Major downsizing

[Harrison Owen]

At 01:49 PM 5/11/01 +0200, you wrote:
>Hi list-friends.
>A client of mine has planned to hold a 2-day OST with all 170 staff, in
>june, the last days before they all go for summervacation. The theme was to
>concern the future of their school (working with "adult learning"). They are
>in the process of changing from public funding to "free market conditions".
>5 public schools will be in a corporation owned by the municipality. Now it
>seems that they will loose a lot of the courses they have given before and
>face serious downsizing. The circumstances will be made clear the coming
>days. The headmaster believes that maybe 50 out of a total 170 persons on
>his school will have to leave.

Some years ago, I was involved in a plant shut down -- everybody went.
Basically we used an early version of Open Space to facilitate the creation
of a support-group-of-the-whole which seemed to work marvelously in getting
all the folks through the ordeal. Another situation was handled by a friend
Hugh Huntington who had a client that literally had to cut itself in half
in a very short period. They used Open Space both to design the new entity
and also to create a supportive body of folks to help each other through
some very tough times. Hugh wrote all that up in a chapter in "Tales from
Open Space" which i edited. That is now out of print, but you can get a
free copy online at www.openspaceworld.com in the section called "Papers"

Harrison


>Harrison Owen

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

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