Dear Birgitt,
one of the preconditions for selforganisation to show up (and for
potential engagement and action and myriads of other things) is
"voluntary participation".
The invitation, coming from the sponsoring organisation, is one way of
supporting voluntary participation.
It sounds not that komplex but it is tricky, since the sponsor usually
is quite interested to have everyone invited to actually show up. When I
suggest to the sponsor to ask folks accepting the invitation to actually
respond (so that it is clear how many chairs are needed and enough food
is around and what size space is needed, etc.) the remark often is "Does
that not make it more difficult for them to come?" It might but it is
not intended to be a barrier. It is, however, just about the first
selforganized step that a potential participant is invited to take in
this particular process.
In some organisations, such as a German public school, civil servant
teachers might and can object to receiving or having to respond to an
invitation for an event that takes place during their regular working
hours. Their position is that they are required by their oath to attend
activities that fall within their regular working hours whether they
like it or not. In fact, they might even say that liking or not liking
to attend is not a choice they have, its their duty.
In one particular instance, the principal offered the choice of
attending the ost-event or choosing another task in the school while the
event took place in the school.
I wonder if OST provides conditions for engagement once people show up.
Is it not the force of selforganisation that tends to show up in OST
events, especially when the often mentioned prerequisites have been
given attention to? Does the force of selforganistion "intervene" for
engagement or passion or chaos or structure or love or participation or
whatever desireables or undesireables? Is its working fathomable?
Considering the experience of the repeatable and predictable experiment
of a properly set up OST-event, conducted zillions of times, I suggest
we just continue repeating it... focusing on the prerequisites (thats
part of the experimental set-up).
Greetings from sunny Berlin
mmp
On 15.08.2016 02:37, Birgitt Williams via OSList wrote:
Harold,
thank you for this considered contribution about engagement including
the links. I agree that OST does not guarantee engagement. It does
provide the conditions for engagement once people show up. It is then up
to people to exercise their personal leadership as to whether they are
just going to participate...or to engage. I am less clear about this
business of not forcing people to show up. It gets to the question of
'when is an invitation not really an invitation?'.
Warmly,
Birgitt
On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 3:50 PM Harold Shinsato via OSList
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
Thanks Birgitt, Harrison, Eva for this question!
Engagement is considered very valuable. There's been an annual
gallup poll around U.S. employee engagement levels, and the latest
one shows it's only 32%. They're participating as employees, but
they're not really showing up.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/188144/employee-engagement-stagnant-2015.aspx
Gallup has estimated the cost of this lack of engagement is "$450
billion to $550 billion in lost productivity per year".
http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/162953/tackle-employees-stagnating-engagement.aspx
I'm not the origin of this story, and I doubt it really started with
the formal use of Open Space in bringing Agile practices into
software organizations (thank you Daniel Mezick!), but engagement is
really considered critical in getting a successful and lasting shift
towards agile processes and an agile mindset.
Although Open Space doesn't guarantee engagement, it does prevent a
critical factor in this lack of engagement. Which is enforced
participation. Open Space helps show how space actually is open for
people to step forward for what they love as an act of service
(thank you Peggy Holman for showing me this way of thinking about
Open Space).
Unless we offer an authentic invitation to engage, one that is
welcoming as well as being an invitation we can safely decline, the
most we can get is their butts into the room. We won't get their hearts.
Can we coerce engagement? Full engagement? My sense is no. Maybe we
can trick people, but engagement by fraud isn't real engagement.
Harold
On 8/10/16 10:05 AM, Eva P Svensson via OSList wrote:
Hi Birgitt and al,
great distinction, I so often experience that there are great
engagement in an Open Space Technology meeting and also in the
follow up meeting afterwards but when it comes to action planning
people suddenly start to look down, the voices becomes more silent
etc and it’s difficult to get the energy for actions.
I will here after talk about both participation and engagement and
what that means for the participants and the sponsors.
:o)
Eva
Bästa hälsningar
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10 aug. 2016 kl. 16:38 skrev Birgitt Williams via OSList
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
Harrison...one of the aspects of you that I love is that when you
participate, you engage.
I witness many people participating and appearing engaged. And
yet upon probing after a participatory meeting, engagement was
not sufficient to create follow on action. I feel that this
distinction between having a participatory meeting and having the
conditions for engagement is important somehow.
Blessings,
Birgitt
On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 5:52 PM Harrison Owen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Love to participate… and engage. So what so I do?
ho
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*From:*OSList [mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] *On Behalf
Of *Birgitt Williams via OSList
*Sent:* Tuesday, August 9, 2016 8:49 AM
*To:* OS list
*Subject:* [OSList] a substantial difference
Dear friends and colleagues,
One important question is "do you want to participate?".
Hence participatory methods.
Another important question is "do you want to engage?". A
totally different question with a different energy, both in
its inquiry and its answer.
The question that we align ourselves with as facilitators
makes a substantial difference in our approach. I am
wondering about the impact on our outcomes.
Make a great day!
Birgitt
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