Concluding Open Space

Parkinson & Gibeault dgp at cyberus.ca
Sun Aug 23 14:33:25 PDT 1998


Hello Michael and everyone,

In June you responded to my report on a different way of converging in OS.
You were then "catching up with e-things after being gone". Well, I am doing
the same thing now that the post holiday folly is winding down.

First, thank you for your comments. I like your suggested question and
intend to use it in my next OS in September. It will be the first time I use
the tree metaphore for convergence with a large group (250 people). I will
be co-facilitating with Jacqueline Pelletier a long time facilitator who
also trained with Harrison Owen. We will report on how it went.  If other
people have used this approach particularly with large groups, I would
welcome their comments and suggestions from their experience.

2.Dot vote: Because the time investment question gets dealt with in action
plan discussion groups to which people participate, I use the dot voting to
give the organization another piece of information: independantly of where
people chose to invest time, what do they think the overall priorities for
the organizations are. The reason being is that people may feel more
comfortable and competent to contribute to an issue but may want to
communicate what they think (priorities) about the big picture.
Participants  have in fact asked to make that distinction.

Look forward to more discussion on all this,

Diane Gibeault

Diane Gibeault & Associé.e.s/Associates
191 Juliette Ave. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1K 2T5
(613) 744-2638    Fax  (613) 744- 3347

Michael Herman wrote:

> hello everyone,
>
> just catching up with e-things after being gone...
>
> special thanks to diane for taking action on our conversations re:
> converging and for reporting it...i'd add a couple of little details by
> way of question, suggestion, concern....
>
> 1.  the notion of priority setting and the question you used to open the
> last day seems to have the potential to allow an escape into planning
> mode and out of passion+responsibility mode...what do think of the more
> blunt question..."what are you going to do now?" or "what can you do
> now?"...still intending that these individual actions would be lead to
> the emergence of priorities?
>
> 2.  recently was present for a dots-voting session...i questioned the
> strength of the passion+responsibility link in this particular session i
> was in and thought the link could be tightened by asking folks to take
> dots in proportion to the amount of time they expected to invest in
> doing the actions being voted on....for example, at my meeting (about 30
> volunteer leaders at my church) i would have suggested taking one voting
> dot for every hour per week a person expected to work on these projects
> over the next six months.
>
> as you can see, my concern is to get the most honest view on day three
> of what can really happen going forward, what people are really ready to
> do and not just what would be nice...that said, i also really like the
> idea of going through the opening process again, to demonstrate that the
> opening/questioning process is an everyday working thing, not just an
> annual planning thing.
>
> thanks again,
>
> michael herman



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