Hello all, I've been listening to the good advice from everyone. I thought I'd add from a set of experiences with a client. The client hires us to do a one-day Open Space as an introductory phase of IS/IT shop restructuring. We do a number of these each year. Sometimes we do two single day events back to back for the same organization. There are a number of reasons we jointly chose a one day process, but that's not the focus of this message. We also decided to limit the attendance to 200-225 per session. The ones we've done fall into the range of 60-245.
The Senior Manager of the department, often the CIO, issues the invitation. The invitation states that attendance is voluntary. If you'd like to know the percentage that decides to come, it always seems to fall in the 55-65% range regardless how eager or reluctant the managers perceive their people to be. But.... of the 55-65% that decide to come, a fair percentage of them feel that they did not really have a choice in the matter. Knowing that we have both volunteers and prisoners, we address the issue as we open the space. We say that "for this whole day, freedom of choice prevails." "This is your day -- make it what you will." We talk about choices, responsibility, and consequences. We talk about there not being blame in a system, but shared responsibility to change what needs to be changed. We talk about staying in the "learner's story." After a bunch of these (and we've had good days and "challenging" days) , the overall experience is that the prisoners feel validated and make the choice to contribute freely. I guess my advice would be... you can't do much about some of the circumstances leading up to the event, but you can open and gracefully (and lovingly) hold open the space for all who enter the room. Warm regards, John --
