Dear Birgitt,
thank you for your story.
I happied myself with the memories rising from the contacts with you in
the past, all still very alive.
One of the stories I tell is the intervention you offered at the WOSonOS
in Moscow when invited by Raffi Aftendelian, the sponsor, to help in a
wicked situation:
"Please get up, take your chair and recreate our circle."
Folks did exactly that. Stood up, grabbed their chairs and created a
perfect circle so different from the disarrayed one.
It was the selforganized basis for a productive and actionoriented
continuation of our gathering.
This happened in 2006.
At the end of WOSonOS 14 five women from the Ukraine invited us to the
WOSonOS 15 in 2007 in Kyiv.
Today, probably all of us know about Kyiv and I know that new circles
are in the making... also at the WOSonOS 28 in the Basque Country this
September.
Greetings from Berlin
Love and Peace
mmp
Am 06.04.2022 um 00:01 schrieb Birgitt Williams via OSList:
Dear friends and colleagues,
this month I am celebrating 30 years of working with Open Space
Technology. What a grand journey it has been, giving me a vehicle to be
of help to leaders and their organizations...while simultaneously
growing me. I benefited a lot from in depth four day trainings in OST
with Harrison, attending, co-sponsoring seven training sessions in
Canada. I continue to facilitate in the ways that we were originally
taught, with adjustments made to adapt OST for the online environment. I
refuse to facilitate an OST less than four hours, with sessions never
less than one hour.
My two favorite experiences of being a participant in OST meetings: the
first OSONOS in a hotel near Dulles airport in which just over 30 of us
gathered to explore our learning with OST and the excitement of
participating in what was then pioneering work with organizations. The
second of my favorite experiences was the Expanding Our Now event in
Oregon in the mid 90's sponsored and facilitated by Harrison Owen and
Anne Stadler. Five full days within an OST container, exploring and
accomplishing ways to expand our now. Again, about thirty of us came
together, from a number of countries, with profound experiences within
which each of us experienced personal transformation and the expansion
of ourselves, and the expansion of our NOW. We who gathered understood
that the bigger our NOW, the better we facilitated. The power of a
multi-day OST is not often the current offer...however, it is powerful
beyond what can be imagined.
In those early days, I experimented with how short an OST meeting could
be while still retaining what I believed was valuable about OST. Four
hours was the shortest I would go...and in those days I did so as a
means for following up from a multi-day OST for the purpose of moving
topics forward that had been prioritized from the multi-day OST. At the
time, I believed a short (ie 4 hour) OST was valuable only after a
multi-day OST in the organization. I believe that OST was initially
devised for multi-day meetings.
I also experimented with frequent OST meetings in the same organization
ie: monthly. The story goes that the first two monthly OST meetings were
loved by our staff and Board as the newly preferred way to have our
monthly meetings. At the third meeting, I sat and said to those gathered
(about eighty people) that they need what to do so please post their
topics. Everyone stayed seated until someone said "we know what to do,
however, there is something important in this opening that you do that
helps us to determine what we want to post and to get on with it. We
need you to do the opening. It is not sufficient to tell us that we know
what to do." And so I learned that the opening, even with a well
seasoned group, gave benefit from the ritual and was to be included. At
the fourth monthly meeting, as I entered the room, a staff member stood
up and said "we don't want to do these kinds of meetings anymore. We
come up with all sorts of ideas for going forward but after the fact, we
find out what the barriers are to taking action and it is very
disheartening to us". We sat together and talked this over. Two gifts
emerged from this. The first was the concept of the 'givens', providing
the shape of the OST meeting (defining the playground to which people
were invited) by clarifying beforehand any non-negotiable barriers. Once
we worked out the givens together, we successfully had years of OST
meetings. The second gift was the emergence of another meeting method
Whole Person Process Facilitation (WPPF), designed to be used in between
the OST meetings to examine what had come out of the OST meeting and
what would move forward into action..and how. By alternating OST and
WPPF for our monthly meetings, more actionable items moved forward than
would have moved forward with OST alone. And the participants, with the
addition of the givens, and the bi-monthly OST/WPPF meetings were well
satisfied that we had a new way of working...during meetings and then
into the daily life of the organization.
My favorite examples of facilitating OST meetings is difficult to narrow
down. One that stands out as dear to my heart is for Saving Newborn
Lives, a global project of Save the Children USA. Representatives from
eighteen countries participated in the OST that evolved into the
strategic plan and was a significant part of their organizational
transformation from a research program to a service delivery
program.Another one that stands out is an OST for the exploration of
issues and opportunities for housing hard to house marginalized people.
In our Regional government at the time, the idea of one-third of the
spots designated for the homeless themselves was a big challenge
resulting in skepticism about it all working, one-third of the spots
were for government, and one-third of the spots were for non-profit
organizations. The people were in genuine contact with one another, and
a lot got accomplished, much to the surprise of many of the
participants. I heard just last week that one of the task forces
developed from that OST is still active and has been making a big
difference for almost thirty years in getting marginalized people
housed. A testament to sustainability of results from a single OST meeting.
If you know me, you know that I was attracted to the genuine contact
that is experienced in every OST meeting...genuine contact with self,
with other, with the collective, and with
Creator/Spirit/Creation/Conscious Energy. I developed the Genuine
Contact Program and way of working, with Working With Open Space
Technology as one of the essential modules of this program
I appreciate the journey, the blessings inherent in the journey, the
miracles I have witnessed with OST, and its role in my life,
in genuine contact,
Birgitt
Picture*
*
*Birgitt Williams*
*Senior consultant-author-mentor to leaders and consultants *
*Specialist in organizational and systemic transformation, leadership
development, and the power of nourishing a culture of leadership.*
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