A Story from OZ

[Denis Hitchens]

>over time from immediate value to post OS event value.  This matches the
>basic concepts of "dissipative systems". My thought is that Open Space
>could be used as a "snap shot" of the real culture systems in an

Rich,

my understanding of dissipative in the context of ffednoldcas-os is the
"sucking up" of energy not the wasting of it.

In fact, as an independent witnes to one of Nigel's other OS's (for my
client) I can say clearly that the value is growing the further we get from
the OS.  The "system with delay" context is that it has taken the "100
monkeys" quite a time to get their head around the changes illuminated in
their OS.

Now come to think of it, it is happening in a second case (a different
region of the same org) in much the same path, though entirely separate org
problems in each case.

So our experience is quite what I first considered "dissipative" to mean.
These people are now calling up more energy to do the job and doing it far
better.  In the longest case, we have a journey of increasing their Gross
Income by a factor of 8 and their profitability from breakeven to 20% of
Gross Income.  At the half way mark we are more than one-third there, nicely
following the expected exponential.


Cheers

>From  Thu Apr 13 22:48:21 2000
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Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 22:48:21 -0400
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From: Birgitt Williams <birgitt at mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: A Story from OZ
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Hi Rich,
I am interested in understanding how "value" is measured. How "value" is
defined.

I am also curious about how you are defining Open Space Technology. Are you
measuring a one day event, a two day event?  It is my experience that value
over time increases when an event is at least two days and for sure, when
convergence and action planning is done. There is longer retention of
benefits when a report form is used that is a bit guided. Many of us use
this. In my travels, I have found that there are many many variations of
what people are calling Open Space Technology and I wonder how you have
handled this in your research.

And was Open Space Technology ever intended as a "single use" intervention
and should this be the basis of measurement?

As you know, I am a strong supporter of the Open Space Organization, (which
is not a MODEL or a prescription and every Open Space Organization is
different). There are some ingredients in common to be attended to. And the
use of Open Space is frequent within the organization as well as informing
the entire management style and corporate culture. When Open Space is used
frequently, there is no decline in value over time. Sometimes the whole
organization destructs but this is not a decline in value over time the way
I see it. De-structure is needed before Re-structure, Con-struction can
occur.

Even if an organization is not an Open Space Organization, and simply uses
Open Space Technology more than once --I think the findings would be that
value doesn't decline over time. For example an organization who does a big
Open Space Technology meeting and then from that meeting divides the results
into "do it", "clarify it" and "open space it". The latter results in
several shorter and smaller Open Space Technology meetings to get actionable
items moving forward hopefully then turning them into "do its" or "clarify
its" which of course in turn lead to more "open space its" and of course
this is an endless creative cycle and I'm not sure at what point the
research would get its snapshot :-)

I look forward to finding out more from you.

Kindest regards,
Birgitt



Birgitt Williams
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effectiveness consultants

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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]On Behalf Of
rnorris at DIGITAL.NET
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2000 7:21 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: A Story from OZ


This is great -- but for me
>the math would be harder then the Open Space. But there was a time when I
>did an Open Space for a $300 million company -- small but quite well known.
>The CFO was furious. We basically closed the company for two whole days. He
>figured it cost him a Million a day. Anyhow, but the end of the first day,
>in addition to a whole mess of other stuff, the folks had designed a new
>product (including manufacturing and marketing plans) and re-designed their
>inventory system. The CFO figured the first was worth $24 million a year,
>and the second saved $4 million.

************************************************************************

Harrison,
Was this The Rockport Company?  Is so, may I use your comments as a part of
my research paper.  Not much reported on value in monetary terms that I can
see from my data.  A whole bunch of other types of repoted value though.

One trend I have noticed in the data, is a large fall off in reported value
over time from immediate value to post OS event value.  This matches the
basic concepts of "dissipative systems". My thought is that Open Space
could be used as a "snap shot" of the real culture systems in an
organization and not the "masked" culture systems that orgs would believe
they are. Maybe I am seeing a superb potential in OS for conducting ongoing
and fluid org cultural gap analysis (conducted in OS), particularly if
organizations reach a state of continious change...at the speed of thought?
This "real time" gap analysis could be useful to help see the places where
the loss of energy (dissipation) is or may be influencing or impacting the
stability of the org.   OS could be a prepetual temperature guage to
forecast if the organization is cooking or may possibly be cooking at or
about right temperature...simmering, boiling etc. for the org to change.

Come to think of it, I've never been in a stable organization and don't
know of any except those that are now dead (entropy set in).


Rich Norris
Satellite Beach, Florida
(407)779-0531
<rnorris at digital.net>