Question to experienced OS users

[Jay Vogt]

Greetings:
One of the areas of open space facilitation that fascinates me the most is
how the facilitator works to help integrate the explosion of creativity that
emerges from the event with the ongoing work and life of the institution.

The strategies below make sense when you are integrating Open Space with a
traditional hierarchical organization operating with limited resources,
which, for the time being, is just about everywhere.

My principal strategies include:
1) Negotiating with the leaders, in advance, about how to manage this
explosion of participation.  In one case a senior manager said he'd be happy
with four workgroups developing four good ideas from an open space event.  He
got close to 30.  Senior people often are unprepared to deal with the level
of participation and creative success they experience in open space.

2) Thinking always about how to "bound the space" without "closing it."  For
me this means clarifying what the client most wants from the event so that I
can then provide, up front, discussion templates, convergence strategies, and
other aids, as appropriate, to help groups channel their creativity into a
form that the organization can relate to.

3) Negotiating with senior management, in advance, what issues working groups
must address in any proposals they develop to secure senior  management's
support.  In other words, I ask senior management to define the essential
elements of a proposal to get a YES from them.

4) Negotiating, in advance, any decision process and timetable by which
senior management will review and approve/disapprove these ventures.  The
goal, by the way, is that the upfront decision criteria and process, and the
support process for emerging leaders, are so clear that management ends up
saying yes to just about everything.

5) Planning, in advance, how to communicate these givens to the participants
before and during the open space  (I have never had a participant object to
these clarifications - in fact they are grateful that management has done its
thinking about what it can support and can't support AHEAD of time)

6) Planning, beforehand, what steps the organization is committed to taking
after the event to coach and support emergent leaders and ideas (these steps
can always be expanded during the event as well).

These are issues that I raise with every open space client, although these
steps are not needed in all situations.  I am motivated, as you are, by the
desire to do  work that is not "lip service," or perceived as "lip service."
 Life is too short.

Good luck, Jay