Spirituality, Leadership & Management Conference

[Fr Brian S Bainbridge]

For : MICHAEL HOLDSTOCK
Dear Michael,
Thanks for the invite to the conference at the end of this month.
Sorry I can't be there because I am leading a major Open Space for all
the personnel of the Ukrainian Church in Australia and New Zealand at
that same time.  And that will be a challenge.
I - and I think a number of other people in the Open Space Institute of
Australia - am most interested in the "spirit" dimension and its
development in application to companies and organisations in our country,
at least.
Arun Wakhlu, from Pune, India, was here these recent days and delighted
to hear about these developments.
Mike Bell is writing on such matters in north-western Canada especially
as they relate within the development of aboriginal people there.  Alan
Briskin's new book about the Development of Soul in the workplace is
equally focusing in the same direction.
My own experience is that there is a spirit present in so many
organisations that almost never gets any recognition either by the
managers and management or by the participants/employees of the
organisation.  And when that is "allowed out", the results are quite
significantly different from those of the whole system of analytical and
rational/numerical management processes and approaches.
The more you can do in these matters, the better will be our world, I
believe.
I hope I can be in touch and stay in touch after the conference - and
that the OSI and the international OSI's in Canada, the US, and Germany
can all aid this kind of development.
I know Noel Winterburn has some understanding of Open Space, and I
suspect there may well be other Open Space people present at the affair.
An increasing use is being made of the approach, as you probably know,
because it allows and encourages spirit to emerge.  I reckon I have used
it, so far, several hundred times.  Which is a lot.
Cheers and blessings,  Rev Fr BRIAN S. BAINBRIDGE

>From  Sat Sep  5 10:07:57 1998
Message-Id: <SAT.5.SEP.1998.100757.0100.>
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 10:07:57 +0100
Reply-To: kloth at tmn.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.IDBSU.EDU>
From: Chris Kloth <kloth at tmn.com>
Organization: ChangeWorks
Subject: Help for David
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David,

My interest in your situation is in the significance of mandatory
attendance and short time.  Others will rell you that neither time
limits nor mandatory attendence will undermine open space if people are
willing to identify their passions and accept responsibility in the
context of whatever space they have.

What I will look forward to hearing about after your event is how a
group of academics manage to distinguish between their focus on the
issues affecting their work together and their tendency to analyze and
critique the process while they are in it.  When I work with
traditionally trained American academics I often remind them that both
Krishnamurti (in his own words) and Yogi Berra said, "You can't think
and hit!"

One of the things I value about about Open Space is that it is built on
a different epistimology than most of our Eurocentric, reductionist
world view relies on.  What I have experienced is that the least
formally educated Americans I have worked with in Open Space have some
intuitive sense of its potential and will go with it.  What I have also
experienced is that the people who seem to struggle the most either have
a Ph.D!  (notice the judgement? each of us has our own diversity issues,
don't we?

So my request is that you and others who work with Academics share some
of your wisdom and experiences dealing with this group.

Chris