Robert: This -- > The question then comes "What is the unique contribution of this work to > our > agreed reason for meeting?" so that the priceless gems are there for all > to see > and use. The next step is devising ways and means so that these gems > can be > used to develop the "thinking/action/recommendations etc" to a level > beyond what > any of the individual pieces have achieved while at the same time > allowing > everyone to agreed that this is the best we can do now. >
And this -- > In the proceedings "We agreed that..........." has more power (for me) > than the > fact that "the ........ received the most votes". ...are priceless. I have always sort of steered away from Open Space as a way of actually making decisions, mostly because I couldn't see how it might happen, but this conversation is clarifying some things for me and opening some doors. So, I might ask, is it too far to go to say that in the heart of what you are saying we can use the process to actually get some decisions? How would we do that? What might be the benefits and pitfalls? The cases where I have been confronted with possible decisions include such democratic exercises as land use planning, direction setting and choices about options. Some of these exercises are more closed than others. For instance once a woman asked me if we could use Open Space to choose between three options for situating a parking lot. All of these options had been articulated and assessed through a planning process that involved everyone involved, and now it was time to decide. I suggested that maybe this was her responsibility, now knowing the risk and benefits of each option, and that OST would have been more useful for developing the options. I didn't see how it could work in that context. So that was too closed a situation. But maybe for planning exercises like, planning the commercial uses of a street for example, could we use OST to hash over options and have people make decisions that could be incorporated into the planning and zoning decisions. It's almost like decisions on values. And if we involve the people who will actually be using the street, then we get the right people there... Again, I might be over my head, past my "best before" date, but what do others think? At any rate, I love the language of "we agree that" which to me outlines the emergent agreements and collaborations that come out of an OST meeting. Thanks, Chris * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
