no such thing as modified Open Space. It can be longer, it can be very short, yet it needs to be opened with care and honouring of what is possible.Wonder, creativity, innovation, imagination and emergent organization happen. Kind of like love---I either am in love or I am not in love; I surely am not in "modified love" to suit the circumstances. Open Space like love needs to be kept whole, with its integrity intact. Or it falls apart. I am wondering if my thinking is shared by this open space community or if I am on a tangent?? I would love some discussion on this list about this.
Harrison is clear that anyone with a good head and good heart can do OST. I agree. He also chose not to copyright or to "certify" those who have been trained. For good reason. I agree. What I am less clear on is what the response should be when OST becomes modified OST. Three examples of the kind of stuff I struggle with on this one. 1. A conference is being planned that will have many corporations represented. A session in a lunch hour was billed as Open Space. I called to ask about it and was told it was modified Open Space. These people were very well intentioned. They just didn't think about what the ramifications might be for Open Space. I was fearful that hundreds of businesses in our area would feel that they knew what Open Space was after this conference, be most unimpressed with it, and not give us the time of day to use Open Space with them in the future. This has happened before when modified Open Space was used as an evening "catch all" session at the ODN conference 1996. Senior staff locally who witnessed what they thought was Open Space then blocked the use of Open Space in their organizations. Not understanding the great good it could do, and feeling they had witnessed all there was to it. In the case of this present conference, the organizers were gracious enough to meet with me and together we are recouping that lunch time to present a bit about what Open Space is and to show its benefits. They will ensure that nothing like "modified open space" surfaces to cause problems for those of us promoting Open Space in the future. I am grateful to them. Did I have a right to say that there is no such thing as "modified Open Space" or is that just me with a "bee in my bonnet"? 2. A consultant read OST: a user's guide and did a modified Open Space in a large city locally. Didn't think that walking the circle, etc. was important to the process. It would be easier just to get the topics up. She worked with a diverse group in the health sector that experienced union/management conflict. Folks showed up. She called it Open Space. It fell apart quickly with her trying to control the process that quickly got out of hand. The reverberations persist two years later. Not one of those organizations will consider the use of Open Space after their experience of "Open Space" which really wasn't. 3. And another twist on things that doesn't harm the name of Open Space yet feels not okay to me. A colleague in the US is promoting a new methodology of hers. "Invent a Session" that speaks about an innovative process to produce meetings with less pre-planning and effort focusing on passion and responsibility>action>results. She has been trained in Open Space. Now, this doesn't harm the reputation of Open Space, yet doesn't feel quite right to me. I realize that I can be guilty of black/white thinking and I can be like a dog with a bone. Until I have the discussion that helps me see things differently. I appreciate any feedback/discussion you will enter into with me on this. I ask that we keep the discussion on the listserve as a community discussion. I realize there is no one way to do Open Space. Myself, I never do it the same way twice (mostly because I always forget at least three things). I am not talking about the quality of how we Open Space--we all have good days and bad days. I am talking about "modifying" it. Thanks for considering these thoughts, Birgitt Bolton (Canada)
