Positive space invaders

Harrison Owen owenhh at mindspring.com
Thu Mar 9 05:46:51 PST 2000


At 07:34 AM 3/9/00 +1000, you wrote:
>G'day.
>
>I recently facilitated an open space event within a work group in Malaysia
>
>( My thanks to the people who gave me encouragement and ideas prior to the
>event)
>
>The theme was to do with self awareness - the impact that the self has on
>the organization and vice versa.
>
>At evening news on the first day there were some rumblings
>
>At morning news on the second day there was outright space invasion.
>
>The group (about 15 people) decided that they no longer wanted to talk
>about the issues etc. related to self awareness - they wanted to "do it".
>Specifically they wanted to work on giving and receiving feedback.
************************************
Wonderful set of questions for which I am sure there are no absolute answers --
but here's a shot

It doesn't sound to me like you really had space invaders. Sounded like the
whole group. For me the critical thing is to keep the space open so that one
person,or a small group,does not railroad the total group into doing something
that they really don't care to do. However, if everybody wants to go, its a go.
There have been plenty of instances in my experience when somebody says "I
think it would be fun to ...." My response is always, "Sounds like a great
idea, why don't you post an issue and create a group to do just that" If it
then turns out that everybody in the total participant body joins that group --
that is their choice.

Open Space was never supposed to be a prision of methodology and "ought tos"
Just the opposite. It must be a time/space when people can intelligently and
intentionally follow their passion -- do what they want/need to do. The only
caveat is REMEMBER THE LAW OF TWO FEET! When folks can't use their two feet
because somebody is coercing them, you are in trouble. If they can't use their
two feet because they don't want to, or are afraid to, they are in trouble. I
admit, it is sometimes a fine line between these two things -- but hey life's a
puzzle.

One question to you, however -- what would have happened had you not designed
the inter-action process, and suggested that they do?  I think it is quite
likely that they would have figured it out,  and in any event would have done
an awful lot of inter-action in the process of figuring out what they wanted to
do. Would their design have been as elegant as yours? Maybe. Maybe not. But it
would have been theirs.

Good show!


Harrison


Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854
USA
phone 301-469-9269
fax 301-983-9314
website
www.mindspring.com/~owenhh
Open Space Institute websites
www.openspaceworld.org
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