Colleagues: I have stared into the abyss and come away with a new appreciation of goat farming as an occupation.
What a day I had. Now I've dealt with all kinds of space invaders before, most of them are benign, or only mildly ornery. But today I had my first encounter with a space invader who grabbed the mic and used the following words: "This isn't working for us. Whet we need to do right now is bring a table into the middle of this circle, get someone to figure out how to address all these issues and talk about them around the circle!" It wasn't just a small intervention. It was a show stopping, riot inciting, process-scrambling mother of all interventions. It resulted in 68 people stopping dead in their tracks and considering the idea on its merits. And I must admit that the first thought that went through my head was "I'm F***ked." But let me back up.... Fishing issues could not BE more contentious for First Nations people in this country and especially on this coast. The right to fish, especially for salmon and herring, is as deeply rooted and sacred an Aboriginal right as you're going to ever find. Armed standoffs occur regularly over access to the fishery between First Nations people, non Aboriginal fishers and government. It's serious serious business. Today I opened the space for 68 people who are at the heart of the matter in British Columbia. They are Chiefs, folks in charge of large Aboriginal fisheries organizations and political leaders. Serious heavyweights. The purpose of the gathering: "Organizing our Nations to reclaim the Pacific fishery." Lofty goal. The sponsor was the British Columbia Vice-Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, an umbrella political organization. He convened the meeting to provide an opportunity for diverse groups to get together and start to take responsibility for moving their issues forward. The diversity in the group was very much compounded by politics. Some First Nations here operated their fisheries under Canada's Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy which provides the federal government with a regulatory framework in exchange for First Nations having the ability to fish according to their hard won Constitutional rights. Many other First Nations reject this strategy and see it as an infringement on their rights. Needless to say the two groups rarely talk and hardly ever appear in the same meetings together. But they were both at ours. 68 people proposed 24 groups and for some reason, no one put their names on their topics. NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN! It is the difference between an agenda topic being a dissociated issue or a passion driven matter of importance. That was the first problem. The second problem was all my fault, and it had to do with a bad opening. Every so often we flub them, get tongue tied, forget something, say things in the wrong order, whatever. It wasn't the worst opening I have ever done, but it was probably the worst situation not to be perfect in. Usually people get the hang of the process anyway. This time however there were too many divisive politics at play for the group to go smoothly into discussion. Folks milled around at the wall, for 10 minuets, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. I started to break a sweat. My sponsor was cool, and level headed, but suggested that I prompt people to getting down to work. I refused. "They know what to do." I said. They didn't. For some reason an air of confusions descended upon the group. People wandered away. A lot of little discussion started taking place. In retrospect i think two things were happening. First folks wanted to be sure they were not going to be committing themselves to being in a politically awkward position, so a stand off of a sort ensued. Someone had to make the first move. Who you were meeting with was as important as what you were going to be talking about, and so a lot of people were waiting for the right people to make the first move. Second, there was a lot of socializing going on and folks catching up with each other which isn't normally a problem, except in this case it provided a useful way to bide time creating a positive feedback loop. The more standing around that was going on, the more solidly people got engaged in the social groups and the more engaged they were there, the less inclined they were to meet in their groups. I finally assessed the situation from a chaos theory position (you can see how close I was to losing it). i thought to myself perhaps the chaos here is just below the threshold. It isn't going to develop any self organizing priorities without a wee addition of energy. So, not recognizing the self-organization that WAS going on (it was happening, ii just wasn't what I wanted to happen -- see the fatal error?) I put the mic to me lips and said, quietly "The 10:00 groups can get going any time." Stupid stupid stupid. That's when the mic was grabbed from my hand and a complete process reengineering was suggested. And it didn't help that it was a prominent local chief that made the intervention. Great, I thought. A bad idea backed with authority. My immediate reaction was to take the mic back when he was finished fomenting revolution and calmly suggest that if conveyors wanted to combine topics they were certainly invited to do so, but that I thought in terms of the process, folks were expecting to be in Open Space, and that meant that I was going to let the process unfold. I thanked him for his comments though. In two minutes the circles were together and stuff was happening. And the first 1.5 hour sessions worked great. After that I have to admit that the fire went out of the belly and the second and third sessions morphed into a circle with about 30 people talking about the dead moose: the way the Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy divided our Nations. In effect, the group ended up in a situation very close to what the chief had proposed, the difference however, was that it evolved naturally and so it worked very well for them. I never did get grounded, and found holding the space to be very very hard for the whole day. That discussion went on for three hours, with other things happening on the side. I wrapped them up at 2:30, the group prioritized the 12 issues that were reported upon and we gathered in the circle for what I was sure was to be the roasting of my life. My confidence was shot, my demeanor reserved, my visage wan. And to my surprise we heard comments like: this is a great process, it was great to talk in this way, the level of respect in the room was phenomenal, we have to do this more....etc etc. I was pleasantly surprised, although absolutely drained. I'm not happy with how the day went altogether, although i have nothing bad to say about the process. This was also the very first time I have done an OST meeting where people have acknowledged the power of the process but did not thank me. And I did not deserve thanks. It wasn't a stellar day. So the lesson? The process always works (you idiot, of course it always works) but it works better if the facilitator is clear, cool, and collected and the opening has to be impeccably done, especially in these kinds of situations, where there's no forgiveness. It's such a simple lesson, so basic to any facilitation practice, but one that doesn't hurt to be reminded of. Well, it hurts, but that's the point. I'm going to bed now. I'll wake up on Friday. Chris -- CHRIS CORRIGAN Consultation - Facilitation Open Space Technology http://www.chriscorrigan.com 108-1035 Pacific Street Vancouver BC V6E 4G7 Phone: 604.683.3080 Fax: 604.683.3036 cor...@interchange.ubc.ca * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html =========================================================== osl...@egroups.com To subscribe, 1. Visit: http://www.egroups.com/group/oslist 2. Sign up -- provide an email address, and choose a login ID and password 3. Click on "Subscribe" and follow the instructions To unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@egroups.com: 1. Visit: http://www.egroups.com/group/oslist 2. Sign in and Proceed
