Dear All. As ideas on how to do convergence keep arriving in my mailbox - thank you, keep them coming, this is an issue I am very interested in - I thought about convergence in the events I have experienced. It seems to me there are some factors that affect convergence much more than the method used.
For example how pressing the group feels the issue is that needs to be resolved, or how much the group feels like a community, how much time is available. No to mention how conducive the place you are is for drinking yet another bottle of wine in the evening. But it also seems to me that apart from that it takes some groups a lot more effort to become practical. Doctors, nurses and policemen for example seem quite good at it - for which I am happy when I am in a situation I need their help for. Groups of professors rather more slow. While morning news on a second or third day often assists in convergence, I have done something additional in a few cases where I sensed convergence could be difficult. I would invite to imagine that the next morning would be another meeting, in a yearÂ’s time (or whatever horizon would seem to fit) and that the group had achieved enormous progress since the Open Space. And I would say we had agreed that before going on that meeting (a year from now) a few would make a speech of a few minutes, looking back. The story would be about - where are we now, and what is different ? - how has the journey been ? - what were the main successes and problems, and how did we overcome those problems ? - how did this group support the journey ? I have just come back from an event where we had just 3 hours on the second day, and this group actually told me that sometime long after I had gone to bed they began designing stories to be told and spent a couple of hours preparing - and convergence was no problem. But then, the problem maybe existed only in my mind ? Greetings from Denmark, Gerard Muller Open Space Institute Denmark * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
