> > On each occasion I sat down in the middle of the room during the > OS-in-progress with 'the planning team' and shared my concerns - > participants wandering by sat down too and it was all a transparent > moment of what should we do or should we do anything. A planning team > of whomever wanted to be the planning team. > > In the case of the upset participants we co-re-designed the next day, > including a co-designed consensus process to begin that day; in the case > of the upset client we just got more people holding space for the good > and somehow that good energy (or nothing we did at all maybe?) carried > it through and the client didn't stop the process. >
Lisa...this is a very important contribution to my practice of Open Space. Thank you for this. I have done similar things and as a facilitator working with other processes I am always open to on the spot redesigns and flexible process to meet the client's needs. But I have never thought of inviting people to sit with me in the centre of the ghost circle and consider the Spirit in the group and whether anything needs to be done about it. I think that's a risky thing to do, as it invites all kinds of speculations and momentum building in directions that I wouldn't necessarily be comfortable with, and yet I can see the value. This leads me to a story, which has been rattling around in my mind the last few months. It's taken me a while to get it out. I finally did an Open Space where I had to walk out of it (at least temporarily) in that true way that Harrison writes about in the User's Guide. The occasion was a gathering of people from a number of First Nations around British Columbia all of whom operated agencies funded by the sponsor of the OST, a government department. We held a very successful OST in February where our question under consideration was "How do we build on our successes" to talk about how to extend the government program that had funded these agencies to do great work. A follow up OST was proposed by the sponsor around the issue of a province wide voice for these agencies. We were all set to go and 15 minutes before I opened the space, the sponsor surprised me by saying that he thought this was not a good time for this OST, as there were political things going on and financial commitments currently being withdrawn that would mean that anything coming out of the meeting would not be supported, either politically or with money. I was shocked at this admission, and mused openly about whether we should just call the whole thing off. He said he thought we should go ahead given that everyone was here, and maybe the conversations would lead us to a different place. Evidently a number of the participants were aware of this REAL POLITIK, although most were in the dark. I reluctantly agreed to go ahead but only if he would introduce the OST with some honest articulation of these new givens. He didn't do a very good job of it, and his introduction looked to me like he was trying to hide something. As I walked the circle, and introduced the process I was interrupted quite forcefully be a chief who stated in no uncertain terms that the theme we were there to consider was bullshit, and that there were bigger issues that needed to be talked about. I invited him to post these issues but he disagreed saying that he thought that people needed more information before they decided that the OST should continue. I continued to thank him for raising the issues and asked him again to post, but he wasn't biting. As I opened the space, an older woman asked politely that I reconsider what we were doing and stop to listen to the information that others had so we would know what the real issues were. There was an AWFUL lot of nodding in the room and people looking at me expectantly. It was more than apparent that we were on the verge of a consensus among the 50 participants that the OST should wait. So I asked people what they wanted to do. Someone suggested a caucus meeting, meaning that we were to be kicked out of the room along with the sponsors and the participants would talk among themselves. There was a general will in the room to do this, so I said "I'm here to Open Space on this topic of a provincial voice. If people don't feel they are ready to do that right now, I'll gladly leave so you can do the work that you want to do, and when you're ready for us, we'll come back." We left the room. The conversation went on in there most of the morning. The sponsor was philosophical in his acceptance of the situation but not happy. I reminded him, kind of honestly, of what he had sprung on me earlier in the morning and suggested that people had seen through this thinly veiled government agenda for what it was...an attempted whitewash of the real situation. He agreed and blamed headquarters. When we resumed after lunch, there was no passion left for the topic. Nine discussion groups formed and some work got done, but it was clear that they were mostly killing time until a senior enough government official arrived so they could vent on him. This happened the next day after we did convergence. We finished the OST (surprised that it had lasted that long) and after lunch the regional director general arrived with a power point presentation on why there was no longer any money to implement all the stuff they had been talking about. With bigger fish to fry in the room, one by one people rose from their chairs and started to ask him some pretty direct questions. Our work was done. We quietly shut the door and left. This is an extreme example of reengineering the process in mid stride, and although Harrison alluded to it in the User's Guide I seriously thought I would never see the day when I would have to actually leave the room. In the many other cases where a good conversation about process was warranted I have often wrestled, like Lisa with the best way to do this. Now thanks to your post Lisa, I have a way to being more "moderate" in thinking collectively about where we are in the moment. Cheers, Chris * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
