Process question

owen owen at tmn.com
Thu Jan 21 06:20:22 PST 1999


>But has anyone ever used a metaphor as a pathway to prioritizing. What images
>did you use besides a house or building of some kind?
>
>Thanks.
>
>Don Ferretti
>
>______________________________ Reply Separator
What you are suggesting is interesting, but personally, I have never had
any problem getting people to respond to a very simple question -- what are
the most important issues for you?  Most often I use a prioritization
proceedure borrowed from Andre Delbec of Nominal Group Porcess fame. Each
person is asked to identify the 10 most important issues for them, rank
them, and assign a value of 10 to their most important (9,8,7,6,....) The
ballots are collected, the scores are added, and you come out with a set of
weighted scores that neatly separates out the hot from the not so hot. The
same thing can be done with an electronic version of the ballot which is
available from TASC (See my User's Guide Chapter 10 for details).

Leaving the mechanics aside, my thought would always be to go for the
simplest way of doing things that works. The use of metaphor is intriguing,
but is it essential? Over the years I have always tried to think of one
more thing NOT to do. If I don't do it, and everything works out just fine
-- so much the better.

At a slightly deeper level, I am firmly convinced that the reason Open
Space works is that it is quite simply the process of self-organization in
operation. Organizing  a self-organizing process, no matter how minimal the
intervention, turns out to un-necessary at the least, and usually
counter-productive. Anyhow, I am not suggesting that your notion of
metaphor is without utility -- I just wonder is this trip necessary.

Harrison

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