os topic report

[Barry Owen]

Greetings folks . . . Inviting you to visit a site I have been working on for the
past week and requesting your input. If you enjoy sharing stories about Open Space
and are interested in contributing to this site please email me at
barryo at bellsouth.net
The site is:

The Global Open Space Institute

I am building this site with information that comes to me from the Open Space
community . . . and am open to any and all suggestions as to content and/or
organization . . . My hope is to eventually have that site "acting" like a virtual
open space event . . . I know I've got a ways to go, but here's a start.

As of yet, my only investment in this site is my time . . . I am using a free
web-site from Geocities and have (yesterday) signed up with Amazon.com to create a
"bookstore" at the site which may very well generate some income (for when the site
is no longer free).

Anyhow, Happy surfing :-)

Oh yea: I have put this posting from Birgitt on the OSI Canada page by way of
demonstrating how easy it is to update that site . . . hmmm . . . OK . . . I'll shut
up now.

b

Birgitt Bolton wrote:

> We recently had a meeting of the Open Space Institute of Canada meeting. As
> always the meeting is held in a one day open space. The theme was something
> like "New Learnings and Developments" in Open Space and for the Institute.
> Whenever I get an opportunity like this, I usually post a topic to discuss
> the "Ongoing Open Space Organization".  Possibly like a dog with a bone
> that I won't let go of. However, I do tend to follow my passion and am
> prepared for now to keep taking responsibility for creating opportunities
> for this discussion. It excites me. So, I thought I'd put our report from
> our group here on the list and see if I can get the discussion expanded,
> enhanced here. If you have any comments, insights, questions for
> consideration, I'd love to receive them.
>
> Open Space Institute Meeting February 11, 1998
> Open Space Report #
>
> Name of Issue or Opportunity: Current Learnings about on-going Open Space
>
> Name of Leader: Birgitt Bolton
>
> Names of Participants:
> Eleanor Belfry-Lyttle
> Barry Owen
> Mark Brubacher
> Larry Peterson
> Ellen
>
> Describe Issue or Opportunity:
>
> Birgitt introduced the topic by speaking about her ongoing passion for Open
> Space as a means of being in organization together. Aside from her
> experience at Wesley which she has talked about a lot in the past in terms
> of the ingredients that seem to be essential for on-going Open Space as a
> way of organizational life, she has been working with four smaller
> organizations who committed to working towards organizational
> transformation beginning with an Open Space event and commitment to working
> to being organizations operating in ongoing open space.
>
> The key elements in each organization have been:
> 1.      understanding the need for change, to operate in a different way to
> capture the most that each employee can give of their knowledge, creativity
> and responsibility for getting the work of the place done
> 2.      formal leadership committed to working in a different way, one in which
> they are willing for people to operate in cross functional work teams, and
> in which participative decision making is accepted
> 3.      whether the organization is operating in a hierarchy or not doesn't seem
> to matter to being able to work in ongoing open space
> 4.      working with leadership before the first open space to prepare them for
> what is likely to emerge, how to capture it after the event, how not to get
> in the way of all the passion/responsibility. Despite this coaching ahead
> of time, leadership always goes through a state of great panic once the
> organization really starts operating in a different way and everything
> feels out of control. The coaching ahead is a critical ingredient in having
> leadership trust the consultant after the event to hang in with the process
> and continue to learn about new ways of leadership
> 5.      leadership learning through a "training" program about Open Space is
> essential. The one done by Harrison or the one by Larry and Birgitt. It
> seems that this is more effective and has greater impact for the
> organization if the learning opportunity takes place after the Open Space
> event and once it is evident that the old way of doing things just won't
> work anymore
> 6.      each one of the leaders that Birgitt is working with says the most
> important ingredient for them is the ongoing coaching/mentoring as they hit
> their rough spots and spots of uncertainty
> 7.      IN EACH AND EVERY EXAMPLE INCLUDING THE ONE AT WESLEY, ABOUT THREE TO
> FOUR MONTHS AFTER THE FIRST OPEN SPACE EVENT AND ONCE SOME OF THE NEW WAYS
> OF OPERATING ARE IN PLACE, THERE IS A REVOLT BY STAFF THAT IS VERY LARGE
> AND AWFUL FOR THE LEADERSHIP. Even though staff want the change at the
> start, they rebel and get very angry at the leadership. In all cases it is
> about this time that leadership ends up in tears, wondering if they have
> made a BIG mistake, doubting themselves as competent leaders.
> COACHING/MENTORING/HAND HOLDING from the consultant is critical at this
> time just as the midwife holding the hand of the woman in labour when
> things start to get really bad just before birth. It is exactly the time
> not to try to fight what is happening, and the most important thing the
> coach can do is to reassure and to tell stories of how "normal" this stage
> is. When everyone gets through this stage, staff start talking about how
> angry they were but how they now get it. And leaders talk about their anger
> at Open Space but when asked if they would do it over again, always say
> that they WOULD. In every case they said that although the transition had
> been very painful, that the stuff was out in the open that had always been
> under the surface and had always gotten in the way (ie: Dead Moose stuff)
> 8.      In establishing commitment to operating in ongoing open space, we should
> not just rely on people's somehow getting it, but to actually bring the
> changes to the awareness, awakeness, conscious level by doing things at the
> end of an Open Space event like covenanting/contracting as a group to meet
> in person or on-line 4 months after the event to give feedback about
> progress to date on the actionable items. This does a shift from reporting
> back to "the boss" to holding each other accountable. Which has marvelous
> spin-off effects. In Birgitt's experience no "champion" of an
> issue/opportunity has ever not been prepared with a report back at the
> scheduled time. No "supervision" /memos/reminders were necessary along the
> way, it just happened. Amazing thing—people taking their own responsibility
> J
> 9.      To Birgitt's chagrin, after all of the gains made after almost nine
> months in each of these four organization's and that each of the four is
> basically operating in ongoing open space and despite all the coaching,
> only now are the leaders asking questions about "what is open space
> anyway".  They don't know they are in it.
> 10.     "Givens" must be truthful, known. They can be reviewed regularly for
> relevancy ie: once a year. They need to be communicated to everyone.
>
> Birgitt then did a diagram from one of Harrison's more recent teachings
> about what is happening in an ongoing Open Space organization.
>
> Discussion brought out the following key points:
> 1.      the book The Wisdom of Winning Teams by Katzenbach and Smith (Harper
> Business, 1993)  is recommended by Larry as giving  more insight to what is
> likely happening with the teams that emerge and why organizations that
> operate in this way are successful
> 2.      Work groups doing the regular work of the organization can continue
> through the established hierarchy for tasks that are time limited and
> known. Teams in this instance help each other work individually better.
> 3.      If there is a performance challenge, use Open Space to get the
> cross-functional team, the strategy, the plan of  moving to success. NOTE:
> these performance challenges are coming faster and faster within
> organizations so it makes sense to use more and more Open Space events
> within an organization. Does this cause the organization to shift into
> being an ongoing Open Space organization??? Suggestions of this are in
> Harrison's 1995 book Millennium Organization. Likely he has much more
> recent and deeper thinking about this.
> 4.      Both the organization and the work are EMERGENT bounded by passion and
> responsibility---not just at an OS event, but ongoing in an OS
> organization. And this isn't always comfortable for people who maybe have
> patterns of complaining, blaming the "boss" when they really get that they
> are part of the solution and have to exercise RESPONSIBILITY.
> 5.      None of the four principles of Open Space should stand alone. We hear
> people quoting "whatever happens is the only thing that could have" when
> they haven't exercised their responsibility about something. There is in
> fact an excuse for very bad human behaviour when the principles are handled
> this way separately. It seems critical that they come in one package, one
> whole, always with a reminder that they are bounded by Passion and
> Responsibility.
> 6.      We want to refer to organizations using ongoing open space as Open Space
> organizations and see if we can get this term to be used rather than
> Millennium organization because probably there are going to be a thousand
> varieties from different authors very shortly and prolifically about their
> version of millennium organization and this is going to get very confusing.
> We have something special in open space and shouldn't hesitate to promote
> these words for universal acceptance.
> 7.      Ongoing Open Space organizations in their ideal state can be self
> organizing systems. Open Space is the key. We have something HUGE to offer
> to the literature and practice of the world that is interested in Self
> organizing systems. We need to keep working at practice sites so that we
> have demonstrations, not just theory.
> 8.      Should space ever be closed?? In an ongoing OS organization there is one
> ongoing space that is held Open by the formal leader and is not closed.
> Simultaneously, there are many smaller spaces ( 1 day, two day, 3 hour)
> spaces that are opened and closed within the organization.  Closure
> acknowledges endings and beginnings. It acknowledges breathing in and out.
> It acknowledges the ebb and flow of doing and being, doing and letting go.
> Action/reflection cycle.
> 9.      "givens" should be reviewed when the "shift" begins.
> 10.     Leaders need coaching/mentoring to be learn to handle creative U-turns
> that seem to always emerge in Open Space.
>
> I hope that I have captured the essence of the discussion and respectfully
> submit this to you as a record and as an invitation to keep the dialogue on
> this one going as we each keep learning more. If we put our individual
> learnings on this together, we may have some really critical information
> that will benefit many people.
>
> Birgitt


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