Thank you for all your support and great ideas regarding this second and
final weekend of an Open Space for the local Catholic Diocese's
strategic planning process. I'll now try to summarize how Weekend #2
went.
Weekend #1 ended with over 450 recommendations being generated by a
group of 115 participants (aged 14 to 70-something) who convened 85
sessions in about 1.5 days, in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and some
Tagalog (Filipino).
The three Critical Issues which had been identified in earlier
facilitated meetings and surveys were:
- Including Youth and Young Adults
- Developing Lay Leaders
- Living Catholic Social Teaching.
- - - - -
The time in-between
- - - - -
We all agreed at the end of Weekend #1 to let a small group of people
continue the process of organizing "The Wall" of so many hundreds of
recommended strategies into some more usable form -- to see patterns,
follow what various participants had already begun on The Wall, and
spend more time trying to get it into more condensed groupings. It was
agreed that nobody who *hadn't* been in the first weekend would be
allowed to do this (as there was some level of mistrust of others /
'outsiders' diluting the original ideas and wording because they hadn't
known the original context. Indeed, this has happened before in
organizations, eh?
So a team of us struggled with The Wall for days and days and days,
seeing some patterns and just waiting until some other patterns made
themselves known to us. Eventually we brought it down to about 25
clusters, and then we wrote up headings/titles for those clusters in
what we called 'preferred futuring' language (such as: Become a Force
for Tolerance and Work to End Hate Crimes -or- The Bishop Becomes a
Highly Visible Leader on Social Justice Issues.
That's what we brought back to the reconvened participants for weekend
#2, plus a design which we developed as we saw how The Wall unfolded.
- - - - -
The second weekend: convergence
- - - - -
We had a very large room.
This second weekend lasted about 1.75 days (Thursday night and Friday
until late afternoon).
We put up a large banner of one Critical Issue (see above) on each wall,
with the category headings in yellow, plus below them the associated
recommendations on white pieces of paper.
Our work, therefore, for Weekend #2 (which we all agreed was sort of a
continuation of the same Open Space event begun Weekend #1) was to
consider the yellow category headings and come to some agreement on them
/ their wording, do convergence to select three headings/categories in
each of the three Critical Issues, and gather a few more thoughts on
what participants could tell the Bishop would contribute to the success
of this plan.
To get a sense for how the group was feeling, I introduced for each
participant a set of deep red, yellow and green cards. Before, when one
person was talking in the group I had no idea if s/he was speaking for
the entire group or just once again going off on his or her own
(painfully familiar to some) tangent. So I introduced this as a
consensus tool. In this particular form of consensus, holding up a
Green card = "I agree / go with it / fine", Yellow card = "I'm not crazy
about it but I can live with it" and Red card = "Absolutely not" (and
all Reds had a chance to speak to the group to say why they disagreed,
after which they could stay red (and the group had to recommend other
approaches which would will Green/Yellow consensus) or change to Yellow
(after having spoken and listened to responses to their concerns).
I am SO grateful for this tool. We used it throughout this whole second
weekend.
When I explained the new Wall, people were very appreciative of all the
work that went into making it manageable for this second weekend, but
there was obviously still a lot of concern about a) what was going to
happen with this information and b) why did people have to vote on
categories (yellow) when they were still each so attached to their
individual recommendations (white). Because we could not resolve this
with group recommendations, I opened up the process. I invited all who
wanted to stay after that evening's close to Open Space it -- to meet as
a design group to rework the design of the next day together.
At least 20 people (over a 5th of the participants) joined the design
circle, which lasted three hours, up until midnight. It was a
wonderful, exhausting, energizing, frustrating and illuminating process
of everyone offering forth ideas, challenges, possible solutions, other
ways of looking at those solutions, and hanging out with each other
until we all felt we'd got the perfect design for the morning. Concerns
included finding a convergence process that honored the work people had
done, finding ways to ensure that recommendations would not be lost as
proposals moved forward, and addressing participantsÂ’ needs to
understand and feel included in the process.
Not only did we get a great / better design out of it, but we got over
20 people fully engaged in the success of the design, and throughout the
day they acted as co-facilitators ensuring the clarity and success of
the process. Really a great addition.
We had the group sticky-dot-vote on their top three (5 dots for one
Critical Issue, 10 for the two others which had proportionally more
recommendations / white papers) recommendations/strategies in each Issue
area. After each Issue's vote we raised those top categories/yellows
higher on the wall, celebrated, and then turned to the next wall. In
this manner we narrowed it down in a reasonable manner where each
participant felt s/he had at least made a statement about the
recommendations they felt strongest about (whether or not it was a
popular one). Participants commented that they felt listened to and
validated and still able to accept the group's choice.
We then broke into three groups, one convening at each Issue wall
according to participants' passions. Each of these groups had 1 hour 15
minutes to agree through the consensus method on the
categories/headings/yellows and recluster or rename anything they felt
might make things clearer. They were also able to folk categories into
one another, but not too much so as to dilute things.
We reconvened. First Issue reported back, with time for clarification
questions. When the whole group felt ready to vote (as indicated by the
card consensus process), the musicians / liturgists read an opening
reading (reminding participants that they are an advisory group and
helping them let go after this process and let the next advisory group
take what they've identified and continue refining it for the final
written plan):
Habakkuk 2:1-4
Then the LORD answered me and said, "Record the vision And inscribe {it}
on tablets, That the one who reads it may run. "For the vision is yet
for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.
(excerpt)
Then one of the priests would lead the group in a breathing chant to
focus them. After a moment of reflection, they would all walk to the
(one) wall and vote (having listened to their hearts / their intuition /
to God to inform their choices).
Then we would add up the numbers, move those issues upward on the walls,
and announce the vote results. And then the musicians would lead us in
a sung (very short) prayer of Alleluia.
Next, the second Issue group would report, participants would ask
clarification questions, we would be lead in a breathing prayer, we
would vote, sing Alleluia, and so on, through all three Issues.
What an amazing ritual / process that was, and totally perfect.
There was a real feeling of celebration after each three 'yellows' for
each three Issues was announced. It was hard fought for (the consensus
process required true listening and true cooperation and it wasn't
always easy) and just what we'd come together for.
- - - - -
The outcome and the closing
- - - - -
By about 3:00 we had done our work: we'd come up with 9 areas to include
in the Planning process, each of which will be followed up with
staffing, resources, communication and technical assistance training (in
grantwriting, as the Diocese is offering $1 million of matching grants
for proposals in these areas, and probably in Open Space facilitation
training, so each of the 52 parishes can conduct its own OS process to
fulfill it's objective under the plan.
We put up butcher paper along one free wall for messages in an open
letter to the Bishop (what could help ensure success for this plan) and
we ended with a closing/Mass, with inspirational homilies about
visioning, letting go, passing the good works onto the next group and
knowing that the right thing will happen / spirit informed the process.
As part of the gifting / missioning forth, the top Issues and categories
were taken down off the wall during the Mass and presented physically to
those who were in the next group to work on it. True celebration, and
both a coming to center and a seeing you off back into the world as an
agent of change.
Of course, you were all in the room (and some of you, Chris Weaver, were
sitting in the corner playing tunes on the concertina -- I only learned
the first few notes of Ave Maria, myself...).
Dear readers, you must be tired. Rest your eyes.
Take care,
Lisa
--
L i s a H e f t
Consultant, facilitator, educator
Experiential learning and Open Space Technology
2325 Oregon
Berkeley, California
94705-1106 USA
(+01) 510 548-8449
www.openspaceworld.com
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