so how would open space handle this?

[Murray Willmott]

Hi everyone,

Im new to this list so I want to take a little space to introduce myself
before getting onto the topic.

I live in Canberra, Australia and have been working in open spaces all my
life. It wasnt until I met Harrison about 6 years ago that I realised that
was what I had been doing and that it had a name. Since then I have opened
a few spaces and will continue to do so. My particular area of interest is
in the ways communication occurs within and between cultures. This leads me
to dablle and think a lot about the internet these days along with more
traditional fields such as corporate (and any other) forms of
cummunication, information quality and training and development issues.

More recently over the past 10 or so years I have become increasingly
interested and skilled in mentoring and coaching inside cultures I
understand. I've been working for a while now about the concpets of opening
space inside a person to allow for learning and growth. I'ts a pretty new
idea for me and I'd be delighted to talk with anyone else who might be
leaning that way as well.


Onto the issue at hand. My immediate reaction to the question was much the
same as many others who have replied...that the people involved bneed to
care sufficiently to want it to happen. Instictively, my feeling is that
Open Space would be ideal for such an issue. If we measure the situation
(admittedly as I see it through primarily Western media) it satisfies
almost all the prerequistes for using open space...

1. A real issue for resolution which has high levels of complexity.

2. High levels of diversity.

3. High levels of potential or actual conflict. And as Harrison says, the
more the better.

4. When the decision time was yesterday. This one I'm not so sure about.
Sure, it would be great to not have this conflict in the world, for
economic and humatiarian reasons at least. But it's been going on for a
while now in one form or another and this leads me to question if the
matter is seen by those involved as time critical. As with so many of these
wars, successive generations simply do not know any other way of living, or
put another way, the stories in their cultures which support the struggle
are so strong as to override other opinions. The way I see this is that it
must be the people in conflict who see the decision time as urgent, not The
US President because he wants a legacy before leaving the Whitehouse, just
for one instance.

Kerry's comments set me to thinking about something important when opening
spaces. "What is the exact question?". Peace in the Middle East might be
too big to take on in one hit. Something like, "What can women do to have
people see the problem another way" might be a place to start.

This comes with my usual disclaimer..no flames intended and hopefully none
taken.

Cheers for now,

Murray

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