OS in Asia

[Michael M Pannwitz]

Dear Jimbo,
what a great report. I felt myself present.
To your questions:
1. Yes. I have had 2 occasions this year. One was a group of some 60
experts from diverse fields discussing new approaches to get youth
into the labor market. The other was 100 people at their annual
retreat dealing with issues and opportunities in their work with
children and young people in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
(north of Berlin).
In both cases people merged in one case 3 and in another 4 topics. It
did not seem to me an attempt to combine all the topics but to work
on a topic that was common to the 3 and in the other case the 4
topics that were not in the list of most heavily weighted and that
they had a passion for. It seemed like a major breakthrough to me
that after 2 and in the other case even 3 days of intensive work they
had this new energy at that point. They even went out and
selforganised posters etc. to go through the whole process of
"associated topics" and "further suggestions" and giving a new title
to the merged issues.
To my reading, these two "new " topics were central to the theme of
the spaces and some substantial work has been done since the open
space in the two areas.
My observation is that if you play down the idea of "voting" and "top
vote getters" which makes it look to many like a contest with winners
and losers and emphasize that this is an exercise to find out where
energy is highest, hot issues, and that through the step "identifying
associated issues" (all issues turn up again in this step,
guaranteed) nothing gets lost you might get less of a drive to
combine stuff.
2. I have not had 7 people propose an issue. I have had 2, they came
into the circle as a team each making a couple of statements. One
idea I had is to ask all of the conveners to enter the circle and
state their names (how did they communicate with each other during
the phase where people post issues?)
Great going and stimulating stuff
Hope you and some of your colleagues can make it to OSonOS in October
in Berlin. We have 85 people registered as of today and there is room
for 100. More at www.openspaceworld.org/osonos.html
A grand opportunity to get more of an exchange on your experience.
Its great to see how it works worldwide.
Greetings from Berlin
michael



On Sun, 28 May 2000 10:06:30 GMT, Jim Clark wrote:

>Greetings from Formosa,
>
>I've been using OS for a number of meetings in the company I work for
>(operations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan) and thought I would share a
>story with you all.
>
>Last week we had a two and a half day meeting with half a day of follow up
>presentations from previous meetings and about 2 days of OS.  The
>presentation day went pretty well.  We had had a meeting with our top sales
>managers and the people who deliver the services they sell to come up with
>some ways of improving the service we deliver to our customers (we are in
>the English language learning business).  They came up with about 24 ideas,
>and we used the "hot dot" convergence to boil those down to about 9 key
>arenas.  The service people then had about 2 months to follow up on those
>ideas, checking for feasibility, etc. and they gave their reports on the
>afternoon of the first day.
>
>Very well done and well received.  Many things were agreed to by the end of
>the first day, and some hot topics were pushed to the next day "to talk
>about in Open Space."
>
>That night after dinner we sang Karoke songs till the wee hours.  Energy
>was going well.
>
>Saturday morning, we were getting the room ready for the opening circle
>when I got a call from the President of our company, who suggested that we
>take an hour break from 11:00 to 12:00 to listen to Taiwan's new president
>Chen Shui Bien's, inaugural address.  We weren't going to start the opening
>session until 10:00 and I thought it better not break up the flow, so we
>did some discussions about all the infomation that had been presented the
>day before, watched the speech, and had an early lunch.
>
>I surprised myself with how calmly I made the switch in the flow.
>
>We ended up with evening news about 7:15 that night.  This group was very
>diverse, with about 35 people from all three areas (HK, Japan, and Taiwan)
>and some customers.  The customers were only invited for the first day of
>OS, but were not invited for the convergence.  I tried to encourage our
>company to let them stay, but they were concerned about them being there
>when we were talking abou how to spend money....
>
>We spent the early evening getting the Book together and I went to bed at
>10:00 p.m. (which in Taiwan is like going to bed at 7:30 for people in N.
>America as we all stay up pretty late here).
>
>The next morning we did morning news, and it sounded like there might be a
>few more topics that people either hadn't thought of, or were uncomfortable
>of bringing up with the customers around.  I gave a minute or so for people
>to post any new topics, and nobody did.  We passed out the books, and
>started doing the convergence when two topics did get added, which was
>cool.
>
>Something interesting happened, and if you've read this far,
>congratulations.  The group started putting topics together so that those
>that weren't top vote getters would be connected to a TVGer.  I let it go
>for a while until it hit me that they were trying to make sure that "nobody
>lost."  I reemphasized that those that weren't TVGers would still be in the
>document, and people could still follow their passion to make those things
>come true, but we were looking for those areas where the group has passion
>and energy and urgency to get things planned this afternoon.  They were
>reassured, and the combining fury slowed down.
>
>The groups did fine in the planning and we had a wonderful closing circle,
>in which a number of people shared their feelings of uncertainty leading up
>to the meeting, and how happy they had come anyway.
>
>We have been asked to use OS for three more major meetings in our company
>in the next four months, and I'm quite certain there will be more.  It does
>give me great pleasure that people in the company are asking for OS, rather
>than it being me that suggests it.
>
>So the two questions I have are:
>1.  Have any of you come accross groups that want to combine all of the
>topics after voting?
>
>2.  In coming up with topics, I've found that the Chinese participants
>(particularly first timers) will have a number of names on the topic,
>sometimes up to 7 people.  I now ask that if more than one person proposes
>the topic, that one person takes the responsibility to be the point person,
>and that the circle that person's name.  Have others come accross a similar
>situation, and if so, any other responses.
>
>With respect from Afar,
>
>Jimbo





Michael M Pannwitz
Draisweg 1
12209 Berlin, Germany
FON +49 - 30-772 8000     FAX +49 - 30-773 92 464
www.michaelMpannwitz.de

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