A Story from OZ

[Nigel Rawlins]

Hello Harrison,

I was quite taken aback having been noticed, Re: A Story from OZ.
Brian Bainbridge emailed me about you quoting my piece. It was a
strange case and I must admit I was worried that the guys involved
might not even be able to read.

The story was quite interesting because I was embarrassed by my
charging the group quite a lot for a half day session- $800, it's a
bit more than I would normally charge, but being a BHP subsidiary
(BHP was one of Australia's largest companies, pre e-commerce days)
and the manager didn't blink so I assumed that they could afford it.

The immediate return was a very obvious $8000, a ten times increase
based on time, productivity and materials. The manager and I worked
it out after the session. The $100K I extrapolated from there, over
time, possibly longer than a year though. So I think they got the
best part of the bargain after all.

One of the big problems I come across is the question of value and
how much we should charge for an open space facilitation, after all,
we just sit there (not really). What's it worth if holding the space
saves them $1000's? Yet nothing happens unless the group takes
responsibility and does something because it is important to them.

It's pretty hard to put a value on Open Space, but in this case it
was black and white.

Unfortunately the last OS I did was a failure of sorts, even in
light of the principle: whatever happens was the only thing that
could happen.

In this case, on reflection, it revealed a group of professionals
(with extremely low productivity) with virtually no commitment to
take the responsibility to make things change.

A powerful lesson I learned was the understanding of how OS would
help identify where this group was at that time, and what might need
to happen to increase their productivity in light of their purpose.

I was actually so angry afterwards that I suggested to the regional
manager in charge of the group that he might be better off sacking
the lot! I guess it's what's refered to as finding the dead moose. I
sort of picked it up and threw it at him!

I've since been writing out all the principles 100 times.. I must believe...

I now see an even more powerful role for OSpace.

I write a weekly business strategy newsletter and decided to write
up the story of my "failed" open space. Rather than emailing you the
text, if you are interested it can be found at:

http://www.13thbeach.com.au/bsr/archives/bsr2000/bsr600.html

Thanks again for your recognition.

cheers
Nigel Rawlins

Harrison Owen wrote:
>
> The OSI-OZ Newsletter came out recently (and the wizard in this
> case is Brian Bainbridge) with the following story. I hope they
> won't mind me passing it along here.
>
> *******************************************************************
>
> NigelRawlins <nrawlins at netspace.net.au>
>
> I ran a half day workshop with blue collar metal workers. Half day
> on “Dying for customer and company"
> The manager was worried about health and safety. However once it
> started there were a number of issues that
> came up but the most important one was about cutting the metal and
> storing the offcut and where they could find it next time they
> needed it.
> As they say in Open Space Technology, be prepared to be surprised.
>
> This decision probably saved them over 100K over the year. Solved
> because they had the opportunity to raise an issue of concern to
> themselves and solve it their way. Mind you they had a manual
> saying how they should do it.
> These were pretty tough guys with low education but they excelled
> using this process and then went on to tell visiting US
> consultants and senior managers that this was the best day's
> training they had ever been involved in. They learned, as many do
> in OS, that if something has to be done they have to take the
> responsibility to make it happen.
>