Johann wrote: > How do you "wrap up" in non-convergence? Voting serves me well, > because at the end I can say to the attendants: "today we have worked hard, > had fun, and this is the result: those are the issues we care about, and in > that order". Top managers see the proceedings and the prioritization as an > useful input to take further action... it means, power -or at least control- > doesn't goes to the masses; but the people has spoken and IF top management > is clever, they'll build on that.
Well, you wrap up the same way you do after a more conventional convergence and action planning session: with a closing circle. There are all sorts of variations on that theme, but basically, the proceedings of the non-convergence groups all get published along with the other proceedings and everyone gets down to work. I like to invite people to take a short "to do" list with them out of the meeting. Or, if it's a smallish group, say less than 50, then I'll invite people to share their actions in the closing circle briefly. In groups that are less than 30 you can have a more focused conversation at the end, and before the closing circle, invite everyone back to a circle and invite brief reports on action steps only. Ask anyone in the room to speak first and then invite someone to speak about actions that connect to what has just been said. With a little skill, you can draw an interconnected map of all of these action plans on a flipchart as they emerge. That way the whole organization gets a sense of how all of this action relates to everything else, and it should help them see their work and organizational lives in a systems perspective. After that, have a closing circle. But in large groups this is impossible and most undesirable, and so a quick wrap up with the promise that the proceedings will be available ASAP is about all you can do. The trick, of course is what comes next. It does require clever top managers, but it also requires careful planning with your client up front so that the top managers know what is coming and are able to think about how they will support the results of an OST. One of the things I'd like to try soon in a prep meeting is to follow a presentation about OST's predicted results with a very quick and rough scenario planning session to help imagine what kind of futures lie on the other side of the event. Then we can have a conversation about how to address the variety of possibilities, including how to cleverly support lots of decentralized action. > Putting it this way, OST can be a "massive > listening of clients" (if speaking on Language Ontology terms) or an > "strategic planning process that involves the whole organization and > generates appropiation in the people involved". > I would say that this is true. OST is actually the organization listening to itself, which we know from the work of cyberneticians, is how we create healthy systems. It creates feedback loops which sustain action, and it seems to provide saftey valves so that positive feedback loops don't run rampant. I'm not sure how this works, but maybe some of the cybernetics folks and systems thinkers on the list might give this question some thought. It is a strategic planning process that generates responsibility from passion. In other words, it takes what people really care about, and opens the opportunities for them to pursue that. As my pal Michael Herman points out, one thing that is a shock to managers is how easy management becomes when you do that. Chris ------------------------- CHRIS CORRIGAN Consultation - Facilitation Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
