Calling the Circle

[owen]

At 03:46 PM 1/14/99 -0800, you wrote:
>There is a group that wants to get what people normally expect out of a
>traditional strategic planning process (i.e., vision, mission, SWOT, goals,
>objectives, etc.) to meet government funding requirements. My feeling is that
>calling the circle together in open space will meet all these needs. But I
>don't
>know this from personal experience. What would be a theme, or focus question
>for
>an open space that might allow all those strategic plan elements to surface?
>Any
>experience in using OST for strategic planning?
>
>This is meant to be a generative question. No lectures please.
>
>Don Ferretti
>
>______________________________ Reply Separator

Don, I rather suspect that Open Space has been used more for "strategic
planning" (formal and informal) than possibly any other use, certainly in
my experience. When stating a theme, I tend to get a little folksy as in
"What are the issues and opportunities for building a business that we
would all like to be a part of."  When there are definite constraints,
those need to be clearly stated up front so folks don't get frustrated --
but if the constraints are multiple -- it may be that there is not
sufficient space to do anything new and useful. So don't even think about
Open Space.  Boeing Aircraft used Open Space to do a strategic plan for
building doors, as on airplanes. You can get some of the details on the OSI
Website in the Atwork article by Paul Gleiberman.

The major problem I have found is that in Open Space, you end up doing a
lot more than planning. For example at Rockport Shoes, we not only got a
pretty good handle on where they were going, but actually developed a whole
new product that was ready for production by the time we left. At the same
time, they did a major fix on their inventory system. Such things can
become really problematical if the system isn't ready to rock and roll, as
it were. In the case of Rockport, they figured the two items mentioned
would add $24,000,000 to their bottom line each year (minimum) so the pain
was lessened to a degree.

Was that a lecture?

Harrison
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