OST story: there must be better ways to make a living!

Wed Jan 17 01:24:35 PST 2001

Colleagues:

I have stared into the abyss and come away with a new appreciation of
goat farming as an occupation.

What a day I had.

Now I've dealt with all kinds of space invaders before, most of them are
benign, or only mildly ornery.  But today I had my first encounter with
a space invader who grabbed the mic and used the following words:

"This isn't working for us.  Whet we need to do right now is bring a
table into the middle of this circle, get someone to figure out how to
address all these issues and talk about them around the circle!"

It wasn't just a small intervention.  It was a show stopping, riot
inciting, process-scrambling mother of all interventions.  It resulted
in 68 people stopping dead in their tracks and considering the idea on
its merits.  And I must admit that the first thought that went through
my head was "I'm F***ked."

But let me back up....

Fishing issues could not BE more contentious for First Nations people in
this country and especially on this coast.  The right to fish,
especially for salmon and herring, is as deeply rooted and sacred an
Aboriginal right as you're going to ever find.  Armed standoffs occur
regularly over access to the fishery between First Nations people, non
Aboriginal fishers and government.  It's serious serious business.

Today I opened the space for 68 people who are at the heart of the
matter in British Columbia.  They are Chiefs, folks in charge of large
Aboriginal fisheries organizations and political leaders.  Serious
heavyweights.  The purpose of the gathering: "Organizing our Nations to
reclaim the Pacific fishery."  Lofty goal. The sponsor was the British
Columbia Vice-Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, an umbrella
political organization.  He convened the meeting to provide an
opportunity for diverse groups to get together and start to take
responsibility for moving their issues forward.

The diversity in the group was very much compounded by politics.  Some
First Nations here operated their fisheries under Canada's Aboriginal
Fisheries Strategy which provides the federal government with a
regulatory framework in exchange for First Nations having the ability to
fish according to their hard won Constitutional rights.  Many other
First Nations reject this strategy and see it as an infringement on
their rights.  Needless to say the two groups rarely talk and hardly
ever appear in the same meetings together.

But they were both at ours.

68 people proposed 24 groups and for some reason, no one put their names
on their topics.  NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN!  It is the difference between
an agenda topic being a dissociated issue or a passion driven matter of
importance.  That was the first problem.

The second problem was all my fault, and it had to do with a bad
opening.  Every so often we flub them, get tongue tied, forget
something, say things in the wrong order, whatever.  It wasn't the worst
opening I have ever done, but it was probably the worst situation not to
be perfect in.  Usually people get the hang of the process anyway.

This time however there were too many divisive politics at play for the
group to go smoothly into discussion.  Folks milled around at the wall,
for 10 minuets, 15 minutes, 20 minutes.   I started to break a sweat.
My sponsor was cool, and level headed, but suggested that I prompt
people to getting down to work.  I refused.  "They know what to do." I
said.

They didn't.  For some reason an air of confusions descended upon the
group.  People wandered away.  A lot of little discussion started taking
place.  In retrospect i think two things were happening.  First folks
wanted to be sure they were not going to be committing themselves to
being in a politically awkward position, so a stand off of a sort
ensued.  Someone had to make the first move.  Who you were meeting with
was as important as what you were going to be talking about, and so a
lot of people were waiting for the right people to make the first move.

Second, there was a lot of socializing going on and folks catching up
with each other which isn't normally a problem, except in this case it
provided a useful way to bide time creating a positive feedback loop.
The more standing around that was going on, the more solidly people got
engaged in the social groups and the more engaged they were there, the
less inclined they were to meet in their groups.

I finally assessed the situation from a chaos theory position (you can
see how close I was to losing it).  i thought to myself perhaps the
chaos here is just below the threshold.  It isn't going to develop any
self organizing priorities without a wee addition of energy.  So, not
recognizing the self-organization that WAS going on (it was happening,
ii just wasn't what I wanted to happen -- see the fatal error?) I put
the mic to me lips and said, quietly "The 10:00 groups can get going any
time."

Stupid stupid stupid.

That's when the mic was grabbed from my hand and a complete process
reengineering was suggested.  And it didn't help that it was a prominent
local chief that made the intervention.  Great, I thought.  A bad idea
backed with authority.

My immediate reaction was to take the mic back when he was finished
fomenting revolution and calmly suggest that if conveyors wanted to
combine topics they were certainly invited to do so, but that I thought
in terms of the process, folks were expecting to be in Open Space, and
that meant that I was going to let the process unfold.  I thanked him
for his comments though.

In two minutes the circles were together and stuff was happening.  And
the first 1.5 hour sessions worked great.

After that I have to admit that the fire went out of the belly and the
second and third sessions morphed into a circle with about 30 people
talking about the dead moose: the way the Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy
divided our Nations. In effect, the group ended up in a situation very
close to what the chief had proposed, the difference however, was that
it evolved naturally and so it worked very well for them.

I never did get grounded, and found holding the space to be very very
hard for the whole day.

That discussion went on for three hours, with other things happening on
the side.  I wrapped them up at 2:30, the group prioritized the 12
issues that were reported upon and we gathered in the circle for what I
was sure was to be the roasting of my life.  My confidence was shot, my
demeanor reserved, my visage wan.

And to my surprise we heard comments like: this is a great process, it
was great to talk in this way, the level of respect in the room was
phenomenal, we have to do this more....etc etc.

I was pleasantly surprised, although absolutely drained.  I'm not happy
with how the day went altogether, although i have nothing bad to say
about the process. This was also the very first time I have done an OST
meeting where people have acknowledged the power of the process but did
not thank me.  And I did not deserve thanks.  It wasn't a stellar day.

So the lesson?  The process always works (you idiot, of course it always
works) but it works better if the facilitator is clear, cool, and
collected and the opening has to be impeccably done, especially in these
kinds of situations, where there's no forgiveness.  It's such a simple
lesson, so basic to any facilitation practice, but one that doesn't hurt
to be reminded of.  Well, it hurts, but that's the point.

I'm going to bed now.  I'll wake up on Friday.

Chris

--
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

http://www.chriscorrigan.com

108-1035 Pacific Street
Vancouver BC
V6E 4G7

Phone: 604.683.3080
Fax: 604.683.3036
corcom at interchange.ubc.ca

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