Ah Priorities! Balloting! The discussion continues. I think the word for it is convergence, and from where I sit, convergence is a simple, natural, human act. After talking about a whole mess of things, it turns out that some are more important to the assembled group than some others. Of course, all issues (potentially) are important to somebody, and nobody can, or should, change that. But some issues are more important to everybody, or at least most people. The question is how do you surface the really HOT ones without doing violence to all the rest?
Sticky dots and weighted balloting (electronic or manual) are two good ways (See the User's guide for details) -- The important thing is to make clear to everybody that this IS NOT a political win/lose situation. All issues are still there, all are important to someone (presumably) -- but some are really hot, and probably deserve a little more attention. Peggy Holman and Chris, to mention a few, have developed another approach which I tried for the first time (personally) last week with 400 healthcare executives. Simply put: Open the space one more time. During the last three hours of a 2 day Open Space I invited the whole group to think about all the issues raised and if one issue, some combination of issues, or a totally new issue raised itself in anybody's mind as being especially critical and/or "actionable" -- to grab a piece of paper and post it on the wall. The energy was enormous and in short order we had 16 postings which converted into 16 action sessions. Super. Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20845 Phone 301-365-2093 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Staiger, Simone (CIAT) Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 11:29 AM To: [email protected] Subject: OS and prioritizing of topics Dear all, In the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, 15 centers worldwide funded mainly by the 58 countries, private foundations, and international organizations) we are making our first exciting experiences with OS. We used it in the framework of a Knowledge Sharing project where we mainly try to introduce KS tools and methods into mayor Center meetings. Among our team we recently had discussions on weather or not OS can/should/may include a prioritizing of topics. In two of our pilot projects we had group meetings of all the proposed topics. On day 2 of the open space session, participants began their work by reading the discussion reports prepared the previous day and prioritizing them through ballot voting . Eight of the 19 topics/reports were selected for further discussion and conversion into action plans. However some argue that it is against the OS philosophy, others say that it is a good way to focus on what participants feel like the most releva! nt topics. What do you think? Thanks a lot in advance, Simone Staiger-Rivas Communications Unit Webpublishing Knowledge Sharing - InforCom Project (Information and Communications for Rural Communities ) CIAT (Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical) E-mail: [email protected] CIAT Web site: www.ciat.cgiar.org <http://www.ciat.cgiar.org> InforCom Web site: www.ciat.cgiar.org/inforcom <http://www.ciat.cgiar.org/inforcom> Knowledge Sharing Web site: http://www.ciat.cgiar.org/cgiar/knowledge_sharing/home.htm * * ========================================================== [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 * * ========================================================== [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
