Please let me know if this is a correct way to participate in these OSList discussions. I felt so passionate about my meeting with Harrison, that I hosted a session at AONW2015 on the following discussion, and specifically as pertains to OS in the work place. Phyllis Thompson agreed to combine her session with mine. We had a great session, with Diana Larsen, Howard, Charley, and many others participating. I learned so much, and felt so fortunate to be at that gathering!!
We Already Know How to Solve the World¹s Most Challenging Problems Reflections on a Conversation with Harrison Owen Alicia Lanier January 24, 2015 Lucky me! I just spent a wonderful afternoon with Harrison Owen, the man who created Open Space Technology¹ some twenty years ago. Although he claims this is the way everything has really gotten done naturally for over 13.7 billion years. Two hours with Harrison, almost 80 years old by today¹s reckoning, yet actually more than 13.7 billion years old as a self-organized collection of stardust. As soon as I sat down, Harrison said, Ok, tell me who you are, and what you want to know from me.¹ Naturally, I started in on a long-winded resume-esque monologue, starting from when I was bornuntil he broke in. And began telling me some amazing stories. All about us, bits of stardust, some 13.7 billion years old, that have self-organized to form this *person* my mama named Alicia , or, in his case, this *person* his mama named Harrison¹. And from there, these collections of stardust self-organized into groups, project teams, organizations, nations, collaborations of many flavors, you name it - at the end of the day, just bits of stardust, self-organizing, adapting to our environment; or, if maladaptive to our environment, dying. What is he like, you might be wondering? Hum, perhaps just what I was hoping for- Colorful character, colorful language, and very direct! Just maybe even a bit wiser than anticipated. And what color are his eyes? I¹d say dark, almost black, changing with the intensity of the message Originally I considered asking if I could record our conversation, and write an article about it later. Yet as soon as I met Harrison, all of that pre-planning seemed highly inappropriate. My note taking consisted of doodling on the tablecloth as we talked. Part memory aid, part conversation tool, as my hands tried to draw out what my words found difficulty expressing. What did I learn about OST and Harrison that I could not have read on Wiki or in one of his books? Maybe nothing specific about how one conducts an Open Space. Maybe nothing about how or even why OST works. What I did learn was that Harrison is an amazing teller of stories; a wise man who understands people deeply; someone who is not afraid to tell the world we don¹t need managers, we don¹t need facilitators, and we don¹t need plans. I learned that we need to listen; and, perhaps, most importantly, we need to trust. If self-organization is our natural tendency, how do we experience this natural tendency within organizations that are hierarchical, controlling, metric-oriented, perhaps even quarterly stock controlled? Could it be that those conditions where OST works best (complexity, urgency, passion, conflict, diversity) are the conditions where start-ups thrive, and once those conditions level out or perhaps even begin to be greatly minimized, bureaucracies (etc) develop. Or, in any group that gets entrenched in the conceit of its own importance? Complacency. Harrison says if the organism is maladaptive to its environment, it dies. Otherwise, people find work-arounds. Leaving the beautiful Irish Inn in Glenn Echo, I stopped for the night in Roanoke Rapids on my way back to my childhood home, in Clarkton. Decided to sleep on all the great ideas, thoughts and questions, surfacing from this wonderful conversation. So perhaps I could understand what I really needed to share about this meeting. If anything, or perhaps only to document for myself what I had learned. Let my subconscious sort this stuff out for me during the night Here is what I remembered of my best thinking the next day. There are givens in our current world. Givens such as hierarchical structures, bureaucracies, dictatorships, whatever Since these controlling organizational structures, and many others, currently exist, people who really see a need and urgency to address a grand challenge will find work-arounds. Maybe one example of this is the grass-roots movement¹ commonly experienced in many causes. What if we decided to find a way to work within the existing controlling organizational structures to make gains that might otherwise be impossible? Or that might prove to be a parallel and supportive effort to the grass roots work that is constantly in the background? With this question in mind, I, Alicia Lanier, as Manager, HSDP, Facilitator, Professional Engineer, am adding OST to my toolbox. My work tends to come from those controlling organizational structures¹ that seem to be staying for a while. And surely they will die, as we all will, some day. My hope is that by bringing these ideas into such organizations, at least one person within each organization will be inspired to think about their own inherent creative possibilities, as well as those of their team members, and everyone around them. And those ideas will catch hold and grow exponentially. I see my role in working with groups (within these types of organizations) as a way of helping others find their stardust¹ beginnings. So from there, and knowing I have to go into these groups and help people find their way back to their beginnings I have documented as much of the wisdom from Harrison that I can remember and share with you. Pragmatic, functional, under-lain with the wisdom that tells us we already know how to solve the world¹s grand challenges. So here goes Who can benefit by using Open Space? Engineers. Scientists. Anyone. Harrison said that I did not look like an engineer. Where is your hard hat? Truthfully, I told him that I just sent it to Goodwill (It was from my stint at North Carolina State University in the late 80¹s¹ as an Extension Specialist. The front was labeled with Go with the flow¹; the back Big Al¹.) He also said that he and I were odd¹. We don¹t think like a lot of engineers. Yep, totally in agreement. How about break-through research? Back in 1989, Harrison worked with research scientists at DuPont. They came to him because they had been charged to help Dupont, the inventor and major producer of DacronTM, decide whether or not they could compete competively, or leave the market . And they had no idea what to do. So he asked a few questions. Have you ever had success with a similar type project? Yes, six times. The second question: Did you have a plan? Yes, in all six projects. Did you follow the plan? After a brief pause, the youngest member of the team said No, never.¹ So he introduced OST to them, and within two days they had worked out the formula (?) Plans are not meant to be followed. When he first realized this fact, Harrison was working on a construction job for a CIA building. A morning after a night out as a young man, he was taking transit readings of a wall that had been built by another contractor. The wall was 4ft thick at the base, and 3.5ft thick at top. He read to the left then right then to the wall, and was 2.5ft off. He did it again, and after the third time was starting to get really worried. He went to his supervisor and told him he had something he needed to tell him, but he wasn¹t going to do it. He asked his supervisor to go take the readings and hoped his own readings had been off. Well, they were not off. What happened next was essentially what might be called Design/Build now. Use existing plans as a coarse roadmap, and get the building built around this wall that was off design plan by 2.5ft. This meant an on-site concrete plant mixing concrete, re-designing and building simultaneously, and sometimes construction had to get ahead of the redesigning, to stay on track. A complex problem that needed to be solved immediately, by a diverse team that was experiencing extreme conflict, and with all team members passionate about the work. The original plans were great; and, unfortunately, were mostly scrapped to get the building constructed once that original error was made. How much time do you need to really make OS work? I had read in one of Harrison¹s books that you should plan on at least two days, and if you have to (for action planning), add another half day. No more than that, cause everyone will be burned out. Why the magic number of two days? Harrison asked me when do most people do their best thinking? In the morning? No, you remember your best thinking in the morning. Your best thinking occurs at night while you sleep, with your subconscious doing the work. So, if a group is raising issues in day one, they will come back on the second day with solutions and understanding how to move forward. So, he recommends two days minimum. That said, he does have stories where groups were successful with one day. How long does it take to cover the basics of OST? A group of over 2000 German psychiatrists were at a four-day annual meeting with the last day in OS. Harrison said that within 15 minutes the group understood how to work within OS. How did he know they had gotten it in such a short time? After 15 minutes, about 200 people were standing up ready to discuss their issues. By the end of the day, they had created working groups around those issues, had written reports, and knew what their next steps needed to be. I know OST works. How do I get a client to buy into it? Don¹t try. Don¹t name any of your techniques (don¹t call it ToP, World Café, Open Space). Just get in there and do it. Ok, I am thinking to myself, that is exactly how I have been operating. Bringing ToP to groups, BES, SFWSCand World Café to SFWSC 2015 Annual Meeting under the heading Dynamic Teaming and Knowledge Networking¹. And if a client comes to you and asks you to help, ask them if they have exhausted all other possibilities. Because they won¹t believe it, and will be willing to try anything like this only if they are in crisis. Never, ever tell a client that you will save them 1700% return on investment. Why? Because they will not believe you (and you especially because you are a woman. Wah!! Side note: my daughter Sabrina, at 4 years old told me that you only get one Wah. A great rule to live by.) Harrison worked with AT&T on a building for an Olympic Village. After ten months, they had final design drawings, with six months to build. The planning committee asked if they would consider moving to the village center. This meant, instead of 5000 projected visitors, they likely would get 75,000 visitors. You don¹t have to be an architect or engineer to understand that a building for 5k would not work for the center of the village. You also don¹t have to be a mathematician to understand that they couldn¹t spend another ten months on design. They had to redesign, and quickly. After two days of OST, they had design drawings for the new building. (What that meant was that everyone who needed to be part of that design, every part of the system, was there participating). Clients are the only ones who know what they need. Going in to a client and telling them that you know the solution to their problem is mad, idiotic, and stupid. Harrison worked with a group of engineers at a telecom company in South America (?). They needed to make changes to their system immediately. Jobs were on the line. They had one day for open space. At 10 o¹clock, the mic was not there, at 11:00 o¹clock, the mic was still not there. Finally at 11:30 o¹clock, the mic shows up. The team got to work and by the end of the day had workable solutions. As an aside, the interesting thing about this team was that a majority of the engineers were women. And the entire team was fairly young, probably in their early thirties. All systems are open. I need to think about this a bit more, since in HSD we discussed open and closed systems. That is really how the discussion of stardust with Harrison came into our conversations. Did I tell you he is an Anglo-Franciscan Priest, aiding in funerals? So maybe what really matters is not whether there are closed systems or not (if this has to become a debate, does it really matter?). Maybe what really matters is the level of complexity, conflict, passion, urgency, and diversity. My final personal reflection (for now): Climate change: I think people are already doing the knowledge networking, through all the conversations, talks, building understanding of the complexity, urgency, passion, diversity, conflict. Could it be helped along by OST? I believe so.
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