Opening Space Hither and Yon

[Harrison Owen]

Recent news from Cincinnati sounds good... From Susan Smyth
<SUSANSMYTH at aol.com> Also from "Down Under" Joan Smith
<joanis at ozemail.com.au> they don't show up too much on The List -- but
thought I would give them a spot.

ho
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GoTeam!
We're launched! Thanks to all of you plus the enormous efforts of our Open
Space Leadership Team Co-Chair, Daniel Epstein, we have finally had our first
real Open Space experience!!! P&G's ADOPT program used Open Space as the
format for an afternoon of dialogue. And the results were wonderful---
heart-warming, surprising, uplifting.

A very diverse cross section of 49 P&Gers assembled Friday afternoon for 3
hours of Open Space to dialogue on the theme of Building Communities of Peace
and Inclusion. Tiffany Taylor and I facilitated. Tiffany was the perfect
choice. She left P&G after 13 years on Oct. 1 to pursue her passion of
helping the world understand
cultural differences. She was able to speak with credibility to the concerns
of P&Gers about this funny thing called Open Space and belief-bending
concepts like "whoever come are the right people" and the Law of Two Feet.
The topics people brought forward were deep and from the heart.
Daniel will send along the list of the topics for all of you to see. The
only hard part of the day was to stop the spirited dialogue long enough to
do the
final debrief and have people share a word about their experience. My take on
what they shared was: 'this works for us and we want more.'
The team Daniel partnered with at the company who sponsored the Oct. 19
effort have a long term responsibility to provide solutions within P&G to
heal the racial divide in Cincinnati. They will let us know as they continue
to assess the Open Space pilot how and if they will want our ongoing help.
No matter how that sorts out, yesterday was a huge success. For Open The
Space Cincinnati and P&G. My deepest gratitude to all who have helped make
this possible. I
particularly want to thank Daniel whose courage and persistence in making
this happen have been truly exceptional. We've all acknowledged that hardest
way to do this Open Space work is within the confines of our work place.
 From a career standpoint, there is nothing to gain by taking the stand for
building communities of peace and inclusion, and doing it by having people
come together to TALK, in an open forum, of all things! We got where we are
as a divided city by many people at many turning points taking the safe way
out. This was no safe choice on Daniel's part. My deepest respect to you,
my friend.
Thanks each person involved with Open Space Helpers without whose efforts
this result would not have been possible. It renews my commitment to open the
space. I ask that each of us look into our hearts as well as our
rolodex/contact lists and see where we can create the opportunity to open the
space.
Blessings,
Susan
Open Space Facilitators Leadership Team

And then from Down Under

From: Joan Smith <joanis at ozemail.com.au>
Reply-To: joanis at ozemail.com.au
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; N; PPC; en-US; m18) Gecko/20010131
Netscape6/6.01
X-Accept-Language: en
To: owenhh at MINDSPRING.com
Subject: Self Organisation


Greetings from Down Under Owen, Hope all is going well with you - I have
just finished a 3 day OST with a group of 110 women from a Religious
Congregation. At the moment they are 'self organising' - a miracle of some
sort in their situation, and I am sure very few of them would have thought
this could happen two weeks ago. Healing is another word I have heard
coming through during these days. I smile when so many of them are saying
'how did it happen'? They become frustrated when I answer "not sure ".
However in a debrief today I put it back to themto reflect on the
experience and I think they were surprised that they were naming the
interaction and self empowerment that occurred and now the responsibility
to take forward the directions they have decided upon.
In a meeting with the leadership team of the congregation in March I felt
uneasy as they were not sure about people taking responsibility and self
organising groups they could not 'control'. I suggested that maybe they
were not ready for this experience - At a second meeting we decided
together to go forward.
A new leadership team were elected at the end of the OST - this, too, held
many surprises for the group. I think it was the deep interaction over the
three days that allowed Spirit to work and open people to possibilities
other than the names that had fixed in their minds when they arrived.
Gratitude Harrison for your 'two martinis and joke' that brought this way
being a group to so many of us. Also for your way of 'letting go'.
Hope you can come to OZ next year. Peace Joan Smith

***********************************************

So -- anyhow... wherever and however we can do it...


Harrison





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

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