Good Story

[Harrison Owen]

The following story showed up on my email this am -- thought you all would
enjoy it.

Harrison

**********************************************************
Keyspan Corporation (formerly Brooklyn Union Gas)
by Kenny Moore, former Catholic priest

Several years ago, we went through our first merger and as part of the
deal, we were required to generate $100 million savings each year for 10
years. Shortly after the merger the CIO called me in and said that he had a
problem. Most of these savings were based on synergy savings and the use of
information technology. The IT people from one company hated the IT people
from the other company. I thought Catholics were the only group that had
dogmatic beliefs. IT beliefs about which systems to use were even worse -
they made the Spanish inquisition look like Sesame Street. So the CIO said
that he was going to bring all 500 of them together, read them the riot act
- and that I could have 45 minutes on the agenda to solve this problem. I
said no. I can't correct this stuff in 45 minutes. If you are really
interested in doing something worthwhile, I'd be willing to host an 'open
space' for you and I would need an entire day. (Open space is a large scale
org. Change program that has the participants identify topics of their
choice and host the sessions to make everything happen). I recommended that
we rent out the Grand Ballroom of the Garden City Hotel, put all 500 people
in a circle, and book all the conference rooms for the groups to use as
break out rooms. This was going to cost him tens of thousands of dollars.
He said to me 'Have you ever done this before?' I lied and said yes - I do
it all the time! Well, I didn't really lie - I mean I read Harrison Owen's
book on Open Space - and we're going to have 500 people sitting around in a
circle, me in the middle, many of them confused, angry and wounded - and
all of them hoping that by some miracle, things would change for the better
- it sounded like a Mass to me - and I've said Masses for groups larger
than 500 - so this could be a piece of cake.
This CIO was a man who had no use for me - didn't support any of what I did
or believe. Marcel Proust said: 'To wisdom and learning we show allegiance.
Pain we obey." In some regards the only reason he came to me was because he
didn't have much of a choice. He said "Can you guarantee that this is going
to work?" I said, "No - but what I can guarantee is that by the end of the
day, you'll know whether you have the people in your organization who can
bring this merger off - or not. And you're better off knowing now whether
you need to fire them all and start over again - rather than a year from
now. My hope is that they will rise to the occasion - but I can't guarantee
it."
The day came. The CIO gave a brief intro and sat down - turning it over to
me. I briefly explained open space to them, told them that they were the
ones who knew best what needed to happen to make this merger work - and
that one person with passion is worth more than 99 with a good idea - and
would a person with passion please step up to the mike, identify the topic,
post it on the bulletin board and get the process started. SILENCE. The
good news is that having spent 15 yrs in the monastery, I have a higher
degree of comfort with silence than most...so what seemed like an hour (but
in reality was about 30 seconds) some brave soul comes forward and says,
"My name is John Doe - and I have passion about relocating our data center
to Long Island." Right behind him is another person who says, "I'm Jane
Smith and I have passion about relocating our data center to New York
City." And the process was underway.




Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-365-2093
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website www.mindspring.com/~owenhh

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