Steve wrote: > Has anyone pursued the Six Sigma "Voice of the Customer" concepts into an > Open Space facilitation? It seems that if the topics introduced into an > open space discussion do not concern the participants, they will not > respond.
I haven't pursued the voice of the customer into Open Space facilitation. I think instead I opt just for the voice. If customer's voices are required, we bring them into the session. But I think your observation that where there is no passion, there is nothing to talk about is true. I also think it's important that we don't do things just for the sake of doing them, so if there is nothing to talk about, why have an Open Space (or any other kind of meeting) in the first place? >There is also a 'fear factor' in this equation. If the > participants include members of adversarial groups, they may be unwilling to > "Open" the discussion. Perhaps a brainstorming session might surface common > ground where a discussion might occur in the situation Harrison describes > here.. The issue for me is the authenticity of the voices in the room. Brainstorming externalizes the voice or idea and a list that we agree on is one in which our own personal responsibility is diminished. This is why I have stopped having groups ranks action items. OST runs on passion bounded by responsibility. The invitation is for people to come together around issues they personally care about and to take responsibility for moving those issues forward. In OST I am not interested in the group coming to "consensus." I am interested in the sponsor opening a container wide enough to invite any action coming from an OST to be "part of the plan." So it's not about constraining voices, or making lists, but opening the bigger plan so wide that anything that comes out of the OST IS part of the direction, and thereby we emerge consensus - not a consensus in which everyone agrees, but one which is full of creative tensions, passions and loads of personal responsibility and which can all be seen as moving in a similar direction, most often towards making a community or an organization a better place to be. Very few people will propose in an OST meeting, ways for making a community or an organization worse. If leadership can accept the fact that "better" can self-organize in a dynamic market of ideas and action, and that's it's messy and complex and diverse and full of dialogue and working through the big issues, then we can REALLY do something. The major transformation in OST comes when people realize that conversation and not prescription is the way we move forward. That changes everything. Chris -- ------------------------- CHRIS CORRIGAN Consultation - Facilitation Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
