Yesterday we held the second Creating the World We Want (CTWWW) gathering in London. About 60 people took part, a very diverse group that included a business analyst from Shell, a lot of executive coaches and organisational change consultants, a couple of artists, a choreographer, a dancer, a business school professor, corporate social responsibility practitioners and all sorts of other people. Many of the participants are activists of one sort or another, some devoted to improving work life, some to accelerating the evolution of human consciousness, and some, like me, to both of these.
Most of the day was spent in Open Space. One of the participants, Neil Crofts (www.authenticbusiness.co.uk) hosted a session on turning CTWWW into a global movement, so that people can organise days like yesterday in their own neighbourhoods. This has become an ongoing project and some of us are meeting on 20 September to move the project forward. Another participant, Chris Macrea (www.valuetrue.com) has made a posting on the Knowledge Board website (http://www.knowledgeboard.com) entitled <Open Space and Getting Human> in which he recounts his experience of the Open Space process yesterday (in fact not a typical one as the OS timeslots were just 40 minutes) and advocates the use of OS in knowledge management endeavours. His posting is reproduced below and you can contact him at <[email protected]> if you want to make any comments or suggestions. Alternatively you can join the online discussion at <http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=90017&d=1&h=417&f=56&date format=%o%20%B%20%Y>. And if you would like to become part of the CTWWW community, please send me an email. With warm wishes from a somewhat cool Brighton on the south coast of England, Martin* Martin Leith, Catalyst Creating a rapid shift from now to new (Download info pack: www.martinleith.com/martin/martin.doc) 17 Bedford Street, Brighton BN2 1AN, United Kingdom Phone 01273 675322 (+44 1273 675322) Mobile 07808 773713 (+44 7808 773713) email [email protected] www.martinleith.com _________________________________________________________ OPEN SPACE & GETTING HUMAN There is a tacit assumption in 99% of the correspondence of KBoard that technology is pervasive in standardising KM. Hmm I remember a wonderful nugget of advice guru David Fahey shared with me 6 years ago : watch out how the KM school is separating from the Learning Organisation school another disastrous missing link that will be perpetrated by academics and others who are primarily rewarded for becoming grandmasters of something however specialised, and therefore remote from the whole. Let us be very clear in this SIG. Technology mediated KM that does not listen and learn from every way in which humans share knowledge in the flesh (and without any expensive mediating platforms) is economically ruinous and socially weird. So lets use this space to discuss: what are the great non-technological ways in which knowledge gets tacitly communed and mined? Over time I will try and invite some human facilitator experts to add messages to this article. I am turning my mind frist to Open Space having it experienced it for the second time yesterday. A typical Open Space event: 30-60 participants openly sharing everything they know around an agreed agenda for a day in which participants create discussion forums they want to host in the form of 40 minute group discussions ; everyone chooses 3 of these events to participate in though they can move around during the 3 session periods if they wish. Prior to the sessions the facilitator has devised several ways for the group to introduce themselves personally to everyone and to use mini-assemblies to speak up about the issue- this enabling both diversity and congruence of understanding to start flowing. After the sessions, an hour is spent on clarifying which sessions created an ongoing project and who from the whole assembly wants to join up which projects, and what more virtual method of project collaboration will be involved now that the days co-location is coming to a celebratory close. In spite of my amateur introduction, it should be clear that the difference between great OS and one that doesnt fly is all about real-time knowledge managing capabilities : classifying, connecting people, managing many yin and yangs such as creative diversity but moving forward around focal points so that everyones day has been well spent and will be well spent in whatever they opt into participating in the future. Here I will go out on several limbs (more than I have, so this could be uncomfy!): If I was to set a large virtual team project (say 30 + members, 5 or more countries, in which typical members were budgeted to spend at least 6 months each) , I wouldnt go ahead anyway without the resources for an early real meeting of everyone; I wouldnt make it less than 48 hours; and one of the two days would be built round pen space facilitation. I would be very surprised to hear of any large virtual team project ever working without similar real (getting human) attention from its birth. I would make similar remarks for webs/intranets that are intended to be a way of globally sharing knowledge and benchmarks of how we operate branches of our business across countries through learning of the smartest practices from each other as well as tidying up the core body of knowledge that makes our competences unique. If company budgets permit you to invest in the technology but not the people preparation, ask yourself why? who divined it so? did they have any total knowledge-managing competence to make such a call or were they sold an impressive business case by a supplier whose interest was selling in gadgetry and leaving humans to make of it far less than they could if they had first made of each other. _________________________________________________________ * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
