Carol: What fun. I have written some of my musings. I haven't done open space with the military but was involved as a subcontracted consultant to co-facilitate a set of sessions with Canadian military personnel. The design was poor and so the whole thing did not go well. But I learned a ton about the Canadian military culture. So here are my thoughts. I'm extrapolating from one three-day intensive facilitation but it taught me some stuff about the culture that I'll never forget. But some of what I say here may be that particular group of 300 people. Test out what I say and discard what doesn't make sense to you.
The first thing I was struck by was how tough they are on themselves, though they would die rather than admit it. They hold themselves to a very high physical standard and are open and proud about that. But they hold themselves to a very rigid standard of how okay it was to be emotionally expressive. Not very. And some of the women were actually opting out of the armed forces as soon as they had finished a couple of tours of duty. I think Open Space will be different enough that they will take to it. The thing that you will likely find is that they will see Open Space as a "game" whose rules they need to figure out in order to be successful at playing it. I found the Armed Forces Staff very quick at understanding instructions (they have to be good at that and they have to be good at giving them out) and they will likely figure out more quickly than most groups how to take advantage of what Open Space has to offer. Another implication of the bit about giving instructions is that it is such a basic skill to armed forces personnel that anyone who doesn't give the instructions in a fluent and confident way may run the risk of being seen as less competent. They really respect competence. Because it matters in the field. If anyone is incompetent in the field, people die. The personnel that I dealt with were tough physically, extremely bright, very good at sizing people up and (in our case) unengaged. But they went through the motions anyway because someone had told them that they had to. No one could order them to like it or to engage other than intellectually which they did as a point of pride. I believe that open space will allow them the chance to engage. And, as usual, the givens need to be very clear. Just how much power they have to make change will have to be very understood. One other thing, the choice of language was very important. I would get someone to brief you on your choice of words if you haven't had previous experience with this culture. This is true of many cultures but I found this one less forgiving of difference: especially in an external consultant. Having said all that, if I had the chance to do open space with them, I'd leap at it because it would, I think, work extremely well. Hope my limited experience is helpful. Esther Ewing The Change Alliance 133 Fairlawn Avenue Toronto, Ontario M5M 1S9 416-489-5229 Assisting Individuals and Organizations to Grow Capability
