I'd love to hear other stories of great endings....

Julianne Bell julianne at bit.net.au
Sun Jun 11 22:16:08 PDT 2000


T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U Jimbo!

-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]On Behalf Of Jim
Clark
Sent: Monday, 12 June 2000 12:30 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: I'd love to hear other stories of great endings....


The first time I "Opened Space" we had two "endings."

The first was in the room, and the second was at the restaurant that night.
We were staying at the Ritz Carlton in Maui, and had one last night
together after the program ended.

The "first" closing touched me deeply.  I had been preparing for this
meeting for a couple of months (including a quick trip to Toronto to have
an intimate little Training with Birgitt and two others).  I had just been
put in charge of running meetings within our company, and this was the
"biggest" meeting I had done, with the CEO, President and others from the
five different countries we do business in.  In some ways, I had wagered my
future on Open Space working (much because of the postings I had read on
this list serve) and had never really been through an OS event.  The group
had started with much conflict and tension, and the faces that greeted me
on the first day were skeptical, and weary...weather torn comes to mind,
though they all work in doors.  The final day there was a lightness to the
group, and in particular to a couple of the people that had impressed me as
"complainers" at first.  The CEO had been diagnosed with Cancer about a
year and a half prior to this meeting and is following a Macrobiotic diet
to reduce the cancer rather than have surgery.  As our closing circle
merged to a small standing circle of people holding and supporting
eachother (we don't use words like "group hug" in our company) the CEO
said, "I have grown to realize that every day I have on this earth is a
gift, and today seeing you all working together in harmony has made today
one of the greatest of my life."

Then the "second" closing happened that night.  We had the entire
restaurant to ourselves, and ended up staying past closing (the Ritz just
put a guy in the corner to watch us and make sure we didn't break anything,
and closed the place down).

We ended up making a circle, randomly grabbed two other people's hand, and
made a human pretzel.  The goal was to "un-pretzel" ourselves without
letting go.  After about 15 minutes that staff from the Ritz came over and
started to give us suggestions.  In the end we had to "cheat" a couple of
times and ended up in a circle of hand holding, giggling, smirking adults.

As we left, we thought, "Should we give this guy a tip?"  Instead, we sang
the "Thank You Song" from our children's product.  It litterally brought a
tear to the guy's eye.

Now when I do programs with people that work in our children's division, we
often close with the Thank You song, with them inserting people's names as
they look at their eyes...

For those that are interested, here are the lyrics::::

"T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U
Are the letters that spell Thank You

T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U
Spell the magic word that I sing to you

Thank you mother (replaced with someone's name from the group)
Thank you father
Thank you mother
Thank you very much.

Thank you mother
Thank you father
Thank you mother
Thank you very much."

With respect from Afar,

Jimbo



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