Seeking Input/Advice/Learning from Your Experience

[BJ Peters]

Dear OST Colleagues-- I have a potential family owned and operated
client in the construction industry (specifically in the concrete
business) who has experienced significant growth in the past few years.
They are experiencing record volume (to the extent that the owners are
considering dropping some of their backlog, which is at an all-time
high) and record low profit margins. They have historically taken a
divisional approach to how work is done: each crew and foreman does one
piece of the work, either preparation, or rebar, or laying concrete,
etc. There is no one person that manages the entire job and with whom
the customer can interface. This leads to a lot of fingerprinting rather
than joint ownership of the entire project and good customer service.
And the owners may not be choosing the right jobs to give their
attention to.

The owners are identical twin brothers who sometimes have intense
disagreements and who don't spend a lot of time together. There are 3
other "professionals" involved, a controller, an estimator/bidder type,
and my contact, a brother-in-law to the owner who oversees operations.
My contact acts as coach and mentor to his brother-in-law to a large
extent, and as advisor to the others to a limited extent. There are 6
supervisors - most Anglo Americans. There are 6 foremen - most Latin
Americans. Almost all of the 40 crew workers are Latin Americans for
whom English is a distant second language, and most have no more than a
9th or 10th grade education.

My contact believes that unless there is some systemic change in the way
work happens and is managed, the business will continue to suffer. He
also believes it would be beneficial to have everyone in the system
participate in determining how things might be done differently, and he
has experienced good ideas coming from the crew workers informally. He
has read Harrison's User's Guide and believes in the idea of open space,
which is why he approached me in the first place. He has some real
concern, however, about the willingness and ability of these crew
workers - who have minimal formal education, who have limited command of
English, who come from a different ethnic environment, who work in an
industry known for its "macho", hierarchical "do what you're told"
culture - to step to the center of the circle in which sit their peers
and "bosses" and write and post a topic.

While I don't share his level of concern, because I have always seen the
process work, I told him I would use this rich resource, the OSLIST, to
ask for advice and counsel. So I pose the following:

-  How have you successfully used open space with groups that share the
factors described above?
-  What, if any, do you see as the level of risk in doing open space
with this particular group?
-  What might we need to do differently to accommodate the unique
characteristics of this group?
-  Does this seems like a situation where open space would work?

There are definitely other things I see that need to be addressed in
this situation before deciding that open space would be appropriate.
However, addressing those other issues will need to happen only if the
concerns that are foreground for my contact now are answered so that he
can achieve a greater level of comfort.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart - in advance - for your
guidance. --BJ

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